Chapter 41: The Serpent's Feast

“Damn it!” Just as Liu Zhi was happily gathering all sorts of dried fruits, a sudden downpour struck. Caught completely unprepared, Liu Zhi was drenched to the bone, and the fruits he had collected were washed away by the torrent, their whereabouts unknown. Even worse, the rain came with thunder and lightning, shrouding the entire Golden City in darkness; the sky, smothered by thick clouds, made it impossible to see what lay around him.

With lightning flashing all around, hiding beneath a tree was out of the question—there was no telling when a bolt might strike nearby. Left with no other choice, Liu Zhi could only dash madly through the rain, abandoning all the fruits he had picked, leaving them scattered on the ground.

When he reached the base of the pyramid, he did not rush upward but instead found a spot among the rocks to shelter from the rain. Only then did he realize how fierce the storm truly was: the river outside the city was rising, and water was surging from the north district, flooding into the city.

“What’s going on? Either it’s endlessly damp with not a drop of rain, or it pours like this,” Liu Zhi muttered. Meanwhile, the Soul Naga glided effortlessly through the rain, her amphibious nature allowing her to move freely through the water, the downpour having little effect on her. She had already retrieved all the fruits Liu Zhi had abandoned and brought them back to his side. With a careless flick of her hand, she dropped the fruits before him.

“Well, since it’s raining and I can’t go out to look for anything else, I might as well deal with these fruits,” Liu Zhi said. He searched for a relatively dry patch of ground, placed the fruits the Soul Naga had brought back on a rock, and picked up another stone to crack them open.

Once he had smashed all the shells, he extracted the edible seeds from inside. Each seed was as thick as a finger and incredibly hard, reminiscent of cracking walnuts. Liu Zhi piled these seeds onto a stone slab and set it up, preparing to roast them.

Just as Liu Zhi was about to light a fire beneath the slab to roast the seeds, the rain abruptly ceased. He turned to look at the nearby trees and noticed something peculiar: the moment the rain stopped, many of the surrounding trees suddenly burst into bloom and bore fruit at an astonishing rate—as if someone had pressed fast-forward on a film. The fruits, for reasons unknown, fell instantly into the water, drifting with the current toward the river.

In the blink of an eye, the edible fruits that had just formed on the branches vanished, leaving only bare, mocking leaves behind, as if taunting Liu Zhi for being a step too slow. Stunned for a moment, Liu Zhi then seemed to go mad, racing after the fruits. The Soul Naga, weapon in hand, followed close behind, watching as Liu Zhi chased the fruit all the way to the mouth of the valley.

At the riverbank, Liu Zhi saw the fruits bobbing up and down in the current and was sorely tempted to jump in and fish them out. But every time he stepped forward, a strange sense of warning prickled at him, urging him not to enter the water—that doing so would mean certain death.

He lingered on the shore for a long while, watching helplessly as the fruits were about to be swept out of the valley. At last, he mustered his courage, gripping his staff of death, and moved closer to the river’s edge. Just then, a massive serpent’s head emerged from beneath the water. With a single inhale, it devoured the floating fruits, then vanished below the surface. This happened five times, until every last fruit was gone.

Only then did Liu Zhi understand the strangeness of the Golden City: these enormous serpents ate fruit, and with their size, how could they ever be satisfied? Why couldn’t they leave just a bit for him to taste? Even now, as the new master of the Golden City, he was still living on nothing but grass.

The Soul Naga swam to his side, gazing into the river, deep in thought. “No wonder there are no fish in this river,” Liu Zhi mused. “With this happening every day, even if there were fish at first, they’d have been eaten by now. But the trees grow so quickly—there must be some hidden secret here. I have to investigate. Soul Naga, help me later. Our next research focus will be on the northern district.”

The Soul Naga nodded to show she understood.

It was only then that Liu Zhi remembered the withered fruits he had collected. “But before that, I need to make something edible. Without food, I can’t do any research at all,” he said as he walked away from the river. As he left, another giant serpent rose silently from the water, staring after him as he departed.

Back at the base of the pyramid, Liu Zhi busied himself processing the seeds and planning his next steps. “The giant serpents have returned. The valley is sealed off once more, making it even harder to leave. If I have to stay here for a hundred and fifty days, I’ll need to prepare the necessities: a fire pit, pots, bowls, everything. I’ll also need somewhere to live and sleep; otherwise, if it rains again, it could be fatal.

“And I need to get food ready. If the fruit growth I just witnessed is a common occurrence, I could prepare in advance during storms and intercept some of the fruit.”

As he calculated, Liu Zhi started to act. The pyramid contained much useless gold, so he gathered some and hammered it flat, fashioning small pots and bowls. He tested a pot by the river and found it didn’t leak.

He filled the pot halfway with water and carried it back to his original hiding place, propping it over a fire with stones and tossing in the seeds. Making a fire was not difficult for Liu Zhi, but dry fuel was scarce since most wood outside was wet and wouldn’t burn. After some effort, he found dry moss and got a fire going. He placed the damp wood he found around the fire to dry, feeding each piece in as it became usable, creating a sustainable cycle.

The fire was small at first, but metal conducts heat well, and soon the water in the golden pot came to a boil. Liu Zhi tested the seeds with a couple of sticks and found them still quite hard, so he left the water boiling and turned to fashion more implements from the remaining gold.

By the time he had made some bowls, basins, and spoons, he noticed that two-thirds of the water in the pot had boiled away. What remained was a dark, muddy liquid with dissolved seeds, looking as thick and black as the sludge from a swamp.