Chapter 2: Two Little Teeth

Jiang Xiaoya was finally saved by a kind person!

This kind person was, for all intents and purposes, her new mom. She believed it was a mom because she could feel long hair brushing against her face, shielding her completely from the cool drizzle outside.

When she was lifted off the ground, her height soared to a level that would make most infants dizzy. But Jiang Xiaoya just figured it was because, in a kid’s eyes, all adults seem enormous.

And just like that, swaying precariously, she was brought to her new home. She was being raised in a big, empty, drafty house—but Jiang Xiaoya had her very own large wooden crate to block the wind. It was about three Jiang Xiaoyas wide.

Now that she was presumably safe, Jiang Xiaoya finally felt her hunger pangs. Her stomach growled uncomfortably, and her mind began imagining the smell of warm, fragrant milk.

The little baby poked her head out of her swaddling, rustling slightly, and let out a little wer wer sound.

Hey, Mom, can a girl get some milk around here?

She expressed her craving for food in fluent baby sounds.

Jiang Xiaoya had always been the type to warm up to people instantly. She was an orphan in her last life, with no family to speak of, so getting rescued and immediately assuming her rescuer was her new mom felt perfectly natural. She even wanted to give her new mom an enthusiastic little head-nuzzle to express her gratitude and affection.

But the moment she nudged her head toward the shadow above her, she hit nothing but air.

Huh? Wasn’t the shadow right there a second ago?

Jiang Xiaoya heard a heavy, strange breathing sound. In the damp, dark, abandoned prison, the Water-Marsh Monster stood before her large wooden crate, its massive form casting a colossal shadow in the gloom.

After a long while, the heavy footsteps faded into the distance.

Probably went to mix my formula, she thought.

Baby Jiang Xiaoya relaxed. This was a world of supernatural horror, which should have been incredibly dangerous, but a 40-centimeter-tall person didn’t need to worry about that.

She vaguely remembered how, in her past life, she had been so envious of babies in their cradles. All you had to do was go goo goo ga ga, and you didn’t have a single care in the world.

If an adult suddenly burst into tears, people would call them “overly emotional,” but a baby could wail its head off anytime, crawl all over the floor, and even stick its own foot in its mouth.

Basically, as long as you didn’t play with your own poop, you were a decent baby.

And Baby Jiang Xiaoya was, of course, a decent baby!

In short, now that she had a mom, she could slack off her entire childhood. Right here, in this dark, damp, and terrifying abandoned prison, Jiang Xiaoya felt a profound sense of peace.

She drifted off to sleep, feeling completely secure.

By now, it was the middle of the night. A thick mist wrapped around the abandoned prison by the swamp.

This place, once the largest prison in Asparagus City, had been partly swallowed by the marsh, with one part buried and the other exposed, resembling some kind of post-apocalyptic art installation. The old cell doors, rusted by the dampness, had fallen partly off and creaked and groaned in the wind.

A long time later, heavy footsteps returned. The Water-Marsh Monster appeared at the prison entrance again. It moved slowly toward the corner. Its shadow stretched and twisted, growing larger.

In the darkness, a horrifying black hand reached for the baby.

The hand didn’t look quite human. It was long and slender, with sharp fingertips and what looked like webbing between the digits.

In its pale, large hand, it clutched a half-dead Water Ghoul.

In her sleep, Jiang Xiaoya felt something slimy being pushed against her mouth.

Who feeds a kid poop?!

But the slimy thing was persistent, stubbornly trying to shove its way into her mouth. After a moment, probably realizing she wasn’t eating, the shadow above her seemed to grow larger. It leaned in to study her for a bit, then disappeared again with heavy footsteps.

Some time later, Jiang Xiaoya was awakened by a rich, savory aroma. With her eyes still closed, she instinctively moved toward the scent.

This time, the large, pale hand held a half-cooked taro. It had probably been fished out of the dying embers of the intruders’ bonfire. The cooked half was soft and wonderfully fragrant.

