Black Snake had been busy swallowing wood frogs these past few days.
They often lingered in pools beside the valley stream and were especially noisy at night. He could locate them by their croaks or draw closer and search with his eyes. In early spring, when prey was scarce, they made a fine meal, easy to catch and rich in nutrients. Their only drawback was being a little small.
He had to make the most of his time. Once the wood frogs left a clump of eggs in the pools, they would head up the mountain.
He would eat as many as he could over these few days. When choosing a target, he had to watch out for things that resembled wood frogs but moved sluggishly, because slow movement often meant they had some means of defending themselves, such as spines or poison.
Something larger than a wood frog approached at a leisurely pace, all but ignoring the enormous Black Snake.
Black Snake flicked his tongue a few times to catch its scent, then ignored it.
All bumps and lumps. Inedible. This thing left long strings in the pools, unlike the clumps of wood frog eggs.
He watched coldly as the creature lumbered past him.
The weather had been steady this spring, with no late cold snaps intruding, so the window for hunting wood frogs was shorter than in previous years.
He inevitably encountered other snakes along the way, and ignored them with the same composure.
For several days running, he stayed along the little stream, searching its still pools. Passing through a narrow, shaded gorge, he saw thick ice concealed beneath fallen leaves, remnants of winter carefully sealed away by the mountain.
When clumps of frog eggs filled the pools and the clamor subsided into silence, Black Snake knew it was time to change his diet.
Wild mice were now active throughout the mountains. Unlike catching wood frogs, hunting them required patient ambushes.
Unfortunately, his body was too large now. He could no longer squeeze into mouse holes.
In spring, bird nests held delicacies. A simple climb would bring him eggs or nestlings.
The little nests in the shrubs could not ease his hunger, so Black Snake was forced to set his sights on larger nests, frequently using his heat sense to search the great trees for targets.
Black Snake did not care what kind of bird it was, so long as he could eat it.
Soon, he discovered a heat source among the branches at the top of a giant tree.
From its thermal outline, he could tell that the bird was large and that there were several eggs as well.
Black Snake now knew how to think.
After locking onto his target, he did not rush to climb the tree. He forcibly suppressed the impulse and coiled quietly in the shadows, waiting for nightfall.
As he waited, he heard the beating wings of a second large bird landing in the nest. After a bout of rustling, it flew away.
His forked tongue caught a bloody scent in the air...
The last trace of sunset withdrew behind the peaks. The moon had yet to rise, and the mountain wilderness sank into thick darkness, making the distant sound of the stream unusually clear.
Black Snake slowly wriggled up the rough trunk, his forked tongue flickering rapidly.
His scales made a faint cracking sound as they rubbed against the bark.
The eagle in the nest at the treetop was roosting for the night. Its keen eyes, made for daylight, were practically useless in the dark. Wind, insects, and rustling branches and leaves wove together into a jumble of sound that masked the faint scraping.
Ordinary birds and beasts lived by instinct. There was nothing special about them.
An eagle was no night owl. Ambushed at night by a creature that was anything but ordinary, it was bound to pay a heavy price.
Black Snake had already climbed to the edge of the eagle nest.
Thin twigs snapped beneath his weight. Only then did the female eagle in the nest notice the intrusion. She hastily spread her wings and beat them wildly to fight back. In the confusion, she managed by sheer luck to fend off Black Snake's sneak attack, but his enormous body still shoved her bodily out of the nest!
The sudden struggle was chaotic and clumsy. Black Snake had no desire to prolong it. He opened his mouth and seized a warm eagle egg radiating heat. His throat muscles worked, and the whole egg slid into his belly. After eating one, he swallowed another, quickly gulping down all three eggs in the nest.
Another eagle nearby panicked in fright. Under cover of the crisscrossing branches in the canopy, Black Snake twisted his body and swiftly slid headfirst toward the ground, leaving the battlefield. On the way down, he crushed the eggshells inside him.
