After Transmigrating into a Mermaid, I Was Picked Up by an Evil Dragon - Chapter 1

An Ming woke up amidst violent jolting. No sooner had he opened his eyes than he was met with an even more intense impact.

Had the spacecraft crashed? He instinctively gripped the iron bars of the cage in front of him, managing to steady his body with great difficulty.

Once the vibrations gradually subsided, An Ming let out a soft sigh of relief.

In the next moment, however, he stared at the cage and froze.

It wasn’t the cage imprisoning him or the wretched environment that shocked him, but rather the thin layer of membrane between the fingers of both his hands.

Like… webbed claws.

Did these just grow out?

He widened his eyes to examine his hands closely, and soon, a thought struck him. He hurriedly looked down at his feet.

Both feet were still there, but they were covered in fine, silvery-blue scales.

An Ming: “…”

Using his sharp, webbed claws, An Ming lightly touched his shimmering legs.

Am I turning into a fish tail?

He looked around despondently. This was the bottom hold of a spacecraft, cluttered with debris, stained with filth, dark, sweltering, and cramped. It seemed the ship had encountered an accident, and the black-market dealers who had captured him were nowhere to be found.

Sigh… An Ming sighed.

Time to face reality; this really wasn’t a dream!

He had truly transmigrated into a book, becoming an imprisoned merman…

How long had it been since he arrived? Three days?

Originally, he had been lying on a hospital bed. The pain had gradually faded, the beeping of the machines had drifted into the distance, and his brother’s tearful face had grown increasingly blurred… The next moment, he was here, his body burning with fever, weak and exhausted.

The original owner of this body must have died from the high fever, allowing him to unexpectedly continue his life. However, this body was truly overburdened. Since transmigrating, he had been in a constant state of grogginess. His own memories, the original owner’s memories, and the plot of the story transmitted to him by the book were all tangled together, constantly churning in his mind until it felt like it would explode.

Right now, for instance, his forehead was terrifyingly hot, and the back of his neck throbbed with a dull ache. Every single part of his body was screaming in pain.

An Ming felt so aggrieved he wanted to cry, but this body had been imprisoned for too long. Prolonged dehydration had left his throat incredibly dry; he couldn’t squeeze out a single tear.

Calm down!

An Ming whimpered to himself.

He tried his best to steady his nerves and began to recall the information he currently possessed.

It felt as though his brain had been fried; he couldn’t remember much of the original plot. He only knew this was an unfinished Interstellar ABO novel. It told the story of a human Omega Prince who kills a half-human, half-dragon Arch-Villain and achieves a Happy Ending with his Alpha adjutant.

As for him, he was just an anonymous little merman, existing merely to flesh out the world-building, having absolutely nothing to do with the main plot.

In other words, he wouldn’t provoke the protagonists, nor would he have to worry about being killed by the Dragon Villain. He was more of a background character than even a “cannon fodder” character!

That’s good, An Ming thought. A free man who doesn’t have to follow the plot.

Regardless, since he had been given a new life, he had to cherish it!

First, he had to escape from this place!

An Ming calmed down slightly. Based on the current situation, he quickly deduced that the spacecraft had malfunctioned and was forced to land somewhere.

Strangely, the two black-market dealers who had constantly come to check on him in his memories had yet to appear. An Ming vaguely remembered that these two humans had injected the original owner with a drug, saying it would induce “differentiation,” and they kept pulling his hair to check the back of his neck.

“Check if the gland has grown yet!” one of them had roared.

The dealers hoped he would differentiate into a Merman Omega so they could sell him for a fortune on the human capital planet. In this interstellar world, the merman race was nearly extinct, and the tears of a Merman Omega were considered a miraculous healing medicine, said to cure all sorts of incurable diseases.

“Including impotence and erectile dysfunction, hehehe,” the dealer had said back then.

“And if someone actually mates with a Merman Omega, it can make an ordinary person radiate divine power and become immortal,” the other told An Ming.

“You’re so beautiful and have rare blue hair; you’re definitely a top-tier Omega.”

“A guaranteed profit.”

“Right, so you better damn well differentiate.”

Then, An Ming had differentiated into an Alpha right in front of the two dealers.

After confirming it several times, the dealers flew into a rage and immediately prepared to throw An Ming out into space.

The iron cage had already been dragged to the hatch. The airlock was only a few meters long; beyond the metal door lay extreme low temperatures and a vacuum.

What happened next?

Fragments of memory flashed by, causing An Ming a splitting headache. He knocked on his head.

An Ming: “…” He remembered.

At that time, he was terrified. He struggled with all his might and, in desperation, screamed at them, telling them to go to hell.

Something strange happened. Those two people genuinely seemed intimidated by him. Their eyes filled with fear, and they didn’t dare approach him again.

What followed was even more bizarre: the two dealers suddenly began bleeding from their seven orifices, as if they were being crushed by an invisible giant hand.

