Jiang Xiaoya was finally picked up by a kind-hearted person!

The kind-hearted person was also her mother this time. The reason she thought it was her mother was because she could feel long hair brushing back and forth across her face, completely blocking the slightly cool threads of rain outside.

When she left the ground, she felt her altitude rise to a height that made a baby a little afraid of heights. But Jiang Xiaoya thought it might be because, in a child’s eyes, adults were all very tall.

Jiang Xiaoya was thus swayed and carried into her new home. She was raised in a very large, very empty house that leaked wind from all sides—however, Jiang Xiaoya had a big wooden box of her own to block the wind. Its area was three times that of Jiang Xiaoya.

It was probably safe now. Jiang Xiaoya finally felt hunger. Her stomach growled uncomfortably, and fragrant milk began to appear in her mind.

The little baby rustled and poked her head out from the swaddling clothes, letting out werwer sounds:

Mom, give me some milk to drink.

She used baby talk to express her desire for food.

Jiang Xiaoya was just that naturally familiar with people. In her previous life, she had been an orphan, with no relatives at all, so after being picked up, she quite naturally regarded the other party as her new mother. She even wanted to enthusiastically rub her forehead against her new mother to express her gratitude and affection.

But just as her head arched toward the black shadow above, she immediately rubbed against empty air.

Huh, hadn’t the black shadow just been above her head?

Jiang Xiaoya heard heavy and strange breathing. In the dark, damp abandoned prison, that swamp monster was standing in front of her big wooden box, its massive body casting an enormous shadow in the dimness.

After a long while, the heavy footsteps gradually moved away.

It was probably going to mix the milk formula.

Baby Jiang Xiaoya felt at ease. This was a world of urban legends; logically, it should be very dangerous, but these were not things someone 40 centimeters tall needed to worry about.

Jiang Xiaoya vaguely remembered that in her previous life, she had especially envied babies in cradles—just babababa, with no need to worry about anything. If an adult suddenly cried loudly, people would say they were “too emotional,” but a baby could wail at any time, could even crawl all over the place and stuff their feet into their mouth.

In short, as long as they didn’t play with poop, they were a pretty good baby.

Baby Jiang Xiaoya was, of course, a pretty good baby!

Anyway, with a mother now, she could slack off for her entire childhood. In the dark, damp, terrifying abandoned prison, Jiang Xiaoya felt a moment of tranquil years.

She fell asleep peacefully.

By this time, it was already deep night. Thick moisture densely enveloped the desolate abandoned prison by the edge of the swamp. This prison, once the largest in Tiandong City, had been swallowed by the swamp—half buried, half exposed above ground. Like some kind of post-apocalyptic art piece. The former prison gates had been corroded by dampness, half of them fallen off, creaking in the wind.

After a long while, heavy footsteps sounded. The swamp monster appeared once more at the prison entrance. It moved slowly toward the corner. Its shadow stretched and twisted, growing larger. In the darkness, a terrifying black hand reached toward the little baby.

That hand did not look quite human—long and thin, with sharp fingertips, and seeming to have fish-like webs.

In the pale, huge hand, it held a half-dead water ghost.

In her sleep, Jiang Xiaoya felt something sticky move toward her mouth.

Who feeds a child poop?!

But that sticky thing was very persistent, still moving to her mouth, stubbornly trying to stuff itself in. However, after a while, it probably realized she still wouldn’t eat it. The black shadow above her head grew a bit larger, leaned in to examine her for a moment, and then once again disappeared with heavy footsteps.

After another stretch of time, Jiang Xiaoya was awakened by a rich, thick fragrance. With her eyes closed, she instinctively moved toward the smell.

This time, in that pale hand was a roasted taro, cooked only halfway through. It had probably just been pulled out from the extinguished campfire of those intruders. The roasted half of the taro was soft and fragrant.

