Black Snake had coiled on the mountain summit for more than a dozen days and nights.
He had reveled in the wonderful rain essence, continually guiding lightning to strike nearby, with wind and rain for company day and night, until the Continuous Rainy Season finally ended. The clouds dispersed, the sky cleared, and sunlight spilled down, glinting on his wet scales.
After spending a day regulating his breathing and refining all the accumulated rain essence, he set off for the Medicine Fields scattered around the area, tidied them up, and left his scent again. It was already three days later when he returned to the mountain. Before he could go drink at the Spring Well, he suddenly stopped.
There was fighting again in the direction of the County Seat.
He glanced over twice, then paid it no further mind. After decades of intermittent fighting, he had seen enough to grow used to it.
He remembered passing a bookshop the last time he went to the County Seat to watch a play.
It had a small storefront, with an old man dozing inside. He had glanced through the doorway as he passed and remembered shelves full of books, some new and some old. Hopefully, they had not been destroyed in the fighting.
In these war-torn years, even if he wanted to attend a private school, there was nowhere to go.
He could only buy books himself and bring them back to study slowly.
Buying books...
Suddenly, he no longer wanted to wait. He decided to go take a look right now.
He slipped into the cave and coiled in his usual spot. His primordial spirit, which had already attained the yang spirit realm, left his body. It no longer mattered whether night had fallen; he could come and go freely by