Once the last wisp of mist had dispersed among the mountains, Chi Ke spread open his books and began teaching as usual.
This time, Black Snake listened with unusual concentration, striving to remember the vibrations of those complicated syllables. It was difficult indeed. That smooth, impoverished brain was bearing a burden unlike any it had ever known.
Unsurprisingly, when Chi Ke went down the mountain, Black Snake's head was still empty.
What just happened?
Ah...
Since it had failed to learn this morning, it would learn tomorrow. If tomorrow proved no better, there was always the day after. As long as it was not hungry, this learning could not stop for even a day.
There was not a trace of frustration, nor any resentment toward heaven or earth.
Its brain was simple, and its thoughts were equally simple. If something ought to be done, then it would simply do it.
It stretched out its body and basked in the warm sunshine to raise its temperature. This energy, so utterly different from moonlight, was rather scorching and unsuitable for breathing in too much.
It went out hunting to fill its belly, returned to the giant rock before dawn to breathe mist in and out, and listened diligently to the lessons.
The sun rose and the moon set.
This simple, orderly routine repeated day after day.
Black Snake felt it did not matter if it could not remember everything right away. As long as it kept sensing the vibrations of the sounds, it would remember eventually. Now that it hunted less often, it had plenty of time.
The sun grew hotter by the day. Cicadas screamed themselves hoarse in the woods, making an awful racket. The giant rock baked until it was burning hot, the resurrection fern curled into a ball, and thick resin dripped from the old pine's wound.
On the most stifling afternoon of midsummer, Black Snake quietly shed its old scales among the scattered rocks and shrubs.
It was thoroughly pleased to see that its body had grown another inch or so.
Worry really could make a snake grow.
From spring through midsummer, it had often listened to Chi Ke read. Sure enough, those sounds were like a stream flowing over bluestone, leaving pitifully few traces in its mind.
Chi Ke probably had not expected this either. He remained immersed in the satisfaction of teaching a wild mountain beast.
Perhaps that tiny scrap of intelligence had finally served some purpose, for Black Snake at last memorized the syllables of "Brother Snake."
But it stubbornly believed that those two words referred to Chi Ke.
The greatest change was that it had completely abandoned the idea of swallowing Chi Ke, the page, and the hunter.
Life in the mountains was not particularly eventful.
Humans entering the mountains needed to beware of real predators and venomous insects, poisonous plants and miasma, rather than the uncanny spirits of assorted rumors.
Chi Ke finally made some progress in refining pills. After several months and countless failures involving scorched furnaces and hardened medicinal dregs, he scraped a puddle of thick black paste out of the furnace.
In truth, the page and the hunter had the most exhausting jobs. The page had to crawl inside the furnace to scrub it, while the hunter was responsible for chopping firewood.
Since it had not formed into pills, Chi Ke simply rolled it into balls by hand.
Looking at the bowlful of black balls of varying sizes, the page and the hunter held their breath and lowered their eyes, trying not to speak or make a sound, terrified they might be invited to sample the immortal pills.
Chi Ke himself was uncertain.
His gaze lingered on the page and the hunter for a moment before finally settling on the yellow dog gnawing a bone.
A little while later.
While hunting, Black Snake saw the yellow dog racing through the woods.
The yellow dog was radiating abnormal heat, as though a fire were burning inside its belly, driving it to run madly without tiring. More absurd still, Black Snake's heat sense showed that as it ran, it kept releasing bursts of hot, foul gas from beneath its tail...
Black Snake did not quite understand, nor would it pay much attention.
Chi Ke had no choice but to bury the entire batch of black pills in the herb garden as fertilizer. He remained gloomy for several days afterward.
Perhaps his low spirits had left his vital energy weak and unsettled. One day, after returning from gathering herbs in the mountains, he discovered that evening that a patch of rash had appeared around his waist. It itched unbearably. The hunter examined it and said he had been poisoned by a mountain plant; ten days or half a month of rest would let it heal on its own.
That morning, seeing Chi Ke scratch himself as he walked, Black Snake assumed he had parasites too.
Chi Ke sat down awkwardly, too restless and irritable to calm his mind and practice breathing. Watching Black Snake raise its head to swallow clouds and breathe out mist, he felt a surge of envy.
