Seven cycles of day and night slipped quietly by in the ancient Samei Rainforest.
On a moonless night, the entire rainforest resembled a sleeping behemoth. Thick canopies overlapped, cutting the darkness into fractured patches of black.
Beneath the water, a vast black shadow swam slowly past. Its enormous body raised hardly a ripple, and only the floating water plants swayed gently in its wake.
Famu drove away the cold stillness in the depths of the swamp.
He had awakened.
He was patrolling his territory.
The calories provided by the Long-snouted Tapir had run out, and Famu needed to begin his next hunt.
The Spiral Life Tree parasitizing his mind seemed to be a living thing, requiring Famu to nourish it with an equivalent amount of calories, and demanding even more. One of Famu's prey would soon be digested, then turn into points of light on the roots, and those points of light drove some unknown process forward.
Famu did not know what it would eventually grow into.
But he knew it needed more.
At the edge of the swamp, leaves rustled faintly in the treetops of the Sa Mei Su Mu.
A White-Faced Monkey hung upside down there.
Its body was more slender than that of an ordinary primate, with long limbs and a tail wrapped tightly around a branch, suspending its entire body in the darkness. Its eyes, covered by a special reflective membrane, glimmered in the night, allowing it to pick out details ordinary animals could not perceive.
It was watching the water below.
Watching the black shadow that belonged to Famu.
The White-Faced Monkey had spotted him long ago.
But it did not sound the alarm.
Instead, more White-Faced Monkeys poked their heads out from behind the curtain of leaves and spread out in a fan through the canopy along the shore. Their round eyes watched the giant shadow underwater while greedily scanning the distant land.
This was an information network unique to these waters of death.
When the animals in the rainforest that thought themselves clever came to drink, they always had a habit of looking up to check on the monkeys in the treetops.
In their experience, the primates up high were natural alarm systems. If the treetops were peaceful, it meant danger was still far away, and they could drink without worry. Yet their impoverished skulls could never comprehend the words "the human heart is treacherous."
The monkeys occupying the area around the swamp had long since offered their souls to its master.
He was a devil.
Of course, those in the treetops were no sentries either. They were the devil's accomplices.
These accomplices would not warn the animals that came to drink.
They kept silent, letting the unwitting drinkers step into Famu's territory one by one.
In return, after his rampages, Black Typhon would deliberately leave part of his prey behind. Once the giant snake had departed, the monkeys would leap down from the trees and gather around the carcasses, calling out joyfully as they shared this feast brought by death. At times, when large predators entered the area to hunt White-Faced Monkeys, Famu would add those predators to his menu as well and swallow them.
If Black Typhon were likened to a king ravaging the land, then these White-Faced Monkeys were his most loyal scouts.
In the rainforest, nothing secured loyalty better than protection and food.
But tonight, the scouts who were usually silent erupted into an uproar.
Killing intent from beyond the swamp territory pierced the layers of mist in the dense forest.
Deep in the canopy of the Sa Mei Su Mu forest, flocks of roosting night birds suddenly took flight, and the White-Faced Monkeys in the treetops opened their jaws and barked incessantly.
The calls were short and shrill: the monkeys' alarm.
Famu immediately realized where the intruders were.
Boom!
Water burst against his scales as the behemoth changed direction underwater. Tremendous force propelled his body forward, and a white wake was torn across the surface.
Water plants clinging to his scales fell away, and mud and sand formed a murky trail behind him.
In Famu's infrared vision, a pulsating spot of intense heat was stumbling toward the edge of the swamp.
It was a subadult Nightmare Leopard. These large felines were rare, and their habitat was usually dense mountain forests. With keen senses, explosive power, and an almost ghostlike way of moving, they were extremely difficult to hunt.
To nourish the Staff of Life, Famu would try to hunt anything he could find, including these large felines. But he had found no opportunity during their previous encounters. These wary big cats crouched to drink with their whole bodies arched, and whenever Famu approached, they would launch themselves away from the swamp.
They really did launch themselves, covering at least a dozen meters. Famu could only retreat helplessly into the depths of the swamp.
Now, it seemed an opportunity had come.
The young Nightmare Leopard's black fur no longer offered camouflage in the open, and its incompletely developed canines and somewhat slender shoulders showed that it had yet to earn the right to carve out a territory of its own in this rainforest.
It was fleeing.
The heart in its chest pounded at a terrifying two hundred beats per minute, pumping hot blood through its body. In Famu's eyes, it blazed like a magnificent blood lotus.
A little subadult, a wanderer driven out of its family.
Before the young wanderer could find its footing in the shifting sand, another roar came from the ground at the forest's edge.
"Roar—"
The roar sent birds roosting in the bushes scattering.
Two adult Nightmare Leopards arrived like meteors.
Streamlined muscles flexed and relaxed beneath their glossy coats. Their paws, broad as buckets, landed on the muddy sand without leaving the slightest indentation.
This was the deadly weapon evolution had given them. Their broad paws allowed Nightmare Leopards to adapt to many complex hunting environments and even enter the water to hunt giant toothed fish when they were desperately hungry. They were also powerful enough to smash a wild boar's skull.
Clearly, these were a pair of apex predators in their reproductive prime.
One on each side, they closed in with a perfect fan-shaped encirclement, driving the young member of their kind toward the swamp's deadly boundary, where there was no way back.
The adult predators had eyes only for that young body, so full of defiance and threat.
They could even smell the scent of fear clinging to it.
They pressed closer, step by step.
The wanderer backed away slowly until the swamp water covered its thighs. Its legs stood firm in the water, and even in such a desperate situation, it maintained an offensive stance.
The swamp was pitch-black at night, covered in water plants and thin mist, but the water began to rise and fall unnaturally. The little one was so focused that it did not notice anything strange about the current, its attention fixed entirely on the enormous threat posed by the Nightmare Leopard pair before it.
Then came the sound of splashing water behind it, like a sudden downpour striking its fur.
At the same time, the monkeys in the treetops, long held back, broke into a full-blown frenzy, shrieking. The clamor echoed through the dense forest, making the pair of feline overlords feel as though monkeys were shouting all around them.
It was a warning of the Death God's arrival.
A curtain of water poured down, and a fierce wind struck their faces.
Amid the falling rain, the master of the swamp appeared.