Eating is the foremost matter in life.
As the morning light split the mist, thirteen high-horned antelope had already begun grazing on the foxtail grass and beardgrass underfoot. Their steps looked leisurely, yet they ate fast and greedily; the juice-laden blades were no sooner in their mouths than they were chewed to pulp, and under the work of saliva, turned into nutrients the body could absorb.
Finding a fit pasture is no easy thing, and they could not hold back from gorging themselves.
Which cheered the sabertooth tiger not far off.
The massive sabertooth lay crouched downwind in the distance. This was a seasoned beast, rich in experience, and it knew very well that if it simply hurled itself out now, these feeble antelope would scatter and flee at the mere scent or sound of it, never to be glimpsed again.
So it had chosen to lie in wait near the grass instead.
This lush pasture before it was the finest bait of all.
Sheep are bound to eat grass.
And it, too, was bound to have its mutton.
The sabertooth sprang.
Even though the congealed sunlight in those grass blades had already been converted, within the antelope, into the lightning-quick energy of flight, the charging sabertooth still struck one of them dead in the first instant.
When its keen, curved claws sank into the antelope's shoulder blade, the sabertooth—busy all morning—at last had its first meal of the day.
But eating was eating, and as an apex predator the sabertooth did not eat just any flesh. It took only the soft belly meat of its prey and the fat-marbled tender cuts along the torso. This was not waste, but a way of protecting its teeth—gnaw too hard on tough muscle and a tooth could crack at the root, even interfering with the act of eating itself.
Luckily, the antelope before it was plump enough; perhaps it would eat its fill.
Smelling the fresh meat, the sabertooth could no longer hold back from the feast.
Which cheered Du Yi—now a colossal snake—not far off.
Exactly how he had become a snake, Du Yi could no longer recall. He only remembered that it had been a dark and windy night: he had suddenly felt the body that illness had wasted to weakness surge full of strength, and just as he went to raise an arm to see how big his biceps had gotten, he discovered his arm was gone.
Not just his arms—his legs were gone too; his whole body had simply become one long, winding length.
In all of two minutes, Du Yi accepted the fact that he had turned into a snake.
After all, it was no bad thing for him. He felt the long-lost sensation of being healthy again; no longer pinned to a sickbed, he could do anything he wanted—apart from being a little hungry.
But that bit of hunger was precisely the most troublesome thing.
"How do snakes hunt again?"
Du Yi had no real concept of it.
Still, hunting came down to one basic method in the end: chase the prey down, beat it to death, eat it—whatever the style of the hunt, it always came back to that step.
But after a few attempts, Du Yi found he couldn't manage it.
It wasn't that he couldn't win the fight. It was that he couldn't catch up.
His body now was simply far too vast. Even an elephant was no more than an oversized rat in front of him, and if he hurled himself out, the puny sabertooths and elephants wouldn't even need to lay eyes on him—just the scent, or even the sound, and they had already fled on the wind, never to be glimpsed again.
So Du Yi had chosen to lie in wait near the herd instead.
These plump antelope before him were the finest bait of all.
Those carnivores were bound to come and eat the sheep.
And he, too, was bound to have his meat.
Du Yi raised his long tail and scooped up a boulder.
The distant sabertooth hadn't even managed a bite of mutton before the spinning boulder came whirling in and smashed its skull to pulp.
When the sabertooth, its brains dashed out, toppled to the ground, Du Yi—busy all morning—at last had his first meal of the day.
But eating was eating, and as a civilized man, Du Yi did not eat just anything. By a snake's normal feeding habits he ought to swallow the prey whole, yet here, surprisingly, Du Yi clung to a few principles befitting a civilized man.
The first was this: eat, yes, but the innards had to come out. It wasn't that Du Yi was overly fussy—it was that these wild beasts hadn't necessarily emptied their bowels before he caught them, and if he gulped all of that down in one piece, well, just picturing the scene was enough to turn his stomach.
The other was that the food absolutely had to be cooked.
This wasn't even a measure against parasites. He purely and simply wanted it cooked. He wasn't incapable of stomaching the odd bit of raw fish, but now that he'd become a snake, eating cooked food had instead become his last line as a civilized man.
As for the cooking itself, that wasn't so hard. After carefully setting the dry wood he'd gathered off to one side, Du Yi coiled his long tail around a rock and lashed it savagely against another.
This was no ordinary way to make fire—it was closer to brute strength forcing a miracle. Under the powerful lashing of his tail the heavy rocks spun like tops; in moments the two boulders had collided a dozen times over, and before long they'd struck out sparks that set the dry grass and wood alight.
For his part, Du Yi tossed the gutted sabertooth and high-horned antelope into the fire, along with the mammoth fat he'd saved earlier and some bits and pieces that looked like dry grass and twigs.
"Limited conditions—this is all I've got to season with."
Indeed, even as a snake, Du Yi had real standards when it came to flavor.
Under the roasting flames, wave after wave of meaty aroma soon seeped out. Catching that smell of food—not scorched and rank, but scorched and savory—Du Yi nodded in satisfaction.
After dozens of trials, he had finally hit on a fairly suitable recipe.
At the very least, this meat had reached the level of being edible.
But just as Du Yi was about to sample the taste, he suddenly felt a gaze, off in the distance, peering toward him.
"What are you looking at?!"
Interrupted mid-meal, Du Yi glared back, hard.
He couldn't bear to be watched while he ate—and not while he wasn't eating, either. If there was really something to be said, the thing could come out and talk to him in the open; what was the meaning of skulking in the shadows and spying?
And the moment Du Yi bared his fangs, that distant figure—tiny as an insect—was so terrified it fled headlong, scrambling away on hands and feet, for all the world like an ape.
"A wild monkey?"
Watching the figure vanish from sight in moments, Du Yi gave it no further thought.
A puny monkey like that wasn't worth his attention. Better to hurry and taste the food first, before the texture turned on him.
And so, while Du Yi lost himself in the delight of his roast, that monkeyish figure in the distance finally halted its panicked flight, screened behind a jumble of broken rock.
The figure was wrapped in animal hides, thickly furred, every gesture steeped in a primal wildness.
But when it caught the meat-scent drifting from afar, and recalled that pillar of fire from moments ago, the savage's eyes lit up as well.
All the way back to his tribe, the savage kept turning the giant snake's movements over in his mind. He even picked up two stones without thinking and clacked them together, over and over.
Under the ceaseless striking, the two stones crumbled bit by bit into chips, and then into powder. Bright sparks flickered, again and again, with every impact.
It wasn't until a spark set his grass sleeping-nest alight that the savage came back to himself.
Watching the blaze climb higher and higher, the other savages of the tribe went pale with shock—fire, after all, was a thing that appeared only amid driving wind and rain, amid thunder and lightning. Yet now, right before their eyes, a companion had set a grass-nest ablaze with nothing but a clap of his palms!
This was...... what power was this?
Their too-benighted minds had no way to grasp how on earth it had been done.
Only the savage who had done it knew clearly where it all came from.
"God!"
Recalling the form of that giant snake, the savage clapped his palms together once more.
In the firelight, sparks burst and scattered.
"This is the power of God!"