Roasted taro was already a soft food, but a baby still had no teeth. Smelling the fragrance but unable to eat it, the little baby grew anxious and let out werwer cries. Jiang Xiaoya began to worry that this world might be suffering from a famine—otherwise, why would anyone feed a baby taro?!

She was really too hungry! So hungry that two tears were forced out of her eyes. At last, she could no longer bear it and put aside her dignity, crying loudly:

Mom, if there really isn’t any milk, then give me some rice water to drink.

The little baby cried her heart out with her eyes closed, wailing loudly like a small beagle yelping werwer nonstop.

She had no awareness at all of the air around her suddenly becoming heavy and dangerous, of the temperature dropping sharply; from the darkness came irritated, somewhat impatient, rough heh-heh sounds, clearly announcing that some patience had run out.

Even adults found it hard to understand a baby’s needs, let alone this terrifying swamp monster.

The monster twisted its neck, irritably shoving the taro toward her mouth, but the little baby only wailed and cried, refusing to eat.

This ferocious swamp monster was far too young to possibly have offspring, and was even more lacking in the patience such a thing required. Upon realizing that the cub would not eat, the swamp monster’s face immediately turned savage. Harsh, rapid heh-heh sounds burst from its chest, its neck twisted into an eerie angle, and its bone-white fangs nearly brushed against the baby’s face.

Its vertical pupils shrank into a thin line as it stared fixedly at the little baby.

That was the prelude to an attack—it looked as though it was about to swat the baby to death with a single slap; even the shadow reflected on the wall seemed to grow larger and more ferocious.

However, just as it bared its teeth and leaned in, the little baby’s soft cheeks immediately lifted and rubbed against her mother’s face, nudging and burrowing as she tried to drill into her mother’s arms. When a baby was starving, she would instinctively make such movements.

A child’s cheeks were like feathers or clouds, but also warm, intimately pressing close and rubbing again and again.

But this was not acting spoiled—it was hunger to the point of muddled consciousness, instinctively searching everywhere for milk to drink.

The enormous black shadow reflected on the wall froze. It remained bent forward, stiff in place, as if it had been petrified into a statue.

After quite some time, long, pale fingers, carrying a hint of cautious distaste, poked the baby’s cheeks away.

The swamp monster straightened its massive body with a swish, distancing itself from the soft and warm child. Yet the anxious heh-heh sounds slowly faded from its chest.

Its vertical pupils became round.

Squatting by the large cardboard box and watching the little baby for a while, it twisted its neck into an unbelievable arc and looked toward the area beyond the swamp.

There was the cooking smoke of human habitation.

The swamp monster soon crawled away along the ceiling, leaving this stretch of swamp.

───♡───

Tiandong Base, hospital.

“Have you heard? Among the people who went to that swamp this time, one actually came back alive!”

“The one in the intensive care unit? Injured like that, who knows if he’ll even wake up. If he made it back alive, do you think the thing in the restricted zone has disappeared?”

“If he could speak, the base might not have to relocate……”

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

Amid the pattering drizzle, a blurry black human figure appeared before the entrance of the inpatient building.

The corridor lights snapped off. Wet marks dragged their way past one hospital room after another, as if searching for something. One light after another went out, darkness advancing like a tide, until it finally stopped before the door of the children’s ward.

The massive black shadow lowered its head, its twisted neck nearly pressed against the glass. It intently examined the sleeping baby boy—his size was just right, exactly the same length and width as the little person it had picked up.

Its gaze shifted to the fragrant milk bottle beside the baby boy.

The baby boy’s heart-rending cries startled his parents. Hearing the sound, they rushed over, only to skid to a halt at the ward door. The young mother clamped her hand tightly over her mouth; the water cup in the father’s hand smashed to the floor with a “pa.”

A vague yet towering black shadow was standing before their child’s hospital bed.

The shadow stretched out, engulfing the entire room. Hearing their movement, the swamp monster twisted its neck with crack-crack sounds, a pair of gloomy green vertical pupils staring at them through its long hair.

