Chapter 77

“How many of you came in this time?” Mo Laoda slithered over to where Wang Yanzhen was drinking water from the river, and asked.

“Cough cough cough.” He choked and said, “This, I’m not clear on this either.”

Mo Laoda’s gaze grew cold. “Do you want to die?”

Wang Yanzhen: “…Much more than a hundred. Our group had fifteen people.”

Mo Laoda uttered a “right” then slithered away. Yin Xiaoxiao moved to face Mo Laoda. “More than a hundred people, huh. There’s so many here. How can they all be found?”

“Don’t worry.” Mo Laoda kissed Yin Xiaoxiao’s forehead. “I have ways.”

“Eh? What ways?”

“I am Clan Head. The Head has some relatively easy ways of notifying vipers. Watch me.” Mo Laoda smiled proudly then raised his upper body, opened his mouth and let out a strange sound. Yin Xiaoxiao did, indeed, hear it, but Yin Xiaoxiao wasn’t sure how to describe it. This sound didn’t seem to be heard via the ear, but was instead heard directly via the soul.

“This sound can be heard by all the vipers within the boundary. I only called all the vipers within a thousand li to rush over. Based on this requirement, the vipers can determine my location by the sound I made, then hurry over with the fastest speed.” Mo Laoda, after making that sound, explained to Yin Xiaoxiao.

“This is so mystical! But how come I can hear the sound but not hear your message?” Yiin Xiaoxiao was bewildered. He’d heard Mo Laoda’s call but really hadn’t known that it had contained anything else.

Mo Laoda: “…Probably, it’s because you don’t have any inherited memories.”

Yin Xiaoxiao was silent. This was really bullying a snake! What inherited memories?! Why didn’t he get a copy?!

“We’re going to wait here for the arrival of our snakes.” Mo Laoda continued with, “Little Idiot, these next few days you must be obedient. Don’t run blindly into the unknown!”

“You might as well call all the vipers here. Why only those within a thousand li ¹ radius?” By Yin Xiaoxiao’s thinking, there must be a lot more vipers than humans and, in comparison, were more powerful than humans. It would be better if they all came at once.

Mo Laoda slanted a glance at Yin Xiaoxiao. “Aside from us, how many snakes have seen a human? And not every viper can resist being shot by that thing the humans hold. Also, the young snakes still need to be protected, so the vipers on the mountain can’t be removed/taken. And even if those vipers wanted to leave the mountain, if their children are not yet adults, they’d have to go back. And having so many vipers together would be a big target. If we want to have the fewest number of viper casualties, we have to keep some in reserve. But the main reason is that, by having all the vipers in these mountains gather, prey will likely be rapidly reduced in number and lead to the large disappearance of a lot of creatures in the area. Even if organisms slowly migrate to this area from the surrounding areas, it’s still going to take a very long time, and the vipers will not be even a little happy about this.”

Yin Xiaoxiao was stunned. So, it seemed that his own simple mind was unsuitable to leadership. It was better to have Heitan worry about these things. In comparison, he really was more suitable to being in the vanguard.

–Forget about it, Xiaoxiao. Consider it like this: you’re not even an adult yet. By the time you become an adult, you might not even have the military prowess to join the vanguard!

“Clan Head, Xiaoxiao. Xiaohua and I have to return,” said Yin Dabai as he stepped forward with a glance at Hua Xiaohua. “Xiaoxiao, your older brothers are all on the mountain, so we have to go back.”

“Ah, then you’re leaving?” Yin Xiaoxiao was a little disappointed. He hadn’t gotten to spend a lot of time with Dad and Pop this time, and it wasn’t easy to meet up!

“I thought you’d be very happy that Dabai and I are leaving!” Hua Xiaohua said in an injured voice. “Clan Head has been gone for barely a day and you were rolling around in boredom! We don’t want to interfere with your time together!”

Yin Xiaoxiao immediately turned red and shouted, “What! I didn’t! Pop, you’re a lying snake!”

Only, no matter how much Yin Xiaoxiao protested, it was useless. Mo Laoda had clearly chosen to be convinced by what Hua Xiaohua had said and was unable to prevent a massive grin from stretching across his face. Using his tail to pull Yin Xiaoxiao over, he placed several kisses on Yin Xiaoxiao’s face. “It turned out that XIaoxiao missed me that much, huh!”

Yin Xiaoxiao struggled to free himself for a while but didn’t succeed, and he gave up. But that didn’t stop his mouth. “Heitan, you let me go! I already said that it wasn’t like that! It wasn’t even a little like that!”

Yin Dabai and Hua Xiaohua looked at each other and smiled. Taking advantage of the fact that Yin Xiaoxiao’s attention was on Mo Laoda, they stealthily slipped away. More than ten meters away, Mo Dayi had been lying on his stomach, facing Mo Laoda and Yin Xiaoxiao. Without speaking, he turned around to face the opposite direction.

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Yin Xiaoxiao accidentally looked over to the riverbank and saw Wang Yanzhen sitting there, looking amazed. His anger grew. He gave up on struggling free from Mo Laoda and turned to snarl at Wang Yanzhen, “What are you looking at? Take care, or tomorrow I won’t allow you to eat!”

Wang Yanzhen: “….”

Mo Laoda didn’t care if Yin Xiaoxiao was only shy now or he was still shy from before and he happily released Yin Xiaoxiao. “Little Idiot, since you behaved so well, I’ll go and bring you honey to reward you!”

