“A [Monstrosity] can masquerade as the human it ate.”

Such a short line, yet it hit like a falling mountain.

For Ye Weibai, the first image wasn’t a [Monstrosity] lurking among crowds, secretly feeding. It was the previous page’s cruelty, painted in knife-strokes: you know your family has turned into a [Monstrosity], know they’ve been eaten, yet you lie to yourself, and cradle the illusion like a dying ember.

Hard to understand? No. It’s clear as cold water. If you’ve lost the one you loved, you know the mad joy when “family” returns like spring after frost.

Even if it’s false—if “she” comes back with that smile soft as water and moonlight—how do you refuse a ghost you’ve prayed for?

“But that’s the cruelest cut.” Ye Weibai’s gaze sank like dusk over a river. His voice was low and overcast. “You know it isn’t your kin. You know it slips out at night to eat others. Yet you say nothing, and let your heart rot.”

In that moment, Ye Weibai understood that [Monstrosity] meant not only slaughter and a natural enemy. It meant [Rot]. It meant [Ruin].

A killing [Plague].

And he finally understood why he’d been drawn here, what vast and terrible [Misfortune] had tugged him ashore like a riptide—the [Misfortune] knotted around that red-haired, red-eyed little girl. Not just the villagers’ fear, the threat of [Monstrosity], the loss of kin, the lie to the self. All of it, twisted together like warped roots, fermented in darkness, and congealed into one immense, terrifying [Aberration].

Even for Ye Weibai—

“Even for me…” He looked toward a sky bracing for a world-ending storm. He drew a slow breath, like a man steadying a lantern in wind. “Facing this kind of [Aberration] feels… thorny.”

First problem, a thorn at the front of the path—

“Even now, I don’t know how to fight a [Monstrosity].” From the villagers’ fear, the book’s notes, and the memory of dying on Day One, Ye Weibai saw it clearly: “A [Monstrosity] isn’t something a human can contend with.”

It isn’t “a lucky wolf might take a sick leopard.” It is “no sheep, however strong, can kill a lion.” The book said it like a bell tolling.

[So, if you meet a Monstrosity, don’t dream of killing it.]

[Ordinary humans, your job is to leave enough clues about it.]

[Then we—the Demon Exorcists—will find it and avenge you.]

[This is your only choice.]

“Cruel, and real.” Ye Weibai’s pupils flickered like winter stars in black ice. “But is it truly the only way?”

Even after witnessing a so-called [Deity], he kept his atheism like a blade sheathed in calm. A [Deity]? Isn’t that just a stronger [Monstrosity]?

He never believed in fate. He never bought words like “only,” “absolute,” “inevitable.” Even grade-schoolers avoid multiple-choice answers that shout absolutes.

“If you give up at the start,” he murmured, voice as thin as mist, “aren’t you just agreeing to be prey?”

“I don’t want to be eaten again. It really hurts.”

“What hurts, Brother Bai? Did you bump something?”

The wooden door creaked, and a little girl’s voice drifted in like a bell in rain.

Ye Weibai looked up. Daisy stood there in a plain white nightgown dotted with pink flowers, dew-fresh from a bath. Damp chestnut hair clung to her rosy cheeks. In her arms, she hugged a giant white bear doll.

The bear was huge; Daisy was small; its legs dragged across the floor like two tired oars. She had to tilt her head to slip her gaze past its big round head to see him.

Her chestnut eyes sparkled like fireflies under leaves. The tilt of her head, the effort in her arms, made her adorably clumsy. Ye Weibai couldn’t help but laugh, like water breaching a quiet rim.

“What?” Laughed at for no reason, the little girl wrinkled her nose, storm-clouds of indignation on a peach face.

“I just saw a bear carrying a little girl down the hall,” he teased, voice like a warm breeze flipping a page.

“Brother Bai!”

“Uh, sorry.” He said sorry, but the smile didn’t fade, bright as a candle. He pointed at the bed. “Don’t stand there. Come up. Mr. Bear’s feet are about to get blisters.”

“Hmph… I’m nine. I’m gonna grow taller, okay?” Daisy hopped up without ceremony, springy as a sparrow.

