Shapeshifters - Chapter 15
Su Ying seemed to be persuaded, but she still kept crying.
"I'm so scared..."
"Don't be afraid. I promise you, I will always protect you and not let anyone bully you."
"Really? Then...then come back with me," Su Ying said innocently, her tears turning into a smile.
"No, I'm from the sea, I can't go back with you." "You're lying to me! I don't want to go back!" Su Ying cried again in distress.
"Don't cry, I'm not lying to you. I'll tell you a secret: people from the deep sea can transform into humans. Legend has it that there's a place where they can become human. Although the location is long gone, I believe I can find it. I'll go find it right away and then come back to protect you. You go home first and wait patiently; I promise I'll keep my word."
Finally, Xiao Suying was found by beach patrol personnel and rescued, and the memory ended there. I opened my eyes and found myself back in the same place, as if I had just had a dream. Lu Yun looked at me with a grin, while Suying was still unconscious.
“We’ve found the root of her mental health issues,” Lu Yun said with a smile. “Because she was terrified after the shipwreck she suffered as a child, and her subsequent experiences were so bizarre, her brain made a normal protective response, the so-called ‘drawer phenomenon,’ temporarily sealing the memories. But they still resurface in her subconscious from time to time, causing confusion in her memories, which is quite normal.”
Lu Yun told me, "I tried to sort out her memories again, and everything is fine now."
After a while, Su Ying woke up, her face still streaked with tears, but that smile was the most radiant I had ever seen on her since I met her.
“That feeling was so unique, so wonderful,” she said to Lu Yun. “I want to thank you for letting me relive those memories.” Her voice was very gentle.
"You still remember some things from before, right? About these memories?" I asked.
"Yes. I often see it in my dreams, and sometimes I recall fragmented but scattered memories while swimming or taking a bath, but this is the first time I've remembered it so completely. Now I remember it clearly." Her hands were quietly folded on her knees, no longer fiddling with her hair, her face serene and content, her eyes showing great determination.
"You remember everything?"
"Yes."
"It seems the whole matter has been resolved." I composed myself, stood up, and glanced at Lu Yun.
"What?" Su Ying asked, puzzled.
"Although some aspects are still unclear, it is safe to assume that the whole thing is indeed related to the underwater people. As for the Zhidan Garden site, I am almost certain that it is the place that the underwater person who saved you mentioned, the place where they could turn underwater people into humans."
I couldn't help but feel excited, and my voice trembled slightly. I had finally found the truth of the matter; it turned out that it had been hidden in Su Ying's mind from the very beginning.
"I knew it, it must be him!" Su Ying said excitedly, clenching her fists. I heard her say, as if to herself, "It must be him. I knew he would come." I think she must be referring to the mysterious underwater man.
"So what's next?" Lu Yun asked. She had already done what I asked her to do, but she was clearly also quite interested in it.
"Hmm..." I looked at Su Ying, unsure of what to say. I hadn't expected to find the answer so quickly through Su Ying, but should I really help her find the underwater people next? I pondered for a while, just then the doorbell rang.
As I knew, Su Ying wasn't very popular; she rarely even called. I wondered who would come to her door now. Su Ying herself was a little confused, but she went to open the door.
"Hi, Su Ying, long time no see!" The voice sounded familiar... Oh no!
My heart sank, and I knew something was wrong. Standing at the door was Shui Sheng, carrying a bag of some unknown material, with a strange middle-aged man behind her. I'd been so preoccupied with the Zhidan Garden archaeological site these past few days, and with one strange thing after another happening, I'd almost forgotten I was only temporarily renting Shui Sheng's place. Now I was going to be homeless again.
Shui Sheng peeked out and saw me there too. She was quite surprised and asked, "Na Duo, what are you doing here...?" I was a little embarrassed and before I could answer, Lu Yun suddenly rushed forward from the side, pulled Su Ying behind him, his face ashen, and shouted in a deep voice as if facing a formidable enemy: "What are you!"
The intimidating aura emanating from Lu Yun startled me. Shui Sheng's expression also changed, but she pretended not to understand, exchanged a glance with the middle-aged man, and asked Lu Yun, "What...did you say?"
Lu Yun raised one hand, his fingers flicking and bending to form another mysterious hand seal, and I immediately felt dizzy. Although I was shielded behind Lu Yun, I was still affected; one can imagine how strong the impact must have been on the two facing him. Could illusion really be connected to Tantric Buddhism? What are the secrets behind the use of hand seals? Posture, speed, frequency, resonance, or perhaps… illusion? Several words flashed through my mind in an instant.
