Chapter 88

7.1 - It did not mean that he was making way for the protagonist shou

translator: xiin

editors: alamerysl & BlueBug

After getting the results that she wanted, the madame spoke for a while with Xue Ling and left. Xue Ling sat in his seat, stared at the dessert in front of him, and spaced out.

He had been accompanied by a little girl, who was now clinging to his hand as she expressed her disagreement with his actions, "Young Master, how could you have agreed to Madame Lou's request? She has never liked the Young Master, and ever since Young Master had desperately insisted on having the Lou family agree to an engagement with you, she has always disliked you the most. You've finally gotten the engagement you insisted on, so why are you now changing your mind again?"

Xue Ling's head hurt from all her noise. He pushed the dessert on the table forward and said, "Sit there and eat. Let the food occupy your mouth!"

The little girl pouted aggrievedly, her large eyes rolling a little. Seeing that Xue Ling had closed his eyes with an ugly expression on his face, she finally obediently sat down to eat.

The young master seemed truly angry. At the end of the day, he had just been disdained by his future mother-in-law, and even agreed to dissolve the hard-won marriage contract - he must be really sad.

In fact, Xue Ling was currently discussing the problem of his characters' genders in every world with the system, but the system came across as particularly innocent. "This identity that the host has been given is extremely well-suited to interfering with the two protagonists as it is closely related to their identities. I only chose it because I felt like it's really not bad at all. I even opened a big golden finger for my host~"

Xue Ling rolled his eyes, too lazy to pay attention to his own system. "Send the story over." He would beat the system to death after he finished reading up on the plot.

He also had no idea if the marriage contract that he had just eagerly agreed to dissolve would affect his ability to complete his tasks in this world.

This world's settings was not very different from the standard ABO settings. Well, in Xue Ling's opinion, any settings where there was a third gender or factors that allowed men to have children outside of science were all similar to ABO.

But, since he was incapable of giving birth, he was indifferent to the fundamental settings of this world.

The genders in this world were not as vague as those in ABO worlds. There were basically just men and women, only a certain proportion of them would become merfolk. And yes, merfolk were able to give birth the next generation of merfolk for humans.

There was a distinction between natural merfolk and artificial ones in this world. Natural mermaids or mermen were people like Xue Ling's current body - they were bred by merfolk and hatched from eggs, and when they were 'born', they came out as small eggs. Artificial merfolk were ones who had relied on 'science and technology' to transform human legs into a fishtail. The two different methods for creating a mermaid affected the resulting mermaid's breeding value.

That's right. Although there were women in this world, over the passage of time, they had already lost the ability to reproduce. Only by transforming into merfolk could human beings reproduce 'naturally'.

It was because of this addition gender that the world was also divided into three types: ordinary people, breeders and merfolk. Not everyone could get a merperson pregnant, and ordinary people may never come into contact with a mermaid or merman in their entire lives. Rather, the only ones who could get merfolk pregnant were the 'breeders' who had extraordinary talents. The numbers of these three types of people could be explained with this ratio: the population of breeders was half the size of the ordinary population, while the number of artificial and natural merfolk combined was half the number of breeders.

He could be regarded as the starting point of the whole plot. His kidnapping helped the protagonist gong and shou meet each other, and allowed the Duchess to find her own son. His death also agitated the entire ocean population, causing the deep-sea mermaids and humans to erupt into intense conflict and strife. The war gave the protagonist gong opportunities to rise up in the ranks and increase his income, reaching the peak of his life, and allowed the 'Holy Mary' shou to shine even brighter as the shou turned on his golden finger abilities and finally resolved the contradictions between the two races.

Living in glory, and dying in greatness.

Xue Ling finished going through the plot and sighed.

