On a hillside near Dripping Water Crag.
Dawn had barely broken. In silence, the two of them dug the earth and heaped up a new grave. The mound was plain, without exquisite stone carvings or even a headstone. Birds landed on the branches, chirping and cocking their heads curiously, wondering whether there were any worms in the fresh soil.
They bowed three final times, then rose.
They returned to the courtyard, took their simple luggage and a few letters, shut and locked the door, then turned to descend the mountain.
Two people and a dog followed the winding path, their silhouettes shrinking in the morning mist until they merged into the vast blue-gray mountains.
Golden morning sunlight shone on the mountaintops. This spring morning was warm, yet Chi Ke sat alone on a stone beside the grave, as though waiting for something.
Soon, the mountain friends he had known for years arrived at Dripping Water Crag, one after another.
They moved with astonishing speed. A long black shadow glided silently along the ground, Fox bounded like a leaping scarlet flame, and fat Weasel hopped and darted along.
Chi Ke froze, then understanding dawned on him.
"Yin spirits leaving your bodies... you kept me in the dark all this time. Hahaha! To have befriended you three in this lifetime, I, Chi, truly have no regrets!"
Black Snake and the other two kept their distance from Chi Ke.
One coiled, one sat on its haunches, one stood upright; by unspoken agreement, none came any closer.
Fox gave several brief, low cries that seemed both sorrowful and joyful. Black Snake remained silent. Knowing this was Chi Ke's phantom, Black Snake did not go forward and swat it apart as with other yin spirits, and now understood that human-shaped phantoms came from humans who had died.
They would not ask him to stay, nor did they express complicated emotions. They merely watched in silence.
Chi Ke seemed to have a thousand things to say, but sunlight crept down from the mountaintop inch by inch, drawing ever closer. It was time to leave.
He clasped his hands and bowed deeply.
"If we meet again, let us discuss the Dao once more. Take care."
After his farewell, his silhouette grew fainter and fainter.
Under the gaze of his three mountain friends, he finally became a wisp of dust in the wind, free of all attachments, and scattered away. Apricot blossoms fluttered down in profusion. Unknowing mountain birds landed merrily to hunt for grass seeds, their chirping clear and ethereal.
Black Snake stared at the new grave for a while, then returned to bask in the sun and raise body temperature before continuing to hunt and feed.
Lone Crag Courtyard stood empty.
There was no source of warmth, nor any barking. Wind carpeted the path with fallen leaves, little blades of grass emerged between the stone bricks before the door, and birds nested in cracks in the walls.
Fox and fat Weasel occasionally came to Giant Rock for a small gathering, but something seemed to be missing from their lives.
That feeling, however, could not linger for long. Life in the wild kept them busy surviving at every moment: hunting, fighting, or chasing butterflies at play. Everything was diluted by tangible hunger, drowsiness, and unfamiliar sounds.
Black Snake continued fishing in the river as usual, living by the rhythm of the rising sun and setting moon.
Breathing in the essence of rain, receiving lightning, gazing at the moon and drawing breath...
As time passed, Black Snake discovered that the people and events of Lone Crag Courtyard were slipping from memory, along with those rambling words and even the few syllables once memorized with difficulty. Attempts to remember them proved useless. Often, after waking from sleep, everything from yesterday seemed to have been washed by water, broad swaths faded or missing.
Chi Ke's face, and even his voice, were difficult to preserve within that smooth little brain, silently covered by year after year of mountain winds and fallen leaves.
Time did not matter, nor were the departed missed. Survival meant feeding, lying dormant, and raising a head to await the next rain...
Time flew like a shuttle.
Without even Black Snake noticing, a hundred years of life had quietly accumulated.
A black body twenty-six feet long lay coiled atop Giant Rock, quietly enjoying the afternoon sunlight. Occasionally, slit pupils turned toward nearby Lone Crag Courtyard for an indifferent glance.
Only blurred outlines of human figures and vague, indistinct voices remained in memory.
Drawing those thoughts back, Black Snake seriously considered a recently discovered problem: in recent years, shedding had not brought the obvious growth in size expected.
