So it really was... a mermaid?
Although Su Bai had suspected it for some time, he still drew in a sharp breath when he saw the half-human, half-fish figure curled up in a dark corner of the hidden laboratory. A moment later, however, he held his breath in discomfort. Once that heavy metal door opened, the laboratory's stench of rot and blood could no longer be contained. It was far stronger than anything elsewhere on the Sixth Floor.
The smell might have come from the enormous tank, which was already too ghastly to look at and too difficult to deal with, or from the things Cheng Xun was working on at the laboratory benches. More likely, though, it came from that half-human, half-fish figure.
In the fairy tales of the real world, mermaids were always maidens beautiful enough to bewitch the heart, always swimming freely through clear, shallow waters. They always seemed to wear innocent smiles, like white roses beaded with morning dew.
But the thing curled up in the corner at that moment was clearly nothing of the sort.
The fish tail that formed her lower body had long since lost all its luster. What should have been a lovely silver had turned a dull gray, much like the scales on those Experimental Subjects. Like those distressing Experimental Subjects, her tail was covered in fleshy growths. It looked as though it had suffered more numerous and more severe injuries than they had. Even the exposed skin of her upper body bore all kinds of growths.
Thinking of Cheng Xun and Jialan's experiments, Su Bai could not help wondering whether the wounds on her body had come not from struggling or resisting, but because the experiments required her "flesh"-flesh in the literal sense.
Su Bai continued studying the half-human, half-fish