Cooked taro was already a soft food, but this baby hadn’t grown any teeth yet. Smelling the delicious aroma but unable to eat, the little baby got anxious and started making her wer wer sounds again.

Jiang Xiaoya was starting to worry that this world was in the middle of a famine. Why else would you feed a baby taro?!

She was just so hungry! Two little tears of frustration squeezed from her eyes, and she finally abandoned her dignity and let out a full-throated cry:

Moooom, if you don’t have any milk, can you at least give me some rice water?!

The baby shut her eyes and wailed with total abandon, sounding like a little beagle yelping wer wer wer.

She was completely unaware of the air around her, which had suddenly become stale and dangerous, or of the plunging temperature. From the darkness, a guttural, impatient, and irritated hhhh sound emerged, clearly signaling that someone’s patience was wearing thin.

Even an adult human would struggle to understand a baby’s needs, let alone this terrifying Water-Marsh Monster.

The monster twisted its neck, impatiently shoving the taro against her mouth, but the baby just kept wailing and refused to eat.

This savage Marsh Monster was far too young to have a cub of its own and lacked the requisite patience. Seeing that the infant wouldn’t eat, its face contorted into a snarl.

A series of rapid, vicious hhhh sounds escaped its chest, its neck twisting at a grotesque angle as its bone-white fangs came dangerously close to the baby’s face.

Its vertical pupils contracted into a thin line, pinning the baby with their stare.

It was the signal for an imminent attack. It looked like it was about to swat the baby flat; even its shadow, projected on the wall, grew larger and more menacing.

However, the moment it bared its fangs and leaned in, the baby’s soft cheek immediately lifted and nuzzled against its “mommy’s” face, squirming and trying to burrow into its embrace. It was an instinctive act for a starving infant.

The child’s cheek was as soft as a feather or a cloud, but warm, as she affectionately rubbed against it.

It wasn’t a gesture of affection, though. She was just so hungry she was delirious, unconsciously searching everywhere for milk.

The colossal shadow on the wall froze. It remained in its crouched position, stiff as if it had been turned to stone.

After a good while, a long, pale finger, with a hint of careful disgust, poked the baby’s cheek away.

The Marsh Monster shot up to its full, towering height, moving far away from the soft, warm child. But the agitated hhhh sound slowly faded from its chest.

Its vertical pupils rounded out.

After crouching by the large cardboard box and watching the baby for a while, it twisted its neck at an impossible angle and looked out beyond the swamp.

Over there, smoke from cooking fires rose from a human settlement.

The Water-Marsh Monster quickly clambered up to the ceiling and crawled away, leaving the swamp behind.

---

Asparagus City Base, Hospital.

“Did you hear? Someone actually made it back from the swamp this time!”

“The guy in the ICU? He’s in bad shape. Who knows if he’ll even wake up. Hey, if he made it back alive, you think that thing in the Forbidden Zone is finally gone?”

“If he could just talk, maybe the base wouldn’t have to relocate…”

The conversation faded with the footsteps, eventually swallowed by the sound of the rain.

Through the drizzle, a blurry, dark figure appeared at the main entrance of the inpatient ward.

Click. A hallway light went out. A trail of wet prints dragged past one hospital room after another, as if searching for something. One by one, the lights blinked off, darkness advancing like a tide. It finally stopped in front of the children’s ward.

The massive shadow lowered its head, its twisted neck almost pressed against the glass. It stared intently at a sleeping baby boy—the size was right, the same length and width as the little human it had picked up.

Its gaze shifted to the fragrant baby bottle next to the boy.

The baby boy’s heart-wrenching cries startled his parents. Rushing over at the sound, they skidded to a halt at the doorway. The young mother clamped her hands over her mouth; the water cup in the father’s hand smashed to the floor.

A tall, blurry shadow was standing by their child’s hospital bed.

Its shadow stretched out, blanketing the entire room. Hearing them, the Water-Marsh Monster’s neck swiveled towards them with a series of clicks, and a pair of gloomy, green, vertical pupils stared at them through a curtain of long hair.

