Chapter 193 — Lost in the Deep... or Adrift?

"You're a siren?" Gao Yang took two deep breaths before calming himself, then at once asked eagerly, "If you are, then perhaps we really have met. My name is Gao Yang Cecil—did we meet seven hundred years ago?!"

"Gao Yang Cecil? Yaaawn..." The mermaid miss gave a great yawn, then rubbed her eyes. "Seven hundred years ago... that does ring a faint bell. There did seem to be a human like that about, but I didn't have much dealings with him. You're saying that was you? Can you humans live seven hundred years?"

Gao Yang was momentarily at a loss for how to explain. "Uh... I only recently came back to life."

The mermaid miss blinked. "Did you people develop a new feature?"

Gao Yang: "...You could say that. Or not."

"Doesn't matter—we're not close anyway," the mermaid miss said, shaking her head so that her sea-blue hair caught the sunlight in wondrous luster. "So sleepy. I was only halfway through my nap when someone smashed a bucket over me and woke me up. Who threw that bucket, anyway?"

Gao Yang glanced awkwardly at Pea, not far off, but quickly recovered. "You were sleeping in our well—of course you'd get hit... By the way, what's your name?"

"Tir," the mermaid miss grumbled. "So that place I was just in was a well?"

It was plain she did not much care to talk with people, yet she seemed somewhat interested in Gao Yang, so the two barely managed a conversation—and that little exchange was already enough to make the onlookers click their tongues in wonder. Rebecca gazed at her Ancestor-sir almost worshipfully for reaching a consensus with a fish, and could not help blurting out: "Ancestor-sir, did you go fishing back in the day?"

Where she got that idea from, no one could fathom.

Gao Yang gave Rebecca a look caught between laughter and tears, then turned to the siren who called herself "Tir," unable to curb his curiosity: "So where do you come from? Why did you come here? Is there anything you need our help with?"

"Me? I came from the deep sea," Tyre said, swaying slightly where she perched on the well's rim. "How would I know why I ended up on you humans' land... Not long ago I was still in the sea fighting another bunch of humans, and then I got separated from the main force. I swam for home on my own, and somewhere along the way, somehow, I wound up in this place. I opened my eyes and saw humans everywhere around me—I thought I'd dropped right into the enemy's nest. Gave me an awful fright."

"Fighting a bunch of humans in the sea?" Gao Yang seized sharply on the key point in that sentence, and in the next instant realized another: "You're saying you drifted here while swimming back toward your siren territory?"

Tyre nodded. "That's right."

If the legends and the elves' records were not mistaken, sirens were an intelligent species living in the distant seas east of the continent...

Gao Yang's expression turned strange. "Miss Tyre, if I'm not mistaken, you... have most likely swum the wrong way..."

"Huh?"