My Head Itches, Feels Like I'm Growing a Brain

Head Brain Storage Area

My Head Feels Itchier, Like It's Starting to Grow a Brain

"What the F, where is this?!"

Lin Yi opened his eyes abruptly, greeted by colossal trees that blotted out the sky. Those trunks were absurdly thick, such that two or three people wrapping their arms around them might not even span them, and the leafy canopies layered over one another, carving the sky into scattered fragments.

A strange and rich botanical scent permeated the air.

He lowered his head, his entire body freezing completely.

A chilly wind swept past his crotch, and his nether regions were currently enjoying the hospitality of the gentle forest breeze with zero protection.

"Meow it, where are my clothes?!"

Lin Yi raised a hand to touch his bare body, his skin still stained with blades of grass and mud, and not even a pair of underwear remained on his entire person.

Last night, he had clearly been pulling an all-nighter playing games in the cheap rented apartment he lived in, eating instant noodles while cursing out his teammates.

Then, right before bed, he had manipulated a joystick, so how—upon closing and opening his eyes—was he lying naked in a haunted place like this?

An illusion. It had to be an illusion.

"I must have taken off too violently and gotten dizzy," Lin Yi pinched his own thigh fiercely.

"Hisss," the pain made him bare his teeth and grimace.

Not a dream.

He took a deep breath, trying to force himself to calm down.

That fresh air, dense to the point of near tangibility, poured through his nasal passages and into his chest and lungs, like an ice spring washing over every single bronchus, the chill rushing straight to the top of his skull.

"Hisss... this is kind of great."

Yet the next second, the feeling of greatness came to an abrupt halt.

An indescribable, murky tingling surged from deep within his brain, like something gently scratching inside his cranial cavity.

At first it was merely itchy, fine-grained and persistent, as though thousands of ants were marching in formation across his cerebral cortex.

Lin Yi couldn't help reaching out to scratch his temple, yet that itch wasn't on the surface of his scalp at all; it was buried deep right in the center of his brain.

He couldn't reach it.

The itch escalated rapidly, turning into a dull ache.

It wasn't sharp, but it was heavy, like someone holding an iron hammer and beating unhurriedly against the inner walls of his skull.

"Fuck... what is going on..."

Lin Yi arched his body, his hands clutching his head for dear life.

Cold sweat slid down the corner of his forehead, dripping into the soil beside his feet. He could feel his breathing growing more and more rapid, but the harder he panted, the more fiercely that blinding pain raged, as though his brain were frantically absorbing something.

"Ah, fuck"

The very instant the agonizing pain climbed to its peak, Lin Yi only had time to curse one last sentence before his knees went soft, his whole body dropping straight to the ground on all fours.

The green forest before his eyes faded rapidly into gray-white, the sound of the wind in his ears growing more and more distant. With a thud, his consciousness plunged cleanly and neatly into darkness.

He knelt down and pitched forward with his ass stuck high up in the air. He had passed out.

The forest restored its tranquility.

A few birds hiding behind the treetops poked their heads out and chirped twice, seeming to confirm that this strange two-legged animal had thoroughly passed out cold.

The gentle breeze continued to caress his bare spine, sunlight scattering through the leaf gaps in mottled light and shadow, tranquil as a painting.

Who knows how much time passed.

Lin Yi felt something warm and damp lightly licking his face, slimy, carrying a bit of a rough, barbed sensation.

His eyelids pried heavily open by a slit.

A furry, pointed face was close at hand, and two round, black, bright eyes were staring unblinkingly right at him.

"Slap." Lin Yi raised a hand and batted that thing away, propping himself up on the ground to sit, discovering that his face was soaking wet and covered entirely in saliva.

Looking closely, the thing he had batted away was a fox.

Vibrant red all over, its tail so fluffy it looked like it was topped with a ball of fire, its size a circle larger than an ordinary fox, it was squatting a couple of paces away, tilting its head to appraise him.

The surroundings were still that same patch of unfamiliar forest.

"Fuck, where the F is this actually..."

Lin Yi supported his throbbing temple, his voice hoarse.

To be honest, he was truly on the verge of breaking down. Mysteriously thrown out into the wilderness, not a single piece of clothing left, head hurting so badly he straight-up fainted, waking up with fox drool on his face—who wouldn't break down?

