Faced with Winsor's first straight shot at flirting, Lansi eventually allowed Winsor to stay on his island after eating the grilled fish.
Because Winsor was there, the sleeping bag Lansi had prepared earlier went unused.
After all, both of them were mermaids with strong physical constitutions. Furthermore, with the presence of Winsor—a terrifying, non-human creature—all kinds of small bugs nearby had already slid away. Lansi casually spread a blanket on the ground, lay down, and watched the stars with Winsor.
"I have never seen so many stars before."
Lansi was content with the simple things anyway. Having eaten his favorite grilled fish today and witnessed such a magical scene, he was in an excellent mood.
The stars above filled the night sky, twinkling beautifully—the kind of breathtaking beauty that couldn't be described in words. Lansi lay under the starry canopy, looking up without distractions. It felt as though he could see the movement of the universe and the joys and sorrows of the entire world through them.
Winsor's lips curled up slightly. "They are not as beautiful as your eyes."
Lansi froze for a moment, his face flushing.
How had Winsor suddenly become a little prince of romance tonight?
"Look at the stars," Lansi blushed, not daring to look at Winsor. He kept his eyes fixed on the sky to change the subject. "I haven't been to space yet. I don't know what the universe is like."
After saying that, Lansi felt a sudden wave of sadness.
This planet was also Earth, but humanity would definitely not be able to stay. If humans had to leave, were there enough stars in the sky to accommodate them all?
"Not very good. Very cruel," Winsor replied abruptly. "It's cold and dark."
"How do you know?" Lansi turned his head curiously to ask.
Winsor was silent.
After a long time, he said, "In human legends, I am an ancient god."
Lansi: ? ? ?
"I have seen human legends about me," Winsor continued. "In human scriptures, I am an ancient god from a star far away in the sky. Supposedly, because I was squeezed out by other gods, I was forced to leave my original home and finally descended upon the Earth."
These words reminded Lansi of the Greek mythology he had read.
In those myths, after the second-generation king Cronus overthrew his father Uranus, he led the golden age, only to be overthrown himself by the third-generation king, Zeus. The overthrown Cronus and the Titan gods were mostly imprisoned by Zeus in the depths of Tartarus.
Ironically, one version of the myth claimed Zeus was so afraid of being overthrown by his own children that he swallowed his first wife, accidentally giving birth to Athena from his head—and Athena was said to be the very deity capable of overthrowing him.
"Then, are the legends right?" Lansi was intensely curious.
"Only half of it." Winsor's voice remained cold. It was obviously a tragic experience, but in his narration, it sounded as ordinary as drinking a glass of water.
Next, Winsor revealed the truth.
He hadn't been exiled from his original planet. Rather, due to the explosion of his home world, his race was entirely wiped out, leaving him as the sole survivor. He had wandered the universe for a long time before accidentally crashing onto Earth.
"When I arrived, there was no life on this planet." Winsor looked up at the stars. His black pupils seemed to contain the entire galaxy, yet at the same time, they looked completely empty. "I was severely injured, and many of the cells from my body detached and fell into the sea."
Because of his grievous injuries, Winsor had fallen into a deep sleep.
He hadn't expected that the cells he left behind would undergo a series of complex reactions in the ocean over a vast stretch of time, ultimately creating living things on this planet. When Winsor finally woke up again, he witnessed the birth of humanity.
"Today's sea monsters are a re-evolution of the cells I accidentally lost back then," Winsor added, dropping the heavy revelation completely unbothered. "About a hundred years ago, some of my cells leaked out, and they seemed to react with marine life under the radiation of a nuclear power plant that humans had sunk."
And so, Winsor had accidentally created the modern sea monsters.
Lansi: "..."
He could only express his utter shock with a row of ellipses. Lansi had no idea how to comment on a backstory that held the weight of the entire world.
"Well... then does that mean you're my ancestor?"
