NOVEL WEB Ch. 12
Chapter 12: Human-Faced, Python-Body
Hong Wen remained silent for a long time.
Just as Hong Tianyun, growing anxious because of the darkening sky, was about to forcibly take Hong Wen back, Hong Wen finally spoke.
His throat was so dry, as though he had not touched water for a hundred years:
“I recognize that snake.”
Hong Tianyun first let out a breath of relief.
Hong Wen’s willingness to speak meant he had accepted reality, and things would not be too difficult to handle.
Then, he was slightly surprised:
“What did you say?”
Hong Wen paused for a moment, then said:
“Last time when I went up the mountain with... Father, to catch snakes, I saw that snake.”
“At that time, Father and I wanted to capture it, but it suddenly leapt onto my shoulder, then slipped into a crack in the rocks and escaped.”
“Because of that incident, Father refused to let me go up the mountain to catch snakes this time, which led to today’s... outcome.”
In truth, compared to that time, Mo Lin had changed quite a lot.
Its scales alone had darkened from blackish-brown to an even deeper shade.
Yet for some reason, Hong Wen insisted that Mo Lin was the same snake as before.
Since Hong Tianyun had never seen Mo Lin’s original appearance, he did not doubt it, merely murmuring:
“That snake once escaped from your father and you, and now elder brother has fallen into the pool because of it... Could this all have been predestined?”
No matter how much the two of the Hong family might lament by the poolside, the fact remained that Hong Tianfeng had fallen in.
Hong Tianyun naturally could not allow Hong Wen to dive in and fight the snake.
So, after silently mourning Hong Tianfeng by the pool for a while, Hong Tianyun led Hong Wen away.
Time passed, and the sky grew darker.
Mo Lin lifted its head out of the pool, the tip of its tail coiled tightly around Hong Tianfeng, who had already stopped breathing.
“Looks like the other two won’t be coming back today. After all, the mountain at night is far more dangerous than during the day.”
In truth, Mo Lin had still hoped that Hong Wen, overwhelmed by grief for his father, would leap into the water to fight it.
With the icy surface of the pool, combined with its venom and affinity for water, it had full confidence that it could bury father and son together.
Unfortunately, the other snake catcher was far too calm.
“To gain one harvest is already fortune enough—greed invites danger.”
Mo Lin suppressed its emotions.
Though it had been stabbed with three fatal blows by Hong Tianfeng before his death, compared to revenge and gain, that was a trivial matter.
Mo Lin dragged Hong Tianfeng’s corpse ashore and stashed it by the poolside.
It did not dare to bring Hong Tianfeng’s body back to its lair.
The snake catchers would surely return tomorrow.
Who knew if among them there might be someone formidable?
If anyone could follow the scent or traces left behind when Mo Lin carried Hong Tianfeng, and find its hiding place, then that would be disastrous.
However, once Mo Lin finished devouring him completely, its expression suddenly changed.
“What is happening?”
A strange heat began spreading from Mo Lin’s stomach throughout its entire body, with a great portion of that heat swirling especially in its head.
Something bizarre was happening.
This was not a feeling it had ever experienced before, not when devouring Field Mouse, Honey Badger, or Mongoose.
“Is it because I devoured a human? Or is it just because of Hong Tianfeng?”
Could this be another manifestation of my Devour talent?
Mo Lin felt its head growing hotter, as though melting and reshaping like a softening cake.
Not only that, but it also began to feel drowsy.
If it had been in a safe place at that moment, it might have instantly fallen into hibernation—a sleep from which it would not easily awaken.
Though it found this extremely strange, with night falling, Mo Lin did not understand what was happening to its body.
The only certainty was that this change seemed to be beneficial.
Since matters were turning toward the favorable, Mo Lin decided to ignore it for now.
“So sleepy... hissss\~ I really just want to fall asleep and never wake up.”
Mo Lin shook its head.
“No, I can’t sleep yet. I still need to find a place to hibernate.”
