Tonight, the sky over Planet Tarl was unusually overcast.

Thick clouds completely obscured the stars. The wind carried a slight chill as it swept past abandoned buildings and blew into the muddy alleyways.

The silence was broken by the sound of rapid breathing. A figure stumbled forward, bracing against the wall.

He was barefoot, his pale clothing slightly oversized, resembling a hospital gown at first glance. In the dim light, his long silver hair stood out sharply. His gait was odd—staggering, uneven—like a child just learning to walk.

Because the rain had just stopped, puddles dotted the ground.

The lighting was terrible and the road was uneven. With his unstable footing, he hadn’t gone far before he stepped into a hole.

When he fell, the pooled water instantly soaked through his clothing.

A sharp pain from his ankle brought a fleeting clarity to his muddled mind.

A strange sense of déjà vu came flooding in. Lying face down on the ground, Yu Bai’s breath caught—then he suddenly broke into a fit of coughing.

“Cough, cough, cough…”

A faint blush crept up his pale cheeks from the force of his labored breathing.

The deafening explosion of the starship faded like receding tides, the pain of cosmic rays tearing through his skin vanished quickly, and his blurry vision gradually focused.

In the small puddle before him, ripples still lingered, making Yu Bai feel slightly dazed.

Hadn’t he died in that explosion?

The pain in his ankle was still there. Yu Bai instinctively stretched out his leg, then noticed something strange.

He lifted the hand that had been pressed into the mud. Though his vision was still a little doubled, he could clearly see that his wrist was clean—gone was the string of numbers he had stared at for so many years. He reached through the damp fabric to his lower back—no chain locked there anymore either.

What was going on?

But before he could think more, some loud male voices echoed nearby.

“…Did he run this way?”

“Catch him, quick…”

“This way! I see footprints! He can’t be far!”

“Hurry, hurry—this mermaid cost the boss a lot of trade credits!”

The voices sounded oddly familiar. In a flash, Yu Bai understood.

It seemed he had been reborn.

Reborn to three years ago—the day he first arrived on Planet Tarr.

Back then, someone he had rescued from the sea had tricked him into coming ashore and brought him to this planet called Tarr.

Though they didn’t speak the same language, merfolk were naturally intelligent. That person gestured and pointed, and Yu Bai roughly understood—he wanted to repay the favor by taking him to land, maybe even help him find others of his kind.

Having lived alone in the deep sea, Yu Bai naively believed him.

So he left the ocean he had known for years and followed that man to the land.

Indeed, there were others like him who could survive in water. They called these beings “Mermaid.”

But while common mermaids couldn’t hide their original forms, merfolk who could shift freely between shapes were extremely rare.

And it seemed land-dwellers had a particular fascination with rare things.

Yu Bai only pieced this all together much later—after too many days spent watching the people outside the glass walls of the lab.

Because that very night they arrived on Tarr, that man sold him to an auction house.

He remembered it clearly: the auction would begin at midnight. He would soon be caught by those pursuing him, and before dawn broke, he would be sold at a high price as one of the rare finale items to a research institute.

What awaited him was a cruel, three-year ordeal of experiments in various locations.

Those upright beings in white coats would cut him open, study him, wait for him to heal, then repeat it all over again.

They always had ways to catch him, no matter how he tried to escape.

Yu Bai could no longer remember how many times he had nearly died in that glass container that trapped him.

That kind of life continued until the day the laboratory was invaded.

The humans who broke into the lab tried to take him with them, but on their way out, the fleet was attacked. The explosion brought with it blazing fire that devoured everything—and somehow, he had returned to this point in time.

“This way! There’s only this road!”

“Damn it, we clearly drugged him—how is he still running this fast?!”

“Hurry up! The auction is about to start!”

The increasingly close voices pulled Yu Bai out of his thoughts.

There was no time to dwell on why he had been reborn. He struggled to his feet from the ground, endured the pain in his ankle, and limped forward in haste.

Of course, he clearly remembered that after being taken to the auction house, they had injected him with a drug to prevent him from escaping.

It should have been some kind of sedative. He recalled the burning pain when the liquid entered his veins through the syringe, followed by dizziness.

He didn’t know if it was just his imagination, but the drug seemed even stronger now.

The path in front of him blurred more and more dramatically, and his already unsteady legs refused to cooperate further.

“Huff… huff…”

His increasingly labored breathing made his throat feel dry and sore. Yu Bai forced himself to calm down and tried hard to make out the things in front of him.

The desire to survive had never been so strong.

…He could not be caught again.

His chaotic mind pushed itself to sift through his memories. Yu Bai gritted his teeth through the growing pain in his ankle, not daring to stop for even a moment, staggering forward.

He had to escape!