The eagles could not pass through the dense branches in the dark. They did not even know what had ambushed them.
This egg theft had been a great success.
His true advantage was a heat sense far beyond that of his own kind, allowing him to detect signs of life over a much wider area before launching a hunt with his massive body.
Beneath the night sky, Black Snake searched for prey, moving and stopping in turn. He found no second large nest in the trees, but luckily discovered prey in the grass.
A pheasant incubating her eggs kept perfectly still, her protective plumage blending flawlessly into the dry grass around her.
Yet the heat she gave off drew Black Snake from far away.
He turned into a flowing shadow and approached slowly, then shot forward like a tightly compressed spring, biting his target with precision.
He coiled around her without mercy, feeling the struggles of her claws and wings weaken from fierce to feeble.
Then he swallowed the warm prey whole and gulped down every egg in turn. It was quite a feast, though unfortunately, the pheasant had broken several eggs during her desperate struggle.
He found nothing else after that.
Raising his head, he saw through his hazy vision that the moon had climbed high into the sky, and decided to go bask in its light on the giant rock first.
Really, any mountaintop would do for basking in moonlight.
He thought mist might rise in the morning. On the giant rock, he could take some in without having to run back and forth.
Like a living shadow, Black Snake wound swiftly through the woods, gliding over fallen deadwood and scattered stones. The surrounding terrain was much as it had been last winter, with few changes: a fresh heap of dead leaves blown into a hollow by the wind, perhaps, or a few stones loosened by the spring thaw.
An owl traced its famously silent circles through the night sky, turning a blind eye to the great Black Snake. It had no need to concern itself with anything unrelated to hunting.
Black Snake reached the giant rock, raised his head high toward the moon, and breathed deeply.
He could feel a faint comfort, though it was not like gazing at the moon in the gray world. The subtle difference was hard to describe.
Fortunately, Black Snake understood the essence of survival. Practical by nature, he did not indulge in pointless fussiness.
Undulating mountain ridges outlined the edge of the heavens. Against the vast star chart in motion, Black Snake's raised body was no more than a slender stroke of ink.
On another mountaintop, a fox tipped its head back and bowed to the moon.
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In a jumble of rocks brightly lit by moonlight, a plump weasel led several others of its kind in standing upright together.
Inside the Thatched Hut beside the pool, Chi Ke tossed and turned, unable to sleep. At last, he got up, dressed, and went out with his sword. He danced with it beneath the moon, trying to cut away the tangled worries filling his heart with fierce sword moves.
The sky gradually paled, and light gold washed over the green stone on the mountain summit.
The delicious morning mist never came.
Chi Ke came instead. Black Snake watched him climb halfway up the mountain, his bangs soaked with sweat and his breathing heavy.
Chi Ke leaned against a rock and bowed with his hands clasped.
"Brother Snake! Ahem... we parted in winter, and now the spring breeze has brought us together again."
Naturally, Black Snake could not understand a single word. He twitched the tip of his tail in response and dug a few scattered fragments about Chi Ke out of his limited memory.
His tongue also picked up the scents of many herbs coming off the man.
Chi Ke deftly took out a cushion and sat down. In no hurry to begin the lesson, he casually spoke of a few trivial matters from the winter.
Black Snake listened blankly and thought. Chi Ke should be cleverer than foxes and weasels, since he could keep making such complicated sounds. Foxes and weasels could not keep calling for so long.
As he spoke, Chi Ke clapped his hands and laughed.
He shared his joy at having gathered all the medicinal ingredients, saying that he would choose an auspicious day to fire up his furnace and refine pills, starting with the most basic formula.
Then he raised a hand and pointed toward the slope behind the Thatched Hut, where freshly turned earth formed ridges and furrows like waves. He said those were newly opened medicinal plots. He would sow some medicinal ginseng seeds there, and in the future he would be able to supply his own needs.
Of course, Black Snake could neither understand nor see it, and could not even manage a bewildered expression.