LSDWTWHA chapter 60

Chapter 59

After returning from the Qi family’s old house, Qi Hanyi became busy again. During the day, Su Su logged into the game as usual, and at night, due to the side effects, he would sleep alongside Qi Hanyi.

The state of the side effects was gradually diminishing each day, and Su Su knew that his time as a human was coming to an end.

He felt a bit reluctant; the soft big bed, the shark plush toy, and the person sleeping beside him. He felt that he was becoming more and more adapted to living as a human.

That day, Su Su logged into the game as usual and headed straight for the arena.

Since the competition, he had been spending all his time there.

Others believed he was guaranteed to win the championship based on his performance in the preliminary round, but Su Su felt that this match had revealed many of his shortcomings. In terms of strategy, he was not as good as [No Return]; in terms of killing insect species, he was not as skillful as [Simplifying Complexity], and there were several high-level players who each had their own strengths.

What left him feeling the most inadequate was the four SS-level male insects in the final match. Their strength was so great that Su Su could not confront them directly, making him realize that the insect species in the universe were far more powerful than he had imagined. This was only SS-level; what would the SSS-level male insects be like?

If he truly wanted to pilot the Bai Ze, he must face these issues. He had to grow rapidly and become stronger than he currently was.

Thus, Su Su spent every day in the arena, and he devoted even more effort to fighting than before. He never treated his opponents lightly just because of their weaker abilities; he learned various combat methods and techniques from each opponent.

However, while he was focused on training, someone had unknowingly uncovered the fact that he had logged into the game under a false identity. Speculations about his origins began to circulate: some claimed he was a member of a notorious underground organization from Freedom Island, harboring dark intentions to infiltrate the Expeditionary Force. Others guessed that he was a military plant who had undergone professional starship pilot training, which explained his impressive performance in the final round. There were also those who speculated that the Expeditionary Force had recently proposed a plan regarding mermaid pilots; could he perhaps be some uniquely talented mermaid that the Expeditionary Force had created as part of their ploy?

In no time, various speculations arose.

Su Su worried that he might have caused trouble for Yan Bai, so he decided to seek him out. Upon receiving a message from Su Su, Yan Bai asked him to come to the guild leader’s office.

“Recently, many people have been checking my account, saying something about a virtual identity. I haven’t caused you any trouble, have I?” Su Su’s oversized shark plushie head peeked in from outside the door.

“No, if they’re bold enough to let you compete, I naturally have my preparations in place. These accounts were sourced from a tech company, and their purchase records are confidential, so they won’t find anything further,” Yan Bai said, glancing at Su Su and chuckling lightly, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You should be more worried; using a virtual account is against the platform rules. If they find out, they might disqualify you from the competition.”

“That shouldn’t happen.” Su Su recalled Qi Hanyi’s high praise for him from a few days ago and smiled contentedly. With such a favorable evaluation, he doubted he would be easily eliminated. “They probably checked my identity a long time ago; if they were going to disqualify me, they would have done it already.”

Yan Bai only found that smile a bit glaring. Indeed, Qi Hanyi and Su Su had already formed an understanding, so Su Su had no reason to worry about the military disqualifying him.

“By the way, here’s something for you.” Su Su transferred a portion of his points to Yan Bai, which amounted exactly to the total of the points Yan Bai had initially given him plus those needed to purchase the Silver Dragon: “I earned quite a bit from this competition, and with the points you gave me earlier, I still have a lot left unspent. I also get quite a few points as rewards every day from the arena.”

“What’s this? Why are you suddenly being so distant with me? We’re brothers; it’s normal to help each other out. Why act polite about a little money? My money is your money,” Yan Bai replied, maintaining his usual familiarity. He then joked, “Are you planning to forget about your little brother just because you won the competition?”

“……” Su Su couldn’t quite put his finger on why Yan Bai felt different from before, but he definitely felt a twinge of discomfort.

If he had to put it into words, he thought Yan Bai seemed a bit angry but was trying to play it cool. Su Su couldn’t understand what he could be angry about when everything was fine.

“Anyway, I’ve already transferred it; just accept it.” Su Su didn’t know how to comfort him, and since he couldn’t grasp what Yan Bai was thinking, he decided to leave.

Just as he stepped out of the room, he suddenly heard a faint voice float over from behind him: “You remember our agreement, right? You didn’t tell Qi Hanyi about playing the game, did you?”

Su Su realized what was happening and stopped in his tracks. He thought, no wonder Yan Bai seemed a bit off; perhaps he had guessed through some clue that Qi Hanyi knew something about him playing the game, and that made him angry.

It was actually easy to guess; after all, he saw Qi Hanyi frequently, and it would be strange if he could keep it a total secret.

Su Su turned around and admitted straightforwardly, “I told him.”

“You… you told him?”

Su Su’s unexpected honesty once again disrupted Yan Bai’s plans. He had originally intended to let Su Su deceive him just one more time so he could give up and rationally cut off ties with him, exploiting or even hurting him without hesitation.

Yan Bai never anticipated that Su Su would confess.

