The Little Peacock Raises a Snake (GL) Chapter 2

[Everyone has once been free of worry. Sadly, we did not meet in the years when we were both most carefree.]
[But I have never regretted using everything I had, in my most carefree days, to save you when despair had almost crushed you.]
*
East of Qixia and north of Wuzhou, between two nameless mountains, there was a quiet hidden valley called Wuyou.
Wuyou Valley had not always had a name. Fu Zhuochen had kicked out the local land god, claimed the place first, named it Wuyou, and even gave the two mountains the same name.
After living there lazily for a few years, he always felt something was missing. So he built a Peacock God Temple outside the mountains, declared himself a half-immortal, and began accepting offerings from the people of Wuzhou.
If an ordinary demon did such a thing, punishment would surely follow. Yet no one had restrained Fu Zhuochen for many years.
The heavenly realm indulged him because he was a red peacock born with a rare mutation. He had been extraordinary from birth, and after more than three thousand years of cultivation, ordinary immortals and gods could do very little about him. Luckily, although this demon was famously proud, vain, and hard to get along with, he still obeyed the rules of the three realms. He never caused disaster in the human world. So the heavenly realm turned a blind eye and let him spend his idle days there.
With such a great demon living in Wuyou Valley, no one dared offend the place.
There were many living things in the valley through all four seasons, but very few had awakened intelligence.
Fu Xiaoba was one of them.
She was a peacock. A female peacock.
Her neck was green, her body was muddy yellow, and her short tail looked like a pheasant’s. She could not grow the splendid tail fan of a male peacock.
Her family name had not been Fu at first. Her parents were the most ordinary peacock couple in Wuyou Valley. They had no names, no family name, and no learning. They hatched clutch after clutch of children, and after each one broke its shell, they named it by order. Simple and easy to remember.
She was the eighth little one to break her shell, so she was called Xiaoba, Little Eight.
Even that was because she had been born early. If one looked eight or nine years later, the youngest little sister in the family was already called Yao-San-Qi, Little One-Three-Seven.
From childhood, Fu Xiaoba felt she was different from everyone else. If one had to say how, it was probably that she was much smarter than the other peacocks in the valley. So after her small body matured, whenever she saw male peacocks spreading their tails to court mates, she stayed especially cold and unmoved, with a strange lofty air that said, How could common peacocks be worthy of me?
Sure enough, a few dozen years later, her parents and siblings were all gone. Even the descendants of that youngest Yao-San-Qi were filling the valley with their courtship displays. Yet she was still alone.
“So I am a demon,” she realized when she was already more than fifty years old.
The years in the valley were long. The sun rose, the moon set, and the peace carried a hint of loneliness.
Only that figure in red, in these green mountains and clear waters where no one ever stayed for long, counted as a sight she longed for.
As for her, she spent every day standing blankly beside the stream, watching sunrises and sunsets. Her days passed in a muddle, idle and carefree.
One day, Fu Zhuochen could no longer stand it. He crouched beside her and spoke the first human words she had heard since cracking her shell.
“Do you truly not plan to cultivate?” His tone seemed to hate that iron would not become steel.
The little peacock had never seen what other demons looked like after taking human form, so she had no way to compare. But from the bottom of her heart, she felt Fu Zhuochen was especially beautiful, a rare beauty in this world.
That year, she was not yet one hundred. It was the first time she had been so close to that three-thousand-year-old demon, so she could not help feeling nervous.
She lifted her neck, tilted her head, and blinked at him in great confusion.
That was the first time she met the eyes of the great demon in the mountains. Sadly, her cultivation was extremely low, and she still could not speak.
The next moment, Fu Zhuochen grabbed the back of her neck, the place fate had chosen, and with no pity at all carried her deep into the valley to the bamboo courtyard. He took her as his younger sister and forced her to cultivate seriously every single day.
From then on, Fu Xiaoba’s family name became Fu.
Later, she could not help asking Fu Zhuochen why he had caught her that day and kept her beside him, urging her to cultivate day after day.
Only after asking did she learn that she had once been a fairy in heaven. She had descended only to undergo a love tribulation, so she could ascend as an upper god.
“Before you jumped from the Reincarnation Platform, someone repeatedly asked me to keep you safe.” Fu Zhuochen’s words were full of dislike. “I only agreed to protect you. I had no interest in getting involved with you. Who knew you could waste nearly a hundred years? Every day, besides spacing out, you only knew how to eat, drink, relieve yourself, and sleep. It was simply unbearable to watch.”
