That Black Snake Always Crawls onto My Bed at Night - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My name is Liu Mian.

I live at the very end of Clearwater Village. Behind my house is a desolate mountain, and in front is a river that has nearly run dry.

My parents died early, leaving me with nothing but this drafty, broken-down shack and a pile of unpaid debts. I survive by doing laundry and mending clothes for others. Life isn’t particularly good, but it isn’t too bad either.

That was until half a month ago, when the Village Head and a matchmaker cornered me at my front door. They said they wanted to betroth me to the town’s Rice Shop Owner as his sixth concubine.

That Rice Shop Owner is fifty-two this year. As for the previous five wives, they either died of illness or during childbirth. Whenever the villagers mention him, they lower their voices and curse him for being a man marked for divine retribution.

I tore up the marriage contract on the spot.

The Village Head’s face darkened, and he told me I didn’t know what was good for me.

I matched his cold expression and told him I’d rather starve to death than warm that old man’s bed.

From that day on, the villagers began whispering behind my back, saying I had a cursed fate and that a woman like me deserved to be unwanted.

I didn’t care.

In their eyes, I had never been a person anyway.

I was more like a piece of cargo that could be traded for silver.

The Black Snake came after that.

The first night it crawled onto my bed, I felt as though my entire body had frozen. Its scales were cold and slick as it slowly coiled around my ankle, tightening inch by inch, as if afraid I might run away.

My fingers trembled so much I didn’t even dare lift the quilt.

It didn’t move either; it just remained coiled at the foot of my bed, head raised, watching me.

I endured the whole night, only drifting into a hazy sleep as dawn approached.

When I woke up, it was gone.

A bag of honeyed dates sat by the bed.

The dates were still warm, as if they had just been tucked against someone’s chest.

Looking at the bag, my skin crawled. I picked it up, intending to throw it away.

But then I thought about the price of honeyed dates and couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I set them on the table and stared at them for half a day before finally opening the bag and trying one.

It was very sweet.

So sweet that the back of my neck felt numb.

It came again the second night.

It was the same-it crawled onto the bed soundlessly, first coiling around my feet before slowly resting its tail against my waist.

I grit my teeth and didn’t dare move, thinking that if this thing dared to bite me tonight, I’d rip its scales off even if it cost me my life.

Instead, it just lowered its head and sniffed near my hand.

In that moment, I inexplicably felt like it was confirming something.

When I woke up on the third day, the silver hairpin I had lost half a month ago was lying on my pillow.

It was the only decent thing my mother had left me.

I had dropped it while delivering clothes a while back. I had walked the road to town three times looking for it but found nothing, and I had even had a good cry once I got home.

Now, it lay safely by my hand, and even the tiny piece of jade on the head of the pin had been wiped clean.

I clutched the silver hairpin, my heart tightening.

What exactly did this snake want?

To repay a debt of gratitude?

Or was it giving me a bit of sweetness before taking my life?

On the fourth day, I went to see Granny Liu at the east end of the village.

Granny Liu was a shaman who loved nothing more than reading faces and exorcising evil spirits. When I told her about the Black Snake, she first sucked in a breath of cold air, then squinted her eyes to size me up.

“A black snake?”

“Pitch black all over, with golden eyes?”

I nodded.

Granny Liu fell silent.

She stared at me for a long time before suddenly asking, “Did it hurt you?”

“No.”

“Did it bite you?”

“No, that either.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”

I almost laughed out of sheer frustration.

“It’s a snake!”

Granny Liu rubbed her string of shiny prayer beads and said slowly, “There are different kinds of snakes. If it were an ordinary mountain snake, how could it recognize a specific bed and a specific person?”

“Liu Mian, I’m afraid you’ve attracted something you shouldn’t have.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“What do you mean by ‘something I shouldn’t have’?”

Granny Liu didn’t say it directly. She just handed me a packet of realgar powder.

“Try sprinkling this around the foot of your bed tonight.”

“If it still dares to come, then this isn’t just a simple case of a malevolent haunting.”

I headed home with the packet of realgar tucked in my clothes.

As soon as it got dark, I sprinkled the powder in a circle around the bed, not even sparing the threshold of the door.

I thought that this time, I would finally get a peaceful night’s sleep.

Instead, in the middle of the night, the oil lamp in the room lit itself.

I snapped my eyes open, nearly screaming.

The Black Snake was coiled right next to my pillow.

Its head was lowered, its flickering tongue almost touching my chin, and its golden eyes glowed eerily in the firelight.

As for the circle of realgar at the foot of my bed, it looked as though something had forcibly pressed a gap through it.

My scalp went numb with terror. I grabbed my pillow and threw it at the snake.

The Black Snake didn’t dodge.

The pillow hit it weakly and fell back into my arms.

It stared at me, and it actually looked as if it were smiling.

I trembled with rage. “What do you want!”

Naturally, it didn’t answer.

It only slowly extended its tail and went to coil around my ankle again.

I flinched back. Its tail paused for a moment, and then it actually stopped.

Then, it rested its head beside my knee.

Like a large cat that had been scolded.

I was stunned.

That night, I didn’t sleep again.

But the strange thing was, as much as I was afraid, by the end of it, I wasn’t as desperate to faint on the spot as I had been at the beginning.

Near dawn, I even reached out on a strange impulse and touched the scales on its back.

Cold, hard, and slick.

But it didn’t bite me.

It only gave its tail a gentle curl, wrapping it around my wrist.

As if it were trying to please me.

On the fifth day, the Rice Shop Owner’s people came again.

This time, they weren’t here to propose marriage; they were here to collect a debt.

They claimed that the money my father had owed back then had been dragged out for so long that the interest had compounded. If I didn’t pay up now, they would seize this broken shack of mine as collateral.

