Chapter 1: Chapter 1 hungry

Wealthy merchants and traders might well have cherished this season.

The roads, once sealed by the biting cold, were now barely passable for carriages, and the long winter had depleted the stores of the gentry, which now urgently needed replenishment.

For the villagers in the countryside, however, the situation was precisely the opposite.

Predators, having starved for months, could scent flesh from miles away, and this was the time their hunger raged most fiercely, viewing ordinary folk as nothing more than a delectable meal.

Unless truly at their wit’s end, no one would willingly venture into the mountains at such a time.

“I… I cannot fall here…”

Along the winding mountain path, a girl, appearing to be fifteen or sixteen and dressed in coarse cloth, lay collapsed in a muddy puddle, her face etched with defiance and despair.

She hailed from a small village at the foot of the mountain, having never journeyed anywhere else until now.

Had it not been for that incident, she might have lived out her entire life within the village, just like her parents and grandparents before her.

The spring rain had rendered the mountain path utterly impassable, making even an experienced hunter struggle to advance.

For the unarmed girl, each step further up the mountain meant drawing closer to death.

From within the trees, faint rustling sounds and heavy, ragged breaths indicated that the beasts had stealthily gathered.

“Oh, Snake Immortal…”

The girl untied the cloth bundle she had carried all this way, revealing a neat stack of one hundred hard-boiled eggs, gathered by the villagers.

“If you truly protect this village, please accept this offering and save us!”

As if spurred by the scent of food, the ravenous beasts lost their final vestiges of patience, emerging one by one from the shadows, their backs hunched, heads lowered, eyes fixed intently on the girl on the ground, saliva dripping from between their teeth.

Whether the villagers down the mountain would be saved was unknown, but their own meal for the day was certainly assured…

Raindrops splattered onto the girl’s face, blurring her vision.

‘Was it all a lie? There was no such thing as a Snake Immortal… and even if there were, surely one hundred eggs wouldn’t be enough to entreat them?’

The dual torment of her body and mind pushed her will to the brink of collapse.

In her dazed state, she vaguely perceived a peculiar sight.

A woman, holding an oil-paper umbrella, appeared at a bend in the mountain path.

The woman possessed a captivating, lithe figure; her form-fitting silver attire accentuated her beautiful physique.

Below her pristine neck, her chest rose proudly like twin peaks, only to taper dramatically before flattening into a taut, unblemished abdomen.

Her two slender, graceful legs moved one before the other, while her slender, graspable waist swayed rhythmically, causing her every step to ripple with alluring charm.

The moment she appeared, the ferocious beasts, whose claws were poised to strike their prey, immediately prostrated themselves on the ground, not daring to even breathe, as if they had encountered the king of the mountains.

The woman approached the muddy puddle, crouched down, and picked an egg from the bundle, holding it in her hand.

“Your… eggs… I’ve accepted them.”

Just before she completely lost consciousness, she finally discerned the woman’s face.

‘Those vertical pupils, gleaming with an otherworldly light, deep, beautiful, as if they could ensnare one’s very soul… they were indeed identical to a snake’s!’

****

The girl awoke in a dilapidated old temple.

The ancient temple, long fallen into disrepair, was drafty, its roof riddled with a large hole, and its eaves covered in cobwebs, a testament to how many creatures had made it their home.

Most of the statues that should have been enshrined were gone, leaving only a small, broken remnant whose outline vaguely resembled half a snake’s tail.

Beneath the statue, a woman who appeared two or three years older than her cautiously peeled an egg and swallowed it whole.

In one gulp, without even chewing.

One could see her slender neck distend, swelling high as the egg passed through.

The oval object slowly descended, inch by inch, along her throat, eventually dropping past her shoulders…

More eggshells lay scattered at her feet, indicating that more than half of the entire bundle of eggs had already been consumed.

“Ah, I, that…”

Gazing at the bizarre scene, the little village girl, clearly unaccustomed to such sights, was too frightened to speak.

“Eggs,” the woman said, pointing to the bundle. “I’ve eaten half.

Is that alright? You said they were for me.”

The woman possessed an exceptionally beautiful countenance.

She had a melon-seed shaped face, willow-leaf eyebrows, a gracefully upturned nose, and a pair of vertical pupils, distinctly serpentine.

Under her gaze, a chill ran through the girl from head to toe; the oppressive sensation was ten, even a hundred times more intense than facing a wild beast.

“They are all yours, all yours…”

She replied instinctively.

“Thank you,” the woman seemed to offer a smile. “Then I’ll eat them all.”

With that, the serpentine woman resumed her terrifying eating method, one that would surely unnerve any ordinary person.

Before long, the remaining fifty eggs had also disappeared into her stomach.

“Excuse me… are you the Snake Immortal?”

Only then did the girl muster enough courage to ask in a hushed voice.

“Snake Immortal…” The woman pondered for a moment before replying, “I don’t know.

But I’m the only ‘person’ here, so if you think I am, then I suppose I am.”

“Snake Immortal, please…”

“Wait a moment, I’m not called Snake Immortal,” the woman interrupted. “My name is Yin Luan, and as you can see, I am a very pure young woman.”

“…My name is Xiao Cui.”

The girl didn’t quite understand why the Snake Immortal had emphasized the word “pure.”

“Tell me, what happened in the village?”

Sated, Yin Luan appeared utterly delighted, swaying from side to side with increasing amplitude; her slender waist seemed boneless, capable of bending at any conceivable angle.

“The village… it seems to have been afflicted by evil.”

The strange occurrences had begun half a month prior.

Qingshan Village was a secluded mountain hamlet, inconvenient to access; even reaching the nearest city took ten days to half a month, and that was only under clear weather conditions.

The village was self-sufficient, and while its inhabitants weren’t wealthy, they generally managed to get by; people wouldn’t starve to death unless faced with a major disaster or drought.

This winter had ended somewhat late, leaving everyone with dwindling food reserves, but thankfully, the villagers lived in harmony, helping one another, always managing to pull through.

No one had starved.

Yet, some had died from being too full.

It began with Wang Erniu from the end of the village; when he was discovered, his stomach was distended like a small hill, his eyes wide and bloodshot, as if they were about to burst from their sockets from the pressure.

The village chief and several others entered his home to investigate, only to find that he had devoured all his stored grain, not a single grain remaining.

He had literally eaten himself to death.

Over the next few days, several more bodies were discovered, one after another, all bearing the exact same grotesque appearance as Wang Erniu.

This sparked considerable panic within the village.

‘They hadn’t even suffered much from hunger this year, so why were they, one by one, seemingly going mad and eating themselves to death?’

The village chief instructed everyone to monitor each other and report any anomalies immediately, but even this failed to prevent the strange occurrences.

At night, when ordinary people should have been peacefully asleep,

one could listen closely.

It seemed possible to hear a voice, starting faintly and growing stronger, calling out incessantly.

“So hungry…”

“So, so hungry…”

“Starving to death!!!!!!”