Snake Tale

The Story of the Snake · Zhou Budan

Words: 3134

更新时间：2017-11-1221:16:01

He was sitting alone in the room, lost in thought, when suddenly he heard a light knock on the door latch.

Startled, he grabbed the robe that was draped over his shoulders and stood up on tiptoe trying to get back to bed as silently and quickly as possible - but the door creaked open.Holding a candle in his left hand, Qin Wei saw him standing stiffly by the bed with his back arched.

"caught you."

Qin Wei pursed his lips and smiled lightly.

Shen Yuzhu let out a sigh of relief, "It's you." But the awkward expression on his face did not disappear, he tilted his head and looked at him, apparently confused about the purpose of Qin Wei's late-night visit.

"The charcoal fire in my room is exhausted." Qin Wei said frankly, and naturally closed the door and walked in.

"You still have a charcoal fire?" Shen Yuzhu smiled, "It's already March."

When Qin Wei passed by the desk, he put the candlestick on it.The red candle was already very faint, and the flickering fireworks were trembling in the dark night.They stared at the candle together, and each walked for a while.Shen Yuzhu suddenly said:

"I heard that the cook in the front yard died." He thought for a while and said, "Yesterday she was found hanged in the kitchen. The first thing said that it is not yet confirmed whether it was suicide."

Qin Wei sneered lightly: "Really, is the rice she cooks so unpalatable?"

Shen Yuzhu was slightly taken aback by his coldness.Qin Wei asked again: "What were you doing just now?"

"It's just in a daze," Shen Yuzhu said with a shy smile, "I... I'm conceiving a painting."

"Take a look," Qin Wei said enthusiastically, and added, "Is it okay?"

"It's just a draft..." Shen Yuzhu muttered, bent down and took out a scroll from under the bed.Together, they slowly opened the painting. On the three-foot-wide screen, the cold and sharp ice blades, the red flames spreading all over the sky, the human-faced spiders as big as wheels, and the entangled and rolling thin scales were painted in rich colors. The Purple Snake—and the Asuras who swarmed from high altitudes to confiscate their souls.

"What a map of hell." Qin Wei praised, "I can see that the writing skills are good, but it's a pity that it hasn't been completed yet. What is your idea?"

"I want to make paintings of the four scenarios of birth, old age, illness, and death." Shen Yuzhu said, "For some reason, the first thing that pops into my mind is the theme of 'death'."

Under Liao Qing's peaks and ravines, Asura fell from the sky accompanied by meteorites and raging fire.Every Asura in Shen Yuzhu's works has a different costume and face. Some are gorgeous and graceful women, some are ferocious and burly men, and some are chubby boys with strange smiles. They all lowered their eyes and looked down the picture Ocher valley.

"What should be here?" Qin Wei pointed to the red blank.

"Dead." Shen Yuzhu replied. "However, I don't know how to draw. I have been imagining the face and posture of the deceased, the pain, struggle, despair, shock, pleading, fear...but no matter how hard I try, the pain in my mind It's just a blank, let alone describe it with a pen." He said discouragedly.

"This is very natural," Qin Wei raised his eyes and said, "You are only 12 years old, young, healthy, and have no worries about food and clothing. How can you know what death is? More importantly, why do you want to know? Think about what it is Can the question of death save you from death?"

"Of course not." Shen Yuzhu said in amazement, "I just naturally want to know... something that I can't know."

Qin Wei smiled lightly and said: "Naturally? There is also a secret desire hidden under the slip of the tongue, something that keeps you awake in the middle of the night, and you want to infer that it is just a coincidence? According to me, you can't figure out the desire deep in your heart , you will never try to draw a real map of hell."

Shen Yuzhu looked at him annoyed and troubled, "Then, what do you think is the reason?"

Qin Wei looked at him with amber eyes, covered his lips and yawned, his eyes glowed with luster.

"I'm sleepy," he said. "Have you got a fire?"

Shen Yuzhu watched helplessly as Qin Wei took off his coat and climbed onto his bed: "Please feel free to ignore me." Before he could finish his sentence, Shen Yuzhu had already blown out the candle.

Shen Yuzhu got on the bed, lay on his back, and folded his hands on his stomach.He heard Qin Wei rustling beside him, and after tossing and turning, he turned and sat up.

"What's wrong?" Shen Yuzhu asked.

"The feet are too cold." Qin Wei hugged his knees and smiled.

Shen Yuzhu stood up without saying a word, and took his bare feet into his arms.

Those skinny, delicate and cold toes made him feel like he was holding a handful of white stones at the bottom of Qingqiu stream.