Immediately, Yin Xiaoxiao stopped shouting. These past few days had been spent hurrying along on their journey, and the entire time he hadn’t gotten to eat honey. Now, hearing Mo Laoda say this, Yin Xiaoxiao immediately recalled that wonderful flavor. “Yes, yes!” His tail swung happily behind him a few times.

Mo Laoda chuckled foolishly as he left to look for honey for Yin Xiaoxiao. Oh, today he must look for honey from those bees for the Little Idiot. The Little Idiot liked that honey the most!

“Gulp–”

Yin Xiaoxiao heard the sound of saliva being swallowed. Following the sound, Yin Xiaoxiao’s gaze fell on Wang Yanzhen. Seeing the yearning look on Wang Yanzhen’s face, Yin Xiaoxiao, showing off, said, “What? You want to eat honey?”

Wang Yanzhen vigorously nodded his head. “Yes, so long as it’s food!”

Yin Xiaoxiao thought for a bit, then said, “Okay. When I’m done, you can eat the leftovers.”

“Then it’s an agreement!” Wang Yanzhen was so moved that he wanted to cry. It was actually so easy to grab food from the mouth of a snake! But….Yin Xiaoxiao was…Yin Xiaoxiao wasn’t hungry so he surely wouldn’t eat a lot of honey, leaving a lot left over. Moreover, honey contained a lot of sugar. If he ate some, it would be able to support him at least overnight.

Wang Yanzhen’s calculations were sound, but he’d underestimated Yin Xiaoxiao’s appetite.

Before Mo Laoda returned with the honey, Yin Xiaoxiao decided to try to fish for information from Wang Yanzhen. He coiled up beside Wang Yanzhen and made an “I want to speak with you” gesture. “In my opinion you look outstandingly cultured, so I can’t figure out why you came to grave rob. Luckily, you were caught by our family’s Heitan!”

Wang Yanzhen stared blankly for a while, then forced a smile and said, “This is something that I’d really never thought of before. I am the second young master of the Wang family. From birth until now, most of my duties have revolved around tomb robbing. I never thought of doing anything other than tomb robbing.”

Yin Xiaoxiao frowned. However, these were only the secret troubles of a young master from a great family, although this “great family”’s business was illegal.

“At first, my paternal grandfather looked after the Wang family’s business but, after he passed away, my father took control of the family. My father asked me to come to this snake tomb.

“Ah, sorry.” Wang Yanzhen suddenly smiled apologetically. “You probably don’t understand some of these words, so I better not say them.”

Yin Xiaoxiao frowned again. Who didn’t understand?! Don’t look down on this snake! But, forget it, if he said that he understood then he’d ask how do you understand and so on, which would be really bothersome.

“Snake tomb? You ² call here the snake tomb? How did you ³ know that there are snakes here?” Yin Xiaoxiao asked, suspicious.

Wang Yanzhen said, “The existence of this tomb is not at all a mystery. At the beginning of the 20th Century…sorry, I forgot you don’t know…in short, a little more than a hundred years ago, people already knew about the existence of this tomb. People say that this tomb is from the Zhou Dynasty, and inside the tomb is something that could grant a person immortality. Quite a lot of people began to look for this tomb but unfortunately they didn’t find it. After several decades, a declining family in tomb robbing circles suddenly claimed to know the location of this Zhou Dynasty tomb, and then, once more, many people came to look for it. And that time, this tomb was found. There were a few dozen people but only one mad man left alive, shouting ‘lots of snakes! Too many snakes!’, so since then this old tomb has been called the snake tomb.”

Startled, Yin Xiaoxiao said, “You said that humans have entered before? And had also been attacked by snakes?” Up until now, Yin Xiaoxiao had thought that Wang Yanzhen had been one of the first people to enter the boundary.

“That’s right.” Wang Yanzhen nodded.

“How strange. I haven’t heard any other snake mention that,” Yin Xiaoxiao muttered.

“I can have this investigated.” Mo Laoda had returned with honey.

Just then, Yin Xiaoxiao didn’t care whether or not Mo Laoda had the matter investigated or not, and rushed straight to the honey.

“Eh? This taste…this is that very tasty honey from that day!” Yin Xiaoxiao was excited.

Mo Laoda dotingly rubbed Yin Xiaoxiao’s head with his tail.

Yin Xiaoxiao ate, Mo Laoda went to call on Mo Dayi, and Wang Yanzhen watched as Yin Xiaoxiao ate.

After a minute, Yin Xiaoxiao hadn’t finished eating. After five minutes, Yin Xiaoxiao hadn’t finished eating. After ten minutes, Yin Xiaoxiao still hadn’t finished eating.

Wang Yanzhen’s face, which had been full of hope, fell. After ten minutes, how was it still eating?! Even if it was a large beehive, even if it had a lot of honey, who could eat this much?!

After five more minutes – “Okay, I’m done eating! The leftovers are yours!” Yin Xiaoxiao very generously said to Wang Yanzhen, and he swept the beehive over to Wang Yanzhen.

Wang Yanzhen impatiently grabbed the beehive, picked it up and looked inside. At most, there were two bites left!

Looking at Wang Yanzhen’s scowling face, Yin Xiaoxiao harshly snarled at Wang Yanzhen, “You should be happy! It was only because of our chat that I gifted you two mouthfuls! Otherwise you would only have had one mouthful!” Hmph, anyway humans wouldn’t die from going a day without food!

Wang Yanzhen silently ate all the honey in the hive then once again ran to the river to drink – tonight he had to drink water in order to be full!

T/N:

Footnotes

<ol>about 310 miles or 500 km plural plural</ol>