Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, but Thunderbolt Taoist Sect

Chapter 36 Snake Man

According to the snake charmer's story, the snake named Erqing must have been very intelligent from a young age, the kind that is born with intelligence. But Dongjun, which Dou Xu mentioned, is very far from here, and there are mountains between it. How did it manage to climb over here?

"I learned about the snake charmer from a friend two years ago. Now, the little green snake has probably grown quite a bit and is old enough to be replaced."

This is the case for most animals used in acrobatic performances. Their main purpose is to perform and make money. If they get old or too big, they have to be replaced and smaller ones are used to fill the gap.

Compared to many snakes used for performances, Erqing is very lucky. It is loved by snake charmers and has grown to a huge size that allows it to walk sideways among its kind. Now it seems to have developed intelligence and can cultivate itself into a spirit. If it can continue to persevere, it may even transform into a dragon in a thousand years.

To maximize the value of their snakes, most snake charmers resell the snakes they replace, which end up as snake soup on the tables of the wealthy. The fact that the snake charmer who raised Erqing released it shows that he truly loved his snake.

"I didn't expect that."

Dou Xu squatted on the ground, looking at Erqing who was curled up on the ground.

"It's only been a few years, and he's grown so big."

Several years ago, Dou Xu was just a young man who hadn't even reached the age of twenty. He lived in a village and hadn't seen many acrobatic performances. The time he went to Dongjun to visit a friend was the first time he had seen a snake charmer perform. At that time, Da Qing and Er Qing were at their most famous, and the performance was indeed wonderful. So he still remembers the characteristics of those two green snakes.

However, he never saw the snake charmer again. What happened next was told to him by his friend from Dongjun, who saw his interest. If Erqing was released two years ago, the snake was more than three feet long then, but today it has tripled in length. It's a terrifying growth rate.

Xi Fangping also realized this. He and his father made a living by farming, and they often encountered snakes and rodents in the fields. There were some that were on the larger side, but none of them were too outrageous. If they encountered one, they could be dealt with by a hoe. But the snake in front of them, named Erqing, was indeed too big.

In just a few years, it has grown from a few feet to more than ten feet. If left unattended, wouldn't it continue to grow?

"I've heard of a snake called the Bashe, which can swallow an elephant whole. Could it be...?"

“Brother Xi, you’re talking about Baling Jun from the Classic of Mountains and Seas. I’m guessing… The Baling Jun recorded in the book is in the Dongting Lake area, which is far from here.”

Dou Xu originally wanted to say that the Classic of Mountains and Seas was just a book of strange and supernatural beings, and that most of the animals in it did not exist. However, he then thought of that magical dream, the two people standing next to him who looked different from ordinary people, Xi Fangping himself, and Erqing sitting on the ground. They didn't seem so prominent anymore. With all these strange and supernatural beings in the room, it seemed a bit far-fetched to say that they didn't exist.

So he changed his tune, geographically refuting Xi Fangping's conjecture that Erqing was a Bashe (a mythical snake).

"So, what are you going to do with this giant snake?"

The fact that Erqing had a background might guarantee that he wouldn't hurt people indiscriminately, but Dou Xu was still a little scared to have such a big snake coiled up in his house.

There was no way around it; Erqing was simply too big, over ten feet long and as thick as a bowl, making its presence impossible to ignore.

"Although it is intelligent, it cannot speak, and it has been lurking behind your neighbor's vegetable garden, watching the beehive inside."

"Behind the vegetable garden next door?!"

These words made Dou Xu frown. There was a neighbor next to him, an elderly man, who did indeed have a beehive in his vegetable garden, where bees had been breeding for more than 30 years.

That snake is so big and coiled up behind the old man's house, it's too dangerous!

"We'll have to wait until tonight to find out exactly what this Erqing is planning to do."

"Why wait until night? Could it be that it can speak at night?"

"more or less."

A flash of silver light appeared, and Xi Fangping blinked, realizing that it was the light reflecting off the metal folding fan in Yuan Wuxiang's hand. The fan was also mainly silver-white, which suited the person holding it very well.

But when did this fan appear? Previously, we only saw Juan Shoutian holding a whisk, and the color of the whisk's bristles was very similar to his own hair, making people think that he had cut off a section of his own hair to make the whisk. Yuan Wuxiang had nothing in his hand.

Upon hearing the mention of Yuan Wuxiang's hand, Xi Fangping recalled the strange sensation on his shoulder when the other man had pulled him. His gaze followed the unfolded silver fan downwards, landing on Yuan Wuxiang's hand beneath his wide sleeve.

The first thing that catches the eye is the silver color, which is fine; the other person's gloves are silver-white. But this sheen... it's not made of fabric. Did they take off the gloves?