He envied it for already setting foot on the path of cultivation, free from the torment of an itching rash.
Little did he know that Black Snake had spent more than fifty years ridding itself of parasites.
Once the thick mist had dispersed.
Chi Ke did not open his books as usual.
He quietly gazed at the rolling blue-green mountains in the distance, his eyes vacant and his expression weary. This was a pain deeper than failed pill refining or finding no way into cultivation, steeped in profound helplessness.
"Beyond the mountains, the people of this world..."
He stopped halfway through, shook his head, and finally fell silent.
Noticing that Chi Ke had fallen silent and was not calling out, Black Snake calmly waited, showing neither impatience nor any urge to hurry him.
With his heart knotted, Chi Ke simply lay on his back atop the giant rock and stared blankly at the sky. There were no outsiders in the mountains, so there was no need to mind propriety; he could lie however he liked.
Though he lived secluded in a mountain valley, pillowing his head on stone and rinsing his mouth in flowing streams, every letter inevitably turned his thoughts toward worldly affairs beyond the mountains. His heart was like a lone cloud, yet in the end it remained tethered to the smoke and turmoil beyond the horizon. Ah.
Seeing that his employer was in no hurry to descend the mountain, the hunter cleared the weeds along the mountain path, then built a shelter beneath the pine.
He placed a stone inside the shelter to serve as a stool, so that if they encountered another sudden downpour, they would no longer have to scramble miserably beneath the cliff.
While busy tying branches onto the shelter's roof, he looked up and suddenly spotted something red behind a tree uphill.
"Sir, that fox is here again."
Hearing him, Chi Ke sat up and followed the direction the hunter was pointing.
"It really is that fox. Could it want to hear me read too?"
The fox poked half its head out from behind the tree, its lively eyes watching cautiously, then gave Black Snake two short, urgent cries.
Chi Ke and the hunter were deeply curious, quietly discussing what exactly the fox was trying to convey.
Black Snake caught a trace of something unusual in the fox's urgent cries.
The rhythm and force of those cries closely resembled the sharp warnings birds perched on branches gave the woodland beasts whenever Black Snake lay in ambush during a hunt, alerting nearby creatures to danger.
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You'll never believe why I moved to... Taipei
My life in emojis: ️, , , ️
MeetSingles
Looking for someone in Taipei today
Willing to lie about how we met
Singleflirt
Then where was the danger the fox had discovered coming from?
Black Snake glanced at the humans murmuring together and decided they were not the threat. Looking more closely at the fox, it saw that the fox was agitated, repeatedly glancing in a certain direction.
After giving its warning, the fox bounded nimbly toward the mountain peak without looking back.
The hunter found the fox's behavior highly unusual.
Why would the fox abandon a hillside rich in prey and water to climb a precipitous peak with neither?
He began to suspect that a dangerous beast was prowling nearby.
He could not help tightening his grip on his woodcutting blade.
"Sir, a dangerous beast has most likely come into these mountains. We must head down and return to the village as soon as possible."
At this, Chi Ke considered for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the woods, where danger lurked on every side.
"If we leave now, will we still make it...?"
The hunter fell silent. If the beast was already nearby, the road out of the mountains would be dangerous. He recalled that the supply party would enter the mountains in a few days. Once they arrived, everyone would be safe. But the little courtyard and thatched cottage were too flimsy to keep a dangerous beast out.
How were they to survive these next few days?
Just as the hunter was racking his brains for a solution, he suddenly heard frantic wingbeats. Birds in the distant woods took flight in alarm!
He hurriedly called back the page who was gathering pine needles.
The yellow dog, which normally hid whenever it saw the snake, now darted onto the giant rock and huddled against the hunter's legs.
In the entire scene, only Black Snake remained calm and composed. Being a snake, it could make no facial expression; only the flicking of its tongue noticeably quickened. Its body suddenly rose to a person's height, ignoring the obstruction of leaves and weeds as a world outlined by temperature unfolded before its eyes.
Soon, beside the little stream at the bottom of the valley, it locked onto an unfamiliar large heat source. The creature crossed the stream, moving in fits and starts, circling and adjusting its route several times as it approached the giant rock at an unhurried pace...