Chapter 1 An Overture

The reckless stranger siren before him had revealed a lot of intriguing information in just a few words, and she was clearly connected to that mysterious underwater city. Hao Ren decided he had to take her back and ask her everything—perhaps the key to entering the deep-sea city lay with this siren.

Although a little reckless, this stranger siren was not lacking in vigilance. It took the group quite a while to negotiate with her before she finally agreed to go back with Hao Ren. Lily, seeing this, was a little curious: "Speaking of which, why are sirens all so cowardly? Logically speaking, shouldn't you fearless creatures be bolder than anyone else?"

"Who can say about personality," Nangong Wuyue, who was talking to her own kind, looked up and answered casually, "Aren't you pretty timid too?"

Lily was speechless.

After Wuyue explained to the stranger siren what kind of place they were going to, the latter began to reconstruct her body. Accompanied by a burst of rushing water, the translucent female figure quickly condensed and gained color, eventually transforming into a big-eyed girl with light brown curly hair. She slowly crawled out of the water tank, her upper body "wearing" a layer of beautiful leather, just like Nangong Wuyue's siren form, while her lower body was a sea serpent tail with colorful patterns. Hao Ren immediately saw that large patches of scales on her tail had lost their luster, looking as if they had been burned by strong acid: no wonder she said she was here to heal, it turned out she was seriously injured, and seeing that even with the constitution of a siren, she couldn't directly heal these wounds, these injuries were probably not inflicted by ordinary enemies.

"What happened to your injuries?" Nangong Wuyue couldn't help but ask, "Can't you heal them yourself?"

"The Queen's Guard did it. Their water arrows are poisonous, but this is already much better," the stranger siren looked down at her tail, quite regretfully. "It's just that my clothes are ruined, it was a really nice outfit… What did I ever do to deserve this?"

Nangong Wuyue blurted out: "What's the Queen's Guard?"

"You don't even know that?!" The stranger siren was shocked, but quickly realized, "Oh right, you were born on land. The Queen is the Siren Queen, and the Queen's Guard is her personal guard. They came to capture me."

The more Hao Ren listened, the more he felt there were layers of secrets, and he immediately waved his hand: "It seems things are a bit complicated, this isn't a good place to talk, let's go home first—by the way, Miss, are you prone to motion sickness?"

The other party didn't have any clothes and could only maintain siren form, Hao Ren was worried that if he brought her back like this, people would see her, so he prepared to have the data terminal open a portal directly. The stranger siren was stunned: "Motion sickness? I'm fine, I often play in whirlpools."

Hearing this, Hao Ren felt relieved and casually threw out the data terminal: "Open the heavenly gate!"

A white light flashed, and in the next instant, the group had already returned to the living room. The data terminal clamored and protested to Hao Ren: "Can you please stop assigning this kind of idiotic startup command to this machine every now and then! How old are you this year?!"

At this time, Izhaks was studying two booklets on appliance repair with Elizabeth in the living room. Hearing the commotion, the two turned their heads at the same time, and both saw a strange girl behind Hao Ren. Elizabeth was very surprised: "Eh, Uncle Ren, didn't you go to the pumping station? How come you brought another 'newcomer' back? This… um, this tail-sister is also a siren?"

Look at her casual unit of measurement—thank goodness she didn't use "this root-sister"...

"It's a long story, I haven't figured out her background yet. This girl was staying in the water tower next to the pumping station, messing up the tap water for the entire southern suburbs. Everyone on our street drank fish soup for several days," Hao Ren said, gesturing to the stranger siren not to be restrained. "You don't have to be restrained here, this house is a sanctuary, and everyone inside is not normal. Um… By the way, what's your name? I forgot to ask."

"Shakira," the siren casually replied while curiously looking at the seemingly ordinary residence, "This is what you call a… sanctuary? It looks like just a regular house, are there fortresses and walls outside?"

It seemed that this Shakira had indeed been staying in the deep mountains and old forests with some kind of alien family all along. You could tell from the fortress style in her words that that thing could definitely not be built within the Third Ring Road...

