Me! Cleaner!.

Chapter 1128 Nightmare and Reef

"Oh!!!"

After letting out an involuntary scream, Miss Salty Fish, who was curled up in the clam shell bed, suddenly opened her eyes and sprang up, then crashed into the top of the clam shell with a bang.

It hurts so much... Was it all just a dream?

After hissing and taking several deep breaths of cold air, Miss Salty Fish, now fully awake, reached out and opened the top cover of the clamshell bed, then sat down on the edge of the bed, clutching her head.

"what happened?"

Seemingly having heard some unusual commotion, the mermaid beauty immediately called out with concern from outside Miss Salty Fish's door.

"Wendy! What are you doing? I think I heard you call out just now?"

"fine!"

After replying through the door, Miss Salty Fish loudly explained:

"I just had a dream, and then I woke up."

"Oh, I see... You scared me!"

After receiving Miss Salty Fish's reply, the mermaid beauty outside breathed a slight sigh of relief, then pushed open the door and came in, looking terrified.
"It turns out you were just startled awake by a dream. I thought you couldn't sleep and were trying to clear your mind..."

"It was just a dream! Nothing else!"

Instinctively sensing that the topic was veerging in a strange direction, Miss Salty Fish quickly intervened, then, after glancing at the mermaid beauty who had entered the room, couldn't help but frown and say:

"Also, even though we're at home, you're dressed way too casually!"

"Hmm? Wouldn't it be better to be more casual?"

After tugging at her extremely cool pajamas to cover up a sight that would make any male's blood boil, the mermaid beauty blinked in confusion and asked, somewhat bewildered:
"It's time to sleep now, so of course you should wear whatever is comfortable. Besides, I've always dressed like this before. Why are you only realizing something's wrong today?"

"I……"

After listening to the mermaid woman's words, Miss Salty Fish realized that something seemed off about herself. She hesitated for a moment, then blinked and said somewhat uncertainly:
"Maybe it's related to the dream I just had? After the dream, I subconsciously felt that your outfit wasn't dignified enough, that it didn't suit your status, and that I should remind you..."

"Oh, that's normal."

Upon hearing this, the mermaid beauty nodded knowingly and said:
"This is caused by your overly strong possessiveness."

"?!?!?!"

"Don't be shy. Many children have this kind of mentality, just not as severe as you."

She sat down at the edge of the clamshell bed, embraced her bewildered daughter, and forcefully pressed her face into her arms. The mermaid woman sighed softly, explaining with a look of utter despair:
"Children always admire and yearn for their parents, and subconsciously resist sharing them with others. Plus, your mother... that is, me, is just too elegant and beautiful. You instinctively want to possess this beauty all to yourself, which is why you dream about me and even wish I were dressed in more layers..."

"What nonsense are you spouting!"

After struggling to get out of the warm face wash, Miss Salty Fish pushed away the mermaid beauty who didn't want to let go, and said angrily:
"I'm not possessive at all! Didn't I tell you? I just had a weird dream!"

"But wanting to possess my beauty exclusively in your dreams is also a manifestation of possessiveness~"

"It has absolutely nothing to do with possessiveness!"

Unable to resist the mermaid beauty's persistent advances, Miss Salty Fish could only push her away while trying to explain:

"I dreamt of a strange ruin, and you were a huge, talking statue. I was your priest or something, and we were chatting."

The reason I said you weren't dignified was because I was still half asleep; that priestly thought hadn't completely left me, so seeing you dressed so provocatively, I just felt I should remind you!

Ruins... statues... priests?
After hearing Miss Salty Fish's words, the mermaid beauty paused slightly, then relaxed her arm, which was preparing to launch a second attack on her breasts, and asked with great interest:

"Wendy, what was your dream like? Can you tell me about it?"

"Never!"

Miss Salty Fish shook her head repeatedly, rejecting the offer with a look of disgust:
"I just said a couple of things casually, and you're already calling me a pervert. If I told you about my dream, you'd definitely start saying all sorts of nonsense!"

"That's it..."

Upon hearing this, the mermaid beauty sighed and made as if to leave.

"Then I can only go and have a heart-to-heart talk with your grandma, your Aunt Liao Sha, and your Aunt Dai Na, and ask them what to do about their daughter's possessiveness... Hmm? Why are you pulling me?"