He said, “With such laziness, when will you ever take human form and pass this lifetime’s love tribulation?”
That was true. The peacocks in the mountains all lived short lives. Not one could fall into a deep, lingering romance with her. If she wanted to pass a love tribulation, she really could only wait until the day she took human form, then run to the human world and find a man.
As Fu Xiaoba thought this, she suddenly spotted a flaw.
This valley was not filled only with “common peacocks”!
“Good brother!” Fu Xiaoba hopped onto the table and flapped her muddy yellow wings at Fu Zhuochen, who was drinking tea. She blinked her little eyes, trying to act cute.
Fu Zhuochen glanced at her lightly. “If you have something to say, say it.”
Fu Xiaoba scratched the tabletop with the tips of her claws and asked carefully, “How about you accompany me through this love tribulation?”
Fu Zhuochen seemed to choke on his tea.
He forced himself not to spray tea all over Fu Xiaoba’s face. After several seconds of silence, he elegantly set down his celadon teacup and rubbed the silly tuft of feathers on her head.
His fine brows curved. With a smile that was not quite a smile, he said, “Before doing anything, think more about whether you are worthy.”
Fu Xiaoba: “…”
So angry. But she still had to keep smiling.
“All right. I understand.”
“I am sorry. I am not worthy.”
Fu Xiaoba’s tone was terribly wronged.
Seeing her so dejected, Fu Zhuochen felt a little embarrassed for once. His tone softened by a rare few degrees, and he gave her a rather half-hearted comfort.
“It is only a tribulation. Why rush it? Being an immortal is not that wonderful. It is much happier to be a demon.”
“If you are born because of a tribulation and die because of that tribulation, would that not make this whole trip through the mortal world a waste?”
His words were not wrong. But from the moment she learned she had once been an immortal, her heart had longed for the day she could return to the heavenly realm.
Being an immortal was so steady. Once she was an immortal, she could space out whenever she wanted. No matter how much she lazed around, Fu Zhuochen would not be able to pinch the back of her neck and force her to cultivate.
*
Legend said the bird clan had a precious treasure. Most of the time, it was hidden very well, but once every hundred years, it drew a strange sign from heaven and earth, making its location easy to expose.
No one knew exactly how powerful that treasure was, but every kind of demon and devil had coveted it for years. Both the bird clan chief and the lord of the demon realm valued it more than their own lives. Every time the omen came, they personally guarded it.
As one of the top experts in the clan, Fu Zhuochen would be called to Qixia Mountain by the bird clan chief to protect the rite whenever the omen was near.
To be honest, helping the clan chief guard the rite only took about a month. But Fu Xiaoba did not know why, every time Fu Zhuochen returned to Qixia Mountain, he stayed for a long time. Without a year or half a year, he would not come back.
Once he left, Wuyou Valley, already empty, became even quieter than usual.
In the days when Fu Zhuochen was gone, Fu Xiaoba yawned and began to slack off.
She rarely had a chance to be this lazy in the mountains. She wandered from the bamboo forest to the clear stream in the valley.
With her wings behind her back and her head held high, she faced the sunset and closed her eyes.
She stretched her “beautiful neck” with its touch of green and, like an old person, enjoyed the last warmth of the late autumn sun.
After some time, a faint smell of blood drifted into her nose along with the scent of grass. It carried an extremely weak trace of demonic energy.
Fu Xiaoba hesitated for a long while. In the end, she took small quick steps and ran in the direction the smell came from.
Beside a pile of broken stones near the stream, a small snake lay quietly coiled, bleeding without stop. It had black scales, and its forehead was lumpy. It was not smooth and round like other little snakes at all.
When the dying little black snake saw her approach, she suddenly opened a pair of tired yet gem-bright black eyes. Her gaze was three parts shame and anger, seven parts threat.
“Do not be afraid. I will not hurt you.” Fu Xiaoba spoke, stepped forward twice, and stopped beside the little black snake. She tilted her head. “You look ugly in a pretty unique way. Your forehead is full of bumps.”
Perhaps because she had spent too long with Fu Zhuochen, she had been attacked by words for years and had grown used to it. She did not know that such blunt honesty could hurt a snake’s pride.
As soon as she finished that sentence, before the little black snake could react, Fu Xiaoba added, “How did you get so badly hurt? Were you bullied because you look like this and beaten up by someone?”
The little black snake had still been working