Black Snake could no longer remember how many times he had left his body since entering hibernation.
After gazing at the moon, he slid back into the cave, wearily opened his eyes, and tried to wriggle a little-only to discover thick mist filling the cave.
"..."
What happened?
He even instinctively checked whether he had really returned to his body, flicking his tongue to catch scents as he looked around in bewilderment. Where had all this mist come from out of nowhere?
Wonderful. Something else to worry about. The more worries, the better for growth.
Mist it is, then. It isn't dangerous, anyway.
Suddenly, his throat felt parched. At this point, his inability to withstand the bitter cold should have kept him deep in hibernation. Yet Black Snake's very existence was an anomaly.
He decided to go out and find water.
Flicking his tongue, he slowly began to wriggle, his head slipping out through the narrow passage first.
In the snow beneath the cliff, an enormous snake head emerged from the frost-encrusted entrance.
The cold made Black Snake's thoughts as sluggish as his blood. Everything he did was a little slow, and his shortsighted eyes could make out only blurry patches of color.
Relying on thermal sensing, he used the temperature differences between all things in the dim, bitter cold to reconstruct the world as a constantly corrected picture of light and dark patches.
After a few flicks, even his tongue felt cold.
There did not seem to be any water nearby.
He could only try the valley floor. This thirst was truly unbearable.
Slowly, his heavy body, more than twenty feet long, emerged entirely from the cave. Like a giant plow, he cut a deep furrow through the snow, his body swaying from side to side. Occasionally, he crushed through accumulated snow and triggered a collapse, sliding downhill buried beneath the white drifts.
It was not particularly cold today. The snow on the shaded slope was loose and crumbly, while that on the sunny slope was slightly wet and soft. Each required a different way of moving.
A crow's raucous cries pierced the silence. Echoes were especially distinct in winter.
Leaving a long, winding trail, Black Snake reached the valley floor.
He flicked his tongue to search, then slowly slid onto the ice, pressing close against it to sense the faint vibrations and echoes traveling through it.
His forked tongue flickered rapidly, picking moist water vapor out of the air.
He searched the white world for the faintest threads of running water, then changed direction, silently and persistently drawing closer to the flow.
Some time later.
Black Snake stopped beside a freshly dug pit near the stream.
Fresh black mud beneath the frozen soil still gave off wisps of moisture, mingled with the scent of an unfamiliar beast.
Certain beasts could find water beneath snow and soil, then dig down to reach the spring.
Black Snake scanned the surroundings and found no large heat sources. Only then did he lower his head into the pit, touching the spring water lightly with his tongue like a probe. After analyzing it and confirming that nothing was wrong, he lowered his head and drank without concern.
Danger lurked on every side here. He should not linger. After drinking, he prepared to return to the cave.
What he feared came straight for him.
He suddenly sensed unusual vibrations through the ground. A massive heat source burst into view from behind an earthen slope!
At the same time, the cold wind shifted, bringing a turbid gust laden with the beast's strange odor, the smell of pine resin, earth, and other indescribable scents, all mingling and intertwining in their pungency.
It was a medium-sized wild boar that had wandered here from somewhere unknown. Black Snake noticed several claw marks on its thick neck, its hide split open and flesh exposed.
It was too large to swallow. He should avoid pointless expenditure and conflict.
But the boar did not agree...
Deep winter had buried the land in ice and snow. Food was scarce, and hungry wild boars became more aggressive.
Tigers and other beasts would carefully weigh the lethal danger of snake venom. Wild boars, however, had one-track minds. The former weighed life against death; the latter, starving, disregarded the consequences entirely.
And so Black Snake watched the boar charge, snorting hot breath.
This was unexpected. After so long as an overlord, he had never imagined a beast would fail to weigh the risks.
The low temperature created a delay between perception and action. A burst of agony tore through his body, and the boar rammed him backward!
