Hao Ren heard some noise from the town square. He turned to look at it, the personnel guarding the signal tower were walking toward the blood pool in the center of the square. The red liquid in the blood pool was surging, and it was rising in the center. There seemed to be something coming out of it. With a spicy stick still hanging out from her mouth, Lily laid her head on the window sill looking out at the town square. “What happens?”
“That is the process of returning to the real world,” Ulyanov explained. “Everyone is born out of the blood pool.”
Hao Ren became very interested, but before he could say anything, he felt a cold, slippery thing squirming on his chest. It was Lil Pea. The little mermaid jumped on the window sill and wagged her tail happily. The movement outside was attracting her interest. When Ulyanov saw this mysterious creature, he froze. “What is this?” he asked.
Hao Ren held Lil Pea with his hand to prevent the little guy from falling off the window sill as he explained, “She… she is my daughter. She is a mermaid. Don’t your world have it?”
Ulyanov looked at Hao Ren with a weird expression. “You guys walked with your tails when you were just born?”
Hao Ren did not know how to respond to that question.
He had answered a similar question for God-knows-how-many-times, and now he was kind of lazy to explain it. However, he also could not let people’s misunderstanding deepen, so he could only wave his hand helplessly. “It’s complicated. I’m not her biological father. The process of adopting her was rather special.”
Lil Pea had no clue the adults were talking about her, and she just waved happily at the town square, like any other curious child. At the same time, she noticed the wooden window frame around her. The unique wood on the planet had a light golden luster that aroused her appetite. Just when she opened her mouth and about to take a bite, Hao Ren stopped her. All plants in Tannagost contained a certain amount of gold. The baby’s stomach did not seem to be able to digest gold.
At this time, the situation in the town square took a sudden change.
When the personnel were ready to welcome other people coming out of the blood pool, the lifeblood in the pool suddenly calmed down.
It was as if some transmission was interrupted, the rising lifeblood lost its shape and quieted down as the faint red light floating on the liquid dimmed. No one knew what happened. Two persons ran to the house opposite the square nervously, seemingly to report about the situation.
“What happened?” Y’zaks asked curiously.
Ulyanov had no clue as well; after all, he had just woke up from the pool and gotten limited knowledge from the Social Adaptation Department. “I don’t know. It seems that there is something wrong with the restoration process. Let’s go and take a look.”
Hao Ren and his entourage rushed to the blood pool. Y’zaks asked one of the personnel who saw the great demon and almost slipped into the pool. Fortunately, Lily grabbed the guy before he fell into it. Hao Ren squatted and examined the lifeblood in the pool and found that it was losing vitality. He had seen the lifeblood displaying a similar behavior in the container of CARS. The personnel who had slipped and almost fallen into the pool just now told of what was happening. “The transmission was suddenly interrupted, and the condensation in the lifeblood has stopped.”
Hao Ren was about to go and check if the signal tower had any record of the situation. The MDT suddenly came up to him and said, “Muru is calling.”
Hao Ren looked out the town. Muru was standing on a hill in the distance and beckoning him, signaling him to pick up the radio. Hao Ren immediately asked the MDT to patch the call to him. He heard Muru said in a hurried tone of voice, “Has something gone wrong with the signal tower over there? Zorm told me that it lost control of a small blood pool, looks like the signal is lost.”
“I am checking,” Hao Ren said as he came to the signal tower. He lifted the cover at the base of the signal tower and saw the manually-controlled crystal panel inside. The crystal panel was filled with intricate symbols and text, but it showed everything was working properly. “The signal tower is fine,” Hao Ren told Muru via the radio.
He then activated the self-diagnostic program of CARS and the monitoring program of the Tannagost Information Terminal, which was an information exchange center located at the South Pole, but found that the data link between the Capulum Vitae and the blood pool on the surface was perfectly normal.
Theoretically, the will of the First Born, Zorm, could reach the blood pool without any hindrance, but the blood pool refused to respond.
Not just that but it seemed there was something else going on.
Lily looked at the liquid in the pool curiously. She pulled Hao Ren’s sleeve. “Do you think the thing is avoiding you, Mr. Landlord?”
“Avoiding me?” Hao Ren was stunned for a while before he only began to notice the liquid in the blood pool was not completely calm but the fluid tilted away from him and leaving the liquid level nearer to him a dozen centimeters lower than the opposite side. The difference was not that obvious. If it were not for Lily’s excellent dog’s eyesight, no one would have noticed the phenomenon.
Hao Ren thought that it must be just a coincidence. He tried to walk to the other side of the pool. But to his surprise, the liquid in the pool tilted away as he moved; the liquid level closer to him was always the lowest, and this liquid seemed to avoid him all the time.
“I have never encountered such a thing before.” Hao Ren’s brows knit together as after making a few rounds circling the pool, he still could not figure out what caused this phenomenon. He bent down and dipped his finger straight into the lifeblood, and it felt warm, completely normal. “Why not you come over and taste it a little bit and see if it has expired, Lily?”
Lily immediately bared her teeth. “Why me?”
Hao Ren shot her a glance. “Crap! Isn’t this your favorite way of analysis?” he said.
He was joking with Lily using the lifeblood because Zorm catalyzed the mild and harmless lifeblood. Even if it were to lose control, it would not cause blood tide like what happened on other planets. The lifeblood here possessed no hatred towards other creatures.
While Hao Ren spoke to Lily, Lil Pea was looking at the pond from inside Hao Ren’s collar. The little guy felt that the bright colored liquid interesting though it seemed somewhat different from the water in the basin at home.
The liquid itself was enough to trigger the instinct of the little mermaid; she wanted to take a swim.
So she did.
Lil Pea jumped into the lifeblood pool with a plop. When Hao Ren realized it, it was too late, Lil Pea had disappeared into the pool while making a small splash.
Then the whole body of lifeblood in the pool seemed to react instantly.
The red liquid rolled up and away from Lil Pea rapidly, exposing the bottom of the pool in just a few seconds.
It was as if the crossing of the Red Sea by Moses, the lifeblood was rolled up to all sides of the pool, leaving Lil Pea swaying her tail and swimming with her eyes closed at the dry bottom of the pool. After a while, the little guy felt thing was not right, and she opened her eyes, appeared confused before lunging toward the nearest liquid again.
Then the lifeblood retreated again, away from her.
“It’s not avoiding me,” Hao Ren said, stunned. “It’s avoiding Lil Pea!”
“Whatever, let’s get the little guy out first.” Lily also froze for a while. When she was about to jump in and catch the mermaid, Hao Ren stopped her. He took a long-handled fishing net out of the dimensional pocket. “I have a special tool here.”
Lily looked at the special tool, dumbfounded. “You seem to be very well-prepared.”
“Crap, only because I have a bunch of otherworldlings in the house,” Hao Ren said as he stretched out his net to catch Lil Pea. “I bought this from the fishing gear store. I can’t believe that I’ve classified it as a baby toiletry.”
Lil Pea jumped inside the net obediently as her Dad-dee ‘fished’ her out of the pool. As the little guy left the pool, the lifeblood return to normal again.
Hao Ren kept the little guy into his dimensional pocket.
“Lil Pea seems to be able to suppress the source blood.” Y’lisabet scratched her horn. “She’s powerful!”
“Not just suppress the lifeblood.” Hao Ren’s face looked somber. “The lifeblood is afraid of her!”
