FMLB Chapter 146

Extra Chapter 01

 

Wearing a mask and a large straw hat, He Ruge walked along the beach of Mermaid Star, clad in a shirt adorned with coconut trees. 

 

Beside him, Xi Guican frowned, staring at his own flip-flops. Seizing the moment when He Ruge wasn’t looking, he quietly exposed his feet a bit, revealing distinct tan lines on the tops.

 

Xi Guican then discreetly glanced at He Ruge’s feet—fair and harmonious, polished like jade under the sunlight.

 

“Look! Are those residents of Mermaid Star?” 

 

He Ruge’s voice interrupted Xi Guican’s thoughts. Following He Ruge’s pointing finger, they indeed saw a large fish just emerging from the sea.

 

These fish were three meters long on average, predominantly silver. Each fish scale sparkled under the sunlight as they swam from the other end of the sea, leaping through the waves like silver surges traversing the azure ocean. 

 

It was a truly picturesque scene, if only those fish didn’t transform into mermaid forms…

 

Tall fish-headed men, standing two meters high, strolled openly along the beach, completely dispelling Xi Guican’s desire for fish head with chopped peppers.

 

He Ruge’s smile gradually stiffened. 

 

He turned slowly to Xi Guican and said, “No wonder there are no pictures of mermaids from Mermaid Star on the Interstellar Network.”

 

If there were, they wouldn’t have come here for their honeymoon.

 

Nevertheless, the scenery was indeed splendid. He Ruge took off the egg pendant around his neck and handed it to Xi Guican for safekeeping. 

 

He was ready to take a dip in the sea. Xi Guican sat on a watercraft—a large yellow duck—holding the egg pendant and looking at He Ruge.

 

They weren’t sure if the egg could stay underwater for too long, and considering Xi Guican’s swimming skills were not that great, it was safer for the tiger and the egg to observe from the shore.

 

By now, He Ruge had discarded his disguise. His hands rested on the large yellow duck as he tilted his head back, smiling and speaking to Xi Guican. 

 

“It feels so comfortable soaking in the seawater. Hey, Egg seems happy too.”

 

The egg was now about the size of a ping pong ball, yellow and dotted with freckles. The only difference might be the freckles on the eggshell.

 

“No, look.” 

 

Xi Guican turned the egg around, and He Ruge realized the egg was half yellow, half white.

 

What did this mean? 

 

A calm exterior hiding great joy?

 

He Ruge curiously poked the white part of the egg, and something magical happened: the white freckles on the eggshell turned shy pink, while the yellow part intertwined with a hint of blue, as if lamenting He Ruge’s neglect of the yellow section.

 

Strange indeed, He Ruge couldn’t explain why, but he inexplicably understood what the egg wanted. Tentatively poking the originally yellow part, the egg transformed into a purely pink egg.

 

Just as He Ruge was about to poke again, Xi Guican seized his finger. He held He Ruge’s hand, gently brought it to his mouth, and lightly nibbled on his finger with his fangs. 

 

“Don’t poke anymore. There’s no need to poke this egg.”

 

He Ruge couldn’t help but smile. 

 

He gently coaxed, “Okay, okay, I won’t poke anymore.”

 

Xi Guican nodded in satisfaction. Today, they were dressed in matching couple outfits. After changing clothes, Xi Guican had a rare vacation vibe.

 

The memory of the handsome youth who used to indulge in dress-up games was nowhere to be found. He Ruge recalled the effort it took to persuade Xi Guican to wear a wedding outfit for their wedding photos. 

 

Eventually, He Ruge had to concede and sign many unequal treaties to obtain a photo of Xi Guican in a stern and dignified female attire.

 

A strange sensation touched his fish tail, and He Ruge looked down to discover a group of fish surrounding him. Some were as big as a palm, others as small as a thumb, in various colors. A few bold ones even swam up to kiss He Ruge’s fish tail.

 

He Ruge remembered the small fish used for massages on Earth. He chuckled and encouraged Xi Guican to put his feet in the water. Xi Guican, bewildered, dipped his feet into the water, causing the fish that had been circling He Ruge to scatter in panic, as if shot from a bow.

 

“Hahaha, Guican, did you scare off the fish?” He Ruge laughed uncontrollably.

 

Xi Guican fell silent for a moment. Suddenly, he grasped He Ruge’s chin, bent down, and kissed the man’s lips. The wind was calm, and the wandering fish returned silently, dancing strangely in the water. Meanwhile, the egg nestled between He Ruge and Xi Guican turned increasingly pink…

 

As the sun set into the sea, He Ruge and Xi Guican returned to their room. Xi Guican massaged He Ruge’s shoulders, while He Ruge massaged Egg. 

 

“Guican, what’s the use of being the Son of Fortune? Why do I feel no different now than before?”

 

“No, there is.” 

 

Xi Guican whispered softly, “Have you noticed we hardly need spiritual energy anymore?”

 

He Ruge thought for a moment and nodded. 

 

“It seems so.” 

 

Besides feeding Egg spiritual energy daily, He Ruge hadn’t absorbed any other spiritual energy recently.

