Only when not another leaf would fit into that great mouth did Black Snake stop searching.
With a mouth bulging with medicinal herbs of every kind and a little flower poking out at the corner, herbal juices mingling with saliva, Black Snake carried the haul back to Azure Cloud Monastery Back Mountain in perfect contentment and slipped deep into the cave.
Looking at the medicinal herbs painstakingly gathered one stalk at a time,
Black Snake felt a solid sense of satisfaction.
At dusk, Black Snake coiled around a rock behind the main hall and quietly listened to the evening service. Once its lingering resonance faded, Black Snake instinctively started toward the Stone Terrace.
That long body paused, remaining alone in silence for a long while.
In the end, Black Snake silently turned and wound up toward the highest peak, waiting for the cold, lonely moon to rise.
Before moon-gazing cultivation could begin, Black Snake suddenly sensed what seemed to be a vast expanse of heat sources in the distance.
A broad plain lay in the direction of the County Seat.
Seen from the summit, the sight was even more staggering. Densely packed heat sources covered the plain outside the County Seat, their numbers far beyond the ordinary. The mountain wind carried a powerful stench. With so many people and livestock eating, drinking, and relieving themselves, the smell was truly foul.
Small groups constantly joined or left, seemingly transporting supplies.
Watching that immense, intricately operating spectacle in the distance, Black Snake felt that humans were remarkable.
Black Snake remembered He Ning once saying that arithmetic was extremely important.
On a small scale, it could calculate the monastery's consumption of rice, grain, and firewood. On a large scale, it could coordinate and organize an army to operate in an orderly fashion.
It