"I'm telling you! You're not allowed to go and tell everyone!"

Because of the mermaid woman's threat of social death, and her genuine desire to share her strange dream, Miss Salty Fish finally gave in and, tugging at the mermaid woman's sleeve, reminisced:

"Actually, there's not much to say about this dream. It's just a cold and lonely world where there's nothing but your statue and me."

In my dreams, I'm either cleaning your statue or squatting on the edge of an island, carving a large black stone, surrounded by a pile of scrolls covered in writing. There's no one to keep us company, and nothing else to do; it's incredibly boring.

How boring...

After giving a soft "hmm," the mermaid woman, her expression somewhat complicated, softly asked:
"And then? What happened next?"

"And then... in the dream, I seemed to be in poor health? One day after I went out, I fainted or something, and when I woke up, it felt like thousands of years had passed on the whole island."

After frowning and recalling for a moment, Miss Salty Fish said somewhat uncertainly:
"After you woke me up in the dream, you told me that a very long time had indeed passed, but I didn't believe you. Then you asked me whether I wanted to be resurrected again or to forget everything and be reborn or something."

I, in that world, seemed to be in great pain. Although I don't remember what she went through, I had a vague feeling that from the moment she was born, her life consisted only of constant loss.

Losing my mother, losing my companions, losing my family, losing my home... In short, although I didn't regret my choice in the dream, I had little attachment to my life except for you, so I decided to forget everything, and then..."

At this point, Miss Salty Fish paused slightly, recalling the mermaid beauty's earlier threat of suicide, and then couldn't help but hum:

"Then in my dream I said, as long as I'm not your daughter, I'm fine with being anything in my next life!"

"..."

"?!" Miss Salty Fish was startled when she suddenly felt a weight on her shoulder and felt something wet on it.

"What are you doing?"

"..."

"You...you didn't really cry, did you?"

"..."

do not!

After trying to support her a couple of times, Miss Salty Fish noticed that the mermaid woman's face remained pressed against her shoulder, refusing to lift up, and her back was trembling slightly. Miss Salty Fish panicked immediately and quickly supported her shoulder, coaxing her:

"A dream! It's just a dream! It's all fake! Who cries just because someone told them about a dream? You... oh dear!"

Finding that the more she tried to coax the mermaid woman, the more violently her body trembled, the flustered Miss Salty Fish quickly explained:
"No, no! I didn't say that in my dream! I meant that if I could really have a new life, I would still want to be your daughter!"

"I know."

After sniffing, the mermaid beauty vigorously rubbed her eyes dry on Miss Salty Fish's shoulder, then raised her head and said confidently:
"How could you not want to be my daughter? The reason you said that just now was just because you're being stubborn and shy, and you're too embarrassed to admit it."

"Then you...then how did you..."

"Time to desalinate!"

"?????"

"As you know, I was busy merging the two sea eyes together, so I kept running back and forth between the tidal realm and the place with the greatest water pressure in the real world, which resulted in a bit too much salt in my body."

Picking up the ribbon from Miss Salty Fish's pajamas and wiping away the snow-white salt powder from the corner of her eyes, the mermaid beauty, under Miss Salty Fish's bewildered gaze, calmly said:
"According to human classification, we mermaids are amphibians. Too high a salt concentration in our bodies is bad for our kidneys, so actively excreting more salt is good for our health."

"..."

I must have been stupid to think you would cry!
Half-dead from the mermaid woman's abstract salt-spraying antics, Miss Salty Fish couldn't help but shove her, trying to chase this annoying creature away. However, the mermaid woman, who was prepared, dodged to the side, then grabbed Miss Salty Fish's hands and said with a smile:
"Don't be angry~ It's all my fault, okay? It's all my fault for being too busy these past few days and not paying attention to you, which caused your possessiveness to surge... Okay, okay, I won't say anymore."

After Miss Salty Fish glared at her, the mermaid beauty gently patted her back twice and softly promised:
"It'll be done soon. Just wait a few more days and I'll be almost done with my work. Then I'll bring back everything you've lost and let you choose again."

"what?"

As the mermaid woman gently patted her, Miss Salty Fish, who suddenly seemed a little dazed, instinctively leaned against her and asked blankly:

"What should I...choose?"

