Thick fog shrouded the river at dawn.
The man came to the riverbank, tossed his fishing net onto the bow, climbed aboard, and bent down to bail out the accumulated water with a dipper.
Once he finished, he untied the hemp rope, coiled it a few times on the bow, and leaned forward to work the oars. The boat slowly left the bank.
The oars creaked against their wooden pins. Both wooden blades rose from the water together, swung forward, and dipped back in, sending out rings of ripples in a steady rhythm. There was no one else around. The fogbound river was utterly still, save for one splash after another.
The man concentrated on rowing, listening to the monotonous splashing.
He never noticed the enormous dark shape moving silently through the deep water beneath his boat. With a flick of its tail, it swept past without stirring so much as a ripple...
He had put considerable effort into weaving this new net, and hoped it would bring in more fish.
He narrowed his eyes to judge the speed of the current and estimate the depth.
With a strong swing, he cast the net.
He held his breath as he waited for it to sink. Soon, a tremor ran through his hands. A fish had hit the net!
He dared not rush. Alternating his hands, he carefully and steadily hauled in the rope. It pulled taut, and the struggling grew stronger and stronger.
Before the net was fully out of the water, he saw a fish over a foot long tangled inside, thrashing wildly and sending spray everywhere.
His luck was certainly good today. A fish on the very first cast.
He lifted the fish and tossed it into the boat with a smack. It bounced hard against the planks several times, scattering droplets. Smiling, the man shook the weeds from his net and cast it again.
The next three casts came up empty. On the fourth, he hauled in a fish just under a foot long.
Remembering the two-foot fish Old Xu from the village had caught a few days earlier, he felt his competitive spirit rise. A three-foot or five-foot fish would be best. If fortune truly smiled on him and he hauled up a monster over twenty feet long, he would have to take a couple of detours on his way back through the village.
He had lost count of his casts when a particularly heavy tremor traveled through his hands. This one had to be at least two feet long.
After considerable effort, he dragged a large fish aboard, its tail slapping and cracking against the boat.
He wiped the water from his face and looked at his lively catch. The early-spring morning chill and all his hard work had been worth it.
His spirits lifted, and he cast the net again.
I have to make a circuit of the village on my way back today!
He paid no mind to his soaked sleeves and deftly threw the net out. It swished into the water, and he gripped the rope tightly, silently counting as it sank.
Once it was deep enough, he put his arms into hauling the rope back.
Hmm? The tremors coming through the rope were powerful. Delight filled him. What a fine day this was! Tomorrow, he would visit the Snake Immortal Temple in the mountains to give thanks for its blessing.
He pulled hard, but it was unexpectedly heavy. He wondered whether the net had snagged on a rock on the riverbed.
Only after several more tugs did he realize something was wrong.
The thick fog had kept him from noticing earlier, but now he discovered that the boat was moving against the current. It was even turning!
Now the man panicked. What tremendous strength! Just what had he caught in his net?
Underwater, Black Snake swam forward with the fishing net over him, twisting irritably as he tried to shake the thing off. He had been concentrating on catching fish and had not noticed this thing dropping down from above.
He swung his head violently from side to side. The restraint loosened, and another couple of twists shook the net off completely.
He glanced back, dismissed it as vines drifting downstream, and could not be bothered to care. He slipped through the weeds and continued searching for large fish.
Aboard the boat, the man lay sprawled over the bow, sucking in sharp breaths of pain. He had scraped the skin off his forehead.
That immense force dragging his boat from underwater had been terrifying!
"Please don't blame me, Dragon King... Please don't blame me... I really didn't mean it..."
He kept muttering, but his hands never dared stop. He rowed for shore with all his might.
Beneath the water, Black Snake sensed through the vibrations that the wooden shell was leaving. Good riddance. That thing made far too much noise and kept scaring the fish away. It really interfered with his hunting.
He easily swallowed a fish about two feet long and gazed at the much emptier river.
This year's feast seemed to be over. Time to return to the mountains, then.
