Chapter 176
Chapter 176
Why was I going into the mountains?
To visit Bai Su and Huihui, of course!
Ever since they followed me to Lianghe Town, the two had lived in the nearby mountains.
Sometimes, late at night when no one was around, they came down to the coffin shop to visit me. Huihui was usually responsible, always clamoring for Bai Su to bring him to play with me.
He also loved every kind of human snack and food, especially sweets.
Every visit, he devoured loads of candy such as lollipops and chocolate. I couldn’t help worrying that he might develop cavities.
Then again, he was a monster. That probably wouldn’t happen…
The rolling mountains around Lianghe Town stretched on without end.
The town stood in a hilly region along the Sichuan-Chongqing border, so there were no particularly tall mountain ranges.
But a great river flowed past the north, splitting into two winding tributaries that entered the town and curled around it. This gave the entire area around Lianghe Town an excellent feng shui configuration.
Bai Su might be a rabbit monster, but she had been the “monster familiar” of a feng shui master. Her skill in feng shui was no worse than an ordinary feng shui practitioner’s!
She personally chose an auspicious site on a mountain whose configuration promised “great fortune” to monsters and settled there.
That mountain was Fallen Flood Dragon Slope, northwest of Lianghe Town!
The word “fallen” meant perished and represented death.
As its name suggested, Fallen Flood Dragon Slope was a hillside where a flood dragon had died. The name came from an ancient folk legend native to Lianghe Town.
Supposedly, several centuries ago, during the final years of the Ming dynasty,
Lianghe Town had only just begun taking shape as a small settlement of two or three hundred households.
In those days, the Chuan River was much larger and broader than it was now!
The stretch north of Lianghe Town alone was several miles wide, utterly incomparable to its present width of only three or four hundred yards.
The population was also far smaller then, so the Chuan River contained far more supernatural creatures capable of stirring up storms and waves than it did today.
The creature now known as the “River God of the Chuan River” would probably have been considered only an ordinary river monster in the portion of the Chuan River within Fubei County back then…
The legend dated to the Tianqi reign of the Ming dynasty, when Zhu Youxiao, the dynasty’s second-to-last emperor, sat on the throne. One year, torrential rain fell around Lianghe Town for several days without stopping.
The rain was unnaturally heavy!
Not only did the Chuan River flood, but flash floods also erupted in the mountains surrounding Lianghe Town.
Raging reddish-brown water poured from the mountains, carving gullies across ridges and valleys before surging madly into the flood-swollen Chuan River…
On the fifth night of the storm, everyone in town seemed to hear a succession of earthshaking roars from the mountains to the northwest.
Moooo! Moooo!
The sound resembled an old ox bellowing, but it was countless times louder.
Even the torrential rain couldn’t drown it out.
People in ancient times believed this was the cry of a flood dragon!
Several knowledgeable elders said that an enormous python might be transforming into a flood dragon and preparing for flood-dragon ascension…
After living and cultivating for a long time in deep mountains and vast marshes, an enormous python could advance further and gain the chance to become a flood dragon!
The most important step was its flood-dragon ascension.
What exactly was flood-dragon ascension?
The python used its own water-essence qi to connect with the water-essence qi of a great river. Then, amid that violently surging energy, it traveled from the remote mountains and marshes into the river and transformed from an enormous python into a true flood dragon!
That was why an old saying claimed, “When a flood dragon passes, floods spread for dozens of miles.”
To transform into a flood dragon, a giant python needed to unleash a large enough flood to carry it into a great river.
Only then could it draw sufficient water-aspected spiritual energy from heaven and earth, absorb it through its cultivation, and merge it with the water-aspected spiritual energy inside its body. It could then seize the opportunity to transform completely into a flood dragon in a single stroke.
An ordinary giant python might cultivate for hundreds of years and become unimaginably powerful by human standards.
Yet it remained infinitely insignificant before heaven, earth, and nature!
Even if the python possessed the power of a true flood dragon, it couldn’t genuinely summon torrential rain and flash floods.
That was why timing mattered most when a giant python transformed into a flood dragon. A season of torrential rain and catastrophic flooding, for example, offered the perfect opportunity for the transformation…
According to Lianghe Town’s ancient legend, several widely experienced elders made a guess at the time.
The five-day deluge during the Tianqi reign near the end of the Ming dynasty had provided a great python monster cultivating in the nearby mountains with its chance for flood-dragon ascension!
That was why everyone in town heard ox-like bellows on the fifth night. They were the roars of the enormous python preparing to enter the flood and transform into a flood dragon.
Naturally, no one knew the exact process of its flood-dragon ascension!
Outside, the darkness was so complete that no one could see their own hand, while rain poured from the sky in torrents.
Forget ancient times. Even now, no one would dare wander through the mountains outside town in such conditions.
And this wasn’t merely a storm. A great python monster was undergoing flood-dragon ascension.
Even someone extremely skilled who somehow braved the downpour and felt their way through the darkness would probably die. Only an idiot would throw away their life to satisfy their curiosity.
Although no one personally witnessed the giant python’s flood-dragon ascension and could only listen to its enormous roars from afar,
the residents of ancient Lianghe Town still learned the final outcome.