 

“I think being the Son of Fortune means connecting this world to us, mutually supporting each other. The world provides us with a special kind of energy, and we need to protect this world,” Xi Guican speculated aloud, withholding another matter from He Ruge.

 

That night when the mysterious game departed, he had a dream. It was a dream he had dreamt long, long ago, perhaps what the game’s notification “Fate Successfully Twisted” referred to.

 

In that dream, he didn’t meet He Ruge at first. He suffered from a Vortex Mental Devouring Syndrome, recuperating on a private star, with Mao Zixie treating him, yet there was no improvement whatsoever.

 

His mental sea of consciousness was like a vessel riddled with a thousand holes. No matter how much the outside world poured into this vessel, it would all eventually leak out, leaving nothing behind.

 

His physical condition deteriorated progressively. Initially, his beast form shed fur, and eventually even his human form began losing hair. Sometimes when he grabbed a handful of hair, it would lightly float away from his scalp.

 

In the end, despite his calm demeanor, there was still a hint of a bloody taste in his throat. The thing that consumed most of his time each day was sleeping—from going to bed early to sleeping through the night and confusing day with night. Bloodstains from his coughing could be found on his pillow, and he had lost any desire for food.

 

It should be said that he never really had an appetite for food to begin with. Drinking nutritional fluid daily was just a physiological necessity. However, by that time, he didn’t even have the thought of drinking nutritional fluid.

 

Later on, Mao Zixie left this planet.

 

Sixteen stars had already fallen, and even the most optimistic people no longer harbored hope for this interstellar war. The fans who had once supported him began to resent him and disappointedly left him.

 

The setting sun outside the window sank into the west, casting orange-red light slanting into the room. Tiny dust particles floated up and down in the light, the dancing dust seemed to be the only moving thing in this empty room.

 

A nameless bird flew in from afar and perched on the windowsill. It was only then that he realized it was a vulture, a creature that fed on carrion.

 

He wondered if the smell of decay on his body had become so strong.

 

He was dying. There was no one by his side before he died. Mao Zixie originally wanted to accompany him on his final journey, but was driven away by Xi Guican.

 

People like him didn’t want to appear weak and vulnerable before others at the end of their lives. Xi Guican closed his eyes, somewhat laboriously placed his hand over the left side of his chest, where the heartbeat was slowing down, just like his increasingly weak breath.

 

Looking back on his short life, he couldn’t find anything to cherish in the end.

 

Just as everything was about to descend into destruction, a giant shadow enveloped the room. In the lingering glow of the setting sun, the monstrous figure was exceptionally huge. It swallowed the dying person in the room completely.

 

This was the food it had long coveted.

 

The monstrous shadow belched contentedly, feeling the long-lost sense of fullness. However, soon this feeling turned into indigestion. 

 

It couldn’t digest Qiong Qi, even though it had been weakened a lot and lost the will to survive, Qiong Qi still couldn’t be digested by it.

 

After a long, long time, a deformed monster appeared in this world. It had two heads—one was a tiger head, and the other head had human features with tiger teeth and goat horns.

 

This monster devoured the entire world, but when faced with a koi fish, the tiger-headed part hesitated for a moment and spared the fish. 

 

No one knew why.

 

…

 

“Besides these, is there anything else special?” 

 

He Ruge’s voice interrupted Xi Guican’s reminiscence. Xi Guican shook his head and said nothing, silently listening to his beloved rambling.

 

“Guican, do you think we can return to Earth? Just once would be fine. There are still some things I haven’t resolved. Sigh…”

 

“Oh, Egg seems to have grown another circle today, like a balloon suddenly expanding. I’ve noticed that Egg’s color sometimes changes halfway, even though it’s just an egg, it already has such complex emotional changes.”

 

“Lately, everyone has been urging for updates, both in livestreams and novels. I dare not read the comments now; indeed, missing updates can be addictive.”

 

“Do you think Egg will be a boy or a girl? I’ve read a lot of parenting books lately and made more than twenty pages of notes. It feels like I’m back in my student days. I’ll like a boy or a girl, regardless of what their beast form is.”

 

“Well, even if it’s a tiger-headed fish or a fish-headed tiger, I’ll like it. If it has wings and a fish tail, it would be an all-around player in sea, land, and air.”

 

“Will it resemble you more, or me more? Mixed-race babies are always so cute…”

 

“Should we give them an official name? Let’s decide now, we can’t be scrambling to name them after they’re born. Let me think… I’m terrible at naming things, naming is really a headache. Guican, what do you think we should name them?”

 

The voice of the mermaid was delightful to hear. Xi Guican silently listened to his beloved describing their future, smiling as he talked about their hatchling. Xi Guican blinked, gazing at He Ruge cradling the precious egg, everything seemed unbelievably perfect.

 

In such a comparison, the oppressive dream seemed to be just a dream.

 

“Guican? Guican? Why are you distracted?”

 

His deep blue eyes were affectionate and calm, like the accommodating sea surface. 

 

He said, “I’m listening.”