Ye Weibai was about to quip, “Dream on, you’re below average,” when she flipped up his thin quilt. Pushing her luck like a kitten edging into a sunbeam, she dragged the white bear along and burrowed into his blanket from the far side. She wriggled and squirmed for ages, a worm in warm earth, and finally popped out by Ye Weibai’s shoulder, grinning.

“…” The move and the grin were both gloriously dumb. He looked down at her and almost laughed again. “What is this, a caterpillar act?”

“Hehehe… it’s fun like this!” She wiggled free to her waist, cheeks ripe as apples. Leaning on the pillow, arms wrapped around the big bear doll, she looked up and giggled.

Her hair and hem were rumpled from the burrowing, a little storm of threads. Yet that real, clear face and that bright smile struck his heart like a skipped beat.

Memory surged, a wave he knew too well. Without thinking—no, with old habit—Ye Weibai reached out and smoothed the wrinkles from her nightgown. Then he gently combed her messy hair with his fingers, like wind arranging reeds.

“Mm. Much better.” He nodded, content, a soft shore-smile touching his lips.

From the moment his hand lifted, the little girl jolted, then fell quiet. She let his careful fingers tame her hair, and just stared at him, dazed as a fawn.

“Hey, Daisy. Come back to earth.” He smiled at her. “What’re you thinking about? So focused. Didn’t finish your homework?”

“I—I did!” The word “homework” hit like a pebble on a pond; her answer leaped up by reflex. Then she paused. Her cherry lips pressed, a wavering petal, as if she were weighing something.

Ye Weibai understood at once. He lifted his eyes to the window, voice soft as lamplight. “Listening to students is a teacher’s duty.”

She blinked, then bloomed into a sweet smile. “Mm!”

“Teacher Bai.”

He nodded at the change of title, like accepting a cup of tea, and let her go on.

She hugged the white bear tighter. “When you fixed my hair, I thought of my mom.”

“My mom was really pretty and really gentle. Lots of people chased her like bees to flowers, but she married my lousy dad…”

“She loved to cook, but it never tasted that good…”

“Every time…”

A small room, a single dim lamp, like a moon cupped in a hand.

A small bed, a big boy, a little girl, and a white bear doll.

The girl began to speak softly of her past, voice a thread over still water.

Ye Weibai tilted his ear and listened, a tree holding quiet birds.

Outside, the wind whooshed, rain massed at the horizon. Inside, the lamp flickered like a heartbeat, and warmth gathered like a nest.

…

Daisy’s story was simple, simple enough to ache.

Her mother didn’t die by accident, and not by [Monstrosity]. She had an incurable illness, and left slowly, like snow melting. In the end, she smiled and let go, with Uncle Shawn and Daisy at her side.

Ye Weibai had seen death too often. Compared to sudden departures, the long fight against sickness—against fate—only to lose in the end, felt even more helpless, like watching a candle drown in its own wax.

But time, that quiet river, had washed Daisy’s grief thin. She was no longer the girl who cried like a storm that night. What remained was remembrance and a soft sadness.

Daisy had let go.

Yet in the same Xibei Village, a girl the same age—Philia—

She was drowning in despair and [Misfortune].

“I’m hungry.”

Midnight.

In a dim living room, a red-haired man under a blanket in a rocking chair opened his eyes, like coals flaring in ash.

His eyes were blood-red.

“I want to eat.”

He turned his head toward the little girl’s bedroom. A cold gleam slid across his gaze like a knife on ice.

“I want something tender.”

“No. No.”

After a moment, he shook his head. He pushed on the chair’s arms and stood, swaying like a drunk tide.

“I’ll go out to eat—”

On the word eat, his clothes shredded into rags, like dead leaves. He stretched taller, broader, wrong. He grew into a monster. He grew into a [Monstrosity].

Under the lone lamp, his shadow warped and swelled, and became its shadow.

“Let’s get something to eat…” When it spoke again, only a brutal roar came out, a sound like stone splitting. No human could understand it. Perhaps only its kind could.

“What to eat?”

It stepped out of the living room, into the yard, and looked up at a sky pressed low by heavy clouds, like a lid on a pot.

Its mind held only “eat,” a drumbeat in bone.

No—perhaps one more image, of a little girl. It kept that picture tucked away like a fragile charm.

“Can’t eat the villagers.”

“Ah, I don’t want to run as far as last time. So tired.”

“Right… today…”

“A stranger came to the village.”

“Then…”

“I’ll eat him.”