Dual Cultivation: Gathering SSS-Rank Wives in the Cultivation World-Chapter 431- Taking Mermaid for Trial

The mermaid in his arms trembled.

Not from cold, though the air outside her tank was foreign and sharp against her starved skin. Not from fear, though that certainly flickered in those deep blue eyes when they met his golden gaze.

She trembled because his words had reached her—"I wanted to try how a mermaid’s pussy feels like"—and for the first time in weeks, maybe months, her body remembered it had been designed for more than suffering.

Her lips parted. Water still dripped from them, trailing down her chin, between her small breasts, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone. She breathed through the gills beneath her jaw—thin slits that flared and closed rhythmically—but her voice came from her throat.

"For... breeding?"

The word barely registered as sound. Hoarse. Broken. Like vocal cords that had forgotten how to shape language.

Tianlong’s eyebrow raised slightly. His hold on her didn’t shift—one arm beneath her shoulders, the other under the place where her hips transitioned into scaled tail. She weighed almost nothing. A skeleton wrapped in pale skin and iridescent scales.

"Breeding?" He chuckled, the sound reverberating through his chest into her body. "You want children?"

The mermaid’s eyes closed immediately. Her head turned away, wet black-and-blue hair clinging to her face, obscuring her expression.

"I hope for nothing."

Four words. Delivered with the kind of emptiness that came from having hoped before and learning the price.

Silence stretched between them. Behind Tianlong, his wives shifted—Akane’s golden eyes narrowing thoughtfully, Yu Xiang’s violet gaze calculating, Sabrina’s arms crossing tighter across her chest.

Then Tianlong chuckled again. Darker this time. Amused by something only he understood.

"System," he said aloud, his voice carrying authority that made the air itself seem to tighten. "Transfer vitality to her."

[COMMAND REGISTERED]

[INITIATING VITALITY TRANSFER...]

[SOURCE: HOST RESERVES - 50,000 POINTS]

[TARGET: MERMAID SPECIMEN - CRITICAL CONDITION]

[TRANSFER COMMENCING]

The effect was instantaneous.

Golden light erupted from Tianlong’s body—not blinding, but warm, radiant, alive. It flooded through his arms into the mermaid’s form like liquid sunlight being poured into a cracked vessel.

Her eyes snapped open, pupils dilating to pinpoints.

"What—" Her voice cracked. "What is—ahh!"

The sensation wasn’t painful. It was the opposite—overwhelming, all-consuming vitality rushing through dying meridians, repairing damage that had accumulated over weeks of starvation and neglect.

Her ribs, visible beneath translucent skin moments ago, began to fill out. Muscle regenerated along her arms, her torso, the length of her tail. The patches of dull, cracked scales along her collarbone brightened, regaining their iridescent sheen—blues and greens catching the light like oil on water.

Her breasts, small and withered from malnutrition, swelled slightly. Not dramatically, but enough to regain their natural shape—firm, with pale pink nipples that hardened as blood flow returned properly.

Her face transformed. Hollow cheeks filled. Chapped lips regained moisture and color. Her eyes, previously dull and exhausted, blazed with sudden, startling clarity.

And her tail—

The scales rippled, color flooding back in waves from hip to fin. Each overlapping plate shimmered, reflecting light in patterns that seemed almost hypnotic. The translucent fins at the tip unfurled fully, no longer limp and damaged but whole.

She gasped. Actually gasped, her mouth opening wide, gills flaring.

"What... what is happening?" Her voice was stronger now. Still confused, still frightened, but no longer the broken whisper of someone on death’s threshold. "I feel... I can feel everything. My body, it’s..."

She looked down at herself—at her arms, her torso, her tail—watching as vitality continued to surge through her system, repairing months of damage in seconds.

From her position several feet away, still prostrate on the floor with Tianlong’s contract scroll resting on her back, Mirala’s amber eyes went impossibly wide.

"That’s... that’s not possible." Her voice was barely audible, shock overriding even her terror from moments ago. "She was dying. Weeks, maybe days left at most. You can’t just—healing doesn’t work like that. Not on that scale. Not that fast."

She pushed herself up slightly, one hand braced on the wet marble floor, staring at the transformation happening in Tianlong’s arms.

"What are you?" Mirala breathed.

Tianlong didn’t answer her. His attention remained fixed on the mermaid, watching as color fully returned to her body, as her breathing steadied from desperate gasps to something approaching normal rhythm.

When the golden light finally faded, sinking back into his skin, he shifted his hold slightly—adjusting so she sat more securely in his arms.

The mermaid stared up at him, her deep blue eyes wide with emotions she clearly didn’t know how to process. Confusion. Awe. Suspicion. And beneath it all, that same desperate, fragile hope she’d tried so hard to bury.

"You..." She swallowed. "Why would you...?"

Tianlong’s lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "Told you already. I wanted to try how a mermaid’s pussy feels." He tilted his head slightly, golden eyes studying her face. "Can’t do that if you’re dead halfway through."

Heat flooded the mermaid’s cheeks—visible even on her pale skin. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again.

"I don’t... understand." Her voice wavered. "No one... no one spends that kind of power on a slave. On anything. That wasn’t normal healing. That was..." She trailed off, clearly lacking the words.

Tianlong turned his head toward Mirala, who had managed to sit back on her heels, still clutching the spirit stones Yu Xiang had dropped beside her.

"Is there anyone else you brought alongside her?" he asked conversationally, as if they were discussing merchandise rather than lives.

Mirala blinked rapidly, her mind visibly struggling to shift gears. "I... what?"

"Other slaves." Tianlong’s tone didn’t change. "From the same capture. Anyone else?"

Mirala shook her head slowly, her amber eyes still wide. "No. She was... she was the only one." Her gaze flicked to the mermaid, something complicated crossing her features—pity, perhaps, or recognition. "Forgotten her path, they said. Betrayed by her friends under the Triangular Trench, where the three clan territories meet. Sold off to our kingdom by those she trusted."

The mermaid’s entire body went rigid in Tianlong’s arms.

Her eyes, which had been focused on his face, dropped immediately. Her expression shuttered—walls slamming down behind those deep blue irises, locking away whatever emotions the words had triggered.

She said nothing. Didn’t even flinch. Just... closed off completely.

Tianlong felt it—the sudden absence where moments ago there’d been at least some responsiveness. Like a flame being doused.

He blinked once, processing Mirala’s words, then looked down at the mermaid in his arms. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"Betrayal," he said quietly. "Now it makes another point of betrayal, binding both of us."

The mermaid’s eyes lifted fractionally. Confused.

Tianlong’s smile widened, showing teeth. Not threatening—genuinely amused.

"Wanna have a fuck?"

The bluntness of it—delivered in the same tone someone might use to ask about the weather—made the mermaid’s eyes go impossibly wide.

"You—" She sputtered, her recently-healed cheeks flushing darker. "You’re a human!"

As if that explained everything. As if the entire concept was fundamentally impossible.

Tianlong chuckled, raising one eyebrow in mock confusion. "Do you not have a pussy?"

The mermaid’s mouth opened. Closed. Her flush deepened, spreading down her neck, across her collarbones, tinting the pale skin between her breasts.

Her lips trembled slightly. She averted her face, wet hair falling across one eye.

"I have... reproductive organs," she said carefully, each word clearly costing her. "But I don’t know if it will feel like... like a woman’s body. Like a human woman’s. Merfolk anatomy is..." She trailed off, embarrassment clearly overwhelming her ability to articulate.

Tianlong blinked.

Then he laughed—a genuine sound, rich with amusement and something darker underneath. Anticipation.

"Now that would be interesting."

He snapped his fingers.