My Partner Is a Little Golden Python - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I captured Xu Tuan from Golden Valley. He wasn’t this big when I caught him. I dug a simple pitfall trap and placed a chicken on top.

Xu Tuan ate the chicken and fell in. I had pumped half a catty of sleeping pills into the chicken. When I went to check the trap, Xu Tuan was still groggy inside the hole.

I dragged the enormous golden python home, where my dad gave me a beating and told me to throw the thing out.

My mom shrieked in terror, saying she’d kill me tonight.

Helpless, I dragged him over to my grandpa. Grandpa asked where I’d caught him, and I said Golden Valley.

Grandpa asked why I wanted to keep a snake. I said our family runs a chicken farm, and we couldn’t deal with the sickly chicks, so for the farm’s sake, I wanted to catch a snake to handle those chickens and also have a pet.

I waited for Grandpa to praise me, but instead he chased me two li with a shoe.

Later, the Old Master still kept Xu Tuan because he said the snake I dragged back wasn’t ordinary. A pure gold one like this could serve as a Guardian Spirit, and a Guardian Spirit that’s been begged for can’t be sent away.

I objected, saying I hadn’t begged for him; I’d caught him fair and square.

Grandpa got angry again and chased me, cursing, “You little brat, you know a Guardian Spirit is supposed to be begged for. All these years, you’re the only damn one who went to Golden Valley to catch one.”

Right after I brought him back, Xu Tuan was unconscious for three days at our house, covered in injuries. His golden scales were streaked with blood, and some patches were bare.

I don’t know if they were already like that or if my trap had knocked them off.

You have to care for a snake you brought home yourself!

As a ten-year-old with a sense of basic morals, I stole medicine from home and applied it to him every day.

After three days of treatment, he woke up and asked who I was. While applying medicine, I chattered, “I’m Xu Han, from now on I’m your big sister.”

At that time, Xu Tuan wasn’t as big as he is now. He wasn’t large but was fierce, and he angrily opened his mouth to bite me.

Unfortunately, he was injured and missed. I grabbed a stick and knocked him out, then angrily continued applying the medicine.

The more I applied, the angrier I got. While doing it, I scolded him, “Do you know how hard your big sister works every day to treat you? Do you know how many bitter tears I shed to keep you? Do you know how much I’ve sacrificed for you?”

“You know nothing. You only know how to bite your sister.”

Remembering the pain of being double-teamed by Mom and Dad, I applied the medicine even harder.

Without scales to protect him, he must have felt the sting. Dazedly, he curled up closer into my arms.

“It hurts.”

“Call me sister and I’ll go easier.”

He didn’t answer, but after a long while, probably unable to bear it, he muttered, “Sister.”

He burrowed deeper into my embrace, coiling around my waist and nuzzling, “Sister, will you kill me?”

“Why would I kill you?”

Seeming to get the assurance he wanted, he then dazedly passed out again.

For my part, I marveled at how good the village doctor’s sleeping pills were-after all these days of sleep, he could still sleep more.

Later, my grandpa told me it wasn’t that the sleeping pills were effective, but that Xu Tuan had just survived a Thunder Tribulation and had no energy. Otherwise, not even two hundred scrawny kids like me could have caught him.

But after hearing that, I kept worrying that Xu Tuan would run off once he woke up.

So I started lacing his food with sleeping pills every day, and he slept even better.

Then eventually Xu Tuan fell into such a deep sleep that he wouldn’t stir even when I applied medicine.

I couldn’t help worrying again-had I given him too many sleeping pills? Was he about to die?

I kept watch every day, but he didn’t wake up for half a month. I figured he might really be dead.

Crying, I dragged him out, ready to bury him.

I had already dug the pit. After laying him inside, I thought I should keep something to remember Xu Tuan by. So I tugged on one of his scales.

He jolted awake from hibernation, shocked to find himself in a dirt hole. He asked me, “Didn’t you say that if I called you sister, you wouldn’t kill me?”

“…”

I stared at his shock-he had come back to life.

Right then, my grandpa came looking for me, stick in hand, ready to beat me again. Chasing after me, he cursed, “He’s hibernating! What are you doing, you little brat? We finally managed to beg for a Guardian Spirit, and now you’re trying to bury him alive again?”

“…”

The snake didn’t get buried, and from then on he made his home with us.