Chapter 14: What? Only a Few Years Left to Live!
"Woof, woof, woof!"
A brown blur came racing across the green belt, with its owner's shouts trailing behind it. "Lele, slow down!"
It was a gigantic Teddy. Perhaps humans would consider it relatively petite, but to Ye Qin, it was enormous.
Fortunately, he reacted quickly and climbed up the large tree beside him.
By the time Teddy's owner came running over, all she saw was her dog barking furiously and circling around the tree.
"Lele, if you keep this up, I'm putting you on a leash. Why are you suddenly interested in this tree?"
"Huh? Why is there a map here? Who threw their trash around? What terrible public manners."
As the voices gradually faded away, the unwilling Teddy was led off. Only then did Ye Qin climb down from the tree and continue onward.
He was spotted by passersby a few times along the way, but none of it caused any real trouble.
His body was small and posed no threat. At most, he would hear a passerby cry out in surprise. Occasionally, someone bolder would throw a stone at him.
But Ye Qin dodged swiftly, slipping into the nearby green belt or some other place with cover in the blink of an eye, leaving people unable to find any trace of him.
Thus, after making his way through one close call after another, he finally reached the library.
The library in Fog City had a distinctive character. It was built in the Chinese architectural style, with an expansive, antique courtyard. Carved corridors and upturned eaves, jade-green tiles and vermilion rafters, gave people the illusion of having traveled through time.
The library had a long history. No one knew how many storms it had weathered, and even the red paint on its outer walls had faded somewhat.
When Ye Qin arrived, it was nearly sunset. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, and a sliver of evening glow shrouded the ancient building, coating it in a faint orange radiance and making its antique charm even more pronounced.
"Going in now would be a little too early. It wouldn't be good if I ran into someone."
Watching the people entering and leaving the library, he decided to lie low outside and wait until the dead of night, when everyone had left. That would be the safest time to go in.
As the last trace of light sank beyond the western hills, night drew back its curtain. Most of the people inside the library had already left, with only the two night-shift security guards remaining.
After the administrator confirmed that no one was inside, he locked the main doors and left.
No one noticed that, shortly after he departed, a black shadow followed close behind.
Ye Qin swept his gaze around and finally found a fish that had slipped through the net. One of the windows had not been shut tightly, leaving a gap. He pushed it open with all his strength, then slipped through the widening opening.
In the enormous library, he was the only snake left inside.
A peculiar scent lingered in the air, a mixture of ink and paper.
Ye Qin wound his way back and forth between the bookshelves. The library covered a vast area and probably held several million books. Row upon row stretched into the distance, densely packed.
After searching for a long time, he finally found books related to snakes.
There were more than three thousand species of snakes in the world. Ye Qin kept searching and comparing the illustrations, eventually discovering that he was probably a Green Brocade Snake.
The Green Brocade Snake lived in mountainous regions. It was a nonvenomous snake with a body of emerald green, measuring around one meter in total length, though older ones could reach three meters. Its head was relatively long and slightly broad and flat, with a blunt, rounded snout.
The features of Ye Qin's body matched perfectly. Looking at the small emerald-green snake depicted in the book, so lifelike and adorable, he thought that he must have looked the same before being scorched black by lightning.
Ye Qin continued reading. Then, he seemed to see something, and his pupils suddenly contracted.
"How could this be!"
A line of tiny text entered his view, stirring up stormy seas in Ye Qin's heart.
"The lifespan of small snakes is around two to five years. I'm not even an adult yet, which means I have at most two or three years left to live? Maybe only one year? Fuck your grandmother!"
After learning this news, Ye Qin was struck by a thunderbolt from a clear sky. He was so furious that he wanted to curse, but unfortunately, as a snake, he could not yet speak human words.
He had never imagined that he had only a few years of life remaining.
He was so shocked that his scarlet tongue remained suspended in midair, trembling only after a long while.
A powerful sense of crisis welled up inside him.
"No. I have to calm down."
The more critical the moment, the less he could afford to panic.
Ye Qin took a deep breath and banished those emotions from his mind. He had already snatched his life back twice—was he still afraid of death?
"Even if I only have a few years, so what? I'm sure there's a way to resolve this."
Back then, he had been gravely injured, with a zero-percent chance of survival, yet he had still lived through it.
Heaven never sealed off every path for a snake. A solution could always be found.
Since cultivation had been able to heal him, it surely had the effect of extending his life as well. Otherwise, why would the ancients have been so obsessed with seeking immortality and asking the Dao, hoping to obtain eternal life? True, none of the ancients had succeeded, but their underlying idea had been right.
At this thought, Ye Qin had already formed a plan. As long as he continued cultivating and reached a deeper realm, he could definitely defy heaven and change his fate, extending his lifespan.
After all, the essence of cultivation was to change the level of one's life and one's genetic sequence. As long as he persevered, perhaps a miracle would occur!
With such a mountain pressing on his heart, Ye Qin became even more enthusiastic about cultivation.
"I wonder if the library has any books related to this. Maybe I can gain some inspiration from them."
Ye Qin's gaze fell upon the depths of the library. Quite a few ancient texts were kept there as well, though they were not the original editions. Every one of them had been recopied.
After searching around, he finally found them.
Apparently, no one was interested in ancient texts of this sort. Not only were they placed in the most remote corner, they were almost completely covered in dust.
It made sense when he thought about it. Technology was advanced now, and e-books were in vogue. Many paper books could no longer survive.
There were already far fewer visitors to the library than in the past, let alone anyone interested in these mysterious, abstruse, and mysticism-filled books.
In this age of information fast food, everyone cared about one thing: "speed." Even when they borrowed books, they could not settle their minds and quietly comprehend the meaning within them.
These books, sealed away for many years, were opened once more. Their reader was unexpectedly a snake.
Ye Qin read with great seriousness. His life was at stake, after all, and he had to search for as much useful information as possible.
Yet as he continued reading, he ultimately discovered that there was not a trace in the records of cultivators like him. Some legends had indeed been passed down through the ages, but those legends could not be verified and had no factual basis. Most had likely been fabricated by later generations.
But strangely enough, although there were no cultivators, there were many great works concerning the related philosophies. Among them were the Yellow Emperor's Classic of the Inner Elixir, which Ye Qin had first encountered,
as well as the Yi Jin Jing, Shang Qing Jing, Ling Bao Jing, Taishang Ganying Jing, Lotus Sutra, and others he was reading now.
These books touched upon cultivation to varying degrees. Their contents were not entirely castles in the air, ethereal and insubstantial, but were instead built upon a certain philosophical foundation.
If one savored them carefully, one would discover truths within them that could inspire deep reflection.
"Why could the ancestors leave behind works like these, yet be unable to step onto the path of cultivation themselves?"
(End of Chapter)