Free Web NovelLucy sat at the dining table looking as though she hadn’t slept well either, leaning limply against Bai Liu as she yawned.
Jeff looked even worse. He spent the entire morning nodding off, dark circles hanging beneath his eyes. His complexion had taken on a sickly greenish-gray cast, and his sunken eye sockets made him look almost corpse-like.
And Bai Liu wasn’t sure if it was only his imagination, but Andre’s pupils seemed slightly smaller than they had been yesterday. The man radiated a nervous, irritable energy that made others instinctively uncomfortable, and a faint fishy odor clung stubbornly to his body.
Bai Liu took out the coin and scanned Andre.
[NPC Name: Andre (Mental Value decreased, alienating)]
Andre’s appetite seemed abnormally large. He shoveled down plate after plate from the hotel buffet as though he were dumping food straight into a bottomless pit.
Since the hotel stood by the sea, breakfast mainly consisted of every imaginable variety of fish—fried, boiled, steamed. The fish soup gleamed with a rich sheen, and the fillets were fried to a crisp golden brown that looked genuinely appetizing.
But what Bai Liu smelled was a sharp, nauseating stench of rotting fish, like the odor rising from dead fish swarming with flies behind a wet market fish stall. The smell alone was enough to make his stomach churn, much less actually swallow any of it.
Yet both Jeff and Lucy ate with obvious enjoyment, as though the food tasted wonderful.
Bai Liu scanned them with the coin. Sure enough, both of them also displayed [Alienating]. It was probably connected to the mermaid statues in their rooms.
Andre’s condition was the worst. Watching him eat made Bai Liu vaguely uncomfortable. He chewed in huge, ravenous bites, and as his mouth worked, something dark and slick—like a fish tail—kept slapping wetly against the corners of his lips. Often, before he had even swallowed, he would already spear another piece with his fork and stuff it into his mouth.
Lucy sliced into a fish fillet with her knife and fork and looked at Bai Liu in surprise. freewebnσvel.cѳm
“You’re not eating, baby? The fish here is seriously amazing. I’m supposed to be dieting, and even I already had two pieces!”
“You really picked an incredible seaside hotel.”
As she spoke, Lucy leaned over to kiss him.
But the overpowering fishy smell on her breath nearly made Bai Liu choke. He instinctively pushed her away, then after a brief ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ pause calmly pulled the plate in front of her aside. Putting on a serious expression, he said, “Baby, your figure is already perfect. I’m not letting a few fish fillets ruin that. Eat some vegetables instead. The fish here is only average anyway.”
Lucy immediately brightened at the praise. Though she still looked reluctant to part with the fish fillets, she obediently began eating the salad instead.
Bai Liu casually helped himself to serving Jeff and Andre generous portions of salad as well.
Jeff ate distractedly.
Andre, meanwhile, looked at Bai Liu with naked contempt.
“What, our rich guy suddenly out of money?” he sneered. “You bragged all the way here about covering everyone’s expenses, and now you won’t even let us eat a piece of fish.”
“Lucy, look at your stingy boyfriend.”
Lucy instantly exploded. “Andre! If Bai Liu hadn’t brought you here, do you think you’d ever get to stay in a hotel like this or eat expensive fish like this? You couldn’t even afford the room! Look how much you’ve already eaten. If Bai Liu refuses to pay for you, you won’t even make it out the front door!”
“Lucy!” Andre roared.
But Lucy lifted her chin and glared back without yielding an inch.
Andre couldn’t vent his anger on the woman he liked, so he immediately turned toward Bai Liu instead.
Amid Lucy’s startled scream, Andre suddenly reached out, his broad hand lunging for the back of Bai Liu’s collar.
Bai Liu merely dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin and smiled at him calmly.
“If you still expect me to pay your bill,” he said evenly, “then you’d better not touch me.”
Andre’s hand froze midair. His nostrils flared violently like an enraged bull.
Bloodshot eyes fixed on Bai Liu as he snarled, “Just wait until tonight. Once you lose that bet, I’m going to make trash like you—someone who can’t even keep hold of a woman—regret being born.”
Veins bulged visibly in Andre’s bloodshot eyes. Rage had clearly rushed straight to his head, but even so, he still didn’t dare actually touch Bai Liu. After all, he still needed Bai Liu to pay the bill.
At that moment, a piece of broccoli accidentally rolled off Jeff’s plate and landed on Andre’s shoe.
Andre exploded like an overinflated balloon finally bursting. Before Jeff could even stammer out an apology, Andre backhanded him across the back of the head hard enough to slam his face straight into the plate. Jeff instantly vomited up everything he had eaten that morning.
“You got your filthy mess on my shoes, you disgusting freak!”
Seeing Jeff vomit seemed to satisfy something in Andre psychologically. He let out a harsh snort of laughter and kicked Jeff again.
After wiping the tiny smear of grease from his shoe onto Jeff’s pants, Andre sneered coldly, “I can’t even be bothered bullying trash that won’t fight back. Clean this up and get lost.”
