Safe City Ch.90

Chapter 90: Merfolk

“It’s real food, Big Brother. Hurry and eat.”

Tan Xiaoyu carefully carried over a bowl of thin porridge as though it were a bowl of gold. He crouched beside the weak man leaning against the wall and urged him to drink.

The man he called Big Brother was trembling all over, his teeth clenched so tightly that he couldn’t open his mouth.

Tan Xiaoyu patiently pried his jaw apart and spooned the porridge into his mouth.

As he fed him, a smile spread across his soot-blackened, dirt-streaked face.

“Big Brother, eat. If it’s not enough, I’ll go ask for more. The overseer here has a much better temper than the old one. He didn’t hit me, and he even let me be the first to get food. Hehe…”

Because the sl*ves in the Safe City had been chronically underfed, nearly all of them were painfully thin.

Tan Xiaoyu, however, was thin even by their standards.

He looked like nothing more than a short, skinny stick.

That was because he was a second-generation sl*ve.

His biological father had been a sl*ve in Blackstone Safe City. From the day Tan Xiaoyu was born, he had been branded with the mark of sl*very.

After his father died, Tan Xiaoyu grew up in one of Blackstone’s sl*ve barracks.

He had never once eaten his fill.

Too frail, too weak, too slow, and inefficient at mining, he was considered useless by the overseers, who beat him every few days.

That was simply how he’d grown up.

After his father died when he was five years old, the other sl*ves b*llied and beat him as well.

As far as Tan Xiaoyu knew, that was just what life was like.

Then, six months earlier, Blackstone Safe City won a war and acquired a large number of new sl*ves.

One of them—a gravely ill man—was thrown into the same sl*ve barracks as Tan Xiaoyu.

Tan Xiaoyu was desperately lonely.

The other sl*ves avoided him because the overseers had taken a dislike to him. They were afraid of being implicated, so no one spoke to him.

At most, they would kick him as they passed.

Only this gravely injured sl*ve lay motionless.

The two of them shared similarly shaped scales on their faces, and their hair was the same dark blue. The only difference was that Zhuo Ying wore his hair long, while Tan Xiaoyu had naturally short hair.

Tan Xiaoyu shared his nutrient solution with the wounded sl*ve.

Whenever he wanted someone to talk to, he would sit beside the unconscious man and chatter away.

Under Tan Xiaoyu’s clumsy care, the sl*ve unexpectedly recovered little by little.

He said his name was Zhuo Ying, and that, like Tan Xiaoyu, he came from a merfolk civilization.

Zhuo Ying explained that the Safe City of their civilization had been destroyed a thousand years ago, scattering their people across countless places. By now, the name of their branch of the merfolk race had long been forgotten.

Tan Xiaoyu’s father must have known their true origins—that was why he had given his son that name. (Xiaoyu = Little Fish)

Once Zhuo Ying had mostly recovered, he told Tan Xiaoyu to call him Big Brother.

From that day on, Tan Xiaoyu’s life changed dramatically.

Zhuo Ying was tall and powerfully built.

The other sl*ves couldn’t beat him, so Tan Xiaoyu was never b*llied by them again.

When they worked in the mines, Zhuo Ying would help with his share of the digging.

When the sl*ves were sent out as bait, Zhuo Ying protected him.

Big Brother Zhuo Ying also had an uncanny ability to find edible wild plants whenever they were sent outside the Safe City to work.

Sometimes it was wild grass.

Sometimes tree roots.

Occasionally, he even managed to find a snake egg or two.

After eating them, the persistent aches that plagued Tan Xiaoyu’s body from years of living on nutrient solution would ease considerably.

The overseers still beat him from time to time.

But to Tan Xiaoyu, life had already become wonderfully complete.

He thought that if he could live like this for the rest of his life, he would be perfectly happy.

But Zhuo Ying remained constantly restless.

He was desperate to rise from sl*ve to guard, throwing himself into every task with everything he had.

It didn’t take long for him to realize the truth.

In Blackstone Safe City, sl*ves were nothing more than disposable commodities.

Those nutrient solutions inevitably caused genetic diseases after prolonged consumption. Most sl*ves died within five to ten years.

In Blackstone Safe City, there was no such thing as a sl*ve earning a promotion to another position.

Once the sl*ve brand was burned onto your body, you would remain a sl*ve forever.