Subconsciously, he scrambled wildly at his head with both hands, confirming his skull was still there, his facial features intact, and his brain matter hadn't spewed out of his ear canals.

"Phew, good thing... it's all there."

Through this frantic search, he suddenly sensed something unusual.

Something was wrong.

His brain... seemed to have become a bit different.

Lin Yi felt it out carefully.

In the past, his thinking was like an oxcart plodding along a muddy path, always carrying a bit of sluggishness and lag when trying to figure things out.

Yet now—that muddy road had transformed into a highway, all thoughts roaring past with clarity, agility, and zero stagnation.

He had just been ramblingly thinking about the notion of "growing a brain" the second before, and the next second he couldn't help starting to analyze:

What were the cause-and-effect relationships behind the headache just now, the fainting, and the explosion in thinking speed after waking up? The headache was in all likelihood some kind of "awakening" process, and the agility of thought after waking up was the result of its "completion."

He even casually calculated the amount of time he had been knocked out—based on the shifting angle of the sun through the tree gaps, roughly two to three double-hours had passed.

Grew a brain?

This thought drifted across his mind, but Lin Yi vaguely felt that he truly seemed to have... grown something or other.

It wasn't just his thinking speed, but an indescribable sense of transparency, as though the frosted glass that used to cover his brain had been wiped clean, and the entire world suddenly grew sharp and clear.

He could even hear that within the minute, rustling friction of distant leaves, there was a mix of certain regular, low-frequency tremors, resembling a large animal breathing slowly.

This would have been entirely impossible in the past.

Lin Yi shook his head, forcing himself not to sink into these perceptual changes just yet.

The most pressing priority was figuring out where he was, how he got here, and how to survive.

Only then did he truly shift his focus back to that "life-saving fox" beside him.

From the time he woke up until now, that red fox hadn't left.

It squatted on a mossy rock two paces away, its tail sweeping slowly, its two black, bright eyeballs locked unblinkingly onto him.

Lin Yi stared at it, the more he looked, the more wrong it felt.

An ordinary fox wouldn't have that kind of gaze.

There wasn't a trace of a wild beast's vigilance or cowardice toward unfamiliar creatures in those eyes; it was scrutiny, observation, and even carried a bit of... curiosity.

It resembled more a human squatting by the roadside, watching some rare trinket.

Even more bizarrely, Lin Yi even faintly felt that gaze leaking a trace of mockery, as though it were laughing at his disheveled state of bare ass and mud all over.

Man and fox stared at each other just like that.

Lin Yi's heartbeat began to accelerate.

He attempted to fish up some common sense about foxes from his brain to comfort himself—foxes are suspicious by nature, don't actively attack humans, maybe it's just curious—yet that common sense was instantly overturned by his newly awakened super-thinking.

This fox was abnormal in size, its pupil color leaned toward amber gold rather than the brown of a regular red fox, and the tip of its tail possessed a wisp of unnatural silvery-white fur.

All the details piled together, pointing to a single conclusion.

This thing was no ordinary fox.

Lin Yi's back tensed slightly, his bare feet stepping on the moss as his toes curled involuntarily.

He slowly adjusted his breathing, his brain operating at high speed—if it wanted to attack, it would have made a move while he was unconscious.

Since it hadn't made a move, it implied there was no malice for the time being.

But conversely, for an extraordinary wild beast to stand guard over an unconscious naked man for several hours... that in itself was the most abnormal thing of all.

He didn't know whether he should run, fight, or say something.

Yet that fox remained squatting there, tilting its head, its amber eyes sparkling with brilliance.

Lin Yi could feel his brain continuing to spew out all sorts of analyses, deductions, and possibilities incessantly, clearer and faster than at any time before.

Yet facing this silently staring fox, all those analyses got stuck in the exact same place.

What on earth did it want to do?

The wind passed through the forest, stirring the fluffy red tail fur of the fox like a slightly leaping flame.

Lin Yi stared back at it, his spine going cold in waves.

The corners of the fox's mouth seemed to twitch lightly.

Lin Yi wasn't sure if that was his own illusion, or if it was truly smiling.