His head emerged from the water, swaying from side to side as he swam toward shore, pushing out a V-shaped wake. Such thick fog. Unfortunately, its flavor was wrong; it was no good for inhaling.
His body soon touched the river pebbles. They were a little slippery, but posed no obstacle to getting ashore. He crawled over floating sticks and weeds and climbed a mound beside a ditch, where he happened to spot several yellow cattle. Hearing the crunch of dry grass, the herd turned around, then immediately scattered in terror.
Following his hazy memories, he quietly slithered toward the mountain on the sunrise side of the small basin.
The village was noisy and clamorous.
Humans were always like this, fond of making entirely unnecessary noise.
As though going through a formality, he circled the stone pillar twice and gave it a couple of cursory looks. Satisfied, he turned to leave.
Hearing faint human voices in the distance, he decided to stop along the way and see the little boy who wet the bed. Other young ones would do too. He would look at them more often and study their appearances; that would make things easier after he learned to take another form.
He avoided places crowded with heat sources and searched for one alone. A lone one would be easy to bully. With his heat sense continually searching, he soon found a young one turning over stones in a stream.
The young one was comparatively weak and posed no threat. He could approach for a look.
The villagers were all talking at once about Ma the Second's encounter with the Dragon King, and no one noticed the great black snake beside the stream...
A little boy from some family was bending down and turning over stones to catch crayfish. He held a small stick with a little fish tied into a bundle at its tip with hemp thread. He gently extended it beside a rock that might conceal a crayfish, waited a moment, then pulled it back once the crayfish's claws caught hold.
He proudly lifted the little creature and tossed it into the basket at his waist.
Suddenly sensing a patch of shadow beside him, he straightened and turned around, looking curiously at the great black snake.
The scene seemed to freeze.
The little stick and bundle of thread in the boy's hand were still dripping.
Black Snake held his head high and flicked his tongue, carefully studying the boy's appearance from above: his tousled hair, his somewhat oversized, loose clothing, and the strong scent of crayfish.
Sniff~
It was cold beside the water. Two trails of snot hung beneath the boy's nose, but just as they reached his lips, he sucked them back in.
The chill that burrowed back into his nasal passages instead cleared his muddled little head.
"Are you the Snake Immortal? My mother said there's a great black snake in the mountains, and he lives in the Snake Immortal Temple."
Black Snake could not understand him. He was surprised that this young one was not afraid of him. That was nice. He had once been this close to other humans before, too, but those memories had long since blurred, leaving only a chattering jumble of shadows.
He had seen about enough, so he turned to head back.
The little boy watched Black Snake's retreating form with curiosity. His body swayed from side to side like flowing water. There really was a great black snake.
He watched in a daze, only bending down to catch more crayfish after the snake had disappeared completely from sight.
Black Snake returned to the valley.
He coiled atop Giant Rock to bask lazily in the sun, taking the opportunity to size up his new neighbor.
It was a skinny old man. He sat in his yard all day, neither pulling weeds nor doing any work. Of everyone across the mountains, he was the laziest, like a shriveled wild fruit still clinging to its tree even after spring had arrived.
Too little heat, weak blood and vitality, almost nothing worth eating, and no threat either. Having reached that conclusion, he paid him no further
attention.
He shifted slowly, polishing his beloved Giant Rock.
Perhaps the view was clearer because spring's new leaves had yet to emerge, or perhaps those old eyes had not yet grown dim. The skinny old man happened to look up and caught sight of the great black snake on Giant Rock nearby.
He was so frightened that he nearly fainted. He scrambled back into his house, and only after a long while did he peek out from behind a wall. He watched furtively for ages. Only after confirming that Black Snake had no intention of coming over did he clutch his chest and shakily breathe out.
Perhaps out of fear, the old man kept muttering under his breath, as though it could give him a sense of safety.
He dared not open the door or go down the mountain, much less shout for help, for fear of attracting the great snake's attention.
In that strangely taut atmosphere, he endured more than ten days trembling with fear.