The couple took a step back, their screams stuck in their throats.

They both knew what that eerie humanoid creature was. Strictly speaking, the entire Tiandong Base knew what it was. The very reason Tiandong Base was planning to relocate was because of this existence.

Ever since the apocalypse descended, Tiandong City had become Tiandong Base. And the Tiandong Prison, which had once held serious criminals, had turned into a black restricted zone that everyone spoke of in fear.

However, it was precisely the prison’s high walls, electric fences, and natural barriers that had prevented Tiandong Base from being directly destroyed by high-level water ghosts during the apocalypse. Even stranger was this: those mutated high-level water ghosts inside the prison became the base’s natural shield—they hunted low-level water ghosts. Through a series of coincidences, Tiandong Base became a patch of pure land amid the apocalypse.

But after that rainy night three years ago, Tiandong Base was shrouded in an unspoken terror.

That night, many high-level water ghosts were slaughtered, green blood flowing into the quarantine zone, and the former prison complex was slowly devoured by some unnameable existence.

Tiandong Base wanted to investigate the situation, but all the drones they sent out were destroyed with crackling noises… and then, in the dead silence of that rainy night, from the sinking swamp beneath the prison, a strange humanoid creature walked out.

Its long hair resembled that of the legendary swamp monster. Wherever its shadow passed, swamps would appear out of thin air on the ground. The black swamps seemed alive, surging and melting trees and buildings—even iron railings and massive boulders.

If not for a great fire separating it from the urban area, nearby cities might also have been swallowed by the swamp.

In the dark world of swaying lakes and reeds, that humanoid Swamp Monster, its feral and gloomy vertical pupils gazing across the flames from afar, became the nightmare of countless witnesses.

So much so that this patch of pure land in the apocalypse was constantly enveloped in a fear—that it could be swallowed by the Swamp Monster at any moment.

The couple wanted to scream but could not, wishing they would faint on the spot.

Only when the swamp monster’s damp footsteps faded away did the couple collapse to the ground as if drowning.

They quickly reacted, screaming as they rushed over to check on their child.

They had thought they would see their child torn apart, flesh and blood everywhere—but the baby boy was completely unharmed.

Along with the swamp monster, the only thing that had disappeared was the freshly prepared, still warm milk bottle.

───♡───

Jiang Xiaoya was so hungry that her vision darkened. She no longer even had the strength to cry, and could only weakly gnaw at the air to ease the hunger.

Just as she felt she was about to starve to death, a warm milky fragrance drifted over.

It was a bottle of milk that was still slightly warm. In that pale hand, it had been squeezed somewhat out of shape and rather roughly stuffed into the little baby’s arms. The bottle was already a bit deformed, but the milk inside was still faintly steaming.

As soon as Jiang Xiaoya smelled the milk, she immediately perked up, hugged the bottle, and began to gulp it down greedily, ton-ton-ton.

The swamp monster leaned over, the vertical pupils beneath its long hair looking down at the little baby.

The pupils turned round for a moment.

Then narrowed into a thin line.

As if recalling the vague scene it had just seen among humans, it tilted its head and made a somewhat humanlike gesture of thought. That pale, powerful, utterly terrifying large hand suddenly turned—

It began to slap Jiang Xiaoya rhythmically and roughly.

Bang!

Bang! Bang!

The swamp monster’s strength was immense. Jiang Xiaoya’s box started to shake violently.

Amid the storm-like shaking, Jiang Xiaoya struggled to hold onto the milk bottle. Each sip made her feel like throwing up, but this mouthful of milk had not come easily—having been hungry for so long, Jiang Xiaoya clenched the nipple tightly and swallowed it down.

Only after finally eating her fill did Jiang Xiaoya, using her brand-new brain, think for a long time before understanding that shaking her brain matter evenly while she was drinking milk—might, perhaps, have been patting her to burp.