Brain Storage o(*≧▽≦)ツ┏━┓
"Fuck, where the hell was this?!"
Lin Yi's eyes flew open. Towering trees that blotted out the sky filled his vision. Their trunks were absurdly thick—two or three people joining arms might not have been able to wrap around one. Their canopies layered upon one another, slicing the sky into scattered fragments.
The air was thick with an unfamiliar, lush scent of vegetation.
He looked down, and his entire body froze.
A chilly breeze slipped beneath his crotch. Down there was enjoying the forest breeze caressing it with absolutely nothing in the way.
"Damn it, where were my clothes?!"
Lin Yi raised a hand and felt his bare body. Grass blades and dirt still clung to his skin. From head to toe, he did not even have a pair of underwear left.
Last night, he had clearly been pulling an all-nighter playing games in his cheap rented apartment, eating instant noodles and cursing his teammates.
Then, before going to sleep, he had moved the joystick a little. How had closing and opening his eyes landed him naked in this godforsaken place?
Hallucination. It had to be a hallucination.
"It must be because I got too high too hard and my eyes were playing tricks on me." Lin Yi viciously pinched his thigh.
"Hiss." The pain made him bare his teeth.
It was not a dream.
He drew a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.
That fresh air, so rich it was nearly tangible, poured through his nostrils and into his lungs. Like an icy spring washing through every bronchial tube, the chill shot straight to the crown of his head.
"Hiss... that felt kind of good."
But the next second, that pleasant feeling came to an abrupt halt.
An indescribable numbness rose from the depths of his brain, as if something were gently scratching the inside of his skull.
At first, it was only an itch—fine and persistent, as though ten thousand ants were marching in formation across his cerebral cortex.
Lin Yi could not help reaching up to scratch his temple, but the itch was not on the surface of his scalp at all. It was buried deep in the very center of his brain.
He could not reach it.
The itch rapidly escalated into a dull ache.
It was not sharp, but heavy, as though someone were holding an iron hammer and leisurely striking the inside of his skull.
"Fuck... what was happening..."
Lin Yi curled up, clutching his head tightly in both hands.
Cold sweat slid down his temples and dripped into the dirt at his feet. He could feel his breathing growing more and more ragged, but the harder he panted, the more the agony ran rampant, as though his brain were desperately absorbing something.
"Fuck!"
The instant the pain reached its peak, Lin Yi only had time to spit out one final curse before his knees gave way, and he dropped stiffly to the ground.
The green forest before his eyes quickly faded to grayish white, and the sound of the wind drifted farther and farther away. With a thud, his consciousness sank cleanly into darkness.
He collapsed forward on his knees, his ass stuck high in the air. He had fainted.
The forest returned to silence.
Several birds hiding behind the treetops poked their heads out and chirped twice, seemingly confirming that this strange two-legged creature had completely passed out.
The breeze continued to caress his bare back. Sunlight streamed through gaps in the leaves, scattering mottled shadows over him. The stillness was as serene as a painting.
Who knew how much time passed.
Lin Yi felt something warm and wet gently licking his face. It was slimy, with a slightly rough, barbed texture.
His heavy eyelids opened a crack.
A furry pointed face was inches away. Two round, glossy black eyes stared at him without blinking.
"Smack." Lin Yi slapped the thing away, propped himself up, and sat up. His face was drenched in saliva.
Taking a closer look, he saw that what he had slapped away was a fox.
It was crimson all over, its fluffy tail like a ball of flame perched behind it. It was also a size larger than an ordinary fox. It now sat two steps away, tilting its head as it studied him.
The unfamiliar forest still surrounded him.
"Fuck, where the hell was this..."
Lin Yi rubbed his throbbing temples, his voice hoarse.
Honestly, he was on the verge of a breakdown. He had been thrown into the middle of nowhere for no reason, stripped of every stitch of clothing, suffered a headache so bad he blacked out, and then woken with fox drool all over his face—who would not lose it?