"What happened to your hand...?"

Without the gloves to cover them, Xi Fangping understood that Yuan Wuxiang's hands were not only silver, but also had a metallic luster similar to that of a silver fan. There were patterns engraved on the back of his hands. These were not flesh and blood hands at all, but a pair of moving silver artifacts!

"My hand? Oh, did this scare you?"

Although Erqing's teeth were in poor condition, the bite didn't even break the glove, and his own teeth were almost broken. However, Juan Shoutian still checked the bite site afterward, citing the snake's unusual nature and the possibility of other problems.

To conduct an inspection, one would naturally have to remove gloves. After removing the gloves, Yuan Wuxiang decided not to put them back on yet and conjured a folding fan in his hand.

"This item is called Silver Dart Hero Transformation, formerly known as Silver Dart Mystic Solution. It is both a prosthetic limb for my severed hand and a weapon that can transform into countless forms. I am known as the Silver Dart Master, and it is thanks to it that I am called the Silver Dart Master."

Erqing, who was originally lying on the ground, slowly stood up until her head reached waist level, so that she could see Yuan Wuxiang holding the silver fan, her hand gleaming with the same silver light.

Erqing followed snake charmers through the streets and alleys from a young age. Although he couldn't distinguish everything in human society, he could still recognize metals.

Erqing: No wonder it was so hard when you took a bite.

At first, Xi Fangping was concerned about Yuan Wuxiang's hand, which seemed to be made of metal, and thought it was some kind of special ability. But after hearing the explanation, he became more concerned about the "severed hand".

That is to say, in the past, their hands were the same as theirs, but then they were severed. What kind of calamity could sever a person's hands?

Juan Shoutian walked over, used his whisk to prop Erqing up, and was about to knock him down on Yuan Wuxiang's head when he grabbed Yuan Wuxiang's wrist with his other hand.

“My friend’s hand was lost in a previous battle while he covered my retreat.”

Juan Shoutian's expression remained unchanged, and his eyes were always unreadable, so both Xi Fangping and Dou Xu felt that he was not easy to approach and always had a certain distance from them. However, when he talked about Yuan Wuxiang's severed hand, his sad and heartbroken expression was extremely profound.

"Many years have passed since this incident. It was my own choice to cover up for my friend, and it is only natural to go through fire and water for my brother. There is no need to dwell on it."

Upon hearing about the battle, Dou Xu recalled their conversation at the banquet. The two men came from a place rich in resources but also fraught with hardship. Anyone who wants to enter the world must go through a tribulation.

But as he thought about the banquet, he remembered that the two people in front of him had appeared in his dream. Since these two people existed in reality, then the banquet in his dream, the layered pavilions and towers, the King of Gui Mansion and the princess nicknamed Lotus, were all real.

"Two Taoist priests!"

Thinking of all this, Dou Xu quickly stood up, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

"The banquet last night, Princess..."

“Everything Your Majesty said at the banquet was true.”

"But my home..."

That means it's true that the two sides are neighbors. But Dou Xu remembers very clearly that his neighbor was just an elderly man, and there was absolutely no way he could be neighbors with a country.

"If you really miss it, we will definitely meet again, so don't worry."

This left everyone confused. It was said that the giant snake Erqing could talk at night, so Dou Xu wanted to stay up late to see how the snake would speak. But when night actually came, he couldn't keep his eyelids open and almost fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

While he was asleep, the guide from the Bee Kingdom arrived again, inviting everyone to a banquet. The difference this time was that Xi Fangping and Er Qing were also present.

Erqing wanted the honey from the Bee Kingdom and had been loitering outside for several months, causing the Bee Kingdom a lot of losses. This matter couldn't be ignored, and the only way to deal with it was for Erqing and the King to talk face to face.

The guide was immediately stunned when he saw Erqing coiled on the ground. Although the bees had become like humans under the blessing of the dream, and Erqing was no longer a terrifying giant python thousands of feet long in their eyes, the power of their natural enemy could not be ignored.

Can you turn into a human right now?

The bees used dream illusions to transform into human form. Erqing already possessed intelligence and her thinking was closer to that of a human. She even wanted food that humans could eat. It shouldn't be difficult for her to create a human form for herself in the illusion.

Upon hearing this reminder, the giant snake on the ground seemed to ponder for a moment before stretching out its coiled body, and a figure stood up from the ground.

Unlike the Bee Kingdom King and Lotus Princess, who each have their own unique humanoid features, Erqing is clearly imitating someone else's appearance: a somewhat thin middle-aged man dressed in the simplest clothes, with a bamboo box on his back.

"It's that snake charmer from Dongjun!"