A sl*ve who worked faster and better than everyone else only invited even harsher exploitation from the overseers.

After realizing that, Zhuo Ying abandoned the idea of earning his way out.

Instead, he began studying the overseers’ routines and the patrol routes.

He decided to escape—

—and take Tan Xiaoyu with him.

Tan Xiaoyu couldn’t understand why they needed to run away.

Wasn’t life already good enough?

But Zhuo Ying was the only person who had ever treated him kindly.

So he followed him without question.

It happened in a newly descended apocalyptic world.

While the sl*ves were outside the Safe City mining, Zhuo Ying successfully provoked two overseers who had long been at odds with each other into a fight.

Some of the other overseers stood around watching the spectacle, while others rushed in to break it up.

Seizing the opportunity, Zhuo Ying led Tan Xiaoyu away.

He had secretly cut through part of the sl*ve containment net long ago.

They could have escaped.

Then, without warning, black rain began falling from the sky.

The overseers received orders from their superiors.

Cracking their whips and brandishing firearms, they forced the sl*ves to run back into the Safe City.

Soon afterward, people around them began falling ill one after another.

Tan Xiaoyu became sick as well.

He only regained consciousness a few times in a haze.

Many people had died.

But throughout it all, Zhuo Ying never stopped taking care of him.

Because of that, Tan Xiaoyu survived until he recovered.

Only after he had fully regained his health did he learn that their City Lord had ceded this entire region to another Safe City.

He and Big Brother Zhuo Ying were now living inside a different Safe City.

To Tan Xiaoyu, however, this new Safe City didn’t seem much different from Blackstone.

He wasn’t surprised.

As far as he knew, every Safe City was supposed to be like this.

And he was supposed to spend his entire life as a sl*ve.

Big Brother Zhuo Ying soon came up with another escape plan.

Without the knowledge of Tian’ou Safe City’s overseers, he secretly built a boat. Using discarded junk, he fashioned fishing nets and hooks by hand, making sure that once the two of them escaped, they would be able to survive on Green Billow Star.

Everything was ready.

Then, the day before their planned escape…

Tian’ou Safe City initiated a Safe City War.

Tian’ou was defeated.

And the two of them found themselves in yet another Safe City.

They heard that this one was called Blue Sea.

Tan Xiaoyu wasn’t afraid of becoming a sl*ve in another Safe City.

At worst, he’d just keep getting beaten.

He’d been beaten ever since he was little.

He was used to it.

What frightened him was something else.

Since that morning, Big Brother Zhuo Ying had fallen ill.

His powerful body lay collapsed on the ground, his brows tightly knitted. Even the scales on his face had turned pale, and he remained unconscious.

Was it the genetic disease?

Before meeting Zhuo Ying, Tan Xiaoyu had never even heard the term genetic disease.

He had always thought people naturally lived for only a little over ten years.

It was Zhuo Ying who had told him that drinking too much of that inferior nutrient solution would eventually trigger a genetic disease, and that only natural food could ease the symptoms.

Before Blue Sea’s guards entered, Tan Xiaoyu had been desperately digging through the ground, trying to find grass roots…

…or even insects.

Those counted as natural food.

As long as he could get Big Brother Zhuo Ying to eat some, he would be fine.

But this was Green Billow Star.

Although the land looked normal, it had still been contaminated by the Sea of Souls.

Tan Xiaoyu dug hole after hole without finding a single piece of natural food.

Just as panic began to overwhelm him, Blue Sea’s overseers entered.

The overseers brought in bucket after bucket of steaming, fragrant porridge.

In Tan Xiaoyu’s memory, food like that was a luxury reserved for residents.

Yet the overseers said it was for them to eat.

The sl*ves surged forward all at once.

Tan Xiaoyu hurriedly squeezed into the crowd to fight for a share.

That was simply part of a sl*ve’s daily life.

Although Big Brother Zhuo Ying had said nutrient solution wasn’t good for them, to the sl*ves, it had always been the only food they had to survive on.

When it came to mealtime, you had to fight for your food.

The more you managed to grab, the more you ate.

If you failed to grab enough, you’d go hungry for the day.

The overseers in their previous Safe City had loved watching the sl*ves scramble over one another.

Sometimes they even placed bets on who would come away with the biggest share.

What completely bewildered Tan Xiaoyu was that Blue Sea’s overseers didn’t seem to enjoy watching them fight over food at all.