Su Ying was clearly affected as well. We exchanged a glance and then turned our attention to the two people at the door.
Shui Sheng remained nonchalant, but her face had turned a little pale. She forced a smile and asked, "Wh...what is it?"
However, the middle-aged man's hand behind him suddenly seemed to melt, flowing down to below his knees, before twisting and bouncing back to its original shape. Although it was only for a very short moment, we could all see that abnormal twisting.
Upon seeing this sight, I couldn't hide my shock and blurted out, "Underwater people!" The texture and color it displayed were exactly the same as the underwater people that Su Ying had just seen in her memory.
Lu Yun lowered his hand, and before Shui Sheng, who was still pretending to be stupid, could speak, he said in a cold tone: "Stop playing dumb. That attack just now would have knocked down an ordinary person long ago. Your mental strength is really strong, but you are definitely not human. So Duo is right, you are underwater people, right? What are your purposes?!"
"Please forgive us," Shui Sheng finally said after a moment of silence. "We meant no harm."
Su Ying was so shocked that she covered her mouth with her hand and stared at the two of them intently.
"Alright, don't worry about it." Lu Yun smiled, then patted Shui Sheng's shoulder as if greeting an old friend. "We also mean no harm, but we hope that you and your companions will explain things to us clearly."
Shui Sheng and his companion sat down on the sofa. I still couldn't believe that this shy, honest young man, a junior reporter at my newspaper, was actually a sea dweller. After a long silence, considering how to begin his story, he finally spoke: "I am indeed a sea dweller. This is my companion. We are definitely not human."
"Actually, the existence of underwater people predates that of humans by a great deal. Our history began tens of thousands of years ago. In fact, from your evolutionary perspective, we may have evolved from jellyfish, which means that according to your classification, we belong to the category of mollusks. This is several stages earlier than that of humans."
I wanted to say that they were much more primitive than us, but then I thought that this was based on Darwin's theory of evolution, and Darwin formed his theory without knowing the existence of the underwater people, so I held back from speaking.
"Although we have formed a civilization, our thinking is different from that of humans. We, the underwater people, focus on developing our own abilities rather than thinking about how to use tools, which is what you call developing technology. Because the resources in the seabed are very limited, the lives of the underwater people are still very simple and primitive, and there has been almost no progress in technology. However, the physical abilities of the underwater people are very strong, completely different from those of humans."
"Then how did you transform into a human?" I asked him.
"This is a long story," Shui Sheng sighed. "It all started with a story from a long time ago."
“It was probably over six hundred years ago, right here in China, around the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there was a man named…” He couldn’t recall the exact time, but his companion chimed in: “…Ruan Zhenshan. There was a man named Ruan Zhenshan who somehow obtained an incredibly advanced instrument that could cause one creature to mutate based on another. Let me tell you this story.” We listened quietly as this seemingly weathered middle-aged man—who was actually a sea creature—continued.
"This Ruan Zhenshan was the leader of a branch of a rebel organization called Mingjiao—you should know Mingjiao, right?—in the Jiangnan region. He raised an army against the Yuan dynasty and needed a strong force. Because he had a strange encounter and knew about the existence of us underwater people, he thought of us underwater people."
"Sea people?" we asked, puzzled.
"The kind of equipment he obtained could mutate one creature into another while retaining some of its original special abilities. He used this to transform some sea creatures into human-like beings, while preserving their ability to change shape, their invulnerability, and their physical attributes. To tell you the truth, I was one of those people at the time," the middle-aged man said slowly, and we were all taken aback.
"Why would the underwater people have been willing to be used by him back then?" Lu Yun interjected, "If your abilities are really much stronger than those of humans."
The sea creature seemed somewhat displeased with Lu Yun's question, but fearing Lu Yun's abilities, he dared not retaliate. He got up and walked to the aquarium, put his hand into it, scooped up some water and held it in his palm. With a clenched fist, a thin jet of water shot out from between his fingers with a pop, creating a small crater on the wall.
I was speechless, thinking that the games we usually played in the pool had become deadly weapons in the hands of the underwater people. Lu Yun snorted, looking quite unconvinced.
"The underwater people, that is, us, all voluntarily became human back then. We begged him, and he offered to help him defeat the Yuan army in exchange," he said, sitting down.