Because he was having the same dream again, but everyone he had met in real life was on the list, Dou Xu couldn't tell whether he was awake or asleep. Just as he was feeling drowsy, he saw Erqing on the ground suddenly appear, and his attention was completely taken over.

He recognized the figure immediately; it was the famous snake charmer from Dongjun who had raised Erqing.

"I see, that makes it simple."

The villagers of Yuanwu Township looked at Erqing, who had transformed into human form. The fact that Dou Xu, whom they had met a few years ago, recognized him immediately showed that Erqing's imitation was very accurate. It had been raised by the snake charmer for many years, and the human form it was most familiar with was him.

Humans are blessed by fate and are the head of all living beings. Animals that have developed intelligence often imitate human behavior, using this to cultivate themselves and become spirits.

For example, a dog that can stand up and walk like a human, or a fox that follows a scholar to read books, can transform from a beast into a demon, and then into a human.

The human form that Erqing transformed into was exactly the same as a real snake charmer. Once they arrived in Dongjun, they could use this appearance to find the person.

……

"You've grown up too."

On the other side of the mountain, a snake charmer in Dongjun stroked the green snake coiled on his leg and sighed softly.

He was the most famous snake charmer in Dongjun. In his early years, he had two very intelligent green snakes, one large and one small. However, the larger green snake died after a year, and he could never fill the vacancy.

One night, he was sleeping in a temple when he discovered that his other snake, Erqing, was missing. Since his snakes were very obedient, he always had the habit of letting them out of their bamboo box to roam around for a while, and he suspected that Erqing had escaped while being let out for a walk.

Just as he was regretting it, Erqing returned. At that time, it was only a little over a foot long, with an even smaller green snake beside it, which was less than a foot long. The snake man fed them with food, but the little snake shrank back and dared not eat. Erqing then picked up the food and fed it to it, as if it were a guest.

Later, the little snake also entered the bamboo box. It was also very clever. Since it was also a green snake, he named the little snake Xiao Qing, which is the one that is now coiled on his leg.

Erqing grew bigger and bigger, almost four feet tall. No matter how reluctant he was to part with her, the bamboo box was too big to fit her in, and he couldn't carry her on his back. So he released Erqing into the deep mountains outside the county. Two years later, Xiaoqing also grew up and could no longer fit in the box.

After releasing Erqing, he looked for other snakes, but none of them met his expectations. He recently acquired one, but no matter how he taught it, it was not as smart as the previous green snakes.

Now Xiaoqing has grown thicker than a child's arm and can't be kept any longer. He plans to go to the deep mountains where Erqing was released and release Xiaoqing there as well.

"Let's go, I'll take you to find Erqing."

The snake charmer got up, opened the bamboo box containing the snakes, and Xiaoqing crawled inside as if she understood, behaving extremely obediently.

Whether by coincidence or not, starting from the second year after Erqing was released, rumors began to circulate about a large snake chasing people along the mountain road. It was said that the snake was several feet long and as thick as a bowl, and that it moved very fast, darting out from the grass and bushes along the road to chase pedestrians.

Strangely, the snake rarely harms people. At most, it chases pedestrians around, crawls onto them, and snatches away some of their belongings, sometimes accessories from their clothes, sometimes purses from their waists.

Even so, a large snake that can chase people is still very scary. Passersby dissuaded each other, and fewer and fewer people walked this road.

The snake man didn't know if the people were talking about Erqing. He had indeed heard that the snake chasing the pedestrian was a large green snake, but when he released the snake, Erqing was more than three feet long. In the past two years, the large snakes that people were talking about were more than five feet long. Although Erqing was large, based on his many years of experience in raising snakes, it was unlikely that Erqing's species would grow to that terrifying size.

He declined the well-intentioned advice of others and took the snake box onto the road where it was said there were large snakes. As he walked, he heard some unusual sounds coming from the roadside bushes, which were the sounds of snakes crawling by.

The snake handler put down the bamboo box containing the snakes and looked toward the source of the sound. Suddenly, a large snake darted out, moving like a gust of wind, and was about ten feet long.

When such a large snake darts over, everyone's first reaction is to run, even snake charmers. He has tamed many snakes, but the snakes they raise in their line of work are no longer than two feet long. The Erqing snake, which was over three feet long, was already breaking the rules.

Because he was a snake tamer, he knew better than anyone the dangers of snakes. The three green snakes he had raised were accidents; other snakes were not as smart or tamed as them. There were often examples among his colleagues of being injured by the snakes they raised.

What's more, the snake that suddenly appeared was a rare giant snake over ten feet long. He ran desperately, but the snake was chasing him even faster. Just as it was about to catch up, he turned around and saw a familiar red spot on the snake's head, like a mole between its eyebrows.

"Erqing!"

This terrifying giant snake, over ten feet long, was none other than Erqing from back then.