The couple stumbled back a step, screams caught in their throats.

They understood what this strange humanoid creature was. In fact, the entire Asparagus City Base knew its nature. The reason the base was planning to move was also because of this being’s existence.

After the apocalypse started, Asparagus City became Asparagus City Base. The former Asparagus Prison, which held serious criminals, turned into the Forbidden Zone that everyone spoke of quietly and with fear.

But ironically, it was the prison’s high walls, electric fences, and natural barriers that had protected Asparagus City Base from being wiped out by high-level Ghouls in the early days.

Even more strange, the mutated high-level Ghouls inside the prison turned into a natural shield for the base—they would hunt the low-level Ghouls. Through a series of strokes of luck, Asparagus City Base became a sanctuary in the apocalypse.

But after a rainy night three years ago, an unspoken terror had descended upon the base.

That night, countless high-level Ghouls were slaughtered, their green blood flowing all the way to the quarantine line. The prison complex itself was being slowly devoured by some kind of indescribable entity.

Asparagus City Base had attempted to investigate, but every drone they sent was destroyed by static. All they knew was that, in the dead silence of that rainy night, a strange, humanoid creature had emerged from the sinking swamp of the prison.

Its long hair was like that of mythical water-marsh monsters from legend. Wherever its shadow fell, swamps would appear out of nowhere. The black mud, as if alive, would surge forward, consuming trees, buildings, even iron railings and enormous boulders.

If it hadn’t been for a large fire that had created a barrier with the urban area, the nearby city probably would have been swallowed by the swamp as well.

In that dark world of lakes and swaying reeds, the humanoid Marsh Monster, its wild and sullen vertical pupils staring at them from across the flames, had become the stuff of nightmares for countless witnesses.

As a result, this sanctuary in the apocalypse lived under the constant fear of being devoured by the Marsh Monster at any moment.

The couple wanted to scream but couldn’t, wishing they could just faint on the spot.

It wasn’t until the Marsh Monster’s wet footsteps disappeared that the two of them collapsed to the floor as if they’d been drowning.

They quickly scrambled to their feet and rushed over to their child, screaming.

They expected to find a bloody mess, but their little boy was perfectly fine.

The only thing that had vanished along with the Water-Marsh Monster was the freshly made, still-warm bottle of milk.

---

Jiang Xiaoya was so hungry that she saw stars. She didn’t even have the energy to cry anymore and could only chew weakly on the air to trick her stomach.

Just when she felt she was about to starve to death, the warm, fragrant scent of milk drifted over.

It was a bottle of lukewarm milk, slightly warped from being squeezed in that large, pale hand, and it was shoved rather rudely into the baby’s arms. Though the bottle was misshapen, the milk inside was still steaming faintly.

The scent of milk revived Jiang Xiaoya instantly. She hugged the bottle and began to gulp it down. Gulp, gulp, gulp.

The Water-Marsh Monster leaned in, its vertical pupils peering down at the baby from under its long hair.

For a moment, the pupils would become round. The next, they would narrow into a thin line.

As if remembering the fuzzy scene it had witnessed among the humans, it tilted its head, making a somewhat human-like gesture of contemplation.

Its pale, powerful, and terrifyingly large hand suddenly swung over—

And began to rhythmically and roughly pat Jiang Xiaoya.

THUMP!

THUMP! THUMP!

The Marsh Monster was incredibly strong. Jiang Xiaoya’s crate began to shake violently.

In the middle of this turbulent storm, Jiang Xiaoya clung tightly to her bottle. She felt like vomiting with every sip, but this milk had been hard to get. After starving for so long, she firmly pressed her mouth to the nipple and swallowed with all her strength.

After finally eating her fill, Jiang Xiaoya used her new mind and thought deeply before she finally understood.

This attempt to scramble her brains while she was drinking…

It was probably, maybe… trying to burp her.