"Um, our sanctuary is just like this," Hao Ren said with a strange expression, pulling at the corner of his mouth, "But our hard power is absolutely reliable, more reliable than the place you used to hide. By the way, find a place to coil up first, I have a few questions I want to ask you."

"But before that, can you find me some water?" Shakira said, obediently coiling herself up in the center of the living room while pointing to the scars on her tail, "I told you I need a lot of fresh water, you promised."

Hao Ren slapped his forehead and pointed to the washroom: "Lily, go prepare the bathtub."

Before he could finish speaking, the data terminal flew over: "You're really thickheaded, I wanted to remind you earlier: what's the medical pod at home for?"

Hao Ren: "...I forgot!"

Shakira looked curiously at these strange people: "What are you talking about? You're not even going to give me a basin of water?"

"We have a more effective medical solution than a bathtub here," Nangong Wuyue said cheerfully, grabbing Shakira's arm. She was in a very good mood to see a member of her own race, and she was even happier to be able to show off high technology to her own race (even though that high technology wasn't hers). "Come, let me show you some high technology!"

Shakira was dragged away by Nangong Wuyue in a daze. She had subconsciously struggled a bit, but after seeing that Wuyue had no malice, she relaxed, only becoming more curious about the origins of this group of strange people.

To be honest, everything was progressing too quickly, and she couldn't quite react to it.

And after seeing the strange white boxes in the basement, she finally couldn't maintain her composure: "What is this?!"

Hao Ren couldn't explain too much to such an unknown character, so he could only gloss over it: "Some kind of treatment device. I'm a wizard, my research path is a bit off, this is what I use to treat injuries for aliens."

Shakira frowned: "I don't go out much, but I'm not stupid—when did wizards' things look like this?"

Hao Ren rolled his eyes to the sky: "Anyway, believe it or not. If you don't believe me, I can also get you a big basin of water and let you soak slowly, but a bathtub is definitely not as good as a quick fix."

Shakira struggled, obviously she couldn't easily trust a group of strangers she had just met for half an hour, but she couldn't find any reason for these guys to harm her: this ragtag army composed of all kinds of aliens didn't look like a villainous team at all, they didn't even have enough class.

Nangong Wuyue looked a little impatient at her tangled appearance, and patted her own race's shoulder hard: "Hey, just pretend you're being tricked and lie down inside, you won't die anyway. Come, come, quickly turn into a fish, your tail won't fit in..."

Shakira, dragged by Nangong Wuyue, subconsciously turned into a mermaid form, but before jumping in, the vigilance that a normal person should have took over: "Wait! I still feel like..."

Shakira was only halfway through her sentence when Elizabeth suddenly pounced from behind and knocked her headfirst into the hibernation medical pod. The poor siren let out a cry, and before she could even raise her tail, she was locked in the coffin.

The little demon girl clapped her hands behind her: "Too much nonsense."

Hao Ren stared blankly at this scene, and after a long while, turned to look at Izhaks: "You need to pay attention to your daughter's education."

Izhaks immediately put on a stern face and grabbed Elizabeth's ear: "You can't butt people with your head in the future, your horns are getting sharper, you know?"

The others said in unison: "That's not the point!"

Originally, Hao Ren was a little worried about whether the hibernation pod could deal with Shakira's injuries: sirens are very special creatures, and their amorphous body structure couldn't be dealt with using conventional therapies, and Shakira said that her wounds were inflicted by some kind of magic called a poisonous water arrow, so Hao Ren suspected that after she transformed her body shape, the hibernation pod could still lock onto where the "lesion" was. But the facts proved that he didn't have to worry about it at all: three minutes later, the hibernation pod opened, and Shakira jumped out of it like a newly caught fish, as healthy as could be.

"Wow, it's really healed?" Shakira looked at her fish tail in surprise, "Even the gray scale disease is cured by the way?"

Nangong Wuyue folded her arms and smiled: "I didn't lie to you, did I? Now tell us what's going on."

"Oh, wait a minute, let me turn into a sea serpent first. A fish tail can't stand firmly on land..."

It seems that sirens all have this problem.