Under The Lake

2. In Which Wangji Finds Himself Breaking The Rules.

Wangji made his way into the library with great haste, avoiding everyone as he did. Stalking the shelves, he searched the book spines with care, hoping, desperate to find something, anything.

Eventually, he came across a few references and books depicting mermaids.

It wasn't good. At all.

Merfolk, as he found out, were classed as Yao and depicted as ferocious hideous demons.

The illustrations in some of these books were rather unsettling. With large protruding fangs and bulging beady eyes and claws, they were depicted being caught and sliced in graphic descriptions that made his stomach churn.

The mermaid he encountered looked absolutely nothing like this. And lord knows he certainly did not look that vile.

However, there was a particular paragraph that concerned him the most.

'The pearl tears of a mermaid have miraculous healing properties. Their scales are chiefly indestructible, and their blood is a powerful poison.'

Next to it was a gruesome image of a mermaid being strung up by their wrists as a human plunged a spear through their side. All while another human scraped scales off their tail with a butcher's knife, and a third collected the blood dripping down from the putrid looking creature.

Wangji almost threw up over his desk. Was that the fate that awaited him if anyone found out? Would he be tortured for his tears and descaled whilst he was strung up and drained of his blood?

Slamming the book shut, he calmed his thoughts and breathing.

These books were clearly useless. If they were really accurate, they wouldn't have depicted mermaids in such a way.

And honestly, he found these pictures quite insulting. Mermaids were a lot of things, but they were definitely not ugly.

There was only one place he would find any useful information, and that was the restricted section.

But there was no way on earth that he could ask for permission to enter. His uncle would get far too suspicious. He might as well just tell him he was a merman!

No. The only option was to sneak in after curfew.

Good grief, he was really breaking a lot of rules these days.

Just before nine, Wangji entered his quarters and blew out the candles, just like he did every single day of his life.

Silently waiting by the window, he watched as individual lights were extinguished, leaving Cloud Recesses dark and silent.

Deciding to climb out of his window instead, he did a half run half brisk jog to the library, making sure he avoided any floorboards that might make a sound.

Arriving at the locked doors, he apprehensively examined the lock. It was a rather small one that he could easily break if he really wanted to. He supposed that was because nobody would imagine anyone trying to break into a library when the treasure room and his uncle's office were available for plundering.

Judging both the lock and his sects appalling lack of security, he realized that he might have to pick it somehow, otherwise people would know that someone had broken in.

Searching himself for any object that might be able to pick a lock, his hands wandered to the top of his head and came across his white nephrite jade hairpin.

With a small, unwilling huff, he pulled it out of his hair and carefully inserted it into the lock. he had the concentrated expression of a professional, despite the fact that he had no clue what he was doing.

After aimlessly fiddling about and moving the pin in different directions, the lock finally opened.

If Wangji was shocked, he didn't show it, but his thoughts were on the lines of upgrading all the locks in Cloud Recesses.

... Although, if he did that, he would no longer be able to snoop around.

He always did think pull shaft locks were a bit weak, but with his uncle being so adamant on tradition, he knew it wasn't worth mentioning.

With his mind filled with padlocks and security, he entered the library and moved swiftly to the back towards the large, intricate double door that led to the restricted section.

he took off his forehead ribbon, pressed it against the door and watched as it lit up a baby blue before opening ever so slightly.

Was it just him, or was everything glowing these days?

Going down the long, winding staircase, he reached a large room with rows of bookshelves that looked similar to the library upstairs.

Getting to work, he lit a handheld lamp and went up and down each bookshelf. Each book he found was rather interesting, and somewhat dangerous, but nothing was related to merfolk.

After two hours, he was almost going to give up when he caught sight of a dust covered part of the bookshelves nestled in the back, that looked like it hadn't been touched even once.

Twitching his nose as he stifled a sneeze, he wiped the dust off of the books, and his eye was caught by a small book that was about two inches thick.

But what caught his sight was the tiny mermaid on the spine. For once, the mermaid was accurately depicted with a pretty face and small patterns on her cheekbones.

Taking the book off the shelf, he dusted it off to reveal pretty silver inscriptions of fish, river plants and most importantly, merfolk.

Once again, looking around for no reason, he opened the book and read the contents.

The way it was written was more like a diary of someone's accounts rather than an actual book. There were scribbles on the margins and things added and crossed out along with a few doodles and illustrations of mermaids Wangji found much more flattering.

Although it was confusingly written and a little difficult to decipher, overall it was very informative.

The facts about mermaids tears and blood were in fact true, and mermaids blood was a powerful venom that once it entered the bloodstream, it caused instant rigor mortis. which was a fact that he found rather unsettling.

So potent venom was flowing through his veins, but he was still alive? It was all very confusing, but he just put it down to the magic of merfolk.

After flipping through some interesting things about merfolk dietary needs, he finally came across what he wanted.

Scribbled untidily in the margins, was a small paragraph.

'On rare occasions, a merperson can pass their life force and powers onto a human. This rare occurrence can only happen during the full moon, where Yin energy is the highest. The transfer is most successful during cold conditions, the colder, the better.'

Wangji had never despised the full moon more in his entire life, and summer was now his favourite season.

Passively, he closed the book and looked at it as though it had insulted him.

Raising his hand to put the book back on the shelf, the little voice that had been bugging him as of late spoke once more.

'If you put the book back, it's obvious that it was looked at. Do you really want everyone knowing?'

You know, for my inner thoughts, you're being quite brazen! he thought.

Honestly, did being a merman mean that you had a very annoying inner dialogue?

But once again, the voice was right. he had already cleaned off all the dust off of the book, so anyone would know which book was read, even if they didn't know who.

Despite him being on the very bottom of the list of people who would break the rules, it still worried him.

Sighing to himself, he carefully pushed the dusty books together to close the gap left by the merfolk book.

Slipping the book into his robes, he blew out his lamp and made his way up the spiral staircase.