Medusa's Childhood and the Mysterious Man in Black

"Sister, I heard all sorts of interesting things have shown up here lately..."

A young voice suddenly rang out. Before Xiao Yan could react, two small figures came walking toward him.

They were two little Snake-People girls, both adorable.

More astonishing still, they looked exactly alike. At a glance, there was no telling which was the older sister and which was the younger.

The girls chattered away together, their little faces bright with innocent smiles.

Xiao Yan instinctively looked for somewhere to hide, only to see the two figures pass straight through him, as though he did not exist.

"Could those be Medusa and her sister...?" Xiao Yan breathed a sigh of relief and murmured uncertainly as he watched them walk away.

After a moment's thought, he quietly followed them, feeling rather like a suspicious uncle.

As he listened to the girls' conversation, Xiao Yan finally confirmed who they were: Medusa and her sister as children.

Rather than a dream, this was a memory buried deep in the past, and Xiao Yan was merely an observer.

Once he understood that, his interest grew.

He wanted to see what the decisive, aloof, and regal Queen Medusa had been like as a child.

So he followed them like an invisible man, quietly watching the two girls shop, play, and sample food throughout the Snake-People Holy City.

Carefree smiles never left their faces.

"Who would've thought the cold, ruthless Queen Medusa was so adorable as a child?" Xiao Yan murmured as he watched the girls chase each other around.

Childhood truly was the most carefree time. At their age, the sisters had nothing to worry about. All they had to do was play.

Time slipped by, and their surroundings gradually changed.

The sisters grew taller. Their baby fat faded, revealing the graceful features of young women.

"Sister, come out and play with me. Training every day is exhausting." The younger sister tugged playfully at her sister's arm.

"You spend all day thinking about play..." The older sister drew herself up, ready to scold her for neglecting her training again. But before she could get a word out, the sight of her younger sister's pitiful expression softened her heart.

"What am I going to do with you... Just for a little while. Then we come straight back and keep training."

"Yay! My sister's the best!"

The younger sister's comically triumphant look made her older sister burst out laughing.

Watching quietly from the side, Xiao Yan felt a tug at his heart.

He found himself thinking of his eldest and second brothers.

When he was little, they had always indulged him just like that.

Whenever they returned from a trip, they brought him little toys and treats. Even now, remembering how cherished they had made him feel filled him with warmth.

The scene changed again, this time to a vast, boundless desert.

The younger sister's playful nature and complete trust in others had led her to be lured away by Snake-People traffickers.

Her hands were bound behind her back, and she had been drugged unconscious. The traffickers were secretly taking her to a black market in a human city to sell her.

Her older sister had pursued them with the Snake-People Tribe's strongest fighters and rescued her at the last possible moment.

Though the younger sister was saved, many of their fellow Snake-People were killed or went missing during the rescue.

It was then that the older sister first truly understood the responsibility on her shoulders.

She silently vowed to train with everything she had, to protect her sister and the entire Snake-People Tribe.

The younger sister finally understood her sister's ambition too. To support her better, she set aside her love of play and began training desperately hard.

Warm as these scenes were, Xiao Yan's expression only grew more grave. He felt no happiness for them.

Because he had begun to guess what would come next.

Sure enough, the scene shifted again.

The scorching desert became a cold, solemn temple.

Both sisters were grown now, graceful and breathtakingly beautiful.

Their faces could captivate anyone, and their figures were slender, elegant, and perfectly curved.

"The Snake-People Tribe can have only one queen."

"Kill her, and you will be queen!"

"The tribe's rules cannot be broken! You are the queen. You must do this!"

The cold, stubborn words of the Snake-People Tribe's elders cut like blades toward the woman standing at the center of the temple.

"Sister, your dream is to lead the Snake-People Tribe out of its plight..." The younger sister slowly turned around. There was no fear or resentment on her face, only a faint, reluctant smile. "And my dream... is freedom."

"Sister, you're better suited to be queen than I am. Please forgive me for being selfish."

As soon as she finished speaking, an immense surge of energy erupted around her. Space and her body alike began to warp under its force.

Before anyone in the temple could react, the younger sister vanished from where she stood.

The light and shadows around Xiao Yan began to race past as she disappeared.

When his surroundings came into focus again, he was in a desert. He looked around frantically, searching everywhere for the younger sister.

In the distance, a rift abruptly opened in space.

A man in a black robe stepped slowly out of it, carrying the blood-soaked younger sister in his arms. His aura was so deeply concealed that Xiao Yan could barely sense it.

The moment Xiao Yan looked at the man in black, he froze.

A strange sense of familiarity rose inexplicably within him.

That man was definitely not Hai Bodong.

Who was he?

The man's face seemed shrouded in mist. No matter how hard Xiao Yan tried, he could not make it out.

Unable to resist, he drifted closer, hoping to see the blurred face clearly.

But as soon as he drew near, the man in black seemed to sense him. He turned and looked straight toward Xiao Yan.

"Holy shit!" Xiao Yan stumbled half a step back in shock.

As if he had noticed Xiao Yan's embarrassment, the man in black gave a low chuckle.

Then, to Xiao Yan's horror, he lifted a hand, pulled back the black hood hiding his face, and raised his middle finger at him.

The instant Xiao Yan saw the man's face, his pupils contracted sharply.