“Line up! Stop shoving! Everyone will get some! In order… Hmm… Can’t tell who came first? Then line up by height!”

The overseer had pointed at Tan Xiaoyu.

“You! You’re the shortest! Front of the line!”

Never in his life had Tan Xiaoyu been so grateful for being short.

Now, as he spooned porridge into Big Brother Zhuo Ying’s mouth, he muttered quietly to himself,

“Could it be… that people in Blue Sea like short people?”

“How strange…”

“They all speak a language I can understand, too. That’s nice. At least I won’t get beaten anymore because I can’t understand what the overseers are saying.”

That had happened to him plenty of times in Tian’ou Safe City.

“The overseer also asked how old I was. I quickly told him I was already fifteen. A lot of the sl*ve children were taken away. It was really scary… I wonder where they went. They weren’t thrown away, were they? Good thing I’m already fifteen.”

The porridge finally went down.

After Zhuo Ying swallowed a few mouthfuls, his eyelashes began to tremble.

The lips he had been biting shut finally parted, and pained groans escaped.

Tan Xiaoyu hurriedly clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Shh! Big Brother, hang in there! Don’t cry out!”

Ever since Tian’ou Safe City had survived the epidemic, everyone there had become terrified of disease.

Any sl*ve who showed signs of illness was immediately thrown into the sea.

Tan Xiaoyu didn’t know how Blue Sea treated sick sl*ves.

He didn’t dare gamble on it.

Zhuo Ying began struggling in agony.

Standing over two meters tall, he had lost a great deal of weight over the past six months, but he was still powerfully built.

There was no way the 1.4-meter-tall Tan Xiaoyu could hold him down.

“Urgh…”

“AAARGH!!”

The Blue Sea guards watching the captives line up for porridge heard the commotion and turned to see a man curled up in the corner, his entire body trembling and twisting unnaturally.

The sight was…

…far too familiar.

The guards exchanged looks.

“…Huh?”

Are there zombies in this world?

…

Even Cheng Qisheng, who had been inspecting the city’s levitation system as the rising water gradually submerged the highlands, turned her attention toward the disturbance.

It really did look like someone infected with the zombie virus—just on the verge of turning.

But that didn’t seem likely.

The zombie virus spread extremely quickly.

Cheng Qisheng was more inclined to think the man had suddenly come down with some serious illness.

“Back away! Everyone, get back!”

Several guards rushed forward, ushering the captives behind them while keeping a wary eye on the struggling man.

“Hey, you! Move away from him! Don’t let him bite you!”

“N-No… no!”

Seeing the guards drawing their guns as they approached, Tan Xiaoyu panicked. He threw himself over Zhuo Ying, hugging him tightly.

“He’s very healthy! Don’t kill him! Just let him rest for a while! My big brother will be fine soon!”

The boy was short and obviously still young, so the Blue Sea guards softened their tone.

“We’re not going to do anything to him. But you need to move away first. Otherwise, if something happens, he might hurt you.”

Tan Xiaoyu was far too frightened to process what they were saying.

Clinging to Zhuo Ying without letting go, he could only repeat over and over,

“Don’t kill him… Please don’t kill my big brother…”

One of the guards scratched her head.

She turned to the squad leader.

“Should we pull the kid away?”

“No.”

The squad leader kept his eyes fixed on Zhuo Ying.

“I don’t think it’s zombies. If it were, he would’ve turned by now.”

At that moment, two white-robed bishops hurried in.

“We’re here! Is it really a zombie?”

The guard captain stepped forward.

“I don’t think so. Could it be… a seizure? It looks a lot like one.”

One of the bishops gently corrected him.

“It’s called epilepsy.”

The guard nodded.

“Right!”

Then he called out to Tan Xiaoyu,

“Hey, kid, move aside a little. His Grace can cure your big brother.”

Tan Xiaoyu was trembling all over.

He had never heard of a sl*ve receiving medical treatment.

But looking at the two gentle-looking figures in white robes, and remembering the hot porridge from earlier, he sniffled, shivered, and reluctantly moved aside.

The two white-robed bishops had just crouched down and opened their medical kit when Zhuo Ying—who had been convulsing nonstop—suddenly gave a violent shudder.

Then…

His rigid body relaxed.

“Waaah…”

The cry of a newborn baby echoed through the area.

