The Fallen Merman
The Fallen Merman
TAGS
danmei
ABO
mermaid
sci-fi
action
fantasy
found family
An ABO sci-fi danmei about a white-lion Alpha agent reuniting with the mermaid Omega who once nearly killed him — and the conspiracy behind their childhood in a weapons institute.
Chinese Title: 人鱼陷落
Pinyin: Rényú Xiànluò
Common English Title: The Fallen Merman (Unofficial; NovelUpdates title, no official English release — also circulated as Mermaid Trapped / The Merman's Dilemma)
❤️ Main Relationship
Bai Chunian (白楚年) × Lan Bo (兰波)
✨ Introduction
The Fallen Merman (人鱼陷落) is Lin Qian's (麟潜) signature ABO novel and a follow-up to her earlier hit Chui'er Zhishi (垂耳执事). Set in a near-future world where humans engineer "special combat weapons" out of gifted children, it pairs Bai Chunian — a white-lion Alpha who grew up to become a tactical commander and field agent of the IOA alliance — with Lan Bo, a mermaid Omega of noble birth who is quietly the strongest fighter of the two.
The story opens with a rescue mission: a kidnapped experimental subject has been tracked down, and the hostage turns out to be the very mermaid who, years ago, mortally wounded Bai Chunian and shattered the short time they spent side by side in isolation as children of Institute 109. Bai Chunian swears revenge; he ends up adopting the clueless, croaking fish instead. What follows is a mission-driven romance that slowly uncovers how the two were used, betrayed, and pitted against each other — and how a mermaid who has every reason to hate humanity is talked back into the light. The novel ran on Changpei from June 2020 and is completed at roughly 1.03 million characters, with a five-volume print edition.
🌏 Background
The world runs on ABO dynamics but is dominated by a cold military-scientific complex: Institute 109 raises experimental subjects as living weapons and discards the failures. Bai Chunian and Lan Bo survived the institute's culling in adjacent isolation boxes, where a battered copy of Rimbaud's poetry — and the line "I have embraced the summer dawn" — became Bai Chunian's only window to beauty, and the poet's name became the mermaid's. A sudden upheaval tore them apart: Lan Bo was blamed for nearly killing Bai Chunian, while Bai Chunian, cast out, ended up in an underground fight ring before being taken in by Lu Shangjin and Yan Yi, the leads of the prequel Chui'er Zhishi.
When they meet again, Bai Chunian serves the IOA alliance and Lan Bo has become a mermaid who answers everything with a single "croak" — the early comedy of the book is literally a language barrier. Beneath it lies the central mystery: who engineered the betrayal at Institute 109, why the merfolk let their own prince be captured, and what the institute is still doing to the surviving experimental subjects.
🎭 Themes & Tone
- Trauma and healing: two child weapons learning to be people, not assets
- Language and intimacy: love built across species, silence, and mistranslation
- Revenge versus protection: Bai Chunian's declared vengeance dissolving into devotion
- Exploitation of the gifted: critique of institutes that raise children as weapons
- Human–merfolk relations: prejudice, politics, and coexistence
Tone: fast, quippy team-banter on the surface with genuine angst underneath; fluff and danger alternate, and the emotional payoffs land hard.
👥 Main Characters
- Bai Chunian (白楚年): white-lion Alpha, tactical command specialist and IOA agent; cocky, clingy, and frighteningly competent, the "whitelion" codename the institute gave him follows him everywhere.
- Lan Bo (兰波): mermaid Omega and the squad's top assault fighter; a noble, lethal, adorably clueless fish named after Rimbaud, whose one-word vocabulary hides the deepest loyalty.
- Lu Shangjin & Yan Yi (陆上锦 & 言逸): adoptive parents of Bai Chunian and senior figures of the alliance, bridging this book to Chui'er Zhishi.
- Institute 109: the research complex that created both leads and serves as the story's overarching antagonist.
✨ Iconic Quote
- Bai Chunian: "I had to take him home and raise him. There was no bathtub or a large basin at home, so I had to put him in the washing machine for the time being. An hour later I remembered him again — by then he had already been washed very clean." (the novel's famous opening blurb)
- Bai Chunian: "I have embraced the summer dawn." — the Rimbaud line heard in the isolation box, after which he named the mermaid "Lan Bo".
- Lan Bo: "Croak?" (呱？ — his answer to everything in the early chapters)
- Novel blurb: "The road ahead is full of danger. Is bringing this fish along really a good idea?"
🎬 Adaptations
- Audio Drama: a multi-season audio adaptation headlined by voice actors Ma Zhengyang and Zhang Fuzheng, released on the Manbo platform; it became Manbo's first drama to pass 100 million plays.
- Manhua: adaptation drawn by the Re-Vendur / Liulangcao studio, with printed manhua volumes released; its Kuaikan serialization has since been delisted.
- Live-action: none announced.
🔥 Why It’s Popular
- The inverted dynamic: the Alpha is the tactical brains who acts spoiled, the Omega is the sheltered noble mermaid who out-fights everyone — instantly shippable and endlessly meme-able.
- The washing-machine opening scene became one of the most quoted blurbs in modern danmei fandom.
- Found-family appeal: the adoptive family from Chui'er Zhishi gives the action plot a warm emotional home base.
- Adaptations amplified the fandom: a hit manhua plus a record-breaking audio drama kept the novel visible long after completion.
- Recommended for readers who enjoy ABO with actual plot, non-human leads, team missions, and romance that earns its angst.
📚 Reader Notes
Beginner-friendly: 4/5 (completed and widely translated in fan circles, but long)
Angst level: 3/5 (heavy past trauma; a gut-punch climax, but a healing ending)
Plot complexity: Medium
Romance visibility: High
Mystery focus: High
Recommended for readers who enjoy ABO, 人外 (non-human) leads, military-science conspiracies, and equal-parts banter and feels.
✍️ Author
麟潜 (Lin Qian)
A Changpei author best known for ABO and 人外 fiction. Chui'er Zhishi made her name; The Fallen Merman cemented it, and her later serialized puzzle-driven novel Die Bian (蝶变) followed. Her style pairs rigorous power-system worldbuilding with memorable character voices and emotional gut punches delivered in plain language.
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