Hiss—
Shua—
It was a long, quiet night.
A strange sound awakened the boss and the proprietress from their sleep.
Without thinking, the boss skillfully grabbed a long wooden stick from beside the bed.
The proprietress wrapped herself in thick clothes. The two exchanged a glance and cautiously walked out of the room, heading to the inn’s lobby.
The originally locked door had opened mysteriously, revealing a small gap.
The boss immediately raised his stick in alarm, “It seems a thief has broken in. Call the police quickly.”
The proprietress took out her phone upon hearing this, but no matter how long she tried, all she got was a busy signal.
Her face turned a bit pale, taking on a paper-like whiteness in the dark of night.
Hiss—
Shua—
The strange sound rang out again, even more eerie this time.
It sounded like a massive snake slithering over rough sand.
The stick in the boss’s hand clattered to the floor, and the next second, the proprietress picked it up.
The sound was getting closer and closer, seemingly coming from the basement.
The boss and the proprietress subconsciously looked toward the staircase, and saw a large snake with an eerie white glow slowly crawling up.
The snake was so huge that its body spanned the entire width of the staircase. It raised itself, coiling menacingly in front of the boss and the proprietress, its bright red tongue flickering in and out of its mouth.
The two gasped in horror. The boss pointed the stick at the white snake. “W-what are you? Stay back!”
“You don’t recognize her anymore?”
The door to the lobby opened from the outside, and a tall, slender young man slowly walked in. “Weren’t you the ones who handed her over to the snake demon in the first place?”
He came to the white snake, which immediately wrapped its tail around his waist affectionately.
The proprietress’s face turned pale. “Su Zhen, didn’t you leave?”
Bai Lixin: “They all left. I stayed because I still had unfinished business.”
the proprietress glanced at the white snake, then at the young man. “What do you mean by what you just said?”
“Three years ago, wasn’t it you who handed my sister, Su Yixue, over to the snake demon?” Bai Lixin patted the smooth scales of the white snake next to him, which were neatly aligned like teeth. “That’s why she ended up like this.”
the proprietress’s eyes widened. “Are you saying that this snake is your sister?”
“Oh my god,” she dropped to her knees with a thud, tears immediately welling up in her eyes. “Miss Su, it’s all my fault. If only I had stopped you from running out that night when you quarreled with your boyfriend, you wouldn’t have gone missing. But you shouldn’t be seeking revenge on us. It was Dong Qing, that scum, who caused all this!”
The proprietress looked at Bai Lixin with tears streaming down her face. “It was Dong Qing who targeted your sister back then. He used a sales pitch as an excuse to trick her into eating snake eggs. He also deliberately got close to her and caused her and her boyfriend to fall out. If it hadn’t been for Dong Qing, your sister wouldn’t have quarreled with her boyfriend, and she wouldn’t have stormed out that night.”
Bai Lixin: “Dong Qing is indeed guilty, but you two are the ones hiding a deeper secret.”
the proprietress: “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Bai Lixin: “The Dong family’s obsession with snake eggs stems from their belief that consuming them makes one more beautiful.”
“But what they don’t know is that eating too many snake eggs results in a terrible backlash.”
“You two knew better and never ate a single bite of snake meat. To avoid suspicion, you even pretended to be vegetarians.”
“Dong Qing is indeed despicable, but he never took anyone’s life. He tricked girls into his home, made them eat snake eggs, and used them to give birth to small snakes to satisfy his twisted obsession with beauty. Once the girls could no longer bear offspring, he cast them out of Snake God Mountain. Later, when the Dong family felt they weren’t getting enough victims, they had Dong Jing, who was in college, trick four girls at once into coming to Snake God Mountain.”
“They were openly evil, but you two, you were secretly worse.”
“You ran this inn, offering one girl after another to the snake demon.”
The boss and the proprietress’ faces turned pale and then green.
The proprietress pressed her tongue against her teeth. “Don’t throw dirty water on us. My husband and I are devout, pious people. We would never do something like that.”
“Whether you admit it or not doesn’t matter,” the young man said indifferently, “Anyway, this white snake will devour you tonight no matter what. These are your last words, so if you have any regrets, say them now. Otherwise, let’s get started.”
The white snake slithered forward, making a soft scraping sound on the ground. Its mouth opened wide, revealing sharp fangs, and slowly slid toward the two.
The proprietress wanted to run, but it felt like her feet had taken root in the ground—she couldn’t move.
The boss was so terrified he fell to the floor with a thud, his face ashen.
“We were forced into this!” he shouted, begging for his life beneath the white snake’s gaping mouth. “If we didn’t obey the snake demon’s orders, it would have eaten us! What choice did we have but to obey it?”
The young man raised an eyebrow. “You’re lying.”
The boss’s expression froze.
The young man continued, “You have a habit of sleepwalking, and your wife always follows you when you do. I secretly observed your sleepwalking. You must have been dreaming of ascending to immortality because I always saw you walk into the courtyard, kneel down in worship, and murmur prayers like ‘Snake God, grant me immortality.'”
“If you were truly afraid of the snake demon, why would you dream such dreams every night? It seems you’ve gone mad with your desire for immortality. You willingly sacrificed these girls to the snake demon for your own selfish gain. You knew exactly what those snake eggs were, which is why you never dared to eat them.”
The boss remained silent.