The snow gave Black Snake no purchase. Driven back by the boar's snout and tusks, he plowed a broad trench through the snow, sliding out of control amid flying fragments.
Since the battle had begun, there was no point in hissing meaninglessly. Black Snake needed to counterattack at once.
The boar's two tusks were normally used to turn over soil. In winter, they could even dig through hard frozen earth, and they were covered in deep scratches and ingrained brown stains.
Normally, a charge would be followed by an unbroken series of killing moves: upward gouges, swings of the head from side to side, relentless attacks that never stopped.
Unexpectedly, the tremendous momentum of that collision carried the battle from the snow onto smooth ice.
The boar drove all four hooves down with a sudden burst of force!
The expected charge never came. Its hooves scraped and slipped in place, scratching a jumble of white lines into the ice.
As it kept slipping, Black Snake realized that he could move too.
The loose snow thrown up by the collision had spread across the ice, making it especially slippery. Neither beast could control its body, and both slid helplessly down the slick surface.
The boar flailed its hooves and fell again and again.
Black Snake pressed his whole body against the ice, striving to raise his heartbeat and gather strength. He also noticed a rock protruding from the ice ahead.
At this moment, the extraordinary nature of an animal with awakened intelligence revealed itself.
Twisting his body to brace against the rock, he forcibly controlled his muscles and arched to gather strength. The image of the fox channeling heat into its forepaws flashed through his mind, and he gathered his own cool energy into his venomous fangs!
He watched the boar spin and slide toward him out of control. His slit pupils fixed on its belly as he calmly waited for the right moment.
Halfway up the mountain.
The little courtyard on Solitary Rock stood silent. Suddenly, a dog's head appeared above the wall, barking urgently toward the foot of the mountain.
Hearing it, the hunter hurried to the wall and looked in the direction the yellow dog was barking.
With no leaves to obstruct the view in winter, he could clearly see the boar and the great black snake on the icy stretch at the valley floor. The two seemed to have come to blows.
"Sir! Black Snake is fighting a wild boar!"
With that, he turned, snatched up his iron fork and hunting bow, called to the yellow dog, and hurried out through the gate.
Chi Ke paused slightly at the news, then reacted at once, grabbed a thick coat, threw it on, and hurried after him. The young attendant scrambled along last in a fluster.
The moment had come! Black Snake's head shot forward!
As his mouth opened, his upper jaw thrust forward, and the sharp venomous fangs folded against the roof of his mouth sprang upright!
The boar's tough belly was pierced, the fangs driving straight into its internal organs.
His muscles abruptly contracted, injecting venom deep into the boar's organs. He exerted force repeatedly to ensure that he delivered enough, or even an excessive dose.
An agonized, piercing squeal suddenly exploded!
The sound was like a coarse rasp, mingled with terror and fury, crashing wildly back and forth between the mountain walls.
Still stumbling and sliding downhill every few steps, Chi Ke grew more anxious at the boar's squeals.
"Hurry... hurry and help Brother Snake!"
Having scraped out a living in the mountains since childhood, the hunter knew where to place his feet. Darting left and right, he took a shortcut, bounding, skidding, and digging his heels into the snow as he descended the
mountain.
When they hurried onto the icy stretch at the valley floor, they saw that Black Snake and the boar had still not separated. They thrashed and rolled, sliding out of control.
They were approaching the deep pool by the Thatched Hut from upstream.
The yellow dog charged fastest, but halfway there, it finally remembered something, turned around, and ran back.
In its dying frenzy, the boar kicked all four legs wildly. One hoof struck Black Snake, who seized the momentum to withdraw his fangs and slide toward the snowy bank. The out-of-control boar slammed into a rocky outcrop at the bend with a dull thud.
The hunter hurried over from the snow beside the icy stretch and found several messy white scrape marks on the great black snake's body, but no bleeding.
As for whether he had suffered internal injuries, there was no way to know.
Seeing the boar crash blindly into rocks, the hunter guessed that snake venom might have blinded it.