Lansi had long guessed that Winsor's age might be measured in centuries, but he never expected it would be measured in millennia.
"I may be, and I may not be," Winsor said, glancing at Lansi with a subtle expression as he muttered in a low voice, "Not that I ever see you showing me much respect."
Hearing Winsor's complaint, Lansi couldn't help but giggle. He took hold of one of Winsor's hands and teased, "Then do you want me to treat you like an ancestor, or do you still want me to fall in love with you?"
Winsor paused for a moment, then moved closer to Lansi, his lips curling up. "You know my choice."
Perhaps it was due to a profound loneliness, or perhaps out of curiosity, but Winsor had ultimately chosen this body—and through its eyes, he had found his little fish.
Lansi's smile widened, but he suddenly remembered he shouldn't let Winsor get too arrogant tonight; after all, the two of them were still technically in the middle of a cold war.
Realizing he was letting his guard down too easily, Lansi gave Winsor an irritated look and huffed, "I'm going to sleep!"
Winsor gently touched Lansi's hair and said, "Go to sleep. I am here."
Seeing that Winsor was entirely unbothered by his attitude, Lansi pouted, rolled over to the side, and vowed to keep his distance from him. Winsor glanced at the meager fist-sized gap between them, his eyes full of amusement.
Lansi yawned and fell asleep a second later. He was simply too exhausted.
The island was stiflingly hot during the day, and the nights were plagued by bugs. Combine that with an atmosphere that could easily double as a horror movie set, and Lansi hadn't slept properly in days. But he was stubborn. He knew he should return to the sea, but he simply didn't want to. He still remembered his promise to live a good life on land.
Now, with Winsor by his side providing an unparalleled sense of security and keeping the bugs at bay, Lansi slept like the dead.
After a while, Lansi turned over, curling inward as he groaned, "Feet... cold..."
Winsor was somewhat amused but watched as Lansi nervously twitched his legs, looking uncomfortable. When Lansi's cold feet brushed against Winsor's legs, instinctively seeking out his warmth, he began rubbing them between Winsor's legs.
Left with no choice, Winsor used his calves to gently clamp Lansi's freezing feet. Lansi, who had been frowning in his sleep, let out a sigh of relief and finally stilled. He resembled a small animal curled up tightly beside Winsor.
Winsor looked down at Lansi's sleeping face and chuckled softly. This little thing really knew how to give an inch and take a mile.
A moment later, Winsor stroked Lansi's hair thoughtfully, contemplating a serious question. Lansi seemed to yearn for, and adapt much better to, a life on land. Winsor had never really considered this before, but his recent experiences, coupled with Lansi's instinctive actions now, made him wonder if he needed to go ashore permanently.
"Carl... Rose..."
In his sleep, Lansi seemed unsettled. He suddenly choked up, murmuring those two names.
Winsor's hand paused mid-stroke. Hearing those names caused his heart to skip a beat. His feelings seemed to have shifted far more than he realized, and he pondered this change with a touch of distress.
Lansi, oblivious to his own dreams, drew closer to Winsor. He reached out and grabbed Winsor by the collar, a distressed expression gripping his features.
"Lansi?" Winsor whispered, worried he was having a nightmare.
At the sound of his name, Lansi seemed to half-awaken. His eyes remained shut, but his entire body suddenly recoiled like a twitching fish. He tried to pull away from Winsor, but since his feet were still trapped by Winsor's calves, he ended up stretching his leg out at an awkward sixty-degree angle.
Winsor: "..."
While Winsor wondered whether Lansi was actually awake or not, Lansi himself couldn't tell.
Soon after drifting off, when Lansi's consciousness finally returned, he found himself standing in a clearing. He knew immediately that he was dreaming.
With his mind fully alert, Lansi was able to process logical problems clearly and realized he had just been asleep.
He was absolutely certain this was a dream because the moment he looked up, he saw the Milky Way—or more accurately, a sprawling, unfiltered view of the cosmos. He was standing on a pitch-black expanse of ground, a rotating galaxy spinning directly above his head amid a swirl of colorful stardust.
