Chapter 208 — The Siren's Knowledge
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 3
"I hope these foods of the land suit your palate," Hetty said with a smile—though her smile twisted ever so slightly when she saw how Tir used that serpent's tail. "In truth, our fare here is already quite plain. This territory is still developing, and many things are…"
"Doesn't matter," Tir waved her tail. "I can't taste it. Sirens have basically no sense of taste."
"You have no sense of taste?" Gao Yang asked in surprise. "Then when you eat… you just swallow it straight down?"
To humans, lacking a sense of taste was plainly a great deprivation—it meant that one of life's greatest pleasures, good food, was forever banished from one's life. But the siren Tir clearly did not mind in the least. She stabbed her fork into the stewed potatoes before her, popped them into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. "No sense of taste, but we can perceive finer textures. And we sirens are, in essence, closer to elemental creatures—aggregates of the water element. 'Eating' is not a necessity for our survival; it's more like… a form of entertainment. In fact, many sirens don't eat at all in their daily lives. At most, when we catch some unfamiliar fish or shrimp in the sea, we'll take a few bites to test their hardness…"
"How fascinating," Gao Yang said, looking thoroughly intrigued by the sirens' daily life (and indeed he truly was). "So how do you ordinarily live in the sea? Do you build cities? Do you have work and the like?"
"Cities? Our cities would give you landsmen quite a shock!" Tir shot Gao Yang a glance, as though he had asked something absurd. "Our cities are vaster than your largest, more advanced, more solid—and in their day, our cities could fly!"
"Flying cities?" Hetty's eyes went wide at once, unable to hide her curiosity. "Could they be like the elves' Radiant Vault—a magical floating city? Ah, wait—do you know the elves' Radiant Vault?"
"I've never seen it, but some of my sisters have. It floats above the strait south of your continent—the Radiant Vault, with a levitation core handed down from who knows what age, and a broadcast system that can't be shut off at all. Those long-eared creatures called the Silver Elves seem rather proud of their floating city. Some of my sisters once went up out of curiosity, hoping to learn from the elves how they broke free of gravity—only to find that those long-eared creatures can only use it; they cannot build it or repair it. That so-called levitation core was most likely stolen by them from some place or other… tsk, tsk."
Tir passed judgment on the floating city most prized by the Silver Empire in a tone of considerable disdain, yet the words she let slip so casually set wave upon wave stirring in Gao Yang's heart.
Tir's tone did not seem feigned, and the character she had displayed over these past days did not mark her as the type to lie and deceive (though, of course, Gao Yang was sure he could see through a person in a few days—and a person of another race at that; he could only judge by the intelligence he had observed so far). From those few sentences, then, Gao Yang could conclude that the sirens possessed exceedingly advanced technology—otherwise they could never have made such an appraisal of the Silver Empire, the most magically advanced realm on the continent!
It could now also be confirmed that a few sirens had indeed visited the land in the past, visited the kingdom of the elves; they had observed and assessed, delved into the technical essence of the Radiant Vault—and they had done so… originally in hopes of learning the elves' anti-gravity technology?
Had the sirens' own anti-gravity technology run into trouble?
Tir had mentioned just now that the sirens' cities could fly "in their day"—meaning that now they were broken? No longer able to fly?
Had they, too, suffered a break in their technology?