This Snake Right Here Is a Black Rat Snake - Chapter 3

By my second month at the prince’s estate, I had already been tormented out of half my life.

It was around then that I learned Xuan Lin kept snakes because our kind were naturally cool to the touch.

Even beneath a blazing sun, our bodies remained icy cold.

Xuan Lin, meanwhile, had suffered from an illness since childhood.

Whenever it struck, his body grew hot as a furnace, and only immersion in ice water could bring the fever down.

The white snake he had kept before could even conjure frost to cool him.

When the general told me this, I was so anxious I ate three chickens in a row.

I was a cultivating snake too, but no matter how hard a black rat snake cultivated, our spiritual power could never rival that of white snakes, the royalty of serpentkind.

When Xuan Lin needed me, could I really help him the way the white snake had?

Before I could think of a solution, Xuan Lin suffered an attack.

That day, the moment he climbed into his carriage after leaving the palace, heat swept through his entire body.

He burned all over, his brow beaded with dense, hot sweat.

When he saw me huddled in a corner, he crooked a finger.

“Come.”

I crawled toward him without thinking and wound myself around his wrist.

Tormented by the heat, Xuan Lin ran his long fingers restlessly over my body and accidentally pried up the scales over a certain spot.

I shuddered at once.

Oh! You shameless man!

Where did he think he was touching?

Mortified and furious, I smacked him with my tail.

Fortunately, the fever had left him dazed, and he did not notice.

Seeing this, I began to entertain ideas. Chuckling to myself, I slithered toward his lower body.

He snatched me up by the tail. His narrowed eyes plainly said,

“Do you want me to chop you into ten thousand pieces?”

When we finally reached the estate, Xuan Lin carried me off to soak in ice water.

My last near-drowning had left me traumatized, so I wrapped myself tightly around his neck and refused to enter the water.

He tried to peel me off, only to discover that the harder he pulled, the more frightened I became and the tighter I squeezed.

He had no choice but to coax me patiently.

“Get in the water first.”

“Your temperature is abnormal. If you don’t soak, you’ll fall ill.”

I hesitated.

Xuan Lin’s heat had raised my own temperature until it felt as though my organs were being cooked.

Without the ice water, I truly might die.

I loosened my grip on his neck and brushed the water with the tip of my tail.

It was cold.

But I was so afraid of drowning.

Xuan Lin had me coil around his arm.

“I’ll put only your body in the ice water and keep your head above it.”

“Don’t be afraid. You won’t drown.”

“I’m here.”

I wrapped myself tightly around him and shut my eyes, too frightened to look.

Moving very gently, he kept his promise and lowered most of my body into the water.

With my head pressed against his upper arm, I opened my eyes and saw his stern profile.

Xuan Lin was handsome.

At last, the ice bath restored both our temperatures to normal.

Unfortunately, a layer of wax flakes floated on the surface.

Alongside several black scales that had fallen from my body, their edges curled from the heat.

When I saw Xuan Lin studying them, I panicked that he might realize my scales were not white.

I swept my tail through the water and dragged a length of white gauze over them.

His lips curved. Lifting me into his arms, he walked toward the bed.

“Let’s sleep together.”

He was exhausted and fell asleep at once.

I was tired too, but I could not sleep.

Moonlight spilled into the room as I silently watched him.

Xuan Lin, had you realized that I was not your snake?

Today, I had exhausted all my spiritual power to help cool him.

I certainly could not compare to the white snake.

But I had helped a little, hadn’t I?

As long as I could cool him too, he would let me stay.

Xuan Lin, it wasn’t for the chicken.

I simply wanted, just a little, to remain by your side.

Xuan Lin truly seemed not to notice that my spiritual power was weaker than his former snake’s.

He even rewarded me with two hundred chickens for helping him.

That very evening, I marched grandly back to the barren mountain with every last chicken.

My clansnakes’ eyes had long since turned green with hunger, and they immediately feasted to their hearts’ content.

As the clan elder ate, he glanced at me several times.

“Zhuzhu, has your cultivation improved dramatically?”

I nodded.

“It seems to have happened in the last two days. By rights, exhausting my spiritual power should have made me sleep for ages. But when I woke up, I felt even stronger instead.”

That morning, I had realized that absorbing the red light from Xuan Lin’s body had greatly advanced my cultivation.

It was more effective than cultivating for ten years.

After hearing my account, the old clan elder quivered with excitement from head to tail.

“Zhuzhu, this may be an opportunity bestowed by heaven.

“We black rat snakes are lowly among serpentkind, and cultivation is difficult for us. Even after a thousand years, few can assume human form.

“But you have received the protection of a ruler among men. By sharing in his destiny, you may attain the Dao much sooner.

“Zhuzhu, you must seize this chance!”

I grew excited too.

“How do I share in it?”

The old elder wriggled coyly and eagerly, hearts bursting from his cloudy yellow-brown eyes.

“Why, through dual~~ cultivation~~ of course~~”

Dual cultivation?

How embarrassing.

I was only a black rat snake. Doing that with a human would be so mortifying.

At the thought of such amorous scenes, I writhed bashfully across the table.

Xuan Lin’s expression turned complicated.

“You’re twitching as if you’re having a seizure. Aren’t you afraid of spraining your waist?”

Then he muttered to himself,

“You don’t have a waist either.”

I stared at him eagerly.

How I wished I could ask when his illness would flare up again.

Unfortunately, he could not understand me.

Winter soon arrived, and I could not sleep comfortably in my cave.

Xuan Lin had made a little white-jade bed for his former snake. It stayed cool in summer, but in winter it was freezing.

And compared with something so hard, I much preferred burrowing into warm mud to sleep.

That inevitably left dirt caught between my scales.

When Xuan Lin tried to pick me up, he discovered I was as filthy as a loach.

With a dark expression, he ordered hot water brought in and personally pinned me in a basin to scrub me clean.

I struggled desperately, splashing him from head to toe with my tail.

The steward remarked from the side, “How strange. It used to adore cleanliness and baths.”

I instantly froze.

Xuan Lin smiled without betraying a thing.

“Indeed. Its nature has changed.”

He washed me with great care, lifting every scale and cleaning beneath it with a silk cloth.

Meanwhile, I wept.

Stop scrubbing off my wax!

Without it, wouldn’t I turn from a “white snake” back into a black rat snake?

So before he could discover the truth, I snuffed out the candles and fled.

I would come back after waxing myself again.