Chapter 464 — The Black Trap
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
To be honest, Gao Yang had nearly jumped out of his skin when Tyr suddenly burst up out of the water—a siren was, apparently, essentially an elemental being at bottom, and while this sea-slug monster was lurking under the surface it gave off not the faintest trace of presence. When the creature came splashing up all at once, Gao Yang would have already swung a brick at it, had he been holding one...
Once he had steadied himself, Gao Yang looked at Tyr as she swam back and forth in the water: "What are you doing soaking in the river this late?"
"Where else would I be, on the bank?" Tyr answered with perfect righteousness. "I'm a siren. A water elemental."
"...That's a fair point..." Gao Yang stroked his chin, then suddenly felt something was off. "Wait—if I remember right, you're supposed to be over at the shipyard right now, instructing the workers?"
Tyr had by now become the territory's shipbuilding technical advisor. True, she still grabbed every possible moment to catch up on sleep, but according to the reports his subordinates sent back, this sea-slug monster really did put in honest work when she was at the shipyard.
Like most of the workshops in the territory, the shipyard ran on a three-shift rotation. The artisans worked overtime repairing the vessels seized from the Southern nobles, to meet the ever-growing pressure on river transport during the great postwar reconstruction of the South, while under Tyr's guidance they studied the sirens' vessel technology and how to build the new-style ships. And at this hour, if Gao Yang remembered correctly, Tyr ought to have been at the shipyard...
"Aha... well, today's scheduled work is all done, and right now they were testing the strength of a few materials—nothing that needs me watching over it, and your land-dweller materials aren't anything I'm familiar with anyway," Tyr said as she swam toward the bank, starlight spilling over her wet hair and lending it a strange sheen. "So I came out a little early..."
Gao Yang was a little speechless: "So it's still sneaking out, isn't it..."
"Nobody noticed," Tyr said carelessly, wagging her head. "I slipped out quietly along the drainage pipe..."
Gao Yang: "..."
Did this sea-slug monster honestly not realize she was standing in front of the biggest boss there was? She'd just described the whole process of her sneaking out to his face without a shred of psychological pressure...
Gao Yang could not help but feel a keen curiosity about the social structure and customs of the sirens. He crouched down and looked at Tyr as she lolled contentedly in the water: "Are all you sirens as happy-go-lucky as you? Do you... have anything you worry about?"
"Happy-go-lucky? I don't think so... but I suppose that's how it looks to you," Tyr said, slapping her tail hard in the water. She leaped clear in a splash and landed flat on the ground beside Gao Yang like a salted fish, then lay there slapping her tail with a smack-smack-smack as she spoke. "Our race... well, we live a long time, and we've been through a great deal. We've simply seen too much, so we come across as a bit different from you. Next to us sirens, even your so-called long-lived elves are a rather young race... Oh, Mom, finally rolled over."
Gao Yang glanced at this salted fish who needed half a day of flopping to turn herself over on dry land, and simply could not see in such a goofball any of the depth or bearing of a so-called "ancient race of the deep sea." But he knew Tyr was telling the truth: as an ancient race that had personally witnessed season after season of civilization rise and fall and flicker out on land, these deep-sea salted fish were amply qualified to regard any species on land as "children."
On that point, perhaps only his own true form—the satellite spirit—could compete with the deep-sea salted fish.