Chapter 968: It's Been Ages, My Queen

In the end, Shaqira shooed the surprised young mermaid out of the transport tube with equal parts persuasion and threatening. As she left, the young mermaid studied Lil' Pea intently — she had never seen such a young member of her kin, and was shocked by the latter's presence. Hao Ren and the rest did not know this. They were too preoccupied with this whole new image of the sirens that they saw in Nasaton.

Soon, they arrived at the royal grounds of Nasaton, located at the center of the city.

Here, they saw a cluster of buildings that were still under construction. This was where the grand palace of the Queen of the Sirens once stood, but the palace's main structure was nearly razed to the ground in a crisis a few months ago, when the sirens fought against the Brain Monster. The surrounding towers had mostly collapsed from explosions. It would take a long time for the sirens to rebuild after all the damage. Besides, the sirens no longer have large machinery and construction technologies of old. All they could do now was repair the spaceship control center beneath the palace, clear the rubble on the surface, and then build a few temporary structures on top to serve as the Queen's residence and their government offices. The dome-shaped structures on the wide clearing looked sorely lacking compared to their grand palace, but the abundant space around the domes had become public spaces for the common sirens. Groups of sirens could be seen hanging out around the domes. Hao Ren finally saw a few sirens here in their original human-like form, and did not have to suffer from sight of soldier mantis shrimps, giant sea crabs, deep sea eels and so on...

Shaqira led Hao Ren and his group towards the main entrance of the temporary palace. Fortunately, the sirens around here had not yet lost themselves to the craziness of shapeshifting. The female guards that stood watch at the entrance were in their snake form, armed with a trident. These valiant looking guards recognized Hao Ren — they were beaten up by Hao Ren and gang before — and happily swam over to greet them. Another two guards informed the people inside the palace of their arrival. Hao Re followed behind Shaqira into the palace, and immediately realized that the sirens inside the palace were not as "strong" as he expected...

Aside from the sirens that were on duty at their stations, all the others had also joined in the craze of mimicking. The mantis shrimps and sea crabs running around them still maintained some form of siren dignity, but the pails and sea urchins rolling around on the ground could only be explained by pure silliness. Hao Ren even saw a massive ship anchor hopping along the palace's corridors. He stared wide-eyed as Shaqira tried to explain, "Err, that is Titanic's anchor. She wanted to shapeshift into Titanic itself, but later found that the palace could not hold the ship..."

The anchor had reached Hao Ren by then. It wobbled for a while, and then suddenly transformed into a familiar face — Sorma.

They knew this siren from the incident last time as well...

"Ah, Hao Ren, long time no see!" Sorma greeted Hao Ren cheerfully, and then explained his current situation solemnly, "I am now one of the royal guards. The Queen is inside, but she's too busy entertaining the guests, and asked me to bring you inside instead."

Hao Ren and his group followed Sorma in confusion. When they finally arrived at a large hall, they realized what was happening. There was a small party happening in the place as well. Sirens in human and non-human form (probably nobles and government officials) were enjoying themselves in the party. Nangong Wuyue looked around eagerly for the Queen, but did not see her. "Where is the Queen? Has she changed her form too?"

Sorme pointed somewhere in the hall. "Over there! She's coming!"

Hao Ren followed her finger. Even in the water, he could feel cold sweat seeping out under his clothes — a torpedo was heading their way!

"Mother of sirens!" Lily was so surprised that she cursed in the native dialect. "Torpedo incoming!"

By the time she was finished, the torpedo had stopped right in front of Hao Ren. It wobbled slightly, and then exploded into a cloud of microbubbles. From the microbubbles emerged the Queen of the Sirens, Katreina. Her Majesty was surprised by Lily's words, and looked around her in panic. "Where is it? Where — where's the torpedo?!"

"You were the torpedo!" Hao Ren felt another surge of cold sweat. "Aren't you overdoing the whole mimicking thing now?!"

"Oh, you were talking about me." Katreina smiled and waved her long snake tail. "The Queen must be different from her subjects. I wanted to show more creativity."

Hao Ren was speechless.

"It's been ages." Katreina did not find any fault with her actions. She gave a prim but warm smile, and rested her gaze momentarily on each member in Hao Ren's group. "Ayesha had visited twice."

Hao Ren studied the Queen of the Sirens with an odd expression. The Queen was not behaving weirdly; on the contrary, her behaviour was absolutely normal. With the Queen looking so graceful and formal now, with a charged air of power and charisma about her, you would not have thought that just a minute ago she had shapeshifted into a torpedo just to scare people... Surely no one would expect this level of fluidity in attitude!

A moment of clarity came to Hao Ren as he realized something close to the fundamental truth of nature — sirens are truly made of water...

Katreina noted the lack of response from Hao Ren, so she initiated the conversation. "Since you're all here so suddenly, something big must have happened, yes?"

"Oh, right, we're here on business." Hao Ren gathered himself and smacked himself in the head. "I was caught off guard by this unprecedented and unique celebration... Might we find a quieter place to talk?"

Katreina nodded. "Come with me."

Hao Ren followed the Queen of the Sirens, but he soon noticed that Lily was still absorbed in observing the party, while Lil' Pea was swimming in circles excitedly. He waved at them. "If you're not interested in the meeting, go and have fun. Just don't cause trouble."

As he finished, all them scattered except for Vivian. He should have known this, really...

The Nangong family of four socialized with the other sirens, while Lily went to search for new additions to her "汪之财宝". Rollie reveled in the fish smell that permeated every inch of space around her, feeling so invigorated it was like she just had a taste of catnip. Lil' Pea shot around the large hall like bullet let loose —she had come home! Hao Ren waved at Nangong Wuyue, who was some distance away. "Wuyue! Please look after Lil' Pea, don't lose sight of her!"

He then turned to Vivian. "Aren't you going with them?"

Vivian rolled her eyes. "You have this habit of having a brain fart when you're talking. I'll help you keep the situation under control."

Hao Ren was speechless, once again.

The trio arrived at a resting corner in the hall. Katreina saw the solemn expression in Hao Ren's face, and so she waved away the guards and servants around them. She then asked, "What happened?"

"This is regarding your home planet." Hao Ren nodded. "Err, no need to be nervous, there's nothing wrong with your planet, what is wrong is a bunch of unlucky runaways... Just some time ago, I saved a group of people..."

Hao Ren told Katreina about the incident in the Plane of Dreams, but neglected the complicated background story and the Divine Artifact. The Queen listened intently, and interrupted with the occasional question — she seemed interested in the structure and working principles of the arks. Once Hao Ren was done, she blinked slowly and said, "What you are saying is, some aliens had encountered the same natural disaster as us and escaped from their home. Now, their arks have run out of supplies and means of defence, so they need to land somewhere. You also think that Io, the home planet of the sirens, is the most suitable place that you know of."

"To be frank, I did find other options. My drones have located some planets that might just be habitable for them, but these planets either have traces of Lifeblood contamination, or the environment is dangerous enough to cause massive casualties should they land successfully." Hao Ren looked into Katreina's eyes. "Io is the one planet that is suitable just the way it is for them to survive. Besides, my drones can guard wherever they stay."

Katreina frowned and sank into deep contemplation.