"Did this little merchild have any unfulfilled wishes?" Xue Ling asked the system. After reading the information, he had to agree that there were benefits to this identity. First of all, he could turn this annoying fishtail into a pair of legs; second, this identity had the lineage of the deep-sea merfolk's royal family. Becoming successful was simply a matter of minutes as his own body was the biggest trump card. Coupled with the fact that deep-sea merfolk and the natural merfolk had completely different body structures, his body was not nearly as weak and frail as it looked. This would make it much easier for him to deal with matters.

"He died too painfully. He was tortured over and over again. He could not beg for life, nor was he allowed death; he only wanted to completely destroy the mermaid laboratory."

Xue Ling raised his eyebrows. This was slightly more interesting, and it even involved taking the plot away from the protagonist, which coincided with his task to change the protagonists' fate. "He didn't want to be with Lou Cen and grow old together?"

"He had a kind of idol worship towards Lou Cen. You can open your nano-computer to check - Lou Cen had a large number of fans on the mermaid network, and he could be counted as one of those brain-impaired fans. Before he died, he had always hoped that Lou Cen would come and save him, but after the people in the laboratory showed him news of Lou Cen's engagement to the protagonist shou, he completely lost hope, which was probably one of the reasons for his suicide."

"His own ex-fiance announced an engagement to another man less than two months after his disappearance, and that other man was the true son of the Duke's Palace. All the information he had received from childhood to adulthood was completely overturned. It is normal that he suddenly lost his ** to survive, leaving only his extreme hatred for the research institute."

Xue Ling rubbed his chin and lowered his gaze as a slow smile emerged on his lips.

He approximately knew how long it would be before Lou Cen woke up. After he woke up, he would be the Empire's only SSS-class powerhouse, an absolute bug.

But, that had nothing to do with Xue Ling. After all, when he woke up, he would discover that Xue Ling had already broken off their engagement, and he didn't even have to think to know that Madame Lou would purposely slander him in front of Lou Cen. At that time, his relationship with Lou Cen would become particularly awkward, and the protagonist shou would come on stage like the tide and build up goodwill with Lou Cen.

Xue Ling never looked back with regret on the things he had already done, so he had no intention of going back on his word and reversing the broken engagement. However, breaking off the engagement did not mean that he was making way for the protagonist shou.

The protagonist shou grew up by the sea. He had been adopted by a peasant who fished for a living, and was accompanied by the sea every day. He met a deep-sea mermaid, which was what allowed him to act as a go-between for the deep-sea mermaids and human beings later on the story.

This year was the protagonist shou's eighteenth birthday and he was sent to the Empire's Capital to learn skills that all mermaids needed to have. Although he had come from a peasant family, he had the protagonist's halo, and the protagonist shou's treatment was exactly the same as that of aristocrats.

As a natural mermaid, he never had to worry about his life and future. His talent in design was outstanding, and he became good friends with a teacher in the mermaid school. Through the teacher, he came into contact with Madame Lou, and began to have dealings with her, designing dresses and fishtail skirts specially for her. Madame Lou was very fond of him and wanted to introduce this lovely child to her son.

But Yan Qiwen was wedged between them, and knowing that her son had no interest in him, Madame Lou dared to ask Yan Qiwen to terminate the marriage contract during her son's coma, taking advantage of the fact that Yan Qiwen was young and ignorant.

After approximately thinking through the plot's direction, Xue Ling intended to first penetrate the enemy's side first and develop a good relationship with the protagonist shou. It would be best if he could get him to be recognized and accepted into the Duke's Palace right away as it would make it more convenient for him to do things afterwards.

After all, Xue Ling believed that the Duchess would not allow her just-returned child to marry a comatose, vegetable man who had been rejected by her adopted son, even if he woke up as an SSS-class powerhouse.

'Breeders' are basically the 'alphas' of an ABO world, mermaids/mermen are the 'omegas' and the normal people are the 'beta' equivalent. The author lied, this setting is even more complicated than the standard ABO setting.

Also, i'm having a lot of trouble with the word 'merperson' ... it sounds so strange o.o but 'mermaid' also seems wrong since XL and the MC are both male... we'll see how it goes~