“Well, it’s not exactly that I told him; Qi Hanyi figured it out on his own. But I didn’t mention it was you, and he didn’t press me for answers—just as a condition of exchange, he asked me not to tell you,” Su Su blurted out the entire situation and then proactively apologized to Yan Bai: “Sorry, I didn’t think it was such a big deal, and since I promised him to keep it confidential, I thought it best to uphold that promise. Are you angry with me?”

Yan Bai couldn’t believe that things had turned out this way. Su Su hadn’t fully betrayed him as he expected; in fact, his reasoning for concealing the truth was quite valid. For a moment, he was at a loss for words.

“Then since you wanted to keep your word, why mention it now?” Yan Bai looked away uncomfortably.

“Because it seemed like you were angry,” Su Su replied plainly and sincerely: “You care about me, I consider you a friend, and I don’t want you to be upset.”

Yan Bai’s hands clenched tightly under the table, and he felt a bit of warmth welling up in him, dispelling the cold suspicions and anger.

Yan Bai pinched the gills of Su Su’s shark plush toy and said, taking on a tone of feigned severity, “Next time, don’t hide things like this from me.”

“Understood,” Su Su mumbled in reply.

Resolving the misunderstanding with Su Su, Yan Bai redirected his grievances toward Qi Hanyi. He thought that Su Su had simply been deceived by Qi Hanyi’s pretense of goodness and hadn’t truly betrayed him or allied with humans. Perhaps there was still room to negotiate, and there was no need to take things to the extreme as his adoptive father had said.

However, Qi Hanyi’s insistence on keeping Su Su’s secrets from him was certainly dubious; he might have already guessed who Yan Bai was and could’ve been investigating him for a while. After all, Su Su’s first login time was easy to trace back to the last gathering at the Mo family, where he had interacted with Yan Bai.

Yan Bai deliberately said, “Since Qi Hanyi is so clever, doesn’t he realize you are Bai Lin Sha Sha? I’ve heard he’s been pushing a proposal related to mermaids lately; considering your imminent victory in the game, it’s hard not to think that he may want to use the game to promote you to that position.”

Su Su pondered for a moment and nodded in agreement, “Hmm, that’s possible.”

Yan Bai tried to see a hint of anger on Su Su’s face, but the shark plushie just stared back at him with its two adorable round eyes, unperturbed.

Yan Bai found it hard to understand: “He clearly guessed that [Bai Lin Sha Sha] is you, yet he has kept it from you. Don’t you mind at all?”

Su Su shook his head and replied, “What’s there to mind? I’ve been keeping the fact that I am [Bai Lin Sha Sha] from him too. Hiding something doesn’t necessarily imply malice—it’s like how I just want to give him a surprise. Just like with you, I was only trying not to make you worry unnecessarily.”

“You think too highly of him. He’s a human…” Yan Bai insisted, sounding anxious as if he were watching a brother being shamelessly cheated on.

Su Su interrupted, not wanting Yan Bai to continue down that path: “I know you mean well, but it seems you have a lot of prejudice against humans.”

“I don’t think all humans are bad. Why generalize? The disparity between people might be larger than that between people and mermaids. Just like you said, the past grievances stem from the specific evils that certain individuals committed. Who issued the orders, who was merely following them, who stood by coldly, and who secretly helped protect the mermaids—can we condemn them all collectively?”

“But they are all still humans, aren’t they? Isn’t it all for the sake of human interests?” Yan Bai rolled out his usual arguments.

Su Su simply shook his head, feeling that this wasn’t something Yan Bai should be saying: “You can hate someone for a specific event, but you shouldn’t hate an entire group because of it. I think classifying hatred using such standards is very foolish. You’re clearly very intelligent—why would you have such ideas?”

Yan Bai didn’t expect to be rendered speechless when he had set out to change Su Su’s mind. In the silence, he couldn’t help but feel bewildered. Was his loss for words due to being wrong? Everything his adoptive father had taught him, the hatred that had supported him for many years—was it wrong?

No, Yan Bai wouldn’t allow himself to think that way. That was sinful—it would be a desecration of the suffering that the mermaids had endured.

He said, “I still think you give humans too much credit. Perhaps Qi Hanyi treats you well, but you must understand that he is still human, just like all humans. They have always turned a blind eye to the suffering of mermaids, from ancient times until now.”

“If you don’t believe it, you can visit a place called the Mermaid Training Center. There are many such institutions in the imperial capital. You can go there to see what kind of torment the mermaids are enduring. It’s not just history or the past; it’s a reality happening right now, and our kin are suffering.”

“Qi Hanyi may be able to protect you now, but have you considered what your future will look like if one day he can no longer shelter you?”

Su Su truly had not thought about it. Sharks never worried about tomorrow.

Moreover, he didn’t think Qi Hanyi was pretending to be good, nor did he care whether Qi Hanyi was genuinely good. Qi Hanyi had managed his own affairs well and treated him kindly. What did the fate of other mermaids have to do with him, Su Su?

Sharks weren’t benevolent little angels. In the natural world, they had seen things much more brutal than what was happening here. They fought fiercely for a single bite of food, sometimes even resorting to cannibalism. During those times, forget the mermaids; he even envied the turtles kept in fish tanks by humans.