Whether mermen counted as aberrant creatures was something Zheng Qing never managed to get a clear answer on.
It was not that he lacked curiosity, or that the question was too difficult. It was because Xiao Xiao was not far behind Zhang Jixin. If Dr. Xiao learned about Zheng Qing's question, he would surely spend more than half an hour starting with the historical origins of mermen, throwing in several tales of battles between mermen and wizards, before finally giving an answer that could have been settled in one sentence.
And no one was allowed to tune him out.
Why waste half an hour listening to Dr. Xiao ramble over something that could be understood in one minute by flipping through the Encyclopedia of the Wizarding World? No smart person would do that.
Zhang Jixin considered himself a smart person, so when he heard Zheng Qing's question, he immediately raised his voice and changed the subject.
"Oh, mermen? You said you thought you saw mermen?" As he spoke, he shaded his eyes with one hand and peered toward the lake—who knew what good that did in the middle of the night when even the moon was not shining? At the same time, he strode forward, threw an arm around Zheng Qing's shoulders, and squeezed slightly. "You must have seen wrong. Why haven't I noticed any traces of mermen?!"
He bit down especially hard on the words "seen wrong," with a distinctly teeth-gritting edge.
After only a moment's thought, Zheng Qing understood what the red-faced male wizard meant and sneered inwardly. Then he noticed the arm around his shoulders tightening slightly, enough to give him a faint sense of constriction in his chest.
"Oh, I saw wrong... Maybe what I saw just now was a leaf." The young wizard promptly yielded