Chapter 4

"Care to guess why I deliberately sang the wrong notes before?"

Gu Xiao's smile froze.

I opened my mouth and sang the final note.

Every resonator reversed at once.

The full force of the sonic attack rebounded on the four Gu siblings.

【Chapter 6】

Gu Mingzhu screamed and clamped both hands over her ears.

Gu Xiao rushed to the controls, only to find that every command on the screen had changed.

The button once labeled Suppression now displayed a different command.

Return to the Tide.

"Turn it off!"

"Turn it off now!"

The engineer was drenched in sweat.

"I can't."

"The system won't recognize our access credentials."

Resting against Mother, I gently flicked my tail.

"That song isn't a weapon."

"It's how lost young sea folk find their way home."

"You thought you were so clever. You amplified every wrong note ten thousand times."

The resonators shook violently.

Underground pipes burst one after another.

Seawater poured through cracks in the walls, sweeping away every gun the Gu family had stationed around the estate.

It flowed around the guests without touching them.

Seeing this, Gu Cheng suddenly pointed at me and shouted.

"She's killing people!"

"You all saw it! The sea folk are attacking humans!"

He grabbed the livestream camera and aimed it at Father.

"If anything happens to the Gu family today, humanity will never forgive you!"

I raised my hand.

A drop of seawater landed on the lens.

The livestream changed abruptly.

The banquet hall disappeared.

In its place was the Gu family's underground laboratory.

Dozens of dolphins were confined in cramped pools.

Sea turtles had holes drilled through their shells.

A young beluga lay in a pool of blood, its body studded with syringes.

Every guest's expression changed.

The livestream erupted.

Gu Cheng whipped his head toward me.

"What did you do?"

"Water remembers."

I looked at him.

"When you washed that blood down the drains, did it ever occur to you that it might remember?"

Gu Xiao rushed forward and smashed the camera.

But every shard of glass reflected their abuse of marine life.

Gu Ye pulling out beluga teeth to make a bracelet.

Gu Mingzhu forcing dolphins to ram each other, just to film a short video.

Gu Cheng signing hush agreements and changing death records to equipment losses.

One piece of evidence after another came to light.

At last, Gu Mingzhu panicked.

"It's fake!"

"That fish monster is behind all of it!"

Lu Chenzhou broke free of the guards and snatched the knife from her hand.

"Enough."

He tossed a voice recorder onto the floor.

"I recorded everything you said last night."

Gu Cheng glared at him.

"Lu Chenzhou. Don't forget the marriage agreement between our families."

"Marriage agreement?"

Lu Chenzhou wiped the blood from his forehead.

"Someone else can marry her."

"I'm not marrying a criminal."

Sirens sounded outside.

The Gu family's business partners backed away, terrified of being implicated.

Realizing he'd lost, Gu Cheng suddenly pulled a black button from inside his jacket.

"Fine. You want to save those animals?"

"The underground laboratory has a self-destruct system."

"In three minutes, the entire facility goes into the trench."

He stared at me viciously.

"Let us go."

"Or every one of those things goes down with the Gu family."

Red light flashed from the underground facility in the distance.

Mother was about to act when I pressed her hand down.

"Save them first."

Gu Cheng laughed.

"So you don't dare take the risk."

I looked toward the seabed and gently closed my eyes.

"No."

"I just don't want them having nightmares after they watch you die."

【Chapter 7】

Father struck the ground with his palm.

The entire estate shuddered three times.

The underground laboratory remained intact.

Gu Cheng laughed at once.

"Don't waste your strength."

"The shell is made of deep-sea alloy. Break it by force, and you'll only set it off early."

Two minutes and forty seconds remained.

Mother handed me to my eldest brother.

"Stay here."

"We'll save them."

I caught her sleeve.

"The facility has a lock keyed to my voice."

"If you force your way in, the sonic blast will kill the creatures inside first."

Gu Xiao's face changed.

"How do you know?"

"Because the technology you stole was my jellyfish-catching toy when I was five."

For a moment, the banquet hall went silent.

My third brother couldn't help himself.

"Pfft."

"You made a child's toy your ultimate weapon."

"Human science certainly tries hard."

Gu Xiao went gray with rage.

I asked my eldest brother to lower me into the sea.

Salt water touched my wounds. Pain sent a tremor through me.

He wouldn't let go.

"Go home and rest."

"They're only a few fish. We'll find another way."

I looked at him.

"Brother, you just said the Gu family couldn't put a price on a life."

"How come they're only a few fish when it's you?"