Lucy hurriedly helped the dizzy Jeff upright. She screamed at Andre hysterically, “That’s enough, Andre! You’ve gone too far!”
Bai Liu ignored the arguing pair completely. His attention had locked onto the contents of Jeff’s vomit.
The fish fillet, golden and crisp on the outside, had turned a corpse-like greenish-black once chewed apart. It was crawling with things that resembled writhing carrion worms.
(T/N: Saprophytic → obtaining nourishment from decaying organic matter.)
Humans absolutely could not eat this sort of rotten fish. At the market, fishmongers usually fed dead fish like this to larger predatory fish instead.
Bai Liu remembered one fishmonger once telling him that the larger the scavenger fish, the more they preferred feeding on carrion.
After breakfast, the driver arrived to pick them up.
[Main Task: Visit the Siren Wax Museum, reward 50 points]
[Main Task: Participate in the Mermaid Catching Event, reward 50 points]
The Siren Wax Museum and the Mermaid Catching Event sounded like two separate attractions.
Bai Liu considered this for a moment. Just as he was about to ask the driver about them, Jeff abruptly rushed over and blocked the space between Bai Liu and the driver.
Jeff kept his head lowered in silence. His pale cheeks looked even more hollow than before, and dried blood still lingered at the corner of his mouth from Andre’s blow. His clenched body trembled faintly.
Bai Liu raised an eyebrow.
From yesterday until now, Jeff had clearly been trying his hardest to stop Bai Liu from interacting with the driver.
That was not normal.
Almost unconsciously, Bai Liu began flipping the coin across his knuckles.
The coin danced fluidly over the backs of his fingers. Whenever Bai Liu was deep in thought, he habitually played with money this way. Even a single yuan coin brought him a subtle sense of calm and satisfaction as long as it remained under his control.
With the information currently available, Bai Liu guessed Jeff’s real target was probably Andre.
Andre being in contact with the driver made sense. If the driver intended to attack someone, he would naturally need opportunities to act. Lucy, meanwhile, was simple-minded enough that there was no need to deliberately isolate her.
So there had to be a reason Jeff was specifically preventing Bai Liu from speaking with the driver. After some thought, Bai Liu concluded that reason was probably money.
Judging from Jeff’s clothes and the way he was constantly bullied by Andre at school, he clearly didn’t come from a wealthy family.
Andre himself was the type who bullied the weak while fearing the strong. Though he verbally mocked Bai Liu for being rich, he had never actually dared do anything to him. Jeff, however, he beat and insulted whenever he pleased. That alone suggested Jeff’s family background was likely even worse than Andre’s.
Since Jeff had handed the driver what appeared to be a considerable amount of money the previous night, Bai Liu had reason to suspect Jeff had secretly used the money Bai Liu gave him—not to hire the driver and tourists as planned, but to pay the driver to help him get revenge on Andre. That would explain the guilt weighing on him and why he kept trying to prevent Bai Liu from speaking to the driver.
But Jeff had already paid the driver last night. Logically, the deal should already have been settled. On the surface, the driver had performed his role perfectly well and hadn’t shown the slightest sign of suspicion.
Ordinarily, Jeff should have relaxed by now. There was no need for him to go to such lengths to isolate Bai Liu from the driver—in fact, doing so only made him seem more suspicious.
This guilty, overly cautious behavior didn’t feel like someone whose plan had already been set in motion.
Of course, it was also possible Jeff was simply timid by nature and unwilling to relax until everything was over. After all, his side quest was called [Bloody Plot]. For something that sounded this close to murder, a little paranoia was understandable.
Bai Liu simply didn’t know when Jeff intended to make his move against Andre.
For now, though, Bai Liu still intended to focus primarily on the main quest.
He casually struck up a conversation with the driver. “Driver, what attractions are there in Siren Town?”
“Attractions?” The driver thought for a moment before answering, “For tourists, the must-see spots are the night fishing and the museum.”
Just as expected.
Bai Liu lifted a brow. “What’s special about the fishing and the wax museum?”
“Of course they’re special. This is Siren Town, after all.”
The driver turned his head as he spoke. It was the first time Bai Liu had seen the man’s face clearly inside the car. Even with Bai Liu’s high tolerance for horror, he still paused for a moment.
Not from fear—
from sheer astonishment.
The driver’s appearance was bizarre beyond words.
The whites of his eyes were unnaturally large, so large that his irises had shrunk to tiny black dots like flies. As he spoke, those tiny irises darted frantically around the whites of his eyes, as though they might break free and escape at any moment.
His skin was pale to the point of translucence, like cheap wax left too long in cold light.
Even while driving, the man was chewing on a fish fillet sandwich.
Where the sandwich had been bitten through, the fish inside revealed the same putrid greenish-black flesh, like spoiled meat left to rot with mold. Yet the driver ate it with obvious enjoyment. Green-black grease stained his teeth as he stretched his lips into a smile far too wide to look human.
