Once the singing ended, the young mermaids consciously became lively and active.
“Shiyu.”
Someone called out to him from the shoreline. Shiyu turned around and happened to spot several familiar mermaid girls.
The girls’ voices were lively, though somewhat awkward, making it clear they were not entirely fluent in languages other than the mermaid tongue.
“Who are they?” Wennisi stood beside him, asking casually.
That’s right, who were they?
The girls all looked familiar. He thought back for a moment and recalled the events of yesterday afternoon.
They seemed to be the very same girls who had argued with Hawk in the mermaid language.
If he remembered correctly, Wennisi’s translation at the time was that they were praising him for being pretty.
The girls walked toward Shiyu, trailing the shark-silk they had woven themselves from their shoulders down past their waists. The fabric had a fluid texture and varied in color.
Glancing at Wennisi standing beside Shiyu and looking at each other, the girls nudged one another left and right.
Curiously, they asked, “Um… who is he?”
Wennisi’s deep, handsome brows held a smile as he looked back at Shiyu in tacit agreement.
Shiyu thought for a second and replied, “He is my older brother.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the expressions of the several girls visibly brightened with excitement.
“Mhm, an older brother.” Wennisi nodded with a half-smile.
Standing off to the side, Zhou Ji stood eagerly on tiptoe, getting ready to receive questions.
Yet the girls seemed to ignore him entirely, focusing instead on chatting with Shiyu in their unpracticed land-dweller language.
“Oh right, Shiyu.” One of the girls suddenly spoke up, her bright eyes asking him, “Whose shark-silk do you think looks the best among ours?”
The shark-silk worn by each person was made from their own tail fins, gleaming brilliantly under the sunlight like the sparkling ripples on the surface of the sea.
Instead of answering immediately, Shiyu carefully examined each of their shark-silk garments before smiling and saying, “Your shark-silk garments are all very pretty. If I really have to pick just one that looks the best, it’s honestly too hard to choose.”
The young man’s snow-like skin glowed under the sunlight, and his smiling eyelashes fluttered like a butterfly’s wings.
“Then if I want to give you my shark-silk, would you like it?” The girl stared, completely captivated, a trace of shyness flashing in her eyes.
“Don’t you know what giving shark-silk means in the mermaid clan?”
Hawk strode over from the side, his green eyes staring intently at the girl with a considerable amount of displeasure.
“Today is the courting ritual. Only when you encounter someone you like, and the other person consents, can you present your own shark-silk to express romantic affection.”
Finishing his statement, Hawk questioned accusingly, “You lot are just taking advantage of someone’s vulnerability.”
The girls didn’t understand what “taking advantage of someone’s vulnerability” meant, but they intuitively knew that no good words came out of Hawk’s fishy mouth and that he definitely wasn’t saying anything nice.
“We call this having the courage to express ourselves unlike you, you cowardly fish!” The girls spoke much more fluently in the mermaid tongue as they meticulously debated Hawk. “You must have been standing over there watching for a long time, huh? What’s the matter, feeling a sense of crisis before you finally decided to come over?”
“Besides, giving shark-silk to someone you like doesn’t necessarily have to be about romantic affection. He’s so good-looking, we just love looking at him.”
Unconvinced, Hawk hadn’t even managed to reply when he was hit with a counter-question.
“Hawk, do you mean to tell us that your feelings are any different from ours?”
Shiyu was so good-looking that anyone would love looking at him.
Hawk (“…”)
Hawk’s green eyes widened, leaving him temporarily speechless and unable to come up with a rebuttal.
“Everything you’re saying is twisted nonsense. Have the lot of you even reached adulthood?”
The courting ritual also served as the coming-of-age ceremony for the mermaids, allowing them to seek out partners.
Yet the simple fondness the girls spoke of—wanting to give away their shark-silk over it didn’t sound like adult mermaids at all.
Too lazy to bicker with him in front of Shiyu, the girls had guessed that offering the shark-silk might not work out anyway, so they had prepared other items instead.