“Even though you have made a lot of complaints about the Dong family, they treated you with great respect. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was you who lured the Dong family into eating snake eggs, just to make them your scapegoat. When the truth comes out, you would place all the blame on them, leaving you untouched. Truly, you planned it all perfectly.”
the proprietress suddenly dropped to her knees, frantically kowtowing toward the white snake. “We know we were wrong! Please, spare us! We were just momentarily blinded by the snake demon. Now that the demon is dead, we’ve come to our senses. We’ll never do such things again. We didn’t kill anyone with our own hands. Please, give us one more chance!”
“Why? Why should you be forgiven?” a sharp, anguished voice erupted from the white snake’s mouth. “Why should the innocent lie in their graves, never to live again, while you evil doers, who caused this, get a chance to change? I can never be human again! My boyfriend is dead! And it’s not just us—many others suffered as well!”
“I will never forgive you!”
Under the boss and the proprietress’s desperate, terrified gaze, the white snake opened its mouth wide and swallowed them whole.
The bulge in the snake’s long body slowly moved downward, eventually stopping at its abdomen.
The white snake turned and looked at Bai Lixin, its eyes were filled with tears, which looked like drops of blood-red tears in the red eyes
It looked at the young man, its expression empty, as if it were looking at someone else through the young man’s body.
After a long time, the white snake slithered away and left the inn.
“Su Yixue.” Bai Lixin called out and held up a ring from his pocket. “You’ve been looking for this, right?”
The white snake glanced at the ring in Bai Lixin’s hand, then hurriedly rushed over and carefully hooked it with its tail.
It examined the ring on its tail for a moment, then looked back at the young man. “I know you’re not my brother. You can leave now. Tell my brother never to come to Snake God Mountain again. Let him consider me as already dead.”
Bai Lixin: “You were the one in the mirror, warning me that something was wrong with this inn.”
He said it as a statement.
The white snake nodded. “I didn’t want my brother to be in danger.”
Bai Lixin: “You also took that man’s gold ring.”
The white snake nodded again. “I lost my ring, so I was looking for it.”
Bai Lixin: “Now you’ve found it.”
The white snake: “Yes, I’ve found it. Thank you.”
Bai Lixin: “How did you end up like this?”
The white snake: “After the snake demon captured me, it said my body was special, and I could bear healthy offspring for it. I refused and went on a hunger strike. To make me healthier, it fed me a lot of its blood. Perhaps it fed me too much, one day I found myself completely turned into a snake. Because of its blood in my body, I gained part of the snake demon’s power. After I escaped from there, I hid on the Snake God Mountain.”
“I know it has been looking for me, so I kept hiding from it.”
“I only wanted to watch over my younger brother from a distance until I left, but I was too emotional when I saw him. That day when you all went to Snake God Mountain, I couldn’t hold back and stopped your car, just to get a glimpse of him.”
The trees on Snake God Mountain in the distance swayed, making a rustling sound.
The faint roars of beasts could be heard from the mountain.
There was a slithering sound from outside the courtyard as a large group of snakes crawled in one after another.
White Snake: “I have to go.”
Bai Lixin remained silent for a moment. “Is there anything you want me to pass on to your brother?”
White Snake: “Tell him to take good care of our parents because their daughter can no longer fulfill her filial duties.”
As Bai Lixin watched White Snake’s figure disappear, he suddenly felt his consciousness shift. He lost control of his body and another consciousness took over.
He could only stand deep within his own consciousness, watching as this body rushed towards the white snake, its face mixed with tears and snot, crying out in desperation, “Sister! Sister! Don’t go! I’m Xiao Zhen! Mom and Dad miss you so much! Come back with me, no matter what you’ve become, we will never reject you! Sister!!!”
However, the white snake seemed not to hear his cries and continued crawling towards Snake God Mountain.
He wanted to lunge forward, but the small, winding snakes blocked his way, making it impossible for him to move even an inch.
The young man clenched his teeth, roaring hysterically, watching helplessly as the white snake’s figure walked further and further away.
“Stop shouting, she can’t leave here,” Bai Lixin, who was deep in the young man’s consciousness, spoke softly.
The young man froze, then hurriedly voiced his thoughts in his mind, “Why? Mom, Dad and I miss my sister so much. It doesn’t matter what she’s become, we just want her to come back.”
Bai Li Xin: “She has already become the mountain god of Snake God Mountain. She cannot leave this mountain. Those swaying trees, roaring beasts, and the swarms of snakes are all calling their mountain god back.”
The young man staggered and collapsed to the ground.
Bai Lixin’s consciousness swayed again. He knew he would soon leave this body and return to his own world.
In his final moments, he said, “Look at it another way. A mountain god is still a god. Becoming the mountain god means she’s no longer bound by the mortal body of birth, aging, illness, and death. She will have a healthier and longer life, and she may even ascend to become a true god one day. Think of Su Yixue as someone who has gone far away for work. If you miss her, you can come to Snake God Mountain. When you pass by and see a beautiful white snake, that will be your sister.”
After saying this, Bai Lixin felt his consciousness float out of Su Zhen’s body like a kite with its string cut.
Unburdened by weight, his mind drifted freely through the air.
He flew high above Snake God Mountain, where he saw the pure white snake coiled peacefully under a large tree, resting as a horde of animals surrounded her.
He flew beyond Snake God Town and saw several girls fast asleep on a bus, their faces showing relieved smiles, having narrowly escaped death…
His consciousness gradually faded.
Bai Lixin’s vision turned dark.
When he opened his eyes again, all he saw was white.
A white bed, white walls, a white table—everything reminded him that this was a hospital.
It was a single room, and apart from himself, there was no one else inside.
