Chapter 1: The Abandoned Cub
Thump!
Thump, thump!
A powerful heartbeat shook Shen Lin awake from his deep slumber.
He opened his eyes, a trace of confusion flickering within them. Subconsciously, he moved his limbs and tried to open his mouth to speak.
“Gurgle, gurgle—”
The liquid floating around him instantly rushed into his throat. Forced to swallow a bellyful of it, Shen Lin smacked his lips.
Hmm… it tasted a bit fishy.
However, the flavor was unexpectedly good.
After this small interlude, Shen Lin finally began to properly survey his surroundings. Everywhere he looked was pitch black.
Shen Lin disliked dark, cramped spaces and hated the sticky liquid on his body even more. He struggled to stretch his limbs, feeling around to understand his situation. But as he felt around, a strange sensation rose in his heart.
This space wasn’t an angular box; it was a sphere with a certain curvature. Combined with the slime on his body, it inexplicably made him think of a bird’s egg. It wasn’t that his imagination was too vivid, but rather that the feeling this place gave him was simply too similar.
At the thought of an egg, he couldn’t help but smack his lips again.
The first time Shen Lin had tasted food made from eggs, he had fallen in love with it. Just thinking about it made his stomach start to protest. At this moment, he didn’t care if eating this object of unknown origin would give him diarrhea. He wiggled a few times in a dog-paddle motion from his current position. He opened his mouth and took several large gulps. His mouth was immediately filled with a sweet fragrance. Perhaps because he was too hungry, he could no longer taste that fishy scent.
“Burp~”
Shen Lin let out a satisfied belch.
Just then, he reached for his round little belly and froze for a second. On his soft tummy, there seemed to be a layer of limp, damp fluff?
Refusing to believe it, Shen Lin felt himself all over.
His face turned ashen.
As a human child who had just turned three, Shen Lin naturally knew that his current state wasn’t quite right. He seemed to have truly become… a monster?
After a moment of panic, the cub’s eyes suddenly lit up.
Being a monster was good! He could finally be with Monster Baba and the others forever and ever.
Shen Lin thought jubilantly.
The fluffy, round ball of a tail growing from his tailbone wagged excitedly, thumping against the eggshell one after another, creating dull echoing sounds. He subconsciously tried to look back, but the smile on his face gradually flattened into a straight line.
His legs curled up, his head tucked between his knees, and leaning into the sense of security provided by the “eggshell” wall, the tiny bundle curled back into a corner.
In the small space, the ripples caused by Shen Lin gradually returned to tranquility.
Perhaps it was the constant temperature of the liquid, which was as intoxicating as returning to a mother’s womb, or perhaps it was because the cub had never slept so recklessly before. Although this space was dark, a consciousness in his brain told him: ‘It’s very safe here. You won’t wake up in the middle of the night frozen or starving, and no one will suddenly pop up to kill you.’
The cub drifted with the liquid, his breathing steady.
In his dreams, bizarre and variegated images flashed by like a revolving lantern. Shen Lin’s breathing became ragged, and his limbs twitched uncontrollably. Because his movement to sit up was too sudden, his head slammed into the wall above him, only to be bounced back by the sturdy “eggshell” wall.
Shen Lin: QAQ~
Wuu, it hurts~
The cub pouted, clutching his head as he sank into a corner at the bottom. Shen Lin sobbed silently, and in a fit of retaliation, he jumped up and slapped the top wall.
Shen Lin: …………
His hand hurt too~
The cub looked around with tearful eyes, as if searching for something. After a moment, he lowered his gaze and sat back in the corner. At this moment, he looked exactly like a little mushroom hiding in the shadows, sprouting from the soil. Above his head was a lingering dark cloud, constantly drizzling.
Despite this, no sound of crying could be heard from the little cub.
He had stayed in this place where the sun never shone for an unknown amount of time. Every day, besides filling his stomach, he just slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he looked forward to reuniting with the Monster Babas from his dreams, even though he didn’t like that world.
Monsters ran rampant, order had collapsed, and the apocalypse had arrived.
