Lansi eventually went with Will to a small restaurant for dinner.
There were not many kinds of food available in this post-apocalyptic world, and Lansi couldn't figure out what Will actually liked to eat, so he simply ordered him two grilled fish.
Will stared at the two steaming grilled fish in front of him. He frowned slightly and pressed his lips together, clearly resistant to them.
"You're really strange."
Lansi looked at Will curiously.
"Don't you like cooked food?"
"Why do you humans like cooked food so much?"
Will asked in return.
"They're already corpses. Why add another unnecessary step?"
Lansi: "..."
Will clearly had no intention of forcing himself. The next second, he pulled over the box Lansi had brought with him.
Right in front of Lansi, he casually took out a fish and bit into it raw.
Lansi's pupils immediately dilated in shock.
He truly hadn't expected Will to eat the fish just like that, without even cleaning or preparing it first.
Even when Lansi ate raw fish in the ocean, he at least sliced it into fillets beforehand.
Now, watching someone gnaw on a whole raw fish so naturally, Lansi couldn't even convince himself this counted as sashimi anymore.
For the first time, he seriously began to question whether the person sitting across from him was even human.
Thinking back to how Will had tried to feed him live fish earlier, the more Lansi looked at him, the stranger he seemed.
He had no choice but to feel uneasy.
First, Wen Yu had resembled Winsor so much that it couldn't be ignored, and Lansi had instinctively sensed an unpleasant aura from him.
At first, he thought Wen Yu resembling Winsor might simply be coincidence.
But after Will appeared, Lansi could no longer convince himself it was just coincidence.
Suddenly, Lansi reached across the table and touched Will's face.
After catching Will's attention, he cupped his cheek and asked softly,
"Do you like me?"
Will blinked. Under the restaurant lights, his azure eyes looked like a deep ocean—clear and innocent.
"Yes."
He set down the fish in his hand, the corners of his lips curling upward.
"Lansi, have you finally realized that I like you?"
"Before I accept someone's feelings, I need to figure out exactly who likes me."
Lansi narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Are you really just Will? What's your relationship with Winsor? Why do you have his face?"
The smile at the corners of Will's lips stiffened.
His azure eyes darkened almost instantly.
For no reason at all, Lansi suddenly felt a chill crawl down his spine.
He quickly withdrew his hand and stared at Will with growing unease.
"Lansi, I like you. I truly like you."
Will interlocked his fingers on the table and looked at him seriously.
"I know you want to return to the sea. As long as you say the word, I can wipe out all the humans on this planet for you. Then you can live freely in the ocean forever."
Lansi's expression immediately turned ugly.
"What exactly is your relationship with Winsor?"
"Before asking me that…"
Will suddenly giggled.
"…why don't you first figure out what Winsor really is?"
"What do you mean?"
Lansi frowned.
"He's just a black-tailed mermaid."
"Do you really think a black-tailed mermaid could command sea monsters?"
Will laughed even harder.
"And do you honestly think his appearance was just a coincidence?"
"I actually like the way you say everything so directly... In that case, I might as well tell you the truth."
Will looked at Lansi with a smile.
"I used to be a part of the Winsor you're talking about."
What?
Lansi stared blankly at him, unable to understand.
What did he mean by "a part"?
"In the ocean, some creatures are like starfish. Even if one of their limbs is severed, that limb won't die immediately. Instead, it may grow into another complete starfish."
A trace of malice appeared in Will's smile.
"That's the relationship between me and Winsor."
Then he asked a soul-piercing question:
"Do you really think Winsor is still just a black-tailed mermaid now?"
Lansi was so shocked that he couldn't say a single word.
"Still, I'm different from Winsor."
Will gazed at Lansi, his eyes burning with intense emotion.
"Lansi, haven't you realized it yet? Part of your current situation was deliberately arranged by Winsor. He's been deceiving you from the beginning, and he intends to continue lying to you. I'm afraid that even after you return to the sea, you still won't realize you were deceived."
Lansi remained silent for a long time before finally forcing a sentence through clenched teeth.
"Winsor isn't on land."
"Why would you think that?"
Will tilted his head innocently.
