Chapter 115
True or False Mermaid (Arc 9.2)
Jing Yang was brought to a castle-like building and finally met the man who had bought him.
Jing Yang was wearing a white cotton robe that looked like a cheongsam, standing in a living room that was so large it seemed like a temple. And the man who was clearly the owner of the castle was looking at him from the sofa, exuding a sense of strength and power.
Jing Yang felt a little discomfited from his gaze and simply bowed his head as if he didn’t dare to look at him.
“Come here.” Reibar looked at Jing Yang.
Jing Yang felt somewhat reluctant in his heart, but he had already entered the land of someone else, so he couldn’t not obey him. When it wasn’t necessary, he couldn’t show an attitude of resistance, not to mention that he may still need this person’s help.
He slowly walked over step by step. Reibar seemed to think that he was walking too slowly, and before Jing Yang got to his side, Reibar had already stood up and strode toward him.
Jing Yang almost bumped into him and instinctively wanted to retreat. Just as he was about to step backward, his waist was wrapped in the other person’s strong arms, which lifted him slightly.
Reibar lifted Jing Yang’s chin and looked at those eyes that made his heart unable to calm down. It was as if only when he watched him like this that his heart would be pacified. It had to be said that this face wasn’t considered devastating, but he had such a pair of beautiful and attractive eyes. And this pair of eyes seemed to have been specifically created to touch his heart.
Jing Yang had been raising his head and meeting his gaze. He had been maintaining this position for a long time, and his neck was already sore, but the other person didn’t seem to have any intention of letting him go. In his mind, Jing Yang guessed that since this man was so interested in his eyes, could he be his own lover? After all, in every world previously, his lover particularly loved his eyes and said that he could sense his soul from his eyes.
In fact he also had this kind of feeling. In each world, before their encounter, he would be able to sense from his eyes something that could affect his soul.
Their two faces were so close that Jing Yang could even feel Reibar’s breathing. His body was attached to his chest, and they could even feel each other’s heartbeats clearly. Jing Yang met his gaze and saw the obsession in his eyes, and his own heart involuntarily accelerated.
This man should be his lover, right? It was really too great that he could meet him as soon as he arrived in this world. No matter what the original owner of this body had experienced before, ever since he took over this body and met this man, he would be safe.
According to the experiences from the previous worlds, his lover would be a very strong existence in each world. In this world, anyone might harm him, and only this man would never. Even if he had no memory of the previous lives, even if he hadn’t fallen in love with him yet right now, those experiences of love must have long been engraved into the depths of his soul, and become the help that allowed the two of them to quickly fall in love with each other every time they met.
Jing Yang had stayed in this position for too long and really couldn’t stand it anymore. He raised his hand to Reibar’s chest and tried hard to push him away. Even though he used a lot of strength, Reibar didn’t move at all. The weight and strength difference between the two was too great. And Jing Yang was hungry, so he was even weaker.
Suddenly Jing Yang’s stomach started to growl. Jing Yang felt a little awkward, and worked even harder to push him away.
Reibar felt his resistance and heard his stomach growling, finally coming back to his senses from those eyes. Looking at Jing Yang’s wronged appearance, he thought, this person was already his anyways, so as long as he wanted to, he could look at this pair of eyes anytime in the future. He didn’t have to hurry right now.
“Housekeeper.” Reibar let go of Jing Yang and said to the housekeeper standing to the side who was trying to reduce his sense of existence. “Take him to get something to eat and arrange a place for him.”
“Yes.” The housekeeper responded respectfully. After he bowed to Reibar, he brought Jing Yang out of the hall.
When he was leaving with the housekeeper, Jing Yang involuntarily looked back at Reibar. Reibar just happened to also be looking at him, and the two’s eyes met. In that moment, the two people’s chests felt a pang, as if their hearts couldn’t bear to leave each other and wanted to rush out of their bodies to follow the other.
Jing Yang was brought by the housekeeper to a suite that looked warm and comfortable. But Jing Yang knew that in this kind of castle, this should be a very ordinary room.
The housekeeper told Jing Yang not to walk around randomly or he might be seized by the guards patrolling the castle. If he needed something he could just ring the bell, and there would be servants on call.
Shortly after the housekeeper left, servants sent him a wide variety of food. After picking two kinds of light refreshment, he asked the servant to take away the other dishes. After sitting to take a rest for a while, Jing Yang went into the inner room, lay down on the comfortable bed, and turned on the memory retrieval function.
This was a magical space-time. There were three kinds of people in this world: men, women, and mermaids. And mermaids had a particularly polarized position in this world. Natural mermaids had very high status and could receive excellent treatment and protection.
Because mermaids were very popular, many rich people and nobles almost took owning mermaids as a symbol of identity and pride. So many people would undergo surgery in their childhood to transform themselves into artificial mermaids. Even though man-made mermaids could maintain a young and beautiful state for a long time, because there were many of them and artificial mermaids didn’t have the ability to bear children, many countries didn’t support the practice of youths transforming themselves into mermaids.
