Mermaid Reef

1930, Venice.

The beautiful and neat red roof is shining in the setting sun, and the glass windows of the building near the water are rendered with a layer of bright red.

The bells from the towers of St. Mark's Basilica echoed, and a gray-and-white seagull flitted over the city.

It deftly avoids the towering Gothic spiers and slender crosses, and is as light as a gondola (a pointed boat unique to Venice) driving on the city waterway. It is the water ripples it brings.

A turn is about to rush out of the port waterway and go straight to the Adriatic Sea in the distance——

"boom."

Feathers fluttered, stained with crimson.

The water splashed everywhere, and the dead seagulls floated in the river.

A boatman raised his head in surprise and looked around.

There were no pedestrians on both sides of the river, and there was no suspicious figure holding the wooden cang, and he didn't hear the sound of the wooden cang. The seagull seemed to have suddenly broken its wings and fell.

The boatman didn't hesitate for too long, he immediately rowed the boat to the seagull's body, and stretched out his hand happily to fish it.

This is a meat meal.

Usually, these sea robbers like to snatch the dried fish dried by the residents and the bread in the hands of the children. They are hard to catch if they want to. They fly too fast and too high. Today, taking this seagull home for cooking can be regarded as a mouthful. Bad breath.

The oars stopped moving the water, and the boatman leaned slightly.

The rough palm precisely pinched the seagull's wings and lifted it out of the water.

"what?"

The amount in hand is wrong.

too light.

Then the boatman saw a very strange sight.

——The seagull has only an empty shell, as if the flesh and blood have burst out of it, the bones are broken, and the feathers are barely wrapped together, like a mass of rubbish.

The boatman uttered a loud cry and threw the dead seagull back into the water in horror.

At this time, there was a strange sound of metal impacting in the distance. He jumped out of the boat in a hurry, swam to the waterside steps of a house, and covered his figure with wooden boards.

Soon, a group of people in gray cloaks appeared, wearing strange iron masks, and metal knight gloves with equally strange silver knuckles. They looked like crusaders in medieval murals, but without the metal armor.

The gray cloaks quickly blocked this small area, blocking the only two streets on the land.

Then they found a small boat from nowhere (there are boats at the door of every household here), rowed to the middle of the waterway, picked up the dead seagull with long iron tongs, stuffed it into a sack, and then took out the big net and placed it in the water. Fished for a while.

The boatman peeked out from the cracks in the planks.

The gray cloaks carefully picked up the scattered feathers and flesh.

The sacks are inconvenient to hold the blood, so they use earthen jars.

"... Someone heard a voice just now, and there may be a witness hiding nearby."

The voice of a gray cloak speaking clearly reached the boatman's ears, and he immediately became nervous.

The boatman knew these weirdos. They were a secret religious order nearby. They seemed to have some deep background, because he once saw his neighbor being forcibly taken away.

From that day on, the boatman avoided these people. He suspected that the order believed in the devil.

The boatman watched nervously the leader of the gray cloak, a tall man with strange red runes drawn on his iron mask, jumping onto his gondola.

The leader bent down to look at the items on the ship, and let out a contemptuous grunt from his throat.

"It's a mean mouse, get him out."

The boatman was so frightened that he shrank in desperately.

The sound of those metal impacts sounded above his head, as if they were stepping on his heart.

The gray cloaks violently lifted what was covering the nearby boats, stirred the water with their oars, or slapped hard into the gaps between the stakes below the house.

The boatman stared in horror at the oars that were getting closer and closer, and he was almost photographed just now.

Just when he was about to hold his breath and dive into the bottom of the water to escape, a voice suddenly came from the shore.

"The rose is bleeding."

"...Leave that mouse alone, let's go."

The search stopped suddenly, and the sound of chaotic footsteps disappeared.

The boatman didn't dare to come out, so he waited for 10 more minutes, then leaned on the board and peeped out, and swam out after confirming that there was no danger.

He was covered in water, and climbed into his boat in a mess.

Even though the weather was not cold, the boatman was still shivering. He rowed the boat with difficulty and wanted to leave here as soon as possible.

The sun was setting, and the tide brought a wave of shallow waves, beating rhythmically against the hull.

The waterway turned a corner in front, and then it suddenly opened up. This place is no longer remote, and there will be many people passing by near the pier.

The boatman was trembling, and he quickly rowed the boat to the side of the port, where many similar gondolas were parked.

The other boatmen were soliciting business. They wore decent clothes and looked forward to the passengers who disembarked from the large cruise ship. The boatmen who could speak fluent French or English squeezed in the front and tried their best to sell themselves.

Wet hair and clothes prevented the unfortunate boatman from pushing forward. He was afraid that acquaintances would recognize him and ask him why he fell into the water, so he had to squat in a corner, waiting for the sea breeze to dry his clothes or the sun to dry his clothes. Completely disappear.

The boatman was restless and felt an inexplicable cold. He shrank his head and looked around, trying to find a shelter from the wind.