"As one of his split selves, I can sit here and talk to you. Do you really think Winsor, as the original body, doesn't have the same ability?"
Lansi's face instantly turned pale.
He could already feel his suspicions slowly being confirmed.
"Lansi, I'm different from him. My feelings for you are pure."
Will confessed once again, his gaze unwavering.
"So I won't lie to you. Stay here with me, okay?"
Lansi fell silent again.
The information Will had revealed was simply too shocking.
The relationship between Will and Winsor vaguely reminded him of the gods in myths—
A god splitting off a fragment of itself, with that fragment inheriting certain traits before eventually growing into a new god of its own.
If that was true, then Will had probably inherited Winsor's "purity."
Which meant Will was direct, passionate, and ruled entirely by emotion.
"If I stayed with you… what would you do with me?"
Lansi asked cautiously, his voice trembling slightly.
He had once stayed with Winsor before. Even though Winsor had treated him gently, Lansi had still sensed a frightening possessiveness hidden beneath that tenderness.
Winsor had always seemed to want to hide him away.
Only, in the end, Winsor never truly acted on those impulses.
Will tilted his head and seriously thought about the question. Then he revealed an innocent, childlike smile.
"I'd build the most beautiful nest for you."
"And then I'd put you inside it."
Lansi sucked in a sharp breath.
Why did that sound exactly like the coral cave he had once lived in?
If he had never tried to escape back then, would he have spent his entire life trapped inside those coral bones?
Thinking carefully about it, Lansi even began to suspect that the enormous black tentacles he had encountered before had also been Winsor.
"My… my thoughts are a mess right now."
Lansi felt overwhelmed by everything he had learned today.
He needed time to sort things out. More importantly, he needed to go back and ask Wen Yu what exactly was going on with him.
Lansi stood up, preparing to leave.
"You want to leave?"
The smile disappeared from Will's face, and his expression darkened.
"You're planning to go back to that hypocritical clone?"
Why?
Humans were human precisely because they possessed reason. They didn't become slaves to emotion.
Besides, there was a saying: liking is possession, but love is restraint.
Compared to the purely emotional Will, Lansi still felt that Wen Yu—or perhaps Winsor—gave him a stronger sense of security.
At the very least, Wen Yu would consider his feelings.
So Lansi still chose to return.
But the moment he sensed the faint killing intent radiating from Will, his body stiffened.
Instinctively, he realized he probably couldn't defeat Will at all.
Will was not the same species as him.
Sometimes, the aura coming from Will made Lansi want to flee on pure instinct.
Lansi clenched his teeth.
"I don't like you."
"I want to go back."
"That's a pity."
Will sighed and shrugged, looking completely unconcerned.
"It's fine if you like me, and it's also fine if you don't. Anyway, I like you. Your thoughts have nothing to do with me."
Lansi stopped in his tracks. He looked at Will suspiciously, instinctively feeling that the other party was preparing something terrifying.
"Aren't you curious about what Winsor's real body looks like?"
The corners of Will's lips curled upward. Under the light, his smile carried an indescribable charm—strange and ever-changing.
"He doesn't want to show you. I can."
Lansi unconsciously took a step back.
Will slowly stood up from his seat.
Then he removed his helmet.
Black hair spilled over his shoulders.
At that moment, the atmosphere inside the small restaurant suddenly thickened. The warm yellow lights overhead gradually shifted into a deathly cold white.
Lansi stared at Will in front of him and slowly exhaled.
His breath should have been the same temperature as the room, but the moment it left his lips, it turned into white mist.
The temperature was dropping.
The other people in the restaurant seemed completely unaware of the abnormality. They continued eating, drinking, and chatting as if nothing had happened. No one noticed the falling temperature or the tense confrontation between Lansi and Will.
A chill of terror crept into Lansi's body.
Subconsciously, he turned to look at the nearest table.
The people there were drunk, laughing loudly and talking to each other—
But Lansi couldn't hear a single sound.
Inside the restaurant, an invisible transparent barrier had isolated him from everyone else.
At that moment, Lansi felt as though he had fallen into an ice cellar.
