Black Snake watched the village for a long time, but still could not figure out where the problem lay.
After long and painful thought, everything remained a tangled skein.
When hungry, he entered the river to catch fish, making do with a few fish about a foot long. With his mind occupied, he had little appetite.
At dusk, the setting sun slowly pressed against the mountain ridge. Now and then, fish leaped from the river, splashing up glimmers like shattered gold.
Ah, if I can't figure it out, I'll leave it for now and go back to the mountain. Giving the Yin Spirit a form isn't something I can rush.
He hurried upstream along the riverbank.
The pebble beach was broad and unobstructed, making travel pleasantly easy. After nightfall, only the rushing water at the rapids could be heard.
Along the way, he spotted a skeleton lying across his path. It was human.
At first, he paid it no mind. Bones were everywhere in the wilderness. Exposed to wind, sun, and rain, sooner or later they would crumble and return to dust.
Suddenly, Black Snake stopped.
He turned his head, his slit pupils fixed on the skeleton. He seemed to have realized what his transformation lacked.
The hardest part of transforming a Yin Spirit into a human was not copying the outer flesh, but creating the bones that supported its shape.
No wonder imitating movements always felt stiff and difficult. He had been missing a skeleton. Though the Yin Spirit seemed ethereal, it too needed bones forged strong enough to bear weight. Only with bones could that insubstantial spirit be anchored by the weight of existence.
Suddenly, something occurred to him. Did his own Yin Spirit have snake bones?
He examined it carefully and confirmed that it did not. All