How people get acquainted and become acquainted with each other may be an interesting topic.Shen Yuzhu used to ponder these skills seriously, imagining that he could become a sophisticated adult one day, but unfortunately, reality always backfired.When they met for the first time, everyone was as taciturn as him, even more reserved and cold than him, and no one would speak to avoid looking like an over-enthusiastic fool, but when they met for the second time, many people or Whether he became Jiao Bulimeng's close friend, or split into opposing camps, but Shen Yuzhu didn't know anything about it and was very confused.For the young Shen Yuzhu, except for himself, other human beings were dangerous and unpredictable.He was careful, avoiding everyone, like night owls and foxes in the mountains.He hid in the deep mountains and dense forests, staring at his own reflection on the clear stream.The young man's appearance belonged to a classical aristocrat, with a broad forehead, a straight nose bridge, dark and indifferent eyes, plump and elegant lips, the only shortcoming was that his jaw was too soft.He talks to the elk and ape, or meditates for a long time, and sincerely hopes that he will never need anything outside, even if he is alone for a lifetime.

However, Qin Wei didn't care about this.In February, he took a volume of Herbal Classic and went to the mountains to pick Lanzhi, and stepped on Shen Yuzhu nonchalantly.At that time, Shen Yuzhu was resting in the shade of a camphor tree in the afternoon, and it took him a long time to wake up before realizing the pain.He looked at the young man beside him in horror. Qin Wei held a book and leaned over to compare the plants at his feet one by one:

"Here, this plant is called Zhuyu. It tastes like sweets, and you won't be hungry if you eat it... This plant is called Misang, with black stripes and red texture, and you can't miss it when you wear it. This plant..." He smiled softly, " It's called Shen Yuzhu—a child who was picked up from Luoshui by the head of the mountain while he was still in his infancy and flowed down the river until he met bamboo."

"...Good afternoon." Shen Yuzhu said stiffly.

Shen Yuzhu's life experience is not a secret in Qingyan Mansion.Shan Chang traveled around the world all the year round, and occasionally picked up one or two orphans who had lost their parents. Shen Yuzhu was just one of them.His parents may be civilian slaves, or they may be princes and grandsons, but it is meaningless to him.From the moment he drifted on the water, his life belonged to nature, not to anyone in the world.The head of the mountain told him that the gods of heaven, earth and nature obviously loved him very much.When he found him, the baby in the bamboo basket was unharmed, having a sweet dream, as comfortable as a god floating on the ocean of the universe: a lotus blossomed from his belly button, and his dream was The whole world.

Shen Yuzhu was also infected by the nobility and purity in Shanzhang's narrative.He believes that the one who sleeps soundly in his infancy is the saint who can achieve greatness.What he has done in this life is just to return to the original peace and tranquility of life.Full of self-confidence, he believes that all people in the world have the same aspirations, strives to face the world with candor, and has compassion for those who are cunning and pretending.However, in fact, fellow students often use his withdrawn, timid and gentleness as a laughing stock, consciously or unconsciously crowding him out.And he was in a boyhood when he was very prone to self-injury and self-pity, so he inevitably had doubts about himself.

Even in Qingyan Mansion, where geeks emerge frequently, Shen Yuzhu is unconventional and out of place.Fellow disciples, either nobles, came to learn from teachers in order to revitalize their families; or knowledgeable people came to study in order to stand out.They came to Qingyan with great ambitions and diverse visions from all over the world, and they are always energetically planning their future.And the indifferent Shen Yu bamboo toilet standing in it has no more willpower than a fruit on the tree-in this world of great changes where "the high bank is a valley, and the deep valley is a mausoleum", this "everyone with blood has a struggle" At a time when there is a great struggle for "heart", such an existence that does not seek to make progress is in itself an unimaginable and appalling thing.No wonder his colleagues turned a blind eye to him and didn't take him seriously.

Gradually, Shen Yuzhu became at ease with these disregards, and wandered around the school and the mountains like an invisible person all day long.Until one day, he found a drowned woman alone in the dense forest.It got stuck on the river rocks, and its pale, translucent soft body swelled into a colossus. The tongue, eyeballs, uterus, and rectum were all pushed out of the body by the rotten air, rippling slightly in the water.He was forced up his throat by the stench of the corpse, but there was no fear in his heart.He carefully observed those organs that he had never seen before, and finally found that going down the river is not always full of the poetic beauty of a quiet forest.

However, as Qin Wei said, in his calm and retreating temperament, there really is some kind of unconscious desire hidden.

Hope?he asked himself.He has always thought that his great wish is to return to the tranquility of his birth, even if this tranquility is completely boring and empty in the eyes of many people-but where did his curiosity and his fascination come from?

Qin Wei was lying on his side, already asleep with his arm under his head.He tucked up the quilt for him, got up lightly and got out of bed, took out his painting, and looked at it carefully.

It was definitely not a rotten and swollen corpse in summer, but it was not a baby who was as stable as a mountain in a deep sleep.Generally speaking, death is silent and insensitive.However, his colors are rich and vivid, his Asura is gorgeous and powerful, and his hell map is like a noisy and fierce gluttonous feast.

"Death..." He tried the word in his mind.

What was that—a violent, dangerous, elusive, beautiful thing that made him tremble, with a poisonous kiss...?

...One day, he will meet it.It will deprive him of his desire-free skin, and make him willing to drink wine even if he knows it is poisonous wine, and jump bravely even if he knows it is a cliff-will that be his luck or misfortune?