Suppressing the overwhelming instinct to flee, he forced himself to look back at Will.
Will gazed at him with those blue eyes.
Then, the long black hair draped over his shoulders suddenly began to move as though it were alive. It stretched and extended rapidly, reaching all the way down to his heels in less than a second.
Once it touched the floor, the hair twisted violently with sharp cracking noises. Countless strands crowded together and spread throughout the entire restaurant in the blink of an eye.
And yet, the people inside the restaurant seemed unable to see the writhing black hair at all.
Some of them even remained frozen in the middle of eating while the black hair wrapped around them, cocooning them alive.
An indescribable fishy smell began spreading through the restaurant.
From the floor to the ceiling, everything became covered in black hair. Only the chandelier above remained visible, casting down its cold, deadly white light.
Lansi's pupils had already narrowed into vertical slits from fear as he stared at Will before him.
At some point, the skin on Will's face had disappeared.
In its place was a mass of blackness barely maintaining the outline of a human face.
Within the darkness, a pair of glowing blue eyes shone brightly.
Below them was a mouth stretched all the way to the earlobes in a horrifying grin.
In other words, Will had discarded his human shell and revealed his true self to Lansi—
A mass of indescribable matter.
"You can't understand my existence… This is only a form you are capable of seeing."
Will—or rather, the incomprehensible thing before him—spoke slowly.
As he spoke, the black hair nearest to Lansi twisted together and transformed into a thin tentacle. It slithered up along Lansi's calf, climbed onto his shoulder, and lightly scratched his cheek with its tiny tip.
Lansi trembled violently, yet he didn't dare move.
"My little fish, don't be afraid."
The black mass before him began to swell outward, slowly engulfing the table between them.
"You won't feel pain… Just return to my body…"
The ethereal, tangled voice echoed directly inside Lansi's mind.
As panic overtook him, hallucinations began to appear before his eyes.
The horrifying scene in front of him distorted and twisted. Through the haze, Lansi watched the world around him undergo earth-shaking changes—
There was no small restaurant.
No chandelier.
He was standing at the entrance of a familiar home, a suitcase in his hand.
And standing before him was his mother.
She looked at him with the same tenderness and patience he remembered, opening her arms toward him.
"Welcome home."
In an instant, tears filled Lansi's eyes.
The familiar living room.
The familiar hallway.
The apron his mother had worn for decades.
Lansi stared fixedly at the woman before him, his memories becoming hopelessly tangled.
After boarding the Queen Mary… had he lived or died?
Could it be that the Queen Mary had never sunk at all?
Could it be that there had never been any apocalypse, any ocean, any nightmare—
That he had simply traveled the world with his colleagues and finally returned home?
"Come here, my child."
His mother smiled gently.
She bent down, took the suitcase from his hand, and asked softly,
"Did you have fun?"
Lansi nearly broke down crying.
No matter who he became, no matter what identity he carried, in front of his mother, he was still only a child.
He had suffered.
He had been frightened.
He had missed home desperately.
Tentatively, he took a step toward her.
He wanted to tell her that the cruise had not been fun at all. That he had a terrible dream where he lost everything and eventually became neither human nor fish.
But the moment he opened his mouth—
"Yi—"
The nostalgia and warmth instantly turned into ice-cold terror.
Lansi froze.
He touched his throat in disbelief and abruptly woke from the illusion.
He was a mermaid.
He had slept at the bottom of the sea for fifty years.
That strange cry instantly brought him back to reality.
At that moment, Lansi realized something horrifying—
Being a mermaid was not the nightmare.
The woman before him was.
His entire body went cold.
Almost violently, Lansi yanked his hand away from his mother's grasp and stumbled backward several steps. But in his panic, he tripped over the threshold and fell backward—
The illusion shattered instantly.
The world before him collapsed like broken glass.
Instead of hitting the cold floor, he fell into something soft and slippery, like layers of silk.
No—
Hair.
Lansi had fallen into a cocoon of black hair.
Sticky, clammy strands coiled around his body through the gaps in his uniform, wrapping tightly around his limbs and waist.
One strand remained tightly wound around his right wrist, tugging at his hand little by little, almost tentatively.
