At that mont, Tu Xiao'an gazed coldly at a dying snake not far away. Its once vibrant body was now dull and lifeless.
"You've lost."
With the air of a victor, he declared that the great battle was over.
The Crowned Snake didn't even have the strength to lift its head. It lay in a pool of its own blood, unable to believe it had lost.
Gazing toward the mourning hall, it seethed with hatred at the sight of the old man in a wheelchair. Its revenge was not yet complete.
He was still alive.
"We are the sa kind. Why are you helping those damned humans?"
The Crowned Snake was indignant. It had spent a full fifty years transforming from a non-venomous snake into a mutated House Snake, cultivating itself into a Demon.
In the blink of an eye, it had all co to nothing.
"The sa kind?"
Tu Xiao'an gave a bitter smile. It was true he was in a snake's body now, but his soul was still human.
He wouldn't say he was helping them. He had co to capture a snake in the first place. He couldn't just wait for the Crowned Snake to wipe out the Zhao Family before making his move.
That would be pointless.
"Let tell you a little secret."
The Gold and Silver Snake slithered before the dying Crowned Snake and reared its head. "Actually, I'm not a snake. I'm a human. Do you believe ?"
Suddenly, the Crowned Snake stared at him with a final burst of energy. If its body weren't so weak, if it had any strength left, it would have sprung up and cursed, "Believe my ass!"
But whether the snake believed him or not was irrelevant. Tu Xiao'an's Snake Gaze was like two calm pools of water, which then began to ripple gently. "Farewell."
What followed was a brutal scene. The Mutated Crowned King Snake, the one that had intended to slaughter the entire Zhao Family, was devoured bit by bit by the Gold and Silver Snake, unable to struggle in the slightest.
The Zhao Family mbers cried out in alarm. A mont ago, two massive, coiling snakes had been locked in a deadly battle. Now, it had turned into a scene of one snake eating another.
They were simultaneously relieved and terrified. Such a powerful House Snake had been killed and devoured by another.
Would this snake decide to eat people next?
When Elder Zhao saw the Crowned Snake being devoured, his thin, haggard face stread with tears, and he began to weep bitterly.
No one knew if the old man in the wheelchair was crying out of excitent or anguish.
On the wall of the Zhao Family estate, Li Qingzhao had climbed up again. The battle between the two massive snakes had felt like an earthquake, forcing her to find a place to hide.
When she finally managed to climb back onto the wall, she was t with the brutal sight of one snake devouring the other.
The vibrant House Snake that could talk, change color, and grow in size was being swallowed whole by the other snake.
Suddenly, a wave of pity washed over her. It was a murderous snake that deserved to die, but Li Qingzhao's heart ached with pain.
She had been captivated by the one-of-a-kind House Snake from the very first glance. It was dazzlingly vibrant, with srizing, iridescent stripes. It was so beautiful, so full of spirit.
Without a doubt, this was a snake with a story, and Li Qingzhao desperately wanted to know what it was.
But now, the snake was gone. Gone.
As everyone watched, Tu Xiao'an finished devouring the Crowned Snake. His serpentine body began to glow brightly. The mont he swallowed the snake whole, a flood of foreign mories suddenly appeared in his mind.
Scenes appeared one after another, and he was like an audience mber in a movie theater watching the big screen.
'These are the Crowned Snake's mories from its life.'
The next mont, understanding dawned on Tu Xiao'an. He began to focus, absorbing the snake's life experiences.
Normally, a snake's mories are limited. Besides sleeping and hunting, their short lives hold little of interest.
But the Crowned Snake was different. As a mutated House Snake, it had lived for an unknown number of years.
Tu Xiao'an was also curious why this snake had been so intent on wiping out the Zhao Family and forcing Elder Zhao to kill himself.
Scene after scene flashed through his mind…
In a secluded backyard, a young woman played a flute. The lodious sound drifted and echoed as a small, verdant snake coiled playfully around her, as if dancing to her music.
"Hee hee hee..."
The sound of her bell-like laughter rang through the secluded backyard.
The scene changed.
The young woman sat on a doorstep, lost in thought, cradling the small green snake. It was perfectly docile, staying with its master from dawn till dusk, from sunset until darkness fell.
The woman and the snake were like inseparable, innocent companions.
The scene changed again.
The young woman, her belly now slightly swollen, looked at the docile little snake and said with a smile, "When my child is born, will you help protect him, okay?"
The small green snake seed to understand, nodding its head. The motion was comical, yet it revealed a profound spiritual connection.
Yet another scene appeared.
The young woman, her belly now large, lay on a sickbed. Her once-lovely face was pale and bloodless, devoid of any sign of life.
The small green snake frantically nudged its master with its head, trying to wake her.
But no matter how hard it tried, its master never opened her eyes to look at it again.
Low, mournful hisses echoed through the room—the little snake's cries of despair, for its master's life had faded away.
A single, crystalline tear fell from the little snake's eye.
The little snake cried. Its master was dead. The next mont, it let out a roar of anguish toward the sky, its Snake Gaze turning bloodthirsty and terrifying.
Alone in the room with the body that held two lost lives, only a small snake remained, crying, grief-stricken, and filled with rage.
"Will you be my House Snake, and mine alone?"
The echo of those words perated every one of the Crowned Snake's mories, impossible to erase.
The bond between the woman and the snake was pure and simple, real yet almost dreamlike.
As he watched, a profound sorrow welled up in Tu Xiao'an. He finally understood who the Crowned Snake's master was.
When he saw the scene of Elder Zhao turning the young woman's corpse into a set of bones to be hung from the rafters of the Zhao Family ho, the mory was flooded with the Crowned Snake's irrepressible killing intent.
'So that's how it was...'
'It was the tragic story of a pet snake avenging its master's horrific death.'
After witnessing these mories, he felt he had made a terrible mistake.
In his past life, Tu Xiao'an had been a Snake Catcher, and Elder Zhao was a Snake Catching Master whom he had respected. But it turned out that in his youth, the master had committed such an unforgivable act.
He had deceived a kind and naive teacher, failed in his duty to protect her, and what was most horrifying, he had heeded the absurd advice of a Daoist and turned the woman he loved into a skeleton, hanging it high from the rafters of the Zhao Family ho.
All in an attempt to trade it for a lifeti of peace and prosperity for the Zhao Family.
'He deserved to be killed. He deserved to die.'
Now, Tu Xiao'an truly understood why Elder Zhao had said he was the one who deserved to die.
Indeed, he was the one.
There was one last mory.
"You don't seem to like him, do you? Every ti he cos, you hide far away."
The young woman smiled, beckoning to a hidden corner, and the small green snake slithered out.
"He's the father of my future child, and he's the only man I've ever loved in my life. I know this love is wrong, but there's no turning back for ."
"Promise , no matter what he does to in the future, you must not harm him. Understand?"
The small green snake didn't respond. The young woman gently tapped its head and laughed. "If you don't say anything, I'll just assu you've agreed."
'I promised my master I wouldn't kill you... So that was the reason.'
To avenge its master, the Crowned Snake had to resort to forcing Elder Zhao to take his own life.
'I'm sorry,' Tu Xiao'an thought. 'I shouldn't have stopped you. But I will fulfill the wish you were unable to complete.'
Tu Xiao'an made a silent vow. Having devoured the Crowned Snake, he felt he had to do sothing for it—and even more so, for that pitiful woman.
Her death had been so tragic, yet it had been buried by the decades—unknown, unspoken of, as if she had simply evaporated into thin air.
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