It could not remain by the pool or at the place where it first encountered Hong Wen and his father.
Fighting off drowsiness and the fever in its head, Mo Lin began slithering into the forest.
Yet sometimes, the more one longs for rest, the more important matters come uninvited.
Mo Lin had never roamed the forest at night before.
But because of the day’s unexpected events, it made an exception.
And exceptions came with consequences—things that never appeared during the day would inevitably arrive at night.
“Gu gu.”
An owl perched atop a tree, staring down at the slowly moving Mo Lin, its head swiveling a full 270 degrees.
With its intelligence, it could not fathom why a snake dared to move at night, daring even to trespass beneath its very perch.
But since prey had appeared, it would not let it go.
The owl stretched its talons down toward Mo Lin.
“Ch-chang!”
To its astonishment, when its claws struck Mo Lin’s scales, the sound was like metal on stone.
Despite their sharpness, the owl’s talons could not pierce Mo Lin’s scales!
Yet Mo Lin, fevered and dazed, failed to realize the significance of this.
It merely raised its head slightly, looked at the nocturnal predator, and lunged!
“Gu! Gu!”
With its round, cat-faced visage, the owl had no time to react before Mo Lin’s jaws closed over it.
No matter how the owl struggled, Mo Lin’s mouth only twitched reflexively, swallowing it whole.
Then, as though nothing had happened, Mo Lin turned its head away and, with its feverish mind, continued its search for a suitable place to hibernate.
......
No one knew how long had passed before Mo Lin slowly awoke from slumber.
It found itself at the bottom of a hollowed trunk, long dead.
The hollow concealed its form well—someone could stand just a meter away and never realize a hibernating snake was hidden within.
This was the place it had chosen for its hibernation before losing consciousness.
“I feel so full... as if I’ve slept for months.”
Mo Lin smacked its mouth and prepared to crawl out.
But the moment it moved, it immediately sensed something amiss.
“Why is there a layer of skin on me?”
Looking closely, it saw a long-dried layer of shed skin draped over its body.
As it moved, the skin slipped away effortlessly.
When Mo Lin fully emerged from the hollow, it realized the skin was incomplete, cracked from head to tail.
“This... is the skin from my third shedding?”
Mo Lin was astonished:
“While I slept, I unknowingly completed my third shedding?”
“But I clearly remember—before meeting Hong Tianfeng, my shedding progress still had a long way to go!”
“Just one sleep, and the rest of the progress finished by itself?!”
Not only that, but Mo Lin also felt its body had grown two or three times larger.
Rather than a snake, its form was now far closer to a python.
Indeed, Mo Lin had speculated before that after its third shedding, it might evolve from snake to python.
Yet for such a transformation to occur unconsciously left Mo Lin with a sense of absurdity.
“During my sleep... just what exactly happened?”
Before falling asleep, it had only devoured Hong Tianfeng, nothing more.
“Wait!”
Mo Lin suddenly froze.
It remembered that after swallowing Hong Tianfeng, strange changes had already begun in its body, especially the burning heat in its head.
But at the time, it had been too drowsy, and with night upon it, it had no chance to consider further.
All it could do was hide beneath a hollowed tree far from the pool, then collapse into slumber.
And upon awakening, it had become like this.
It thought and thought, but reached no conclusion.
Shaking its head, Mo Lin decided to find a water source, to see for itself what had become of its body.
Emerging from the hollow, it slithered through thickets.
To its surprise, patches of snow still clung to the branches, though much of it had clearly melted.
This only deepened Mo Lin’s confusion.
It had only slept once—so why had the world changed so? Could it be it had slept through the entire winter?
Finally, filled with doubt, Mo Lin arrived at a pool.
It eagerly leaned forward over the water’s surface, then froze.
Reflected in the water was a giant python over five meters long.
Yet its head was neither the triangular shape of venomous serpents, nor the typical form of ordinary snakes.
Instead, it resembled a human skull.
More chilling still—on that python’s head, the reflection showed clearly a human face!