I stood in the courtyard and said coldly, “Show me the promissory note.”

The steward slapped a piece of paper in front of me with a smug look on his face.

I scanned it and almost laughed from anger.

Not only had they tripled my father’s old debt on the paper, but they had even mixed in some ancient, trivial accounts from the Village Head’s family.

“This isn’t my family’s debt.”

“It has your father’s name on it, so it’s your family’s.”

“Then why don’t you write your ancestors’ coffin money on there too?”

The steward’s face darkened instantly.

“Miss Liu, don’t speak so boldly.”

“You’re just a woman. No matter how tough your talk is, there will always come a time when you need to beg for help.”

As he spoke, his eyes swept over my chest with a filthy, lingering gaze.

My stomach churned with revulsion. I snatched up the wooden basin from the courtyard and hurled it at him.

The man dodged it and began cursing, lunging forward to grab me.

But in the next second, it was as if something had tripped him. He lunged forward violently, face-planting into the muddy water.

The two servants following behind hadn’t even reacted before they, too, were sent flying one after another, as if swept aside by an invisible tail.

A strange wind suddenly whipped up outside the courtyard gate.

There was a faint, fishy scent in the air.

I stiffened, instinctively looking back into the house.

Behind the window paper, a dark shadow glided past silently.

After that day, no one dared to barge into my house directly again.

However, the village gossip about me only grew more vicious.

Some said I had seduced a Snake Immortal from the mountains.

Others said my life was worthless, and that sooner or later, I would be dragged into a cave and eaten alive by a snake.

I heard it all but chose to ignore it.

Returning to my room at night, I stared blankly at the empty bed for a while.

I actually found myself checking the side of my pillow first.

It was as if I were confirming whether that bag of honeyed dates would appear again.

On the seventh night, a heavy rain fell outside.

The thunder rumbled low, making the window paper tremble in fits and starts.

I had just blown out the lamp and lain down when I heard the bed slats creak softly.

He was here.

My whole body went rigid; I kept my eyes shut, not daring to move.

That familiar chill first pressed against my instep, then slowly wound its way upward.

I bit my lip hard, trying to feign sleep to get through it.

But this time, the cold sensation didn’t stop at my ankles.

It slowly coiled around my calves, the back of my knees, and finally came to a rest at my waist.

My heart beat so fast it felt like it would jump out of my throat.

In the next instant, an icy hand gripped my chin.

I snapped my eyes open.

The lamp by the bed suddenly lit itself.

Before my eyes was no longer that Black Snake.

Instead, it was a man.

He wore a robe of ink-black silk, with long hair cascading down to his waist. His brow was deep, his nose bridge straight, and his features were almost excessively handsome. Most striking were his eyes-narrow and cold, yet possessing pupils that shimmered with a layer of dark gold, identical to those of the Black Snake.

He was leaning against the head of my bed, propping his head up with one hand while the other toyed with my hair tie.

Seeing me finally open my eyes, he raised an eyebrow slightly.

“Your acting isn’t very convincing.”

My mind exploded with a roar. I scrambled backward, my back hitting the wall with a dull thud.

“You, you, you…”

“What about me?”

His voice was low and raspy, carrying the dampness of the rainy night.

I grabbed my pillow and threw it at him. “Aren’t you a snake!”

“I am.”

He reached out to catch the pillow and set it aside casually.

“I still am.”

I was going crazy.

“Get out!”

“This is my house!”

He watched me for a moment, then suddenly gave a small laugh.

“Liu Mian.”

“Have you forgotten? You were the one who picked me up first.”

I froze.

“When did I ever…”

“Seven years ago, downstream of the Clearwater River.”

“You were wearing an old red padded jacket, your sleeves were soaked through, and you were crouching by a rock, poking at the wounds on my body with a twig.”

“You fed me half a bag of honeyed dates.”

“You even said that being this black was ugly as death.”

I went completely still.

I couldn’t actually remember things from seven years ago very clearly.

I only vaguely recalled a great flood that summer, and that I had found a dying little black snake by the river. Its body had been bloodied from being hit by stones, and it was curled in a rock crevice, motionless.

I was bold back then. Thinking that any living thing deserved a chance at life, I scooped it up, brought it home, and hid it behind the kitchen to nurse it for a few days.

It wouldn’t eat, so I soaked honeyed dates in water and fed it bit by bit.

Later, it disappeared on its own.

I had been dejected about it for quite a while.

But I never imagined-

That snake would grow into a man like this and crawl back into my bed in the middle of the night.

My throat felt dry.

“So… it was you?”

“Mm.”

“Then why did you come back?”

He slowly wound my hair tie around his fingertips and looked up at me.

“To repay a kindness.”

Before I could even breathe a sigh of relief, he added another sentence.

“And to collect a debt.”

I tensed up again immediately. “I saved you, and you’re collecting a debt from me?”

“Nothing is too much to give in return for saving a life.”

“But you said it yourself back then.”

He leaned in slightly, the gold in his eyes like a damp fire.

“Once I took human form, you would marry me.”

My mind went blank.

“When did I ever say such a thing?”

“You said it while you were binding my wounds.”

“You also said that since I ate your dates and stayed in your kitchen, I had to be your man from then on.”

My mouth hung open, and I couldn’t make a sound for a long time.

This sounded exactly like the kind of nonsense I would say.

Especially the fearless version of me from seven years ago.

But-

“I just said that offhandedly!”

His expression remained calm.

“I took it seriously.”

I was nearly choked by his words.

“What does you taking it seriously have to do with me?”

“It has everything to do with you.”

His voice dropped lower, his words falling almost against my ear.

“I’ve come to claim my status.”