The two bishops: “…”

The guards behind them: “…”

One of the bishops looked at Zhuo Ying, then glanced back at the guards and the surrounding camp before turning back again.

He leaned forward, listened carefully for a couple of seconds…

Then reached beneath Zhuo Ying’s trousers and lifted out a baby no bigger than the palm of his hand.

The infant was still attached by the umbilical cord.

Soft scales dotted its cheeks, and its hair was the same dark blue as Zhuo Ying’s and Tan Xiaoyu’s.

Its lower body, however, wasn’t a pair of legs.

It was a chubby little fish tail.

For the first time in a long while, the ever-composed bishop’s expression went completely blank.

He was absolutely certain this was the male prisoners’ camp.

The man who had just given birth—

still had a beard on his face.

His broad, muscular chest was practically in the bishop’s face.

The bishop quickly regained his composure.

“Our God be praised. All of this is according to the will of the Divine.”

Watching from afar, Cheng Qisheng fell silent.

Please don’t attribute everything to me…

The bishop, of course, had no idea what his deity was thinking.

He had already successfully talked himself into accepting the situation.

The people of Dazzling Star can give birth after only five months of pregnancy…

So why can’t men have babies?

The Long-Tendril People don’t even have sexes—they reproduce entirely on their own!

His usual serenity returned almost immediately.

Holding the newborn, he cleaned away the blood and amniotic fluid before cutting the umbilical cord.

“Hmm… Airway is clear. Heart rate and breathing are normal. Muscle tone and reflexes are normal. Strong tail movement…”

“This is a healthy child.”

Meanwhile, the other bishop was examining Zhuo Ying.

“The mother—”

He paused for the briefest instant before correcting himself.

“—the father is currently in stable condition, but he still requires a more thorough examination. Bring in a stretcher and transfer him to the Seventh Temple.”

Tan Xiaoyu stared blankly as everything unfolded.

When a medical cart was wheeled in and his still-unconscious big brother was carefully placed onto it, he hurried after them, sticking close every step of the way.

The two white-robed bishops looked him over.

Seeing that he was young, frail, and posed no threat, they silently allowed him to follow.

One of the bishops even asked him gently,

“Is that your brother? How long has he been pregnant?”

Tan Xiaoyu looked utterly bewildered.

“I… I don’t know…”

“Oh! Does everyone in your civilization have children through the men?”

Tan Xiaoyu shook his head.

“I don’t know… Big Brother never told me…”

Then something suddenly occurred to him.

Why had he always had a father…

…but never a mother?

—Perhaps because none of the other sl*ve children had mothers or fathers either.

Tan Xiaoyu lowered his head and looked at his own stomach.

It had never once crossed his mind that he might be able to have a baby.

And that the baby would even have a fish tail.

Come to think of it…

Why couldn’t he remember ever having a fish tail himself?

The two white-robed bishops exchanged a glance.

The new father and Tan Xiaoyu were obviously from the same civilization.

The fact that the former had never told Tan Xiaoyu anything about pregnancy suggested there was more to the story.

After all, everyone knew…

Only secrets needed to be hidden.

For a Safe City that routinely housed people from all kinds of civilizations, a man giving birth was certainly surprising—but hardly something that ought to be concealed.

It was simply a biological difference between civilizations.

Unless…

…the new father believed that letting others know he was pregnant would put him in danger.

Cheng Qisheng had reached the same conclusion.

But what possible danger could pregnancy pose?

Surely it wasn’t something absurd like people of this civilization becoming extremely weak while pregnant, only to turn into superhumans after giving birth?

She turned to Aether.

“Do you know what civilization they come from?”

This time, even Aether had no answer.

It floated upward and studied the surveillance footage of Tan Xiaoyu and Zhuo Ying for several seconds, comparing their appearance against every civilization in its database.

None of them matched.

“Aether’s database on merfolk civilizations contains no records of this particular civilization.”

Well…

Aether wasn’t omniscient after all.

Until they figured out exactly what was special about this civilization, Cheng Qisheng decided it would be safest to treat them as a potential superhuman-level race.

—

Zhuo Ying was still unconscious.

A deacon with a combat rating of 82 gently placed the merbaby beside him.

The baby was tiny, but its little fish tail made it look adorably plump overall.

Its large black eyes stared up at the ceiling while it contentedly sucked on its fingers.