He instinctively raked both hands wildly over his head, making sure his skull was still there, his facial features were intact, and his brains had not leaked out through his ears.
"Good, good... everything's still here."
But as he did, he suddenly noticed something strange.
Something was off.
His brain... seemed different somehow.
Lin Yi carefully felt it out.
Before, his thoughts had been like an ox cart trudging along a muddy path. Whenever he thought about something, there was always a hint of sluggishness and lag.
But now—the muddy road had turned into a highway. Every thought roared past, clear, swift, and without the slightest pause.
He had just been randomly thinking about the phrase "growing a brain," when the next instant, he involuntarily began analyzing it.
What was the causal relationship between the headache, fainting, and the massive increase in his thinking speed after waking? The headache was most likely some kind of "awakening" process, while his sharpened thinking after regaining consciousness was the result of its "completion."
He even casually calculated how long he had been unconscious—judging by the angle at which the sun had shifted through the gaps in the trees, about four to six hours had passed.
Growing a brain?
The thought drifted through his mind, but Lin Yi vaguely felt that he really had... grown something.
It was not just his thinking speed. There was also an indescribable sense of clarity, as though the frosted glass covering his brain had been wiped clean, and the entire world had suddenly become crisp and sharp.
He could even hear, within the faint rustling of distant leaves rubbing together, a rhythmic low-frequency tremor, like some massive animal breathing slowly.
That would have been impossible before.
Lin Yi shook his head, forcing himself not to get lost in these changes to his perception just yet.
The pressing matter was figuring out where he was, how he had gotten here, and how to survive.
Only then did he truly turn his attention back to the "fox who had saved his life" beside him.
The Red Fox had not left since he woke up.
It sat two steps away on a moss-covered rock, its tail slowly sweeping back and forth, its two glossy black eyes fixed unblinkingly on him.
Lin Yi stared at it, and the more he looked, the more something felt wrong.
Ordinary foxes did not have eyes like that.
There was not the slightest trace of a wild animal's wariness or timidity toward an unfamiliar creature in that gaze. It was evaluating him, observing him, even carrying a hint of... curiosity.
It was more like a person squatting by the roadside, looking at some rare oddity.
Even stranger, Lin Yi vaguely felt a trace of mockery in its gaze, as though it were laughing at how miserable he looked, naked-assed and covered in mud.
One man and one fox simply stared at each other.
Lin Yi's heartbeat began to accelerate.
He tried to dig up some common knowledge about foxes from his mind to reassure himself. Foxes were suspicious by nature and did not proactively attack humans; perhaps it was merely curious. But that common knowledge was instantly overturned by the supercharged thinking he had just awakened.
This fox was unusually large. Its eye color leaned toward amber gold rather than the brown of an ordinary red fox. There was even an unnatural tuft of silvery-white fur at the tip of its tail.
All those details piled together pointed to one conclusion.
This thing was not an ordinary fox.
Lin Yi's back tightened slightly. His bare feet pressed into the moss, his toes curling unconsciously.
He slowly adjusted his breathing as his brain whirred at full speed—if it had wanted to attack, it would have acted while he was unconscious.
Since it had not, that meant it did not harbor hostile intent for now.
But looking at it the other way, a highly unusual wild beast had guarded an unconscious naked man for several hours... that itself was the most abnormal thing of all.
He did not know whether he should run, fight, or say something.
And the fox remained seated there. It tilted its head, a sharp gleam flowing through its amber eyes.
Lin Yi could feel his brain continuously producing analysis after analysis, speculation after speculation, possibility after possibility—clearer and faster than ever before.
Yet when faced with this silent fox staring back at him, every one of those analyses got stuck in the same place.
What exactly did it want?
Wind passed through the woods, stirring the fox's fluffy crimson tail fur like a faintly dancing flame.
Lin Yi met its gaze, while chills ran down his spine in waves.
The corners of the fox's mouth seemed to twitch upward slightly.
Lin Yi was not sure whether that was just his imagination, or whether it was really smiling.
Before you continue