Choose the life you want.

After smoothing down Miss Salty Fish's confused brows, the mermaid beauty placed her back on the clamshell bed, now asleep again. Then, she looked up at the angels falling like raindrops outside the clamshell and unconsciously pursed her lips.

And it's not just you; I also want all our other people to be able to choose again!
……

It's gone after all...

Looking at the ruins plaza before him, which was even more severely damaged than before and almost completely collapsed, and at the empty rock base where the mermaid statue once stood, Leon, now back in the "present," couldn't help but close his eyes, completely confirming his guess.

The "Evangeline" who sent herself back to the present was indeed the Evangeline she knew. They weren't related as the original and the incarnation, but rather as the same person from beginning to end.

The difference is that the mermaid statues of the past didn't have a direct conflict with her and were likely friendly, but the current one, Evangeline...

It's likely that from the moment Miss Salty Fish became Queen of the Ocean, to her inexplicable participation in the Twelve Kingdoms Gathering, to the freezing of the seabed and the disappearance of Director Cancer and the others, and her "accidental" entry into the Abyss Realm, this whole series of events was her scheme!

Recalling everything from meeting Miss Salty Fish to being sent back to the present, Leon couldn't help but sigh inwardly.

At first, I felt that things were a bit coincidental and her behavior was a bit strange, so I never stopped observing her. I only relaxed my vigil for a moment twice, letting her out of my sight.

The first time was when they had just arrived above the eye of the sea, and the clamshell boat was damaged by ice blocks dug out by the Cancer directors. She happened to say a bunch of strange things, which made the annoyed Miss Salty Fish and herself, who were in a hurry to meet up with the two directors, choose to temporarily abandon her and accelerate their descent.

However, not long after she was out of sight, the ice blocks flying up from below stopped abruptly, and the two directors' auras vanished instantly, frozen and falling into the Cold Spring Realm. She probably tampered with things at that moment.

The second time was when she "persuaded" the leader of the Flowing Vortex lineage to help her break through the ice to find someone. Since she was about to leave the mortal world and enter the Cold Spring Realm, she subconsciously relaxed her observation and focused more on the ice and the sea eye.

It was also at this time that the originally stable sea eye suddenly entered an expansion phase, freezing itself and the head of the vortex lineage together, and at the same time crossing time and space, falling into the abyss realm nearly 10,000 years ago.

And among all the people she knew, only she, who had once controlled the entire source of the Abyss Realm, possessed the power to send people to the distant past and traverse ten thousand years in an instant.

As for why she would deceive herself into appearing in the world "now"...

Looking back in the direction he had come from, Leon caught a glimpse of the massive stone monument that marked the end of the entire Abyss Realm. He shook his head, got up, and walked toward the empty rocky base.

She had noticed from the very beginning that the trident that pinned her to the rocky base was wrong in terms of both angle and wound. It didn't look like she had been stabbed by someone; it looked like she had gripped the hilt with both hands behind her back and pinned herself to the rock.

As for the purpose of doing so, it was nothing more than to disperse the remaining source in her body that was united with the source, and to maintain the Abyss Realm for as long as possible. The Abyss Realm and her people probably held a very important place in her heart.

It was precisely because of her sacrifice to maintain the Abyss Realm that he gained more faith in her from the past, and a friendship was formed during their brief time together. But now that he has returned to the present, this friendship has likely come to an end. What will happen next...?

Aquarius!

Seeing Leon, who wasn't in a hurry to return to the mortal world at this point but insisted on seeing some ruins, Scorpio Director, who had secretly stuffed his will into the Wrist Demon when he crushed it and had been searching for him in the Underworld for over a month, could no longer suppress his fiery temper and shouted angrily:
"What the hell are you doing? That Ivangeline is..."

"I know."

After replying to the Scorpio director, Leon climbed onto the rocky base and bent down to explore inch by inch.

"My purpose in coming here is to find a way to deal with her."

……

Two chapters combined... Also, yesterday's first chapter (1117) started with an extra sentence...

Fish has a habit of pasting scattered inspirations into the writing area and comparing them as she writes, but I don't know if it's a bug or what, the first line of the scattered inspirations Fish used to find ideas was somehow entered into the code. Sorry... Or2
(End of this chapter)