“We haven’t observed any signs that the father is producing milk,” the clergy member explained to Tan Xiaoyu. “Nor can we confirm whether infants of your civilization are able to drink milk from other sources. For now, we’ll wait until the father wakes up before feeding the baby. We don’t want to make it sick by giving it the wrong food.”

Watching Tan Xiaoyu nod repeatedly, the cleric added,

“You can sit over there while you wait.”

Tan Xiaoyu, who had been crouching timidly in the corner, hurriedly shook his head.

“N-No, thank you… I’m fine here.”

He had never seen floors so spotless.

Or such enormous panes of clear glass.

Even the bed his big brother lay on looked unbelievably soft…

…like a cloud floating in the sky.

Tan Xiaoyu didn’t even dare sit on the floor.

He was afraid he might dirty such a beautiful place.

Instead, he balanced on the balls of his feet in a half-squat, trying to touch as little of the room as possible.

It was all so incredible.

The overseers—

No…

The people here had actually treated Big Brother.

They had even wrapped the little merbaby in an incredibly soft blanket.

They let Big Brother rest in such a wonderful room.

And they had said that, since he had just given birth, he needed to rest for at least a month.

Did that mean…

…that for an entire month, Big Brother wouldn’t have to work?

The thought filled Tan Xiaoyu with happiness on his brother’s behalf.

A smile spread across his face despite himself.

Still balancing carefully on tiptoe, he quietly edged over to the bedside and looked at his sleeping big brother…

…and the little merbaby happily amusing itself beside him.

The little baby babbled happily.

Its fair little face and soft scales made it irresistibly adorable.

At that moment, Tan Xiaoyu suddenly understood why Big Brother had never wanted to remain a sl*ve.

When it was only himself, being a sl*ve hadn’t seemed so unbearable.

But the moment he imagined this tiny baby—who knew nothing about the world yet—growing up to become a sl*ve as well…

…being beaten…

…mining until its hands bled every day…

…and being b*llied by the other sl*ves…

His heart ached.

“Big Brother…”

Remembering the deacon smiling as he gently cradled and played with the baby, hope welled up inside Tan Xiaoyu.

He cautiously whispered to the unconscious Zhuo Ying,

“It seems like this Safe City really likes children.”

“Maybe… maybe the baby won’t have to be a sl*ve.”

The door opened.

A cleric entered carrying medicine.

The instant Tan Xiaoyu saw him, he snapped rigidly to attention, lowered his head, and began trembling timidly.

The cleric couldn’t help touching his own face.

I’m only 1.9 meters tall…

Am I really that scary?

After replacing the medication in the father’s IV drip, the cleric looked at Tan Xiaoyu.

The boy stood frozen in place, every inch of him stiff, malnutrition practically written across his face.

The cleric reached into his pocket, took out a piece of candy, and held it out.

“Here, kid. Have this.”

Tan Xiaoyu stared blankly at him.

“I… I…”

“Go on. Eat it. Candy’s good for growing kids.”

The candy had been bought with his own money, not supplied by the temple.

So the cleric felt perfectly justified giving it away.

Once he’d handed over the candy, he turned and left.

Holding it carefully in his hand, Tan Xiaoyu softly used the polite phrase Big Brother had taught him.

“Thank you…”

The cleric had walked away so quickly that Tan Xiaoyu wasn’t sure he’d even heard it.

Looking down at the candy in his hand, Tan Xiaoyu murmured,

“Big Brother… I like it here.”

“Maybe… maybe we shouldn’t run away.”

“Let’s just stay here… and be sl*ves.”

Naturally, the unconscious Zhuo Ying couldn’t answer.

Tan Xiaoyu had never seen candy before.

He had no idea how it was supposed to be eaten.

But he had understood what the cleric said.

The candy…

…was good for children.

“The baby…”

“…the baby should eat it…”

“…so it’ll grow up healthy…”

He whispered the words to himself.

Carefully holding the piece of candy so he wouldn’t accidentally dirty the baby, he gently placed it into the little merbaby’s tiny hand.

The candy vanished instantly.

In the surveillance room, the group of clerics monitoring the cameras rubbed their eyes and leaned closer to the screen.

It was really gone.

This time, Cheng Qisheng didn’t have a believer’s point of view.

But the high-definition surveillance feed was clear enough.

She straightened in her chair.

“…Spatial abilities?”

The incredibly rare Spatial Affinity—

The one that was said to appear only once in every ten million residents?

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