Spouting blood from their mouths, they scrambled into a small nearby escape craft and fled in terror.

And An Ming, his strength exhausted, had fallen back into a coma.

Waking up again… led to the present.

So, the spacecraft had lost control and crashed onto a planet?

Does that mean no one is going to sell him or kill him anymore?

After a moment of relief, An Ming couldn’t find it in himself to be happy. Previously, the dealers would at least give him some water and moldy food. Now, he was still trapped in the iron cage, but with no one knowing he was there, he would either starve or die of thirst.

Or… an even more terrifying way to die.

Because outside the sweltering hold, cracking sounds began to ring out intermittently.

Crack! Snap! They were getting closer, sounding hair-raisingly ominous.

Was this the prelude to the ship self-combusting or exploding after the crash? Trapped in this cage, would he be burned alive?!

I can’t let that happen!

With a bitter expression, An Ming placed his hands on the bars again and pulled, harboring no hope of success.

Though they were called “iron” bars, they were actually made of a metal alloy stronger than reinforced steel. He had tried before, and they hadn’t budged an inch.

However, this time, his eyes widened.

The metal pillars, thicker than three fingers combined, actually deformed slightly!

An Ming: !!!

Ignoring the flicker of doubt in his mind, he immediately increased his strength. Soon, the iron cage was as fragile as a cardboard box, easily forced open by him until there was a gap large enough for two grown men to crawl through.

Panting, An Ming looked at his pair of webbed claws in amazement.

He didn’t linger and urgently stepped out of the prison cage.

With his first step, An Ming felt his body was in a very uncomfortable state.

Even though the task just now hadn’t felt difficult, his body was still extremely exhausted.

Aside from the long-standing hunger and thirst, the internal heat was becoming more pronounced. He felt as though there was some stifled thing inside him that desperately needed release.

Enduring the intense discomfort, An Ming calculated his next move: escape this place first, then look for water and food.

Just then, an eerie tapping sound came from the metal hull.

Clang, clang! Screeeech—

It sounded like someone—or something—was searching for a place to break in.

An Ming instinctively backed away.

At the same time, the bulkhead suddenly deformed. A massive, black claw pierced through the thick metal wall, thrusting straight inside!

That black claw was covered in needle-like, hairy barbs that glinted with a cold luster.

An Ming: !!!

He immediately realized that this was an interstellar world. Had some alien beast smelled him and come to eat him?!

Fear seized his breath. An Ming stood between the cage and the claw, his entire body stiff.

In the next instant, several more claws forced their way in, tearing the bulkhead open like it was wet clay.

Then, a pitch-black head with a metallic sheen poked inside. Covered in a hard shell, it was embedded with six crimson vertical pupils—two large and four small—which swiveled 180 degrees. Finally, all six gazes fixed onto An Ming.

An Ming’s scalp turned numb; he nearly fainted.

What… what kind of monster was this?!

An Ming had no doubt he was about to become the creature’s meal.

Unexpectedly, after seeing him, the monster paused. It didn’t speed up to swallow him as he had expected. Instead, it slowly continued to enlarge the hole, allowing its massive, craggy body to squeeze through entirely.

It then stood still before the cage, sizing him up.

Sunlight streamed through the jagged hole, refracting off the tiny particles floating in the air.

With his messy, dark-blue short hair and a pale little face, An Ming stood there dumbfounded, his arms and legs covered in silvery-blue scales.

He was trembling slightly.

He couldn’t help but shudder. By the light from outside the hull, he could clearly see the monster’s appearance.

It looked like a giant xenomorph with the characteristics of armored and jointed insects.

Gory and terrifying, but… also a bit cool.

Like a dark-version Gundam.

The black Gundam-insect bared its teeth at him, revealing four rows of tightly packed, pointed teeth.

Then, a chaotic and heavy voice emerged from its jointed throat, sounding quite intrigued:

“Boss? Guess what I’ve found?”

It… it can talk?!

An Ming’s eyes bulged, and his mouth hung open involuntarily. The shock momentarily eclipsed all other emotions.

“What.” Another voice came from a small white device on the insect’s chest—it seemed to be a communication device.

The voice was slightly distorted, but that didn’t stop it from sounding magnetic and authoritative.

“A pretty little thing,” the insect glanced at An Ming. “Alive, not dead. Isn’t that miraculous?”

“Bring it back,” the device replied.

The brief dialogue ended, and the insect went back to looking at An Ming.

An Ming, the one referred to as a “pretty little thing”: “…”

This insect possessed high intelligence and didn’t seem to have strong malicious intent toward him.

An Ming clenched his webbed claws and forced himself to look back.

The insect’s six vertical pupils swiveled again. It raised a long, pitch-black arm equipped with a sharp bone blade, making an inviting gesture: “Can you walk on your own?”

“Wher… where are we going?” Having not spoken for a long time, and using the automatically mastered Interstellar Common Language, An Ming spoke with a stutter.

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