But because among the rich and nobles there had already emerged a culture of comparing the number of mermaids in the family, this couldn’t stop many people from pursuing a comfortable life and a large amount of money by voluntarily transforming themselves into mermaids. For certain reasons, the government could not directly legislate against the transformation of artificial mermaids, and could only indicate in the law that artificial mermaids did not enjoy the protection and treatment enjoyed by any natural mermaids.
So these mermaid auctions could be said to be neither legal nor illegal, because most of the artificial mermaids were sold voluntarily. And only good-looking artificial mermaids could be auctioned. Those who looked average could only go to the mermaid trading office to wait for others to choose them.
And Jing Yang appearing in the mermaid auction house was not because the original body voluntarily chose to go. The reason was actually quite complicated.
In this world, there was an even more noble existence than natural mermaids. That was the pure blooded mermaid.
Pure blooded mermaids lived in the deepest part of the ocean. The mermaid ocean country was not large and was basically isolated, with almost no contact with the outside world. No one on land knew the location of the mermaid sea country. In order to maintain the purity of their lineage, pure blood mermaids were not allowed to marry foreigners.
Among the pure blooded mermaids, there would be ones that had certain magic powers. These mermaids could not only call the wind and rain but could also summon cures to diseases like the plague, and rain that could allow plants to grow more luxuriously.
The kingdom of Luasi bordered the sea, and the king of the mermaid sea country had always had some form of contact with the kings on land.
The current king of the Kingdom of Luasi was Hegeni, Reibar’s brother. But Hegeni was over twenty years older than Reibar.
Reibar was born to the former queen, and Hegeni’s mother was just a concubine. The Kingdom of Luasi was a country that attached great importance to orthodoxy. According to the law, in the case that the proper wife had children, children born from concubines had no inheritance rights.
But the former queen had been infertile for years. It wasn’t until Hegeni, who had been born to a concubine, had already grown up that the already middle-aged queen gave birth to Reibar.
The queen’s body had never been very good. Not long after she gave birth to Reibar, she died. Reibar was personally raised by the former king, but when Reibar was still a teenager, the former king’s body was already about to give out.
The former king feared that if Reibar was still a child and sat on the throne at such a young age, he would be controlled and the throne might even change hands. So before his death, he announced to all of the ministers that he would be succeeded to the throne by Hegeni. But Hegeni could not establish his own children as heirs to the throne, and in order to maintain the orthodox bloodline, after Hegeni died, the throne must be inherited by Reibar.
Before the death of his predecessor, Hegeni had also made a public vow that he would absolutely allow Reibar to succeed him to the throne. Only then did those ministers and nobles who opposed him stop.
But the longer Hegeni was king, the deeper his thought of not giving the throne to Reibar became. Especially as his own children grew older, he became even more reluctant to let Reibar inherit the throne.
Hegeni tried to send Reibar away from the capital. He thought that this way it would be easier for him to do something to Reibar. And without his consent, Reibar wouldn’t be able to return to the capital. Then, even if he couldn’t kill Reibar, he could still let him not come back, which would make it easier for his son to inherit the throne. When his son sat on the throne, even if Reibar came back, it would be useless.
But under the protection of the people left to him by the former king, Reibar not only grew up very smoothly but also became a particularly courageous general due to the environment he grew up in, repeatedly leading soldiers to win many battles and repel the other countries. The other countries became afraid to move again for fear of his presence, and he received the endless support of the people and the soldiers. No matter how much he didn’t want him to return to the capital, at the urging of the people and the movements of the ministers who were steadfast in their support of the orthodox line, Hegeni was forced to greet Reibar in a grand manner back at the capital.
Reibar’s return to the capital did not mean that Hegeni had dismissed the idea of allowing his son to succeed to the throne. But Reibar not only had a lot of popular support but also a significant number of nobles and ministers supporting him. His own son, Cory, was dwarfed in skill by Reibar, and his popularity was also pathetic.
In order to help his son get more support, Hegeni thought of a way. That was to marry a pure blooded mermaid.
For decades, no one knew the reason, but there was less and less rain on the mainland. When the drought came, it wouldn’t rain for months. Without enough rain, plants couldn’t grow and the citizens wouldn’t be able to have better lives.
During the droughts, the kings of many countries would contact the king of the mermaid sea country and give them many benefits in order to let mermaids with powers from the mermaid sea country come to their countries to summon rain.
Compared with other countries, the Kingdom of Luasi had more rain, but during the droughts it would still need the mermaid sea country’s help. So Hegeni thought if his son married a pure blooded mermaid who had powers, there could be rain in the kingdom whenever and wherever they needed it. In that way, his son was sure to have the support of many people and officials.
But if you wanted to marry a pure blooded mermaid, you had to pay a huge price. Besides agreeing to the mermaid king’s many conditions, he also needed to exchange his own life. This so-called exchange of life did not mean that he needed to give his life directly, but to accelerate his aging and take away his health.
Even ordinary people wouldn’t necessarily be willing to give up their own lives and health. But as a king, in order to succeed his own son to the throne, Hegeni actually agreed to all of the conditions and succeeded in getting the king of the mermaids to agree to the marriage.