When Huǐ Yuān opened his eyes, he expected to see the sterile white walls of a hospital room. Instead, he was surrounded by darkness—a warm, suffocating darkness that pressed against him from all sides. His body felt strange, coiled and confined, as if he were trapped in a tight space.
Panic surged through him. He tried to move, but his limbs—no, his *body*—felt unfamiliar. Instead of arms and legs, he felt a long, sinuous form, sleek and **no thicker than a finger**. His heart raced as he thrashed against the walls of his prison, desperate to break free.
*What's happening to me?* he thought, his mind reeling. *Where am I?*
With a final, desperate push, something cracked. A sliver of light pierced the darkness, and Huǐ Yuān instinctively lunged toward it. The walls around him gave way, and he tumbled out into the open air, gasping for breath he didn't realize he needed.
He looked around, his vision blurry at first. He was in a dimly lit cave, its walls slick with moisture. Scattered around him were dozens of smooth, leathery eggs, some cracked and empty, others still whole. The realization hit him like a thunderbolt: he had just hatched.
*An egg? I was in an egg?*
His body moved instinctively, slithering across the cold stone floor. He looked down at himself and froze. His body was long and slender, **barely longer than a human forearm**, covered in shimmering green scales that caught the faint light. He had no arms, no legs—just a powerful, coiled tail.
*I'm a snake.*
The thought sent a wave of nausea through him, though he had no stomach to empty. He tried to scream, but all that came out was a faint hiss. Panic overtook him, and he began to slither frantically, desperate to escape the cave and the horrifying reality of his new form.
The cave was larger than he expected, with multiple tunnels branching off in different directions. Huǐ Yuān chose one at random, his movements clumsy and uncoordinated. The further he went, the more the cave seemed to close in around him, the walls narrowing until he finally burst out into the open.
Sunlight blinded him momentarily, and he recoiled, his scales prickling at the sudden warmth. When his vision adjusted, he found himself in a dense, alien forest. Towering trees with iridescent leaves stretched toward the sky, their branches intertwined to form a canopy that filtered the sunlight into a kaleidoscope of colors. The air was thick with the scent of earth and vegetation, and the distant calls of strange creatures echoed through the trees.
Huǐ Yuān hesitated, his instincts warring with his human mind. Part of him wanted to turn back, to hide in the safety of the cave. But another part, a primal, animalistic part, urged him forward. He had no choice but to explore this strange new world.
As he slithered through the undergrowth, he began to notice details about his new body. His movements became smoother, more controlled, as if his muscles were remembering what his mind had yet to learn. His tongue flicked out instinctively, tasting the air, and he was startled to realize he could *smell* the forest around him—the damp earth, the sweet flowers, the faint tang of something metallic.
He didn't have long to marvel at his new senses. A rustling in the bushes ahead snapped him to attention. He froze, his body coiled tightly, as a creature emerged from the foliage.
**To Huǐ Yuān, it was a monster.**
The boar was young, **but to a snake barely longer than a ruler**, it was colossal. Its body was **as large as a boulder**, its hooves the size of Huǐ Yuān's entire head. Its tusks, though still stubby and unformed, glinted like daggers, and its snout snorted hot, damp air that ruffled the leaves beneath him. **Every stomp of its hoof shook the ground**, sending vibrations rippling through Huǐ Yuān's fragile bones.
The boar's beady eyes locked onto him, and it let out a high-pitched squeal—a sound that might have been comical if not for the sheer terror of its size. Huǐ Yuān's instincts screamed at him to flee, but his body refused to move. The boar charged, its hooves pounding the earth like war drums as it closed the distance.
Huǐ Yuān twisted and darted to the side, narrowly avoiding the **mountainous snout** that would have crushed him. The boar skidded clumsily, its youth and inexperience showing in its erratic movements, but its sheer bulk made up for its lack of finesse.
It turned and charged again, herding Huǐ Yuān toward a cluster of rocks. The hatchling snake slithered desperately, but the boar was relentless, its squeals growing louder as it cornered him against a crevice.
**Trapped.**
The boar's snout loomed over him, dripping saliva that splattered like raindrops around Huǐ Yuān's tiny form. In a final, desperate act, he lunged upward, his fangs sinking into the soft flesh of the boar's nostril.
The creature shrieked, thrashing its head wildly, but Huǐ Yuān held on, his venom flooding its bloodstream. The effect was almost instantaneous. The boar's movements slowed, its squeals turning into weak, gurgling whimpers. Its legs buckled, and it collapsed to the ground with a **thud that rattled the forest floor**, its massive body twitching once before falling still.
Huǐ Yuān released his grip, slithering back in shock. **The boar's corpse dwarfed him**, a lifeless mountain of flesh and fur. His body trembled as he stared at it, his mind struggling to reconcile his tiny form with the enormity of what he'd just done.
*I killed it. I killed something a hundred times my size.*
A strange warmth spread through his body, starting from his fangs and radiating outward. It was a comforting warmth, like the glow of a campfire, and he realized with a mix of horror and fascination that he had absorbed something from the boar— *a spark of life, a fragment of its essence*.
Before he could dwell on it, a new sound tore through the forest: the *deep, guttural roar of an adult boar*, a sound so primal it shook the trees. Huǐ Yuān didn't wait to see if the juvenile's parent had come seeking vengeance. He turned and fled, his tiny body weaving through the underbrush with frantic speed, until the roars faded into the distance.