Before the age of three, Shen Lin had been locked in a square little room. Everything there was mechanical, numb, cold, and indifferent… Every day, he had to endure the pain of having a random part of his body taken away. His only solace was counting the calendar on the wall to calculate the time he would meet his parents.
“Baby is just sick. Once Baby is all better, we’ll come and get Baby, okay?”
Shen Lin had a very good memory; he vividly remembered the instructions his parents gave him when they sent him away. So, the little cub held onto the calendar he had begged from the people in white coats and waited. He waited from age one to age three.
The wounds on his body would scar and heal, only to be wounded again. As time passed, his pain tolerance gradually decreased. Every time a piece of flesh was taken from him, a new scar would be added. The scars on his body overlapped, deformed and ugly, and his healing speed slowed down. Whenever the flesh grew back, the doubled pain would make him repeatedly hit the wall to find relief.
He was like a pitiful little puppy fished out of the water. This was how a “Big Monster” he met in the research institute described the scene of their first meeting. This monster was also the Monster Baba who protected him later on. In his heart, the cub had already accepted the Big Monster as his father.
There were many monsters in the research institute where Shen Lin lived. They were locked in white rooms just like him, their flesh and blood harvested at will by the white coats. One day, when Shen Lin woke up, he saw a sea of fire behind him. The monsters had destroyed the underground laboratory, and Shen Lin was carried out by the Big Monster.
The earth was full of devastation, monsters roamed everywhere, food was scarce, and human nature was twisted. The little milk ball, who had been fed into a plump shape by Monster Baba and his monster brothers, gradually grew so thin that only his pointed chin remained. Finally, they discovered a shrunken human settlement.
The cub really wanted to go to the human settlement to see if his family was there, but when those people saw the big monsters, they would be terrified and even launch attacks. Shen Lin didn’t want Monster Baba or his brothers to get hurt, so he stopped looking for his family and led the monsters away from human settlements. Even though they tried their best to stay away from humans and hid in a forbidden zone that no one cared about, the monsters’ special care for him still caught the attention of those with ulterior motives. From then on, they encountered wave after wave of sieges.
The familiar big monsters beside him fell one by one. Until only he and Monster Baba were left.
Later, Monster Baba also fell, but even as he was dying, he didn’t forget to stuff the cub into a “safe space.” The safe space was very well-hidden; as long as he didn’t appear, no one could find him. It was also at this moment that the family members who had never appeared suddenly showed up in front of him without warning.
“Baby, come out quickly. We’re taking you home.”
Shen Lin walked out of the safe space of his own accord. What greeted him wasn’t a warm embrace from his family, but a sharp blade piercing his chest.
The cub looked down at his chest, where blood was constantly dripping and overflowing. He looked up calmly, only to see a pair of eyes filled with fear and loathing. At that moment, his heart seemed to hurt more than during all those days in the research institute.
“Monster, go die!”
When Shen Lin fell, he heard those people discussing how to maximize the profit from the corpses of Monster Baba and the other monsters. Thus, he self-detonated, dragging those people to hell with him.
In these past few days, after waking up from an uncontrollable sleep, Shen Lin’s first action was always to feel around, looking for a way out. The results were not optimistic.
The “eggshell” wall was impossible to break with his current strength. Fortunately, the sweet-smelling liquid inside the “eggshell” wouldn’t drown him, and he could take a few sips to fill his stomach whenever he was hungry. Otherwise, his second life might have ended in this tiny room.
“Sigh~”
The cub held his milky cheeks in his paws and leaned against the curved wall, sighing an unknown number of times. Being locked in a dark little room where he couldn’t see the outside world or distinguish between day and night made the cub lose his sense of time. No matter how much security the small room gave him, he was very passive not knowing the situation outside.
And… the cub missed the big monsters a little.
Shen Lin squatted by the wall and pretended to be a little mushroom for a while. The small round ball behind his tailbone tapped the wall occasionally. In his unconscious movements, an invisible energy rippled out in all directions.
In the darkness, rustling sounds came from everywhere, sounding like running animals or crawling insects and snakes. The dazed cub fell asleep once more. After becoming a little monster, he slept very frequently. Sometimes he would fall asleep while thinking about things; it felt as if he could never get enough sleep.
