Chapter 187 — What Are the Sirens

To be honest, Gao Yang was hardly surprised, in the course of searching out biographies of himself, to come across a few strange variant editions. Seven hundred years of change is ample time for any ancient figure to be rearranged into something outlandish by imaginative amateur historians—and Gao Yang Cecil was a gilded name known to the whole continent. The thirty-five-year legendary life of this pioneering hero had never lacked for eager audiences in any stratum of society. As the saying goes, great merit, great fame, and an early grave—where else could one find material so fine?

At this moment Gao Yang even felt a little glad for how backward this world was, glad that its cultural industries, monopolized by the upper classes, had never enjoyed an explosive expansion. Were this place as developed as Earth, he could well imagine the founding martyrs of seven hundred years ago being fitted one by one with character portraits and hung up in a game's cash shop: log in to receive Charles I free, check in seven days for Duke Weirder, and Gao Yang Cecil in the first-purchase bundle...

And every month these people would get new skins, and his two granddaughters would very likely dump the family fortune into the game and whale until it burst, the better to lick the new character art of the Xuanmai Sect—while he, the party in question, risen from his coffin, would maintain an awkwardness of two hundred-plus plus signs throughout the whole affair, wishing he could wipe out his entire house...

Gao Yang smacked himself hard on the forehead and forcibly reined in his thoughts before they bolted any further. He sighed, looking at the "popular reading" before him, full of absurd inventions. Everyone knew the stories inside were false, yet it was the favorite pastime reading of the ladies and young misses of the kingdom's central and southern regions—ample proof of the vigorous vitality of popular literature, and of just how tedious daily life was for the people of this age.

But as the man himself, Gao Yang saw certain underlying facts embedded in those fabricated love stories: not everything in them was false.

Setting aside the beauties and confidantes wedged in by main force, the book mentioned several adventures connected with Gao Yang Cecil—adventures that appeared in no official biography. An outsider seeing them would likely lump them together with the confidantes as the wild imaginings of some second-rate author, but Gao Yang knew that at least half of those little-known adventures were true.

Searching the ruins of ancient tombs in the Gondo Wasteland for traces of the elemental spirits; crossing the "Arcane Scar" at the head of a handful of soldiers in search of a safe passage, and stumbling upon the Gondo magister corps turned to crystal; venturing deep into the mountains when the Cecil domain was still newborn, communing with the elements and receiving their blessing...

These were the other side of Gao Yang Cecil the pioneer. From such experiences one could see that he truly had lived like a cheat with a halo switched on... Of course, whether he was a cheat hardly mattered. What mattered was that these unknown stories had turned up in a preposterous knightly romance—and that was intriguing.

This book had circulated for ages, and its original author could no longer be traced. Probably the man had feared a beating even as he wrote, for the only clue he left behind was his pen name, "Mr. Bard." Gao Yang knew how this gentleman had come by these stories, but he must have been a fellow of boundless patience and no small resourcefulness, calling on who knew how many people who had once had dealings with Gao Yang Cecil, or their descendants, before he could compile such material. And among all these adventure tales, one chapter mentioned Gao Yang Cecil's challenge to the deep sea.

The story went like this: after Gao Yang Cecil had assisted the great founding sovereign Charles I in establishing the kingdom, he grew deeply anxious over the monsters that kept wandering out of the Gondo Wasteland and the ever-spreading corruption of the magic tide. So he sought the aid of the elemental spirits of earth, water, fire, and wind. The four princesses of the four elemental planes (that lot had princesses too?) were won over by the young hero-knight and each offered him counsel, and Gao Yang Cecil in the end accepted the enlightenment of the water element and set out for the ocean in search of answers.

Though he had no storm priest to serve as guide upon the sea, Gao Yang Cecil had the help of the sea elves (of course, in the gentleman's telling, the sea elves sacrificed another princess along the way). The sea elves brought his fleet past the storms that ring the continent and guided the company ever eastward.

After who knows how many days and nights of sailing, the sea elves suddenly fell into panic and urged Gao Yang not to go on, for the waters further east were the domain of the "sirens," and no land-dwelling race could hope to contend with the mighty sirens in the ocean. But Gao Yang Cecil knew no fear and insisted on pressing forward, so the sea elves were forced to leave the company, and most of the fleet's ships departed with them. Only Gao Yang Cecil and a few loyal guards sailed on—and before long, they encountered the sirens.

The clever reader will have guessed at once that among the sirens there must surely be a princess too...

But here the story rather fizzled out. The gentleman merely noted in haste that Gao Yang Cecil won the sirens' trust and was guided to a "sacred and beautiful" place, where the company drank deep of fine wine for three days and three nights, and was then flung straight back to the Loren Continent by a storm.

This was plainly a fob thrown to the reader.

Instinct told Gao Yang that this story must correspond to the record of the far-sea voyage missing from Gao Yang Cecil's memories.

But here a curious race had cropped up: the sirens.

The name of this race was unfamiliar to Gao Yang. In the memories he had inherited there was only the faintest impression of it, and what little there was pointed to bizarre myths and tall tales—nowhere near enough to serve as evidence.

Just then, a knock came at the study door, and when it opened, the druid Pi Yun stepped in. "My lord, Amber said you were looking for me?"

Gao Yang nodded, and once the old druid was inside, asked him point-blank, "Have you ever heard of sirens?"

"Sirens?" Pi Yun rubbed his chin. "I have heard a little of the legends concerning them."

Gao Yang's eyes lit up at once. A druid, no less—the profession with the broadest knowledge of the world's races. Even if all Pi Yun knew were legends about the sirens, his account would surely be far more detailed than what ordinary folk knew!

"Tell me!"

Pi Yun twirled his beard and spoke unhurriedly. "The legends of the sirens are mostly concentrated in the eastern and southern parts of the continent. Here in Ansoul they are seldom mentioned; and when they are, it is only in horror stories or similar tales of the strange. The sirens are said to be among the oldest intelligent beings in the world, their history very likely as ancient as the dragons'. Long before humanity rose, they had already ruled the ocean for tens of thousands of years.

"The sirens are a race entirely female, dwelling in the deep sea far to the east, and they almost never have dealings with the intelligent races of the continent. They are all beautiful of face, but only their upper halves are human in form; their lower halves are various sea monsters...