Lots of Them
Lots of Them
"Don't forget the egg," the MDT reminded him as it opened the portal. "Be careful. Don't break it!"
Hao Ren held the mermaid egg in his hand. He wanted to put it into his pocket but was afraid that he would accidentally crush it. He thought better of it and carried it in his hand instead. "Let's go. We'll use the portal."
The two of them arrived in "Heaven" with the fish. For the first time in history, Raven 12345 was standing at the door waiting for them. Hao Ren brought Vivian up to Raven 12345 and showed her the mermaid egg. "Lil Pea just laid it a while ago."
Raven 12345 took the tiny egg from Hao Ren's hand and examined it with interest. The egg was delicate and exquisite like a piece of art but very fragile. After she reviewed it for a while, the goddess raised her head and said, "It won't hatch."
"I know." Hao Ren nodded. "Mermaids aren't parthenogenetic. I want to know if this is normal. Or has Lil Pea matured?"
"I need to check." Raven 12345 turned and walked towards the door. "This mermaid isn't on my creation list, but it won't take long to check."
Hao Ren and Vivian followed Raven into the mansion. After they passed through a few corners in the long corridor, they finally came to a smaller lounge. Raven 12345 waved her hand, summoning up a silver plate out of thin air. She then motioned for Hao Ren to put the little mermaid on the plate.
The plate seemed to possess a kind of unique characteristic because when Lil Pea lay down on it, her body temperature and hardness changed. The little one stretched her tail out and lay comfortably still. Hao Ren looked at the plate and found its shape a bit strange, but he could not tell why he had that feeling.
Raven 12345 stared at Lil Pea for a while, as though something had crossed her mind. She suddenly took out a few pieces of cilantro as well as shallots and lay them around the little one. Once she was done putting the leaves in a circle, it became evident to Hao Ren what it was. "Is this a fish plate?"
"Oops! I'm just too used to it!" Raven 12345 quickly removed the cilantro and shallots while she hemmed a couple of time. "Just hold on a moment, I'm checking her," she said, feeling embarrassed.
While she said that, her eyes emanated a mysterious silvery-white halo, which caught Lil Pea's attention immediately. As Lil Pea looked at Raven's corneas, she slowly fell into a trance. Not wanting to disturb the goddess' work, Hao Ren and Vivian stepped back instinctively.
"Mr. Landlord." Vivian nudged Hao Ren's arm. "Do you know why the goddess asked for me?"
Hao Ren replied in a quiet voice, "I guess it's about your split, and also the goddess of creation."
Hearing that, Vivian lowered her head and did not say a word. It looked like she was in thought.
Before long, the glow in Raven 12345's eyes faded as she finished her examination on Lil Pea, and the little mermaid returned to her usual activeness. Hao Ren approached them and nervously asked, "How is she?"
"She's fine." Raven 12345 nodded. "It's a normal growth process. Because of the harsh living environment and disturbances during the incubation period, mermaids like her often suffer from congenital disabilities. After the larval stage, they run a self-test on their physiological functions to find if there's any problem, and if there is, the fries will stop growing. In their native environment, it means that they'll die very quickly. That way, they can leave enough resources for healthy individuals to survive. There's no such problem with Lil Pea because she has you guys to take care of her. The little one is very healthy. She was just doing a 'self-check'. That's it."
"I didn't know such a thing existed." Hao Ren was wide-eyed, and once again, he lamented the complexity of life and the environment of each world. "So, will she still lay eggs in the future?"
"She won't until adulthood," Raven 12345 said as she shook her head. "It'll be years before that day comes. Now that she's completed all the checks on her bodily functions, she'll grow up healthily and rapidly."
"What do we do with this?" Hao Ren pointed to the mermaid egg beside Lil Pea. The little one did not seem to be aware of what it meant for her. She just stared at the small ball curiously, poking it with her finger at times. At least she knew that thing was very brittle.
"The egg will quickly lose its vitality. After all, it's just a test. It'll probably only last for a few hours. The egg means a lot to Lil Pea though. I should do something."
Raven 12345 thought for a while before she clapped her hands, picked the mermaid egg up, and began to inject magic into it. A silvery-white glow floated at her fingertip, and the air around the mermaid egg quickly condensed, forming into a crystal-like substance. When the white radiance gradually dissipated, Raven 12345 had a small and cute pendant in her hand. It was a teardrop gemstone with a light blue luster, inlaid with the mermaid egg like a work of art.
Raven 12345 made a rope and hung the pendant around Lil Pea's neck ceremoniously. "Treat it as a talisman."
Hao Ren was like really?
"I feel like I should say something, but I don't know what to say," Vivian said in hushed tones.
Lil Pea fiddled with the pendant quizzically. It appeared a little big for her size, but she was happy. She clapped her tail and thanked Raven 12345 politely.
She thought the teardrop pendant was beautiful though she did not know what it could do.
"You taught her well." Raven 12345 nodded complimentarily.
"She could easily lose it." Hao Ren had another thought. "She swims in the water all day long, and she may unknowingly drop it."
"No worries. I've given the pendant positioning capabilities; it can fly back to its owner if it's dropped. It's the main feature of the pendant," Raven 12345 said while she smiled. "Of course, even then it's still a divine artifact. After all, I made it myself."
Hao Ren was speechless because in his eyes, the most useless divine artifact in the world was finally born; hand made by the goddess, a real celestial object, which had GPS as its only function. What a shame!
"We're done with Lil Pea. Let's talk about something more serious." Raven 12345 handed the little mermaid to Hao Ren, and her eyes finally fell on Vivian. "Come with me; I want to show you something," she said.
Vivian and Hao Ren exchanged looks involuntarily and nodded at each other at the same time.
Raven 12345 brought them to a "warehouse".
The warehouse was located in a unique dimension that was inaccessible on foot. Raven 12345 snapped her fingers, and a light flashed across Hao Ren as well as Vivian's eyes. When they finally came to their senses, they found themselves standing in an unusually wide indoor space.
Rows of neatly-arranged pillars stretched out in front of their eyes. Asides from the mysterious ornamentation on the pillars and the vague magic patterns on the ground, the place looked more like an empty underground parking lot. Hao Ren had no idea why the goddess brought them there, but he would soon know the answer.
Raven 12345 opened a part of the "storage" as the air between two rows of pillars closest to Hao Ren and Vivian began to ripple like the water's surface. Twenty crystal containers emerged from those two rows.
The crystal containers looked like unique hibernation pods and were translucent. Hao Ren stepped forward and took a gander of the inside. "This is..."
A red-haired Vivian was lying in every crystal container.
Vivian almost could not believe what she was seeing. When she saw her split body for the first time earlier on, she suspected that more splits existed around the world, but she never expected to see more than one. It was a shock to her as there were more than 20 split bodies in front of her eyes. It looked like some dark scientific experiment or strange ritual. Seeing her clones sleeping soundly in the containers, a creepy feeling began to rise within her.
"I'm not sure, but I believe most of them are here." Raven 12345's words jolted Hao Ren and Vivian out of their daze.