In his grogginess, he heard some strange noises—it was a bit loud. The cub subconsciously furrowed his tiny brows and rolled over. His round little tail hit the wall, emitting a sound wave that normal ears could not capture.
Just like that, the noise outside stopped abruptly. It seemed the things outside were worried about waking the cub, and the sound vanished instantly.
Thump, thump!
Rustle, rustle!
Shen Lin pressed his ear against the “wall,” his eyes tightly shut. A vast, gray world appeared before him. This perspective was very strange, as if he had turned into a vine crawling forward.
This was one of his special abilities. Relying on this ability, Shen Lin was able to communicate smoothly with the big monsters and, in passing, “pick up the trash” in their brains. The big monsters told the cub that after the trash was cleared, their heads would feel very comfortable and would no longer ache for no reason.
He had seen the way Monster Baba and the others looked when they went berserk or crazy—the research institute and even the entire city were turned into ruins. Therefore, his special ability was undoubtedly beneficial to the monsters.
Just as Shen Lin poked out a “tentacle” invisible to the naked eye, the things in the dark seemed to be attracted by some kind of lure and also poked out a “tentacle” of their own. It was a deep green vine, about as thick as an infant’s arm. The edges of its green leaves were covered with hooked fuzz, and the surface of the leaves flowed with patterns of golden veins.
Shen Lin tentatively approached the vine.
The vine stayed obediently in mid-air, like a big dog waiting for its owner to pat its head. There was no sign of the bone-chilling hooked thorns on the edges of its leaves. When his “tentacle” lightly hooked onto the vine, a strange and curious emotion surged into Shen Lin’s mind.
That was the consciousness of the vine.
When used properly, Shen Lin could share a part of the other party’s perspective. He had finally encountered a vine that could sense his consciousness. He carefully soothed its emotions, and through the vine’s alternative perspective, he finally saw things other than the “eggshell” walls.
First, he saw distorted lines. After a wave of dizziness, the scenery outside gradually became clear. Everywhere he looked were towering, ancient trees reaching for the sky, like a vast underground primeval forest. The giant trees formed massive canopies, with countless vines hanging down from them.
On the ground, stones of various colors glowed. The dappled light pierced through the dense vines, making the entire “forest” look like a cascading green waterfall. Right under the green waterfall, in a nest built of glittering, beautiful stones, lay a glowing… pink egg.
Shen Lin commanded the vine to approach and poked the surface of the eggshell. He felt a slight sway in the small room he was in.
Shen Lin: …
Case closed. It turns out he really was an egg.
After Shen Lin finished observing the environment, he exited the vine’s mind and, in passing, cleared away a pile of pitch-black trash. The moment he withdrew from the vine’s consciousness, his vision went black, and he fell on his bottom. His legs felt a bit weak.
He was certain that if it wasn’t because his abilities had decreased from becoming an egg, then the vine’s brain was simply too big, and the trash was “billions” of pieces. Who would believe that such a massive forest of giant trees only used one brain!
At this time, the specialness of the “egg liquid” was apparent. Shen Lin took two sips and actually recovered a third of his energy. Familiar rustling sounds echoed outside the eggshell, and then the entire space began to shake.
At first, the cub was so scared that his fur stood on end, but then he felt the emotions coming from the entire forest.
—They were very happy!
The hanging vines wove themselves into a large basket, easily cradling the pink egg and gently swaying it without any wind. They were coaxing the unhatched cub to sleep, their movements becoming extremely careful for fear of bumping or knocking him.
“Giggle~”
The slight discomfort on his body vanished under the influence of the giant trees’ cheerful emotions. The cub revealed the first smile since coming to this world. The forest made pleasant sounds of “whoosh” and “rustle,” like a lullaby. Light hit the shaking vines, making the entire space look even more dreamlike.
Over the next few days, Shen Lin used the vines’ perspective to check further away and discovered that this was a massive nest. His pink egg was the only resident of this nest. However, though he searched many places, he never found any trace of an “Egg Mama.”
The corners of the cub’s mouth drooped slightly.
This egg might have been abandoned…
Recommended Reads