The giant python… had failed to become a flood dragon!
The torrential rain stopped the next morning.
The sky cleared, and the sun hung high overhead.
Aside from the Chuan River still roaring and churning outside town and floodwater inundating certain parts of town, everything seemed to have returned to normal.
Several hunters could no longer resist heading into the mountains.
The deluge had lasted five full days, and some hunters had already been resting before the storm began. Their families had run out of meat, so naturally, they wanted to hunt and bring some home.
From experience, the hunters knew that every kind of wild animal would emerge to forage after heavy rain. Having gone without food for days, the animals would also be weaker and easier to catch.
Wild animals were unlike humans. They couldn’t store grain. When natural disasters struck, they simply went hungry.
Never did the hunters imagine that as they entered the mountains in a group, they would unexpectedly glimpse an astonishing sight in the distance.
An enormous python lay dead on a faraway mountain!
The python was simply too large…
By a rough estimate, it was almost two hundred to two hundred thirty feet long!
Its body was thicker than a massive water barrel, and each scale was larger than a washbasin. Several fleshy lumps bulged from its abdomen as though they were about to become legs.
Its head was larger than an entire ox, and an elongated mass of flesh bulged from its center, looking as though it were about to transform into a single horn.
The python’s body, dozens of yards long, sprawled and coiled across the opposite mountaintop.
Even from several mountains away, the hunters could see it clearly. The sight gave them a terrible fright.
Numerous wounds covered the giant python, and portions of its body were charred black, perhaps from strikes of heavenly lightning.
According to legend, during flood-dragon ascension, a giant python not only needed to merge its own water-aspected spiritual energy with that of a great river and break through its bodily restraints. It also had to withstand attacks from heavenly thunder and lightning…
Failure in either respect could end in death and the complete destruction of its cultivation.
This giant python had clearly failed its flood-dragon ascension. Hundreds, perhaps even a thousand years of cultivation had been destroyed in a single stroke!
Several especially courageous hunters prepared to cross the mountains for a closer look, while others hurried back to Lianghe Town and informed the rest of the townspeople.
They then traveled to the county seat to report the matter to the imperial authorities, asking them to send people to investigate at once…
Lianghe Town’s local legends never explained what ultimately happened to the python flood dragon’s corpse. Perhaps the imperial authorities ordered the townspeople to remain silent and forbade them from spreading the story.
In any event, the python flood dragon’s corpse vanished. Most likely, the imperial government took it away or disposed of it.
From that day forward, the residents of Lianghe Town called the hillside where the python flood dragon perished “Fallen Flood Dragon Slope.”
Several centuries passed, from the final years of the Ming dynasty to today’s new society and new era. By now, many Lianghe Town locals had completely forgotten the origin and legend behind Fallen Flood Dragon Slope.
Only members of the esoteric world who made their living dealing with yin affairs, such as Old Cao, remembered the tale and passed it down by word of mouth…
I learned the story while chatting with him.
That was why, after Bai Su finally chose Fallen Flood Dragon Slope as the location of the cave where she and Huihui would live, I made a special trip here to investigate out of curiosity.
I wanted to see whether the place contained anything unusual or any remains left by a legendary great monster like the python flood dragon…
Naturally, the result disappointed me. There was nothing at all!
Aside from its fairly good feng shui configuration, the mountain was no different from any other.
I wasn’t the only one to think so. Even Bai Su said she couldn’t sense the slightest lingering aura of a powerful monster.
The claim that a python flood dragon had died here might truly be nothing more than a false story and legend…
Then again, perhaps too much time had simply passed.
After several centuries, even if a python flood dragon truly had died here, time would inevitably have erased every trace.
Nothing would remain.
As these thoughts passed through my mind, I slowly reached the summit of Fallen Flood Dragon Slope.
An entire stretch of perfectly flat ground covered the summit. It looked peculiar and abrupt, as though some mysterious force had sliced the mountaintop flat.
Such terrain was extremely rare among the hills near Lianghe Town.
According to legend, the dying giant python had created it by lashing out in fury after its flood-dragon ascension failed.
Naturally, I no longer believed that explanation!
Still, the summit offered an expansive view, and a gentle mountain breeze swept past. Looking into the distance, I could see the entire winding Chuan River below.
It roamed domineeringly through the mountains like a colossal dragon, splitting the ranges apart by sheer force to carve out a channel and the small river-valley plains along both banks.
Because those valley plains had formed from alluvial silt, the soil near the riverbanks was extraordinarily fertile.
The banks of the Chuan River from Xinlin Town upstream to Lianghe Town were ideal for growing every variety of fruit and vegetable.
That was why Fubei County had become one of the Sichuan-Chongqing region’s major vegetable-growing centers…
On the eastern side of Fallen Flood Dragon Slope’s summit stood a steep, barren rock cliff.
Bai Su’s cave was set into the cliff face about six or seven feet below the eastern edge of the summit. It followed a natural crack in the mountain, which had then been excavated deeper into a cave.
It was extremely well concealed and safe!
And very comfortable too.