“The seeds we planted have started to sprout.”
You Nian was delighted.
The soil in the Beast World was quite fertile. The potatoes and sweet potatoes she had planted began sprouting one after another in less than a week, little patches of green appearing across the black earth.
You Nian turned and instructed Little White Tiger.
“Baby, when Mother isn’t home, you’ll be responsible for keeping an eye on this field. This is what we’ll live on in the future. Remember?”
Little White Tiger nodded solemnly. “Mother! I’ll watch over it carefully!”
Under You Nian’s guidance, he took the small plot in front of their cave very seriously.
Every day, he focused on patrolling the field’s edge to keep birds and beasts from damaging the crops.
You Nian began thinking about what to do next.
“The planting problem is taken care of for now. I need to see if there’s clay nearby. First, I’ll fire a batch of red bricks to build a kiln, then try making my first batch of pottery.”
You Nian remembered how, just a few days ago, she and Little White Tiger Cub had had to crowd around a single iron pot to drink fish soup.
Her next goal was to make a batch of pottery to use as tableware.
“Even though there’s pottery in the system space, it’s all too expensive. And pottery breaks easily, so I’d better learn to make it myself. Maybe I can even find a way to sell it.”
You Nian soon came up with a plan. To fire red bricks and pottery, she first needed to find clay.
Clay usually settled in places where rivers slowed at bends, on exposed slopes, or on terraces left behind when lakes receded.
“I’ll take a look by the creek where I usually get water.”
After exploring the area for some time, You Nian already knew the forest like the back of her hand. She soon reached the creek.
She gently rubbed a little of the damp soil from the riverbank between her fingertips.
“There’s too much river sand in it—almost all sand, hardly any mud. The clay content is very low, so it won’t work for bricks or pottery.”
You Nian sighed in disappointment, but she still wasn’t ready to give up.
“I’ll look around nearby. Maybe there’s an exposed earthen slope or a lake.”
Having made up her mind, she ventured farther afield, walking for who knew how long.
The lush trees around her were no longer a bright green. They had darkened to almost black, making the forest feel oppressive and eerie for no apparent reason.
At the heart of the forest lay an immense lake. Its water was black as ink and still as a grave, without a ripple in sight. No animals came to drink.
You Nian glanced around. There wasn’t a single animal track on the land surrounding the lake.
“That’s strange.”
A faint sense of foreboding stirred in her. Black water meant unfathomable depths.
This was no ordinary lake. There had to be a bottomless abyss hidden beneath it.
The exposed bank left by the receding water was reddish-brown, its surface gleaming here and there with a slick sheen. It was undoubtedly excellent clay.
If she took some back now, she’d have everything she needed to make bricks.
But You Nian quickly dismissed the thought.
“Knowing there’s a tiger on the mountain, I’m not going to walk into its den. I’ll have plenty of other chances to find clay, but I only have one life.”
“I’m not going to put myself in danger.”
You Nian turned to leave. Suddenly, a tremendous splash erupted from the black lake, as if something had burst out of the water.
Before she could even turn around, a supple, powerful, long tail covered in scales as smooth and lustrous as white jade coiled around her waist and dragged her into the lake.
The black water engulfed her. Its icy chill rushed over her head, flooding her nose.
The creature seemed to have lost control. It hadn’t meant to let You Nian drown.
When it realized what had happened, it pulled half her body back out of the water.
She wiped her face and managed to open her eyes. Only then did she see the enormous creature that had seized her.
A giant snake, pure white from head to tail, with jade-green eyes. Its pupils had narrowed into wild, pinprick slits, and it hissed at her, its bright red tongue almost brushing her cheek.
You Nian shrank her neck and glanced down at the white-jade tail wrapped around her waist. Her vision went dark.
The giant snake’s body was long—at least a dozen meters—but its tail was as thick as a barrel.
Snakes and pythons mainly hunted in two ways: constriction or venom.
A primeval giant snake of this size could probably crush an adult bull with ease.
And snakes didn’t chew. They swallowed whole, squeezing and crushing all the bones in their prey’s body to compress it before gulping it down.
In other words, she wouldn’t just die—she’d die in excruciating pain.
You Nian’s face turned deathly pale. Despair mingled with unwillingness as she struggled inwardly.
She had been so talented, worked so hard, and become the youngest agricultural science PhD.
Yet fate had been cruel. Before she could put her skills to use, she had been buried beneath a cliff.
After finally getting a chance to live again, she’d been careful enough. Was she still going to end up in the belly of a giant snake in another world?
After a brief moment of despair, resolve blazed in You Nian’s eyes. If she was going to die, she would take the creature down with her. Her gaze turned cold, and her hand closed around the boning knife at her waist.
In just a few seconds, she had made up her mind.
Even if her knife couldn’t pierce the giant snake’s vital spot or kill it, she would fight to bite a chunk out of it!
She would never be a lamb waiting to be slaughtered!
At that critical moment, the System—which had been quiet for several days—suddenly issued a notification.
“Ding—The System has detected an ancient 【Azure Dragon[1]The Azure Dragon, or Qinglong, is the guardian of the east among the Four Symbols of Chinese mythology; this novel uses it as a fictional bloodline. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3735765_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3735765_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });】 bloodline. This male of the Snake Tribe carries 5.23% Azure Dragon blood.”
“Once the 【Azure Dragon】 bloodline entry is unlocked, the host will receive 1,000 system points!”
You Nian had her hand on the boning knife and was about to stab the snake when the System’s sudden notification stopped her.
A male of the Snake Tribe? Did that mean the creature could communicate—a beastman, not some primeval giant snake with no intelligence?
You Nian was taken aback.
The next moment, the white giant snake pressed its head against her. Like a puppy seeking approval, it rubbed its chin against her face, neck, and collarbone.
Its cool, forked tongue brushed across her soft lips.
You Nian: “…”
This was a classic courtship display from a male snake.
It had gone to all this trouble and scared half the life out of her just to court her?
“Can you let me go? The water’s cold.”
You Nian tried to push the giant snake’s head away, attempting to communicate with it.
But judging from the original owner’s memories, this white male snake seemed to be in the late stages of his rut. In that state, all that remained was the instinct to reproduce.
He tilted his head. Confusion surfaced in his jade-green eyes, as though he were trying to understand what the little female was saying.
Deep in his rut, Baixi finally understood that she was refusing him and asking him to let her go.
He absolutely couldn’t accept that. This was the little female he’d been watching for so long—how could she reject him?
Baixi had meant to approach You Nian gradually, but he hadn’t expected her female scent to affect him so strongly.
His rut had come early, sooner than he’d imagined. He had lost control even earlier and been forced to hide in the lake, struggling to endure it.
And he’d never imagined that the female he’d longed for would come to him like this, by such an unexpected turn of events.
The snake tail coiled around You Nian’s waist abruptly tightened, making it hard for her to breathe. Clearly, he had no intention of letting her back onto the shore.
It seemed negotiations had failed.
Worse still, one slender section of his tail had somehow slipped between her legs.
The fine scales along its surface rubbed against her again and again, a silent insistence. The tail’s owner could hardly wait any longer.
References[+]