Lansi's eyes widened in terror.
He opened his mouth and screamed without restraint—
"Aah—!"
A piercing, high-frequency cry rang out.
Everything nearby began resonating with Lansi's scream.
The black hair trembled violently beneath the sound waves. It continued swallowing and spreading at first, but under the resonance of the shrill cry, the strands suddenly reacted as though they had been burned by fire. They writhed frantically and began retreating in panic.
Crack—crunch—
Countless strands of black hair twisted into tiny tentacles before rapidly retracting toward their source.
In only a few moments, the tide-like darkness faded completely beneath Lansi's scream.
Freed from the cocoon of hair, Lansi stumbled backward in a daze.
Only then did he realize that the darkness around him had entirely disappeared.
When he looked toward where Will had been standing, he froze.
The spot was empty.
In the entire small restaurant, only the chandelier above still swayed gently.
The glass windows surrounding the restaurant had shattered. All the customers lay unconscious on the floor, their bodies covered in a layer of sticky mucus.
Lansi looked around blankly.
Will was truly gone.
Relief washed over him for only a second before his expression abruptly changed again.
He had turned back into a mermaid.
His white fishtail had ripped straight through his pants and now sprawled openly across the floor.
Damn it. What was he supposed to do now?
Lansi squeezed his eyes shut and wrinkled his nose hard, trying to "think" his tail away like usual.
But no matter how hard he tried, the tail refused to change back.
Now he was genuinely panicking.
There was no way he could drag such a tail through the streets.
Lansi hurriedly dragged himself toward the counter, pulling the only tattered tablecloth in the restaurant over his tail.
At that moment, the restaurant door suddenly opened.
The instant he heard it, Lansi nearly screamed again.
But after turning around, he saw Wen Yu standing there.
At first, relief appeared on Lansi's face. But then he remembered everything Will had said earlier, and his expression immediately became complicated again.
"Wen Yu… how did you know I was here?"
Wen Yu didn't answer immediately.
Instead, his gaze rapidly swept across the restaurant as though searching for something.
After a moment, his face turned pale, seemingly because he found nothing.
Without waiting for further questions, Wen Yu quickly stepped forward and stopped in front of Lansi. He stared at Lansi's white fishtail and instinctively tried to pick him up, only to awkwardly freeze halfway, clearly unsure where to place his hands.
Lansi and Wen Yu both lowered their heads and stared silently at the tail.
What exactly were they supposed to do with such a long fishtail?
Ahem. Fish… tail… should probably… be held…
A slow voice suddenly sounded nearby.
Both of them instantly turned toward the source of the sound.
Only then did they notice the fish tank beside the wall.
To prove their seafood was freshly killed, small restaurants often kept live fish tanks near the entrance.
Lansi crawled over and found himself face-to-face with a turtle the size of a palm.
Apparently, not every sea monster had evolved in the direction of becoming gigantic.
"You… okay… ah… please… can… you… put… me… back…"
The turtle slowly opened and closed its mouth.
A black line appeared across Lansi's forehead as he reached into the tank and picked the turtle up.
He didn't dare ask how this turtle had been caught. Judging by the turtle's speaking speed, hearing its story would probably take until sunrise.
"Thank… you…"
The turtle lay politely inside Lansi's shirt pocket and expressed its gratitude.
"We need to leave first."
Wen Yu stepped forward and directly scooped Lansi up in a princess carry.
Then he stared anxiously at the fishtail dragging across the floor.
After thinking for a moment, Lansi cooperatively wrapped his arms around Wen Yu's neck. His tail curled around Wen Yu's waist like a giant snake before he hugged his own fin tightly.
"Hurry up and go," Lansi urged. "Use the tablecloth to cover it."
The posture looked extremely awkward.
Although Wen Yu was carrying Lansi, it looked more like Lansi had forcibly tied Wen Yu up with his tail.
"You… two… in… public… already… mating…"
The turtle spoke with obvious disapproval.
"Mating?!"
Lansi nearly exploded on the spot.
Who was mating?!
He still hadn't even figured out whether Wen Yu in front of him was secretly the black-hearted fish in disguise!