The arduous transformation consumed enormous physical strength and energy, yet produced only the tiniest changes.
So Black Snake considered whether to stop these unnecessary molts. Physical defenses were insufficient as well. Rather than waste strength on futile shedding, it would be better to strengthen the scales instead, making them thicker and harder.
After a glance at an unfamiliar hawk circling overhead, the pondering continued.
Right now, enlarging the head already demanded considerable effort, and the scales needed hardening too. There was quite a lot to do.
After lying coiled for a long time, Black Snake slowly shifted, scales rasping against the rock.
A forked tongue flicked out, paused briefly to investigate, then withdrew without a sound.
The chipmunk scurrying through the tree was not worth bothering with. The little creature was too small; catching it would simply waste strength for a gain that could not cover the cost.
Now, only the river's large fish could satisfy that steadily growing appetite, and they had become the main source of food.
The day drifted muddledly into night. Apart from the moon, those nearsighted eyes could see neither the stars nor the Milky Way spanning the heavens.
They did, however, spot little insects with glowing tails, flying aimlessly up and down.
Black Snake suddenly raised that head toward the pitch-black forest.
A forked tongue flicked out.
The body shifted with it, coiling into a posture better suited to striking or retreating.
In that dim gray field of vision, a "person" emerged from the woods.
But this was not a person. Though dressed in clothes, the figure had a fox's head, and its posture was exceedingly awkward. Its legs seemed unwilling to obey, wobbling as it walked with a clumsy, staggering gait.
Such a sight might frighten a human into a serious illness, but Black Snake was no human and therefore felt no fear.
From that familiar scent, and the cunning and wildness within its energy signature, Black Snake confirmed that this was indeed Fox.
But why had Fox become such a grotesque thing? Black Snake vaguely recalled hearing someone say that what left the body was a yin spirit, but should a yin spirit not look the same as its body?
Black Snake stared at the strange figure with a fox's head and a human body.
Could it be...
Could a yin spirit change too?
Immediately lowering that head, Black Snake focused and held breath, allowing consciousness to leave the body.
But what was supposed to change next? Black Snake did not know, looking from this spirit form to Fox's humanlike figure.
When Fox approached, Black Snake discovered that the feet were still furry fox paws, and the hands were fox claws too, merely with more flexible joints and the rudiments of five fingers. From a distance, it looked like a human silhouette; only up close did this odd patchwork become clear.
Fat Weasel came bounding over, froze at the sight, and stood upright, little eyes wide and round.
The half-human, half-fox Fox turned in circles as though clowning around.
Then Fox bent down and planted both forepaws on the ground. That form rippled gently like water, returning to its original red-fox appearance, before standing upright again. Light and shadow blurred around the body, and the illusion of coarse cloth garments enveloped it once more.
It was just a little short.
Two fluffy fox tails behind it swayed with particular liveliness in the moonlight.
They played for a while, then returned to their respective homes when their time outside ran out.
Once again, Black Snake remained alone.
In truth, Black Snake had no urgent need for yin spirit transformation. It could neither fill the belly nor fend off enemies, and was really something dispensable,
an unnecessary endeavor that hardly mattered either way.
It would be better to concentrate on making the body larger, the skull broader, and the scales sturdier.
Black Snake marveled inwardly at how quickly Fox's cultivation progressed. Fox's energy was richer and more substantial than before. How wonderful it would be to progress just as quickly, for every increase in strength meant another step away from death.
Points of firefly light drifted leisurely over the motionless, dark-black body, so many of them weaving a flowing river of stars belonging to the mountain forest.
The scales gleamed with a cold, dim luster beneath the moonlight. Wind swept over the treetops with a rustle.
The night wind carried faint traces of human scent.
As time flowed silently on, changes followed. Traces of human activity in the valley increased: figures in twos and threes, mostly entering the mountains to dig for medicinal herbs or gather various mountain products.
Black Snake could not be bothered to make contact, and those entering the mountains also instinctively avoided Giant Rock halfway up the slope, giving Lone Crag Courtyard a wide berth.