Reborn, Yet Not Quite Reborn

"Heaven and Earth are the thieves of the myriad things; the myriad things are the thieves of man; man is the thief of the myriad things."

"When the three thefts are appropriate, the three powers are at peace."

"Therefore it is said: eat at the proper time, and the hundred bones are ordered; move at the proper mechanism, and the myriad transformations are at peace. People know the divine as divine, but do not know why the non-divine is divine."

Amidst the chaos, Ye Qin vaguely heard someone speaking.

He struggled to open his eyes, but it felt as if a thousand-pound boulder had fallen upon him, shattering every bone and grinding his flesh into mud; the pain was so intense he nearly let out a scream.

"Hiss—"

Ye Qin snapped his eyes open, but what greeted his vision were needle-like blades of grass, emerald green and towering high enough to block out the sky. It was as if he were in a primordial Amazonian jungle, where the surrounding plants were unnaturally massive.

Ye Qin clearly remembered accidentally falling into a lake; how could he be in a primeval forest?

Because he was so stunned, he momentarily ignored the pain in his body. He stared blankly for a long time before realizing that those plants were actually just weeds.

Since when could ordinary roadside weeds grow this tall?

Even if they were pumped full of hormones, they shouldn't be able to reach such a size.

The trees not far away were even more impossibly large, their emerald crowns reaching into the heavens as if neighbors to the blue sky and white clouds, stretching their branches to cast a vast shade.

An object with the texture of striped marble looked like a meteorite from the heavens, but after staring at it for a long time, Ye Qin realized it was just an ordinary rock.

And those flowers, which looked like genetic mutations—a single petal could cover his entire body.

The surroundings were clearly familiar sights, yet in his eyes, they had become utterly alien.

Ye Qin gasped, feeling as if everything had been magnified countless times, creating a bizarre sense of dissonance.

For someone with megalophobia, these surroundings were nothing short of a nightmare.

He subconsciously tried to stand up, but he couldn't even lift his body. Instead, he accidentally aggravated his wounds, and a piercing pain, like ten thousand ants gnawing at his heart, surged through him.

"Hiss—"

"What has happened to me?"

He opened his mouth, but the sound that emerged was an unconscious hiss.

Ye Qin quickly realized something was wrong. He tried to turn his head, only to see charred scales flash by, and the feeling of dread in his heart grew heavier.

He endured the excruciating pain and twisted his body, hearing the faint, rustling sound typical of a reptile.

A bizarre and absurd thought surfaced in his mind.

Looking at a small puddle nearby, he crawled toward it, enduring the agony.

The reflection that met his eyes was that of a thin, small black snake!

It wasn't that the surroundings had grown larger; it was that he had shrunk. All the previous strangeness was finally explained.

Those eyes, belonging solely to a serpent, held the coldness of a cold-blooded animal. Because he was so shocked, his pupils had contracted to the size of needle points.

His scales were not only pitch black but also scarred—all marks left by lightning. Some of his flesh was even torn open, now congealed into dark, scabbed crusts that looked incredibly hideous and terrifying.

Ye Qin could not believe that after falling into the lake, he had transmigrated into the body of a snake!

For a moment, he didn't know whether to lament his luck or his misfortune.

Ye Qin couldn't swim, and with no one else around when he fell into the water, his death had been certain. Yet, he had transmigrated.

But fate had played another joke on him.

At the very least, in the transmigration novels he had read, the protagonists' worst starting point was still as a human.

Good grief, in his case, he wasn't even a human; he was a snake, and a dying one at that. It was practically nightmare mode.

The pain radiating from his body reminded Ye Qin that none of this was a hallucination or a dream.

Looking at his reflection in the water, covered in charred marks from lightning strikes, he wondered how much hatred or resentment he must have incurred—it would have been better if he had just drowned.

What did it matter if he was reborn? Turning into a dying snake—it was as if he had been reborn, yet not reborn at all.

From here on out, it was nothing more than waiting for death.

Ye Qin sighed gloomily.

"If I had known it would come to this, why make me suffer through this ordeal? It's like playing a cruel joke on someone."

Heaven had already chosen the method of death for Ye Qin, but at least he could choose a suitable gravesite for himself.

He wanted to avoid being swallowed by an eagle or some other wild beast after he died, which would leave him without even a complete corpse.

Although he had become a snake, Ye Qin was still human on the inside, and some concepts were hard to discard.

He couldn't dig a hole to bury himself or find a proper resting place, but he could at least find a secluded spot to pass away.

Ye Qin endured the pain and continued to crawl. Limited by his stature and unable to tell exactly where he was, he could only rely on instinct.

At first, he was unaccustomed to the serpentine body; Ye Qin felt as if he were twisting himself into a pretzel. It was less like crawling and more like the speed of a snail.

After moving for a long time, he had only crawled a dozen meters, but fortunately, he hadn't managed to tie himself into a knot or do anything as foolish as tangling himself up.

Just as he was struggling to crawl forward, a chill surged into his heart.

Everything happened in a flash. A sharp screech pierced the air, followed by a whistling sound descending from above. Instinctively, Ye Qin ducked his head and darted his snake body to the side.

A searing, burning pain erupted across his back.

He snapped his head up to see a massive falcon standing not far away, eyeing him like a predator. Its talons, glinting with a cold, lethal light, looked like death hooks that had nearly claimed his life.

Ye Qin couldn't help but gulp. Fear of the worst-case scenario had become reality; to a human, the falcon before him would be nothing, but to a severely wounded snake, it was a colossal monster.

Ye Qin dared not make a rash move.

Although he had dodged the fatal strike, there was no way the falcon would let such an easy meal slip away.

He was certain that if he showed the slightest sign of movement, the falcon would launch another attack, leaving him in an extremely vulnerable position.

Furthermore, the falcon's flight speed was incredibly fast; even if he weren't injured, he might not be able to outrun it. If he were caught, he would surely die on the spot.

Ye Qin's only advantage was likely that he possessed a human brain, while the falcon did not.

Before he could even devise a plan, the falcon lost its patience. Its beastly pupils constricted sharply—a clear precursor to an attack.

It didn't care whether the Little Black Snake before it housed a human soul; it only knew that it was about to have a feast.

In the animal kingdom, the strong prey on the weak and the fittest survive; this was the law of nature.

Its black wings fully unfurled, appearing to blot out the sky in Ye Qin's eyes. With a piercing screech, the falcon struck again.

The powerful air currents stirred up by its wings felt like incoming wind blades, filled with a sense of suffocation and crushing pressure.

Although Ye Qin knew he was severely injured and wouldn't live much longer, being swallowed by a bird—leaving not even a bone behind—was a fate he absolutely could not accept.

In the moments before death, the potential a person can unleash is immense.

Ye Qin rapidly twisted his snake body, clumsily dodging the falcon's assault. The massive beak grazed past him, missing his body by a mere hair's breadth.

End of this chapter