Black Snake lay quietly coiled, waiting for the first rain of spring.
It silently witnessed day and night racing past, black and white flashing and fading around it at an astonishing pace. Daytime birdsong and nighttime insect calls came and went like two clamorous tides.
Seeing Black Snake remain coiled and motionless for so long, Chi Ke and the fox thought it might be injured or ill.
At last, it caught the scent of mountain rain approaching.
A gauzy white curtain rose over the distant mountains and swept toward it with a faint roar. Soon, nothing remained between heaven and earth but a tumult of sound.
Black Snake raised its head high.
Rain smelled so good...
The cool rainwater soothed its tormenting thirst, restoring surging vitality to its body. Black Snake breathed deeply, greedily drawing in more Rain Essence.
Several fierce bolts of lightning illuminated the curtain of rain. Then muffled thunder rolled in from afar!
Black Snake liked rain, and it liked the thunder that reverberated through the valley.
Water trickled down through the tight seams between its scales, at first in broken strings of beads, then gradually joining into glistening streams. They washed away the dust that had settled on its body over the past days, exposing its already dulled scales.
The downpour bestowed enough strength upon Black Snake to finish shedding its skin, and it now felt confident it could complete the molt.
The rain stopped and the clouds dispersed. The downpour had driven away the dryness and brought refreshing moisture. White mist wound like cotton around treetops and cliff faces, and the spring sunshine was warm.
Black Snake almost wondered whether something was wrong with its eyes. After a single downpour, the mountain forest had abruptly turned green, layers upon layers of leaves sealing off the sky.
The fox crossed the rugged mountain paths, came to Giant Rock, and called twice to Black Snake.
Black Snake remained silent.
As though it had received the answer it wanted, the fox gently swayed its fluffy tail, turned, and disappeared into the woods.
The fox had painstakingly come all that way, seemingly just to carry out some stubborn ritual.
Black Snake, meanwhile, noticed that the fox seemed to have changed.
The peculiar heat within its body had grown increasingly intense, incomparable to what it had been last winter. Only one winter had passed, yet the change was as though it had crossed several springs and autumns.
Black Snake was envious. It, too, wanted a way to improve quickly, but did not know whether it should eat more or breathe in more Rain Essence.
Its memory of the stranger's lecture was utterly blank. Their meeting on the icy path in winter had likewise been filtered out entirely as an irrelevant trifle.
It thought about the fox's changes, but its thoughts gradually grew muddled, and it began pondering its own affairs.
It gave the matter some careful thought.
Right. I needed strength. My head ought to grow a little bigger.
After weighing the matter over and over for a long while, it could no longer endure the constriction of its old skin beneath the sunlight. It was time to shed. It deftly slid down Giant Rock and seeped into the mountain forest like a streak of ink, deliberately choosing routes through jumbled rocks and thickets.
As it rubbed continually against obstacles, the old keratinized skin at the tip of its snout separated from the new skin first. Its body moved forward, its muscles contracting, gradually freeing it from head to tail and leaving behind an almost intact snakeskin.
It found a random spot to coil up and rest.
Unable to resist its weariness, it sank into a deep sleep.
It did not know how much time had passed. When it woke, thin mist hung around its body, and it was beginning to feel parched. Fortunately, the thirst was not yet severe and remained tolerable.
It vaguely guessed that the mist emerged from its skin and dispersed. Only while awake could it retain that mist within its body.
What a worry...
Predicting that it would not rain for a while, it decided to go hunting along the distant riverbank.
It set off at once, becoming a flowing black shadow as it slithered in the general direction. It used its desire to hunt and eat to resist its drowsiness. Ideally, it would find a way to lock all the Rain Essence inside its body rather than letting it escape.
Along the way, it caught whatever prey it encountered. Mountain rats or pheasants-it did not matter, so long as they were edible.
It crossed mountain ridges without resting, day or night.
While descending one steep ridge, it caught rich moisture carried on the wind, mixed with the river's distinctive earthy, fishy smell.
It was not quite accustomed to that smell. The crisp vapor of rain and mist suited it better.
It remembered only vaguely a broad meadow with tall grass swaying in the wind, filled with frog calls and the rustling of wild mice darting about.
There seemed to have been a strange stone pillar, too.
Yet the increasingly dense moisture made Black Snake question whether its memory was mistaken. When the view abruptly opened before it, all the grass and shrubs vanished at the same height. Before it lay a thick accumulation of broken branches and driftwood, smelling of rot and dampness. Farther down was a rocky shore coated in mud and dust.
Not far away, the broad river washed against the bank again and again with a rushing splash.
Black Snake knew there was a river in this direction, but the sight before it showed that the once-clear water had become terribly muddy. The river was wider than it remembered, and the moisture sweeping toward it carried a chill.
Perhaps my memory was wrong...
Only the crows flying overhead knew that beneath the broad, muddy water lay that lush meadow.
Heavy rain upstream had triggered a flood. In just two days, it had submerged the meadow and inundated this small basin enclosed by mountains, turning it into a muddy yellow lake.
Murky water had flowed backward into streams and mountain gullies. Only where the stream water met the river did the water remain clear.
Among the broken branches and driftwood piled along the shore were many dead fish and the bloated carcasses of various drowned beasts.
For a moment, it felt rather bewildered and at a loss.
It did not know whether it should stubbornly search for the meadow in its memory or simply find somewhere nearby to forage.
Black Snake lifted its head high. Its nearsighted eyes could not make out the mountains on the opposite bank, seeing only hazy blue-green silhouettes. Nearby, flocks of wild ducks quacked, disappearing one by one from its thermal view before heat signatures emerged elsewhere. Occasionally, large white birds skimmed across the water and entered the pine forest on the hillside.
Just as Black Snake was puzzling over how to catch prey, it suddenly noticed the muddy river retreating, exposing the densely packed bare grass stalks of last autumn, broken or flattened in disarray. Everything was coated in silt.
Why was the water leaving?
Its smooth, flat brain found this difficult to understand.
The wild ducks spread their wings and flew away. A family of crows circled down and began enjoying the feast, though they warily kept their distance from Black Snake.
Black Snake paid no attention to the dead fish or the beast carcasses. Their smell was wrong, they gave off no heat, and they did not move, so it ignored them as though they were stones or pieces of wood.
Suddenly, its tongue caught an unusual scent.
It was unfamiliar, carrying a peculiar strangeness that was difficult to describe.
Its body moved slowly and silently along the driftwood marking the highest waterline, stopping and starting as it flicked its tongue repeatedly, analyzing and confirming the scent's source.
It slithered to a gentle earthen slope and stopped beside something exceptionally strange.
It first checked whether the thing posed a threat, flicking its tongue over and over to analyze and interpret it.
Cautiously, it circled halfway around.
The thing had no heat signature and remained motionless, yet it was not dead. Switching its thermal sensing mode, Black Snake could perceive a faint, peculiar vitality and confirm that it was alive.
It was about as thick as an ordinary wild boar, and both ends looked as though they had been severed. The tissue exposed at the breaks resembled flesh.
Its substance was whitish, yet it gave off no smell of meat whatsoever. Mixed among the broken branches and driftwood, it looked entirely out of place.
Its scent had nothing to do with the flesh and blood of beasts, nor was it the fragrance of plants. Instead, it was an unfamiliar smell carrying an earthy note.
Black Snake stared at the strange thing, studying it, then cautiously wound itself around it while maintaining an attacking posture.
Its muscles contracted, squeezing tight!
There was no resistance. It was thick and firm, with a resilient springiness, its texture resembling living, fatty flesh...
After it loosened its coils, the thing returned to its original shape, leaving Black Snake perplexed.