Suddenly he saw two strange people.

The one on the left looks like an aristocrat from England, a young and handsome gentleman, the outline of his face dyed with a halo of yellow light by the afterglow of the setting sun, is better than the marble sculptures left in the church by artists hundreds of years ago.

The other person was wearing an exquisite silver mask, had beautiful long curly red hair, and a particularly conspicuous height, so he should undoubtedly become the focus of the crowd.

But the boatman and the peddler selling handicrafts seem to be unable to see them, just like a school of fish rushing to bait avoids a sea boat, they naturally avoid these two people.

They also enjoy this uninterrupted leisure, and they walk and stop along the road of the port.

From time to time, pointing to the bell tower and buildings in the distance, talking sideways intimately.

The boatman was involuntarily attracted by their figures, stretching his neck like a funny waterfowl.

Suddenly, the boatman met the blue eyes of the English nobleman.

His legs went limp, and he sat down on the ground inexplicably.

The boatman's face was blue, his fingers were stiff, and he was almost out of breath.

"Da da……"

Expensive patent leather shoes tread the colorful mosaic tiles of the port.

The sound seemed to penetrate the din of people, overwhelm the whistle of the paddle steamer, and fit perfectly with the sound of the church bell tower.

The invisible ice that trapped the boatman broke, and he got up in horror, looking at the man who couldn't see his face at all.

"gentlemen?"

"How much is your boat a day?"

The boatman's head sank, and he stammered a number.

The handsome young gentleman turned his head and whispered something to his best friend - oh no doubt, given the barely social distance between them - before nodding and handing him the Ten silver lire coins.

It's silver coins, not paper money.

The boatman grabbed the coin subconsciously.

It was too late to regret, the boatman could only speak a few words of English dryly, and took the two guests aboard his gondola.

"Sir, your luggage..."

"Oh, I'm taking it to the hotel. I don't need your help."

The boatman swore he had seen them disembark from the paddle-steamer, and no servants, servants, or porters ever came to them to take orders, and none of the porters saw them at all.

Thinking of the weird scene at the port, the boatman was sweating more and more on his forehead.

"...Gentlemen, do you want to go to St. Mark's Square? This time can catch up with the evening prayer, and then go to the Rialto Bridge. I guarantee that the gentlemen will not be disappointed with the shops there."

The boatman tried to stay calm, he was paddling, and the gondola was about to follow most of the boats ahead to the bustling neighborhood.

At this moment, the boatman suddenly felt that the boat made a half-circle, heading towards the remote waterway he had just come from.

"No, wait!"

The boatman only had time to utter a brief cry of surprise before losing control of his body.

He watched in horror as he rowed back to where he had fished the gulls.

The afterglow of the setting sun dyed the water waves a shocking bright red, which is an ominous omen.

The slender white fingers stretched out into the water on the side of the boat, and quickly retracted, and then the boatman heard the man in the exquisite mask say in an indescribably beautiful voice: "Right here... that little thing that unfortunately died. Someone is peeking into the real world with a certain object. Unfortunately, when he was looking in this direction today, he happened to meet us. He didn't want to die, so he could only transfer the 'injury' to a passing seabird in a hurry body."

"A seabird cannot counteract all injuries. He should be dying of pain." The British gentleman said the terrible words gently and calmly.

"Well, it's the seabird that died, not the passing boatman. It seems that this object for peeping into the real world should be placed high..."

The two stood up at the same time, as if to judge the height of the nearby building.

The roofs of public buildings in Venice are gray and white, and most ordinary houses are red, so the church is very conspicuous.

"Is it there?"

"I bet on the tower on the right, how about it?"

"... not so good, the boatman we hired is dying."

The boatman couldn't look up, his consciousness was blurring.

As if falling into a bottomless abyss, he roared feebly, and the sound he made was not as loud as a mouse.

The body surface of the boatman was covered with strange scales, and it seemed that he was about to grow a third and fourth arm, and his shoulders were weirdly deformed.

"He touched the carcass of a seabird and was polluted. He could have survived for a few days, but he went to the port pier again."

Jason sighed.

If he hadn't met them, the boatman would be destined to become a irrational monster in a few days, and then be beaten to death by the chaotic barn.

Now... contaminated with more mysterious power.

Although it still becomes a monster, at least it won't become a pool of mud that doesn't even have a shape. If you're lucky, you might still be able to retain your memory.

Pollution is irreversible.

Because there is no way for God to strip away all pollution on the premise of ensuring the "integrity of human beings".

"His willpower is so low."

Gamil frowned, just touched the corpse, and the person was gone?

"Don't compare yourself to Mr. Detective."

"Ok."

Gemil looked away and looked at the tower in the distance.

How interesting.

This city actually possesses a treasure that guards against mysterious powers, and the humans stationed there use it to observe the situation around the city every evening?

"We just arrived in Venice, and we haven't had time to play... We were discovered?"