With mysterious expressions, they produced a small box and handed it over to Shiyu.
“If we can’t give you the shark-silk, at least take this.” They said sincerely, “That way, we’ll be good friends.”
Seeing that the box wasn’t very large, Shiyu agreed, “Alright.”
Taking the box from them, he found it to be a small, square container with a surprisingly solid weight.
What could this be?
Carefully opening the lid, Shiyu saw a sparkling, glowing radiance shining from within.
Sparkling in the most literal, physical sense.
The girls had gifted him an entire box of brightly colored gems and conch pearls.
“Thank you, I really like it,” Shiyu said with genuine sincerity.
No jokes here; he genuinely loved these things.
Seeing that he liked them, the girls cast a subtle, triumphant glance sideways at Hawk.
Heh, so what if he didn’t accept their shark-silk? They had a backup plan.
To their surprise, Hawk wasn’t annoyed in the slightest; instead, he looked rather relieved.
His deep green eyes lowered, the tips of his ears burning hot while his hand remained hidden behind his back. After a brief pause, he spoke in a soft voice, “Shiyu, actually… I prepared a gift for you as well.”
“After all, we’re friends too,” he added defensively, as if protesting too much.
He presented the small case in his hand right before Shiyu’s eyes. Inside lay a pair of hanging earrings.
Long, bluish-green beads dangled from the bottom, emitting a shimmering, iridescent brilliance that made it clear they were crafted from materials of exceptionally high quality.
More importantly, the color of these pendants closely resembled Hawk’s fish tail, sharing a similar shade of cyan-green.
Picking up one of the earrings, Shiyu watched the pendant at the bottom sway and catch the light, making it look even more stunning in motion than it did sitting still.
He smiled at Hawk and said, “The color of these beads looks a lot like your tail. They’re very pretty.”
“I—I’m glad you like them.” Hawk had been a bit nervous while presenting the gift, but now his entire person felt close to overheating.
The girls curled their lips in slight disdain, whispering among themselves in complaint: “Since when did he become so coy and shy?”
Placing the earrings back into the case as if preparing to pack them away,
Wennisi asked him thoughtfully, “But baby, you don’t have pierced ears, do you?”
His tone was casual, yet the question he raised was indeed something no one else had noticed.
“Baby, are you going to go pierce your ears just for him?”
Zhou Ji’s gears started turning, and he began outputting effort as well.
“I just realized, Shiyu really doesn’t have pierced ears. Though getting pierced ears doesn’t really fit our blood hunter vibe, you could say…” No, wait.
From Zhou Ji’s perspective, human males rarely had pierced ears, let alone blood hunters.
The mermaid clan had a tradition: ever since birth, regardless of gender, elders would pierce the ears of their young. Even though many mermaids didn’t wear ear ornaments, the pierced holes were always there.
Hearing this, Hawk stopped fretting over why the older brother called his younger brother “baby.”
He merely felt a quiet pang of self-reproach; when giving the gift, he truly hadn’t considered that if Shiyu wanted to wear what he gifted, he would have to get his ears pierced.
Perhaps Shiyu wouldn’t want to…
Hearing Wennisi’s remark, Shiyu frowned with displeasure.
Get his ears pierced for Zhou Ji?
Wennisi was deliberately asking strange questions imbued with a strong sense of personal subjective bias.
Without answering, Shiyu simply picked the earrings back out of the case. This time, instead of just holding them in his palm, he brought the earring right up against his earlobe.
“Do they look good?”
The bluish-green earrings swayed beneath Shiyu’s ear, contrasting against the snow-white skin of his neck like porcelain-white ceramic glazed in an elegant shade.
Exuding an aura of refined elegance and luxury.
The next instant, Shiyu massaged his own earlobe to find the right spot.
Frowning only slightly, the silver post of the earring smoothly pierced right through.
