Evolution Under the Moonlight

Chapter 4: The Dawn Mist

Cold. A biting, piercing cold.

That was the first sensation Xin Fengchen felt when he regained consciousness. He was huddled against something hard and damp, its rough surface pressing against his cheek. A stench—mingled with rotting food, urine, and iron—drifted into his nose, making him frown instinctively.

He opened his eyes slowly. His vision was blurred, as if viewed through frosted glass. The light was faint; dawn was breaking, painting the sky a murky gray. It took him a few seconds to realize he was lying beside a trash bin in a narrow back alley, his body pressed against the rough, slippery cobblestone ground.

A splitting headache throbbed in his skull, as if someone had been pounding his temples with a blunt object. He tried to prop himself up, but his arms felt weak and limp, nearly causing him to collapse again. Every muscle in his body ached in protest, and every joint creaked like rusted metal, sending a dull soreness through him with each movement.

"Where... where am I?" he muttered to himself, his voice horribly hoarse, his throat dry and tight.

Memories were like shattered shards of glass—jumbled and fragmented, impossible to piece together. He remembered his shabby apartment, the three d**g dealers... the bald man’s terrified face... and then... what happened next?

A violent wave of nausea hit him. He retched a few times, but nothing came up—only the bitter taste of bile lingered on his tongue. He forced himself to sit up, leaning his back against the cold brick wall, and panted heavily.

The alley was in chaos, as if it had been hit by a small storm. Several overturned trash bins lay scattered around, their rotting contents spilling across the ground. On the wall, deep gashes were clearly visible—scratched as if by the claws of some massive beast—with brick dust scattered at their base. Beneath the alley’s usual stench, a faint hint of... blood lingered in the air?

Xin Fengchen’s heart sank. He looked down at himself.

He was wearing only a tattered T-shirt and a pair of equally torn jeans. The fabric had been roughly shredded by some force, its edges ragged and uneven. His clothes were stained with mud, dark red suspicious spots, and... strands of red fur?

Trembling, he reached out and plucked a strand of fur from the tear in his shoulder. It was thin and tough, glowing with an unnatural, almost fiery red hue in the dim light. This was not human hair.

Panic, like a cold tide, flooded him instantly. He roughly pulled open the front of his tattered T-shirt and stared at his chest and arms.

His skin was pale, but... surprisingly unharmed? Apart from a few minor scrapes and bruises, there were no severe wounds he had feared. Yet the all-pervasive soreness, the exhaustion that felt as if his body had been torn apart and put back together, and the bloodstains and red fur on his clothes—all silently testified to an extraordinary experience.

He struggled to stand, but his foot stepped on something hard, letting out a soft metallic scrape. He looked down and saw a small, glinting object half-buried in the grime between the cobblestones.

It was a pendant.

He bent down to pick it up, and a cold, smooth sensation met his fingertips. The pendant was silver, with an ancient, simple design—it seemed to be some kind of abstract symbol, but he couldn’t understand its meaning. The pendant itself was badly damaged, its edges twisted and its chain broken, as if it had endured immense force. Most importantly, this thing didn’t belong to him. He had never seen it before.

Whose was this? Why was it here? Next to him?

Countless questions swirled in his mind, but he had no answers. The gap in his memory left him feeling an unprecedented sense of isolation and fear. What had happened last night? Where were those d**g dealers? Why was he here? And this pendant...

He clutched the broken pendant tightly. The cold metal pressed against his palm, bringing a strange sense of clarity. He tried to recall more, but only blurry, terrifying fragments came to mind: a crimson-tinted field of vision, a violent urge, the agony of his bones shifting out of place, and... a pair of glowing eyes in the dark, followed by the sound of a satisfied chuckle.

Was it a dream? But the soreness in his body and the chaos around him felt so real.

Leaning against the wall, he staggered toward the alley entrance. With every step, the soreness in his muscles reminded him of how unusual the previous night had been. Outside the alley, the city was waking up—distant rumblings of early-morning trams and faint chatter drifted over. These ordinary sounds felt infinitely far away now, as if separated from him by an invisible barrier.

He stood at the alley entrance, staring blankly around. The streets were wet—had it rained overnight? Or was it something else? The streetlights hadn’t been turned off yet, casting dim yellow halos on the damp asphalt. A newspaper delivery worker rode past on a bicycle, glancing at him curiously before speeding up. There was a faint, barely noticeable wariness and fear in the worker’s eyes.

Xin Fengchen*** (lowered his head) and looked at his reflection in a puddle. His face was pale, his eye sockets sunken, his hair messy, and his clothes tattered—he looked like a homeless person, or someone who had just escaped a disaster zone. He touched his face unconsciously; the texture felt normal, with no protruding snout or fur he had feared.

Yet that strange feeling lingered. Something inside his body seemed to have changed. A foreign sense of power lurked beneath his sore muscles, and his senses had become unusually sharp. He could clearly smell the aroma of bread wafting from a bakery dozens of meters away, hear the rustle of a mouse scurrying in a distant corner, and even feel the subtle changes in the humidity of the air.

This extraordinary sharpness brought no sense of security—it only deepened his fear. This was no longer the body he knew.

He opened his palm again and stared at the broken silver pendant. Where had it come from? Did it belong to one of the three d**g dealers? It didn’t seem like it. Or... did it belong to the one who had chuckled?

"Ugh..." Another wave of dizziness hit him, accompanied by fragmented flashbacks: twisted shadows in the moonlight, the inhuman growl that had escaped his throat, the feeling of his claws tearing through something... He closed his eyes sharply, forcing himself to stop recalling.

He had to get out of here. Go back to his place. Maybe a hot shower and some sleep would make everything return to normal. This was just a nightmare, a bad hangover, or... something else that could be explained. He tried to comfort himself this way, but deep down, he knew things would never be that simple.

He clutched the pendant tightly in his palm; its cold touch was his only anchor in the present. He pulled his tattered clothes tightly around himself, trying to cover his body, then lowered his head and merged into the growing crowd of early-morning passersby. Every step was cautious, as if he feared waking some dormant thing inside him.

The dawn mist had not yet lifted, shrouding the city—and his future, filled with unknowns and fear. The mysterious silver pendant, the only clue linking the madness of last night to his confusion now, lay heavy in his pocket, like a silent question mark.