They called him a prodigy.
Before his sixteenth winter, he'd slain a demonic tiger that had haunted the rice valleys for a decade. Its black fur, soaked in death qi, sold for enough to rebuild a sect. He declined the silver. Said he just wanted silence and the stars.
So he wandered.
He didn't seek glory, but the world has a way of offering blood to those who don't ask for it. He hunted beasts because they followed him. First a wolf-drake, then a crimson boar whose breath turned air to steam.
Then came the snakes.
The first he killed without thought — a fang-beast coiled beneath a dead tree. The second was larger, more cunning. It mimicked a dying man's voice to lure him close. Still, he killed it.
The third was... different. An egg.
It had no venom. No lies. Just a fragile shell nestled in the corpse of the snake he'd just slain.
He should've burned it. A beast born of that lineage would carry evil in its bones.
But he didn't.
He took the egg with him, cradled it like a child. Spoke to it at night. It hatched a week later — sleek, silver-scaled, barely the length of his arm. It blinked with cloudy eyes, tongue flicking at his heartbeat.
He named it Sura.
Years passed.
The prodigy built a cottage at the edge of a nameless village deep in the bamboo reaches. Far from sects, from wars, from the chants of cultivators who burned entire forests in search of enlightenment.
There, he raised Sura.
He fed it cooked rabbit, taught it not to strike at children, carved scripts into its scales to contain its qi. The villagers feared it at first. But the snake never bit. It curled beside their fires. It learned to mimic the boy's voice.
It learned to smile.
And so they welcomed it. Some called it guardian. Children draped flower crowns over its horns. Sura grew large enough to wrap around the house, then the village. But it never harmed a soul.
Until the boy left.
Only for a season. Just a small journey, to trade herbs and see the sky from another hill. A promise to return before the rains.
When he came back, the sky was silent.
The village was gone.
Not burned — torn. Bamboo crushed like paper. Walls broken inwards. Not a drop of blood remained. Only bones. Piled neatly. Arranged like nests. Every face he knew, every child who had once braided flowers into Sura's horns... gone.
He found Sura curled around the heart of the wreckage, scales darker now. Eyes full of storm.
He did not draw his sword.
Just stepped forward and asked, "Why?"
The snake raised its head, voice still soft, still shaped like his.
"It is in my nature."
He stood there, throat hollow. "I taught you better than this."
"You taught me human words," Sura said. "Not human hunger."
"They trusted you. I trusted you."
"I know," the snake said. "That's why they didn't run."
He could've struck then. He should have. But his blade stayed at his side, as heavy as regret.
"I thought love would change you," he whispered.
The snake lowered its head. "It did. I loved you."
A pause.
"But I am still what I am. And love is not stronger than hunger."