I tried to yank my finger back, only to find it tightly enveloped in the baby's mouth. Though toothless, the suction power he possessed was astonishing. Forcing it would surely injure my hand.

"What is it?" Hou Dayong sat up, leaning in close to the infant to see what was happening. The instant he drew near, Wang Jue, holding the baby with one arm, shot his other hand out in a rapid, claw-like strike directly at Hou Dayong's eyes. Hou Dayong flinched violently backward, narrowly dodging the lashing eagle claw. I felt a jolt of pure terror from the sidelines. Had that hit its mark, even if I hadn't been blinded, an eyepatch would have been my inescapable fate.

"What the hell?" I cried out, somewhat flustered, a chilling sensation creeping back over me.

Wang Jue looked at both of us with an expression of pure innocence, claiming he didn't know what happened—that his arm simply wouldn't obey him. The three of us snapped our eyes toward the baby. There he lay in Wang Jue's arms, languidly sucking on the finger as if it were a teat. Meanwhile, my own finger was rapidly losing all sensation.

"Oh no, he isn't sucking your blood, is he?" Wang Jue asked, pointing at the infant's little mouth, looking quite helpless.

Following the direction of his finger, I saw it: beside the little mouth opening and closing, a faint trace of blood was beginning to ooze, and the finger he was sucking had turned an alarming shade of pale.

"This is bad, he is drinking my blood," I gasped, frantically trying to pull my finger free. But the harder I pulled, the tighter the suction became; the tiny mouth even seemed to hold a faint, disconcerting smile. I resorted to every tactic I knew for teasing a child: slapping his cheek with my free hand, prodding his sole, tickling his armpits. Nothing worked. That mouth felt as immovable as iron. He just kept his eyes shut tight and continued to suck.

A sudden flash of inspiration struck me. I slapped the baby across the face, thinking that would surely do the trick. To my shock, he didn't cry. Instead, he opened his eyes and glared at me with sharp ferocity. A spike of intense pain shot through my finger, followed by a sickening snap. Then, I lost my balance and tumbled backward onto the deck planks.

Lifting my right hand, Wang Jue and Hou Dayong both sucked in a sharp breath! My index finger, which had been held in his mouth just moments before, had been cleanly severed right at the root. An agonizing, drilling pain quickly spread through my entire body. I looked back at the infant; he was completely unperturbed, lying comfortably in Wang Jue's arms, save for a couple of tiny specks of blood near his lips.

Clutching my wounded right hand, I curled into a ball, writhing across the boat in agony.

"What do we do now?" Wang Jue asked, trembling slightly as he cradled the bloodthirsty infant, throwing a desperate look toward Hou Dayong.

"Can you put him down?" Hou Dayong inquired.

Wang Jue tried several times, but each attempt to set the baby down was met with a searing, sharp pain in his chest. During one attempt, enduring the crushing agony, he forcefully placed the infant on the deck planks. A sudden, unexpected gout of blood erupted from Wang Jue's mouth, forcing him to quickly pull the baby back into his arms.

Hou Dayong sighed, resettled himself back in his original spot, and looked at the baby's deceptively placid face. "Little ancestor," he murmured, "we have serious business to attend to. What do you want by sticking with us?"

The infant ignored him, merely closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep.

Wang Jue and I exchanged a long look, both regretting fiercely that we hadn't heeded Hou Dayong's warning and acted the good samaritan by fishing the baby out of the water. Now, we had no idea how this modern-day tale of the farmer and the snake would conclude.

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