After getting a clear sense of his own strength, Mo Fei had originally planned to start selling his wares right away.
But the trouble Tom caused delayed his plans a little.
The day after Mo Fei cooked them a meal, Tom caused a major incident.
He woke up in Jimmy's bed that morning, as usual.
The temperature outside had dropped considerably over the past two days. Of the rooms on the second floor, only Jimmy's bed and one other child's were a little warmer, and Tom had been sleeping with Jimmy ever since he entered the orphanage.
But that day, when Jimmy opened his eyes, he saw a snake coiled up in a dormant state by the window.
When he got out of bed, he nearly stepped on it.
He had never seen a snake before, and once again, he lost control of himself and screamed.
This time, Mo Fei hurried over in time and saw the snake beside his bed.
Even with all that commotion, it showed no sign of waking. It seemed to have grown stiff from the cold and entered the room for warmth.
It all seemed perfectly reasonable, but the problem was that Mo Orphanage had never received a visit from a snake like this in all the years before.
Besides, he had no idea whether this particular snake was venomous.
He only remembered some educational material from years ago saying something about snakes with triangular heads. He could not remember any of the specifics.
Faced with this situation, Mo Fei could only deal with it first.
The moment Aiwen saw the snake, he took the children to hide in the corner farthest from it.
Aiwen had seen this sort of creature before. Before entering the orphanage, he had witnessed one kill a thug with a single bite. The thug's sickening complexion at the end and the blood constantly spilling from the corners of his mouth had become unforgettable memories for him.
Now, merely seeing a snake had left Aiwen without the strength to walk.
Had he not been worried about the other children's safety, he might not even have had the strength to speak.
Mo Fei was actually rather at a loss too, but he still had to deal with it.
So Mo Fei fetched a sack, carefully lifted the snake into it with a stick, then sealed the mouth of the sack tightly.
Afterward, he took it outside and smashed the sack hard with a shovel. Only when blood had thoroughly stained the sack red did he carefully lift it by the opening and pour out the pulped flesh inside.
As he poured it out, an idea struck him, and he tipped it straight onto the former herb plot.
Once the flesh and blood decomposed in spring, they would make the best fertilizer.
As for any toxins it might contain, there was no need to worry. Microorganisms were not afraid of those proteins...
But only after dealing with it did he begin to feel a little frightened in retrospect.
If the snake had been awake rather than hibernating, if it had been highly venomous, if it had bitten the children, the very foundation of his orphanage would have been utterly destroyed.
Leaving everything else aside, the time they had spent together had given Mo Fei some affection for the children. Watching a child lose their life on his own grounds was something he could not accept at all.
To put it more pragmatically, without these children, his system would be completely useless. Then, in the future, would he have no choice but to wait for new orphans to come to his door again, or...
Those were all the worst possible choices.
Just now, he had still been shaken, so Mo Fei had not figured out why the snake had appeared.
But once he calmed down, leaving aside where it had come from, Mo Fei did not even have to think hard to know why it had appeared-Voldemort, Tom Riddle.
In the original work, J. K. Rowling had merely called the power passed down through the Slytherin bloodline Parseltongue.
Yet she had never explored the specific powers of Parseltongue in depth. It seemed that after becoming a standard feature of the Dark Lord, it had no further value.
But it should not have been like that.
As a power passed down from a legendary great wizard, was the ability to communicate with snakes, or control them, really all there was to it?
Mo Fei certainly did not think so.
Now that snakes were approaching Tom even in winter, was that also part of his power awakening?
Moreover, Mo Fei suddenly thought of something. As a wizard, there was something Tom would experience during his youth-an accidental magic outburst.
This was something Tom was bound to go through. If it was a simple outburst, that would be one thing. What worried Mo Fei was that, as the Dark Lord, an outburst of his magic might bring ten thousand snakes out of their holes. Then they would really be in trouble.
His orphanage would become a snake pit.
Although he did not know how Wool's Orphanage had made it through that period, Mo Fei still intended to remain more vigilant. After all... had fate not already changed?
After thoroughly calming himself down, Mo Fei returned to the children's room.
Seeing that the children were all somewhat frightened in retrospect after Aiwen's explanation, Mo Fei promptly comforted them.
"Don't worry, children. It was probably too cold outside, and this little snake felt the warmth of the fireplace and crawled in. Later, we'll patch up the gaps in the room, and everything will be fine from now on..."
But the children were still a little worried. It seemed they had yet to recover from the fright.
So Mo Fei's eyes darted around, and he turned to a fairy tale he knew very well to change the subject.
"Since everyone's awake, get up and wash first. After breakfast, I'll tell you all a story about a venomous snake..."
Hearing that there would be a story distracted the children considerably. Even Aiwen looked over curiously.
Mo Fei did not begin, however. He merely pointed toward the washroom, then took Tom, who had woken up at some point, and walked out.
Lina went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast, while Aiwen looked at Tom in Mo Fei's arms with a somewhat complicated expression.
After leaving the room, Mo Fei took Tom to his own room. Only then did he let his guard down a little.
"Tom, oh, Tom. I hope you won't be too dangerous. Just what sort of power is Parseltongue? It seems I'll need to pay more attention to you..."
After saying that, he stared intently into those inorganic-looking black eyes.
Only when Tom let out a few hungry whimpers did he take out some milk and feed him.
He had to admit that, when eating, Tom was no different from any ordinary little child.
By the time Jimmy finished washing and came looking for Tom, Mo Fei had already brought the child to the dining table.
Since it was already getting late, Lina had not made any new dishes today. Instead, she reheated the bread left over from yesterday and made a thick soup.
The children were all rather distracted as they ate today, waiting for Mo Fei's story throughout the meal.
Seeing how impatient they were, Mo Fei delayed no further and launched straight into the story of the farmer and the snake.
However, he had adapted this story once more.
"In a small town in Britain, there was a tramp. Because he was poor, he had no fixed home and often went from one meal to the next without knowing when he would eat again... until one day, he found a snake frozen stiff beneath a bridge..."
"He originally wanted to eat it, but he didn't know whether it was venomous, and it was frozen too hard. So he simply put the snake inside his clothes to warm it, planning to find someone knowledgeable afterward to help identify it... but who could have expected the snake to wake up against his chest..."
At this point, all the children grew nervous.
They had just been frightened by a snake themselves. If the tramp in the story faced the same thing, only with the snake even closer to him, and it bit him, then what would happen...
Aiwen could already picture the scene, and his face grew a little pale.
Several of the girls were so nervous that they stuffed their hands into their mouths.