This was space. The dark, endless universe.
Why was he having a dream like this? Was it because he had been thinking about the stars right before falling asleep? Even so, a celestial body of this colossal magnitude shouldn't just appear in a dream so vividly. Lansi raised his head, watching the galaxy spin above him. For a moment, the sheer, reality-shattering scale of it filled him with a deep sense of dread.
"Does it look good?" a voice suddenly called out from behind.
"Is this a character generated by my dream?" Lansi wondered, startled. He turned around, wanting to see who had materialized in his subconscious.
At first glance, Lansi gasped, "Winsor?"
However, after a closer look, Lansi's face fell. He called out the person's true name: "Will."
If this was his own dream, he should be the one in control. Why was someone he never wanted to see again appearing here?
"You recognized me at a glance," Will said. The boy, whom Lansi hadn't seen in a long time, offered a shy smile. He looked genuinely happy, entirely ignoring the shift in Lansi's demeanor as he offered a casual greeting. "Hello there."
"Where is this place?" Lansi demanded.
Will took a few steps toward him. "My dream."
Will raised his hand slightly, and the massive, earthy-yellow planet closest to Lansi suddenly detonated. The explosion caused the very ground beneath Lansi's feet to tremble. He subconsciously whipped his head around to look.
The planet was torn apart. Following the violent eruption of its fragments, the core flashed brilliantly, and the shattered remnants were violently pulled back inward, collapsing into a massive black hole. The anomaly began to rotate, drawing nearby planets, meteorites, and even light itself into warped, stretched lines in the dark universe, devouring them completely.
Lansi stepped back instinctively, desperate to escape the black hole's gravitational pull, even though he couldn't actually feel its traction in the dream.
But as he retreated, his back pressed firmly against a chest.
"Did you see it? This is the imagery from my memory," Will's voice whispered right in Lansi's ear—chilling and cruel, like the hissing of a snake.
Lansi wanted to pull away, but found himself completely paralyzed. Looking down, he saw that his feet had been swallowed by an ocean of shifting black mud.
"This isn't your memory. This is Winsor's," Lansi said angrily, avoiding Will's touch as he forced out the facts word by word.
Everything Will possessed right now was cloned from Winsor. To call these visions Will's "memories" was a lie; it was more accurate to say Will had stolen them from Winsor.
"Is there a difference?" Will didn't get angry. He let out a low laugh, resting his head against Lansi's. "Where have you been? Why can't I find you anywhere?"
"Are you still in the Alliance?" Lansi asked, catching the implication in his words.
"Correct," Will admitted cleanly and simply.
"Did you go back to the sea?" Will rubbed his cheek against Lansi's, asking curiously. "Don't you like the land more? Why go back to the sea? The ocean isn't nearly as fun as it is in the Alliance. Besides, don't you like Carl and Rose? What about them?"
Lansi frowned, holding back his temper for as long as he could before finally snapping, "Don't you dare touch Carl and Rose."
"If that's what you want, then of course I won't." Will wrapped his arms tightly around Lansi, giggling. His black hair began to writhe and twist, snaking outward to entangle Lansi's body. "I'm trying to take control of the entire Alliance. When are you coming back?"
"You... You did all of those things?" Lansi twisted his body, using his hands to tear the creeping hair away from himself in sheer disbelief. "You killed all those people?"
"Mm-hmm."
Will paid no attention to Lansi's struggles, enthusiastically sharing his grand design instead. "I've already controlled a lot of people within the Alliance... The ones on the periphery are too numerous anyway, so they're better off dead. Give me a little more time, and the entire Alliance will be mine. Will you come back then?"
Seeing Lansi still fighting against his hold, Will pulled Lansi into a deeper embrace, whispering like a phantom in his ear, "Or... do I have to hunt you down and drag you back?"