Changes in the Mountains

The herb garden at the foot of the mountain.

The herb gatherer lay on the ground, blood at the corner of his mouth, his rough hands gripping a fellow villager's calf in a death grip.

"This is mine... My herbs! You can't take them...!"

"Yours? Is this mountain yours? This is our territory. You've got some nerve sneaking in to steal herbs from the medicinal garden I worked so hard to plant!"

The lean man kicked viciously, trying to make him let go, but the fellow refused to release his grip. To him, this herb garden was his family's lifeline.

"You're lying! They're mine, cough cough... Don't touch them!"

The other two happily pulled up the herbs. At last, the herb gatherer released the lean man's leg and lunged for the plants, trying to stop them from stealing the medicinal herbs with his life. He shielded the two most valuable plants with both arms, refusing to yield no matter how the three kicked and beat him.

When White Snake arrived at the herb garden, this was what she saw: the familiar herb gatherer protecting the plants while three men cursed and beat him.

Stealing herbs?

It seemed she had misunderstood him. But was it really right to resort to violence over a few common medicinal herbs...?

In the end, White Snake, who had been watching the spectacle, decided to do something. The lean man's face had turned red, the veins on his forehead bulging; he had clearly gone mad. He drew the woodcutting machete he used to clear paths and slashed it straight into the herb gatherer's back!

The machete was heavy and not particularly sharp, but it still hacked a bloody gash into his back.

The other two froze in shock. They were merely ordinary mountain villagers and had never considered killing anyone. The lean man's madness terrified them both, leaving them wide-eyed and at a loss over what to do.

"What are you afraid of? There are only a few of us here. Who would know? Are you two going to do it or not?" The lean man wanted to drag them into the water, lest they betray him later.

"Y-you... you..."

"What about me? Are you doing it or not?"

"Behind you...!"

Behind him? The lean man instinctively started to turn around. Then, a foul, fishy wind suddenly assailed his nose. His neck tightened as though something had seized it, followed by searing pain!

Snakes attacked with astonishing speed. In the blink of an eye, they could strike four times. Studies had found that when snakes lunged at prey, they could withstand 30 Gs of force—thirty times the acceleration of gravity. Even the most elite human fighter pilots, after rigorous military training, generally lost consciousness above 10 Gs. This showed just how powerful a snake's attack could be.

White Snake had front fangs: two sharp venom fangs growing from the upper jaw at the front of her mouth. They normally folded away, but sprang out when she opened her jaws. The instant she bit her prey, muscles around the venom glands contracted and injected venom.

White Snake's venom was not particularly potent, but even weak venom meant certain death when injected into the neck.

Her snake body rose upright, jaws clamped tightly around the prey's throat. The lean man's eyes bulged with terror as he desperately clawed at her, his whole body convulsing uncontrollably. After struggling for only five or six breaths, he gradually weakened and finally collapsed. The venom had already traveled through his arteries to his brain; even a Spirit Pill would have been powerless.

Releasing the lean man, White Snake raised her head and looked at the other two.

The two men finally came to their senses, scared out of their wits. They scrambled away in a rolling crawl, weeping and screaming as they ran. In the blink of an eye, they vanished into the forest. White Snake did not pursue them.

It was her first time killing a human. She had no particular emotional reaction—no guilt or anything of the sort. It was calm, as indifferent as killing any other prey. After twenty years of eating raw flesh and drinking blood, most of her humanity had long since been worn away.

The herb gatherer stared at White Snake in terror. Only now did he remember that the white snake before him was a venomous Fierce Beast...

White Snake wrapped her tail around the lean man's foot and dragged him away. She remembered a forest beneath a distant hillside, filled with giant ant nests two meters tall. Those ants should enjoy meat delivered right to their door. If several tens of thousands of ants died from snake venom, it might even ease the pressure on the nearby animals; after all, there were too many ants, and they were far too formidable.

As for eating a human, forget it. It felt too disgusting.

Near the ant nests, she gave a light shove, and the corpse rolled down before a two-meter-tall nest. The violent tremors alerted the ants, and in an instant, a black mass poured out.

White Snake remained at a distance, observing the ants while thinking—thinking about life vanishing.

At a speed visible to the naked eye, the ants rapidly broke down the corpse. Flesh and blood gradually disappeared, leaving behind a ghostly white skeleton. Then the skeleton, too, was gnawed away bit by bit. The process of a person going from existence to nothing played out before her eyes.

When White Snake returned to the herb garden at noon, she found that the herb gatherer had become quieter.

From then on, his gaze toward White Snake held something called fear. He spoke less and less until he no longer spoke at all. Perhaps he thought the lean man had been eaten that day. White Snake did not care.

As the weather gradually cooled, migratory birds flew south from the north to spend the winter in the Hundred Thousand Mountains, bringing rare liveliness to the forest.

Once the herbs ripened, the herb gatherer dug them up and left. The little herb garden gradually fell into ruin, and White Snake returned to her old life, except that she diligently cultivated every day.

As time passed in cultivation, she began hunting less often. Snakes could go a long time without hunting after eating their fill; under normal circumstances, they ate once every ten days or half a month. Gradually, the intervals grew longer. Now she only hunted again every twenty days, which was good news for the nearby birds and beasts.

Every morning, she cultivated. Once the sun rose, she found somewhere to rest. When her body temperature fell, she basked in the sun to raise it. After all, snakes were cold-blooded animals whose temperature changed with the environment, and when their body temperature dropped, they needed to regulate it promptly.

Time slowly passed.

In the second year, White Snake did not see the herb gatherer come to collect herbs.

Little by little, the slaughter and strife of the forest buried the traces that people had once come here...

The surrounding region became White Snake's territory. Other beasts no longer fought White Snake to the death. Whenever the bobcat saw her, it would watch from afar before turning and leaving. The big cat was not stupid; it knew its own hunting limits. As for the goshawk that always circled overhead, it, too, gave up on White Snake. At five meters long, she had become a threat to it.

The one happiest of all was that annoying honey badger moving away.

White Snake still remembered one encounter with the honey badger. After that, the world changed. That little creature was like a wound-up toy: she could not drive it away, and it would come over now and then to bite her. They fought, stopped, and fought again for nearly five kilometers, yet she could not shake it off. It had the attitude of a dead pig that feared no boiling water, knowing only how to fight for its life. After that incident, White Snake finally understood what shameless stubbornness was. In the end, she had to jump into a pond before it gave up.

The facts proved that honey badgers were not brainless and fearless. When this shameless honey badger saw that its opponent had reached five meters in length, it fled overnight. Yes, it abandoned its excellent burrow and vanished without a trace, leaving White Snake, who had wanted to strangle it to death, deeply frustrated.

After that, White Snake saw the herb gatherer only once. He merely came to take a look before leaving.

White Snake did not know that rumors had already spread wildly outside: a gigantic white snake spirit lived in the mountains. Some even claimed that White Snake had a rooster's comb atop her head. Legend said the white snake liked to eat people, making human traces in this region rare once more.

Mountain wildernesses and rural villages were the best breeding grounds for tales of spirits and monsters—foxes becoming immortals and gathering gold, and so on.

Gradually, people began claiming they had seen a gigantic white snake atop the mountain, Swallowing Clouds and Exhaling Mist. Others said they had seen White Snake transform into a dragon and ascend during a thunderstorm. Tales of mountain ghosts and strange creatures brought rare entertainment to ordinary folk.