He hadn’t run far before the path in front of him split into two.

Yu Bai remembered clearly—last time, he had taken the right path, only to be blocked by a high wall he could never scale.

So this time, he chose the left fork without hesitation.

…Faster… just a little faster…

A different choice soon brought a different outcome: the ground beneath his feet gradually shifted from soft mud to solid footing, and faint lights began to appear up ahead.

Hope surged in his heart. Yu Bai summoned all his strength and quickened his pace again.

He was almost there!

As the lights grew closer, he could also hear the faint noise of people up ahead.

If he could just blend into the crowd, maybe they wouldn’t be able to find him.

Yu Bai couldn’t understand much, but even with the double vision blurring his sight, he could just barely make out a person standing at the end of the alley.

Two steps… three… five…

Then Yu Bai crashed headlong into the man’s arms.

It was a man—tall and broad. Yu Bai had to look up to see his face.

But his vision was so hazy now that even with his eyes open, he couldn’t make out the man’s features.

Still, something about the man’s build felt strangely familiar.

“…”

The man didn’t speak immediately after being bumped into.

“…It’s this way, right?”

“It has to be! The other path leads to a dead end!”

The approaching voices behind left Yu Bai no time to think.

“Please…”

Gripping the man’s clothes tightly, Yu Bai struggled to recall the pronunciation of human speech and managed to mimic a few syllables.

“Please save me…”

Maybe his voice was too soft, or his pronunciation too poor, but the man didn’t respond right away.

Yet Yu Bai could feel the man’s gaze fall on his face.

That gaze reminded him of the scalpels that were often aimed at him in the lab—cold, sharp, dangerous.

Filled with unknowable threats.

The sense of danger was terrifying, but the familiarity was even stronger. So Yu Bai gathered his courage, raised his voice a bit, and repeated his plea.

His anxious tone carried a tinge of pitiful desperation.

“Please save me…”

Seconds ticked by. The surrounding noise gradually faded.

But the man still didn’t speak—he only lowered his eyes to look at him.

Yu Bai’s heart slowly sank in the face of that silence.

The strength in his fingers ebbed away. The sounds of pursuit behind grew louder and closer. His eyelids felt heavier and heavier, and even breathing became difficult.

Save me.

His thoughts turned chaotic and vague, but his overwhelming will to live made him clutch the hem of the man’s clothes tightly.

The chasing footsteps were already within arm’s reach.

And just before Yu Bai lost consciousness from the effects of the drug, he vaguely heard the man whisper a single word—

“All right.”

When the auction house’s thugs arrived, the only things left in the alley besides the crowds outside the market were two overlapping figures.

The man facing away from them was tall and imposing. Even with his head slightly lowered, he practically shielded the smaller figure completely in his arms.

One of the thugs stepped forward but was stopped by the leader beside him.

“He’s a high-ranking guest,” said the leader, a scar-faced man who looked fierce but now spoke in a low voice. “Must be one of tonight’s VIPs.”

The thug followed the leader’s gaze and saw that the man, when he shifted slightly, revealed a gold brooch pinned to his collar—an ouroboros in a circular loop.

The ouroboros was the emblem of their auction house, and also served as a ticket to participate in the event.

Anyone who wore a gold brooch was either wealthy or powerful—a prominent figure without question.

Because the man had shifted ever so slightly, they also caught a glimpse of the person he held, pinned gently against the wall by the nape.

It was a young-looking male with soft black hair and delicate features, wrapped in an oversized coat.

His eyes were closed, one hand loosely hooked around the man’s neck, and the flush beneath his eyes had not yet faded.

Different hair color, different facial features.

And the man seemed to notice their stares as well. With a hint of displeasure, he pulled the person in his arms closer to his chest, shielding him from all probing gazes. His tone was cold and sharp, with just the right amount of impatience: “Have you seen enough?”

“Apologies,” —guests at the auction house came in all shapes and sizes, each with their own taboos. Even though the man looked unfamiliar, Scarface didn’t dare offend him. He quickly averted his gaze, cleared his throat, and forced a smile: “Sir, it’s like this, we’re currently…”

He hadn’t even finished his sentence when a loud roar interrupted him.

When the aircraft landed at the mouth of the alley, it stirred up a bit of dust. Then, the distinguished guest simply wrapped the person in his arms tightly with his coat, scooped him up in a bridal carry, and strode up into the aircraft.

Due to the angle, the thugs didn’t see that when the man picked the person up, a lock of silver hair silently slipped down from his hand.

However, one of them did seem to notice that the person wasn’t wearing any shoes.

But before he could react, the guest slightly tilted his head and gestured toward a direction outside the market.

Whatever suspicion had begun to form was instantly interrupted.

The aircraft left the scene without incident.