131: Chapter 131 Mermaid Princess: Identity and Origin?

"Holy crap?!"

Fan Sinian's voice completely cracked.

The horse-slaying saber in Fang Yuan's hand almost fell to the ground.

Xu Shan and Zhou Jun exchanged a glance, both seeing the same thought in each other's eyes.

Princess?

Merfolk have princesses too?

On the roof of Carriage 07, the sea breeze gradually subsided.

But the waves in the hearts of the spectating passengers grew more and more turbulent.

Everyone stood on tiptoe, wanting to see more clearly.

"Mermaid Princess? For real?"

"Where is the Merfolk Kingdom? Is there treasure?"

"Setting aside everything else, this girl's figure looks really good. Look at those breasts, those hips!"

...

Lin Xiao ignored the noisy chatter around him, directly picked up the Mermaid Princess, and placed her in a relatively clean spot nearby.

Jiang Wanwan timely handed over a blanket, wrapping it around her to cover her private parts.

This Mermaid Princess named Princess Xiyao had very light breathing; the scales on her chest rose and fell slightly with her breath, and her long silver-blue hair clung wetly to her pale skin.

Fan Sinian stood three meters away, his shield not yet put away, his eyes fixed on the curled-up figure as if she might suddenly leap up and hurt someone in the next second.

"Brother Lin, Sister Jiang, you two be careful!" He lowered his voice and asked cautiously, "This is a mermaid..."

Lin Xiao nodded slightly and stood his heavy battle axe upright on the ground with a clang: "I know what I'm doing."

The loud bang of the battle axe hitting the iron plate made Princess Xiyao's eyelashes tremble.

Then, those pale golden eyes slowly opened.

There was no scream as imagined, nor any mental-disturbing screeching.

She opened her eyes and quietly looked at Lin Xiao standing in front of her.

Her vertical pupils contracted slightly and then slowly dilated, as if adapting to the surrounding light, or as if confirming something.

"You..." she spoke, her voice a bit raspy, but very pleasant to the ear, "Was it you who saved me?"

That language was not any that Lin Xiao was familiar with.

But falling into his ears, he could strangely understand it.

It was like some kind of direct transmission on a mental level, completely transcending the boundaries of language.

"Holy crap, did you guys hear that? This thing can actually communicate?"

"Will she summon other merfolk to retaliate against us?"

Discussions rose and fell; Fan Sinian's eyes almost popped out as he watched from the side: "Brother Lin, she, she can speak human language!"

"Don't be so jumpy, I'm not deaf!"

Lin Xiao's brow furrowed slightly.

His peripheral vision swept across the crowd and saw many people holding up their phones.

These people were using the system's built-in recording function.

Those images and sounds were being synchronized in real-time to the chat channel.

[Resident of Compartment 11-05: Holy crap holy crap holy crap... A Mermaid Princess! A live one!]

[07-10 Jiang Lei: Brother Lin caught a Mermaid Princess; she spoke, she said her name is Princess Xiyao!]

[13-03 Li Junjie: That's fake, right? How can merfolk speak?]

[12-09 Sun Hao: Are you blind upstairs? Hasn't the video been posted?]

[Resident of Compartment 11-05: Sigh, why did Lin Xiao wrap her in a blanket? He's not thinking of keeping her for himself, is he?]

[13-03 Li Junjie: Exactly, damn it, why does he get to have all the good stuff!]

...

Lin Xiao ignored these noises.

His gaze fell back onto the Mermaid Princess.

"It was me."

Hearing this, Princess Xiyao looked down at the blanket on her body and then struggled to stand up.

But her fair and slender legs gave way, and she stumbled and fell again.

Lin Xiao reached out to support the Mermaid Princess's soft arm; his grip was light but stabilized her.

"Thank you." Princess Xiyao lowered her head, her silver-blue hair falling and covering half of her face.

Lin Xiao let go and threw out a series of questions: "Where is the Merfolk Kingdom, and why did you appear... inside a fish's belly?"

Princess Xiyao looked up, her pale golden eyes looking softly and directly at the man in front of her.

"I, I can't say for sure either. I only remember many things happened. My mind is in a whirl right now..."

Perhaps recalling something bad, her face grew even paler.

Moreover, the gazes of the onlookers made her feel uncomfortable, and the unease in her heart was constantly magnified.

"They..." Princess Xiyao opened her mouth, not knowing what to say, and could only fruitlessly wrap the blanket tighter.

Lin Xiao didn't speak; he just turned sideways, using his body to block those gazes.

Fan Sinian, who had just recovered from the shock, also walked up, raising his shield without a word to block the area around Princess Xiyao.

At the same time, he shouted at the onlookers: "What are you looking at? Haven't you damn well seen a beautiful woman before? Disperse, disperse quickly, don't force your Master Fan to get rough!"

Fang Yuan and Xu Shan also reacted, leading their people to form a human wall.

They blocked all the greedy, curious, or ill-intentioned gazes outside.

Lin Xiao looked at Princess Xiyao: "Can you speak now?"

Princess Xiyao looked at the human wall that had quickly gathered, and then the way she looked at Lin Xiao became much more complex.

She took a deep breath and began to narrate.

"I am the Mermaid Princess of the Merfolk Kingdom, Princess Xiyao."

"The Di Peoples Kingdom is the place where our merfolk tribe has lived for generations, in a corner of the deep sea, protected by an ancient barrier thousands of years old."

Her voice was very light, but every word clearly reached the ears of everyone present.

"There are palaces built of coral, glowing seaweed forests, and sacrificial rituals passed down for generations..."

Her eyes became distant, as if piercing through time and seawater to see the sights of her hometown.

"We have always maintained the habit of sacrifice," she said. "Whenever the Black Tide surges, we offer the purest pearls and the freshest seaweed to the deep sea. The ancestors of the ritual said that doing so could appease the anger of the deep sea and keep us from disaster."

"For many, many years, we lived like this."

"Until, one day, a human ship came to our waters." Princess Xiyao's voice paused, a hint of gloom flashing in her eyes. "They broke into our kingdom, used cannons to blast open the outposts on the sea surface, dived into our kingdom hidden on the seabed, and disturbed the existence of the deep sea..."

Black Tide?

Human ship?

Lin Xiao's pupils contracted slightly.

The events previously encountered in Harbor Town, as well as the remains just fished up, flashed through his mind one after another.

The surrounding crowd was in an uproar.

Only Fang Yuan frowned, wondering what he had thought of.

"Wait." He spoke, his tone filled with doubt. "You said that ship came to your waters and blasted open your outposts on the sea surface?"

Princess Xiyao's gaze froze for a moment, then she nodded.

"In that case, I want to ask, how did they find those places?" Fang Yuan continued to ask.

Yeah.

Was it an accidental discovery?

The surrounding chatter suddenly grew louder.

And Lin Xiao's gaze fell on Princess Xiyao's face once more.

In this instant, her expression changed.

All sorts of complex emotions flashed in her eyes—guilt, sorrow, and an even more obvious pain.

Princess Xiyao was silent for a moment, so long that Lin Xiao cleared his throat before she came back to her senses and spoke the truth.

"It was we who proactively sought out... humans..."