Wennisi’s gaze darkened. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s fine, just a momentary sting.” Stowing the other earring back into the case, Shiyu turned his head toward Wennisi, presenting the ear adorned with the hanging ornament. “Is there any blood?”
Gently cupping the bead with his hand, Wennisi brushed his fingers past the side of Shiyu’s neck.
After inspecting it closely, his voice dropped a notch as he replied, “No.”
Only a flush of color adorned the earlobe, tinged with a soft pink.
Satisfied, Shiyu gave a soft “Mhm.”
Earlobe skin lacked major nerves, so piercing them indeed didn’t hurt very much.
Besides, these earrings were genuinely gorgeous.
Everyone stared at the earrings hanging by Shiyu’s ear. What had merely been inanimate objects resting inside a case seemed to spring to life right beside his ear.
Shiyu’s hair now reached past his neck, and the medium-length chestnut curls trailed downward, causing the pendants beneath his ears to sway in and out of sight. Rather than looking like mere ear jewelry, they bore a resemblance to hair ornaments.
Radiating a sense of chaotic, breathtaking beauty.
Shiyu curved the corners of his lips in a faint smile.
Though the earrings appeared elegant and luxurious, under Shiyu’s movements they unexpectedly took on a striking, almost aggressive allure.
Zhou Ji was dumbfounded; in his impression, very few men around him ever got their ears pierced.
Yet Shiyu suited them so perfectly he belonged to a world where he should be adorned with pearls and precious gems, as if only such treasures were worthy of being placed alongside him.
Half a day passed swiftly, and the sky remained as bright as ever.
Strictly speaking, the mermaid clan’s courting ritual had already concluded, but the young mermaids were free to continue, leaving the shoreline filled with laughter and cheerful chatter.
Checking the time, Zhou Qi instructed Zhou Ji to round up the rest of the blood hunters.
“It’s almost time. Everyone get ready, we’re setting off.”
Since ancient times, expeditions to defeat the Deep Sea Colossus had always been undertaken jointly by the young mermaids of the mermaid clan and chosen representatives of the blood hunters.
The group of blood hunters was now fully assembled, but it remained unclear which individuals from the mermaid side would be joining them.
A sailing ship was slowly approaching the shore of Mermaid Island from afar.
As the vessel came to a halt by the coast, its gangway was lowered.
Only then did the blood hunters catch sight of the person standing atop it.
A blue-black fish tail stood near the edge of the gangway, accompanied by long golden hair it was Diyou.
Shiyu’s heart skipped a beat.
When Diyou’s azure eyes locked onto him, he froze, staring fixedly for a long time without looking away.
“High Priest, why are you on board?” Zhou Qi asked him with a puzzled expression, breaking Diyou’s line of sight.
“Traditionally, indeed only a few young mermaids would go along, but this time circumstances are different. The Deep Sea Colossus has awakened prematurely, and perhaps…” Diyou’s gaze flickered slightly, concealing the unease hidden deep within his eyes. “In any case, just to be safe, I will accompany them.”
Hearing this, though Zhou Qi felt it was strange, she expressed her understanding.
Upon boarding the ship, Shiyu discovered that Hawk was on board as well.
The moment their eyes met, Hawk hurriedly lowered his head in flustered embarrassment, looking far more bashful than when they had first encountered each other.
Shiyu: “?”
Unaware of what Zhou Qi and Zhou Ji had discussed with him, Shiyu watched with his own eyes as Zhou Ji strode triumphantly back and forth across the deck.
Before long, Shiyu learned the reason why.
“Shiyu, in the interest of fairness, I felt I had to tell you this news,” Zhou Ji said, looking at him with radiant, high-spirited pride. “My older sister just told me that if both of us complete this mission well, we’ll have a chance to enter the Blood Hunter Academy.”
“I can enter the Blood Hunter Academy too?” Shiyu couldn’t help laughing, casting a complex look at Zhou Ji.
Giving a vampire the chance to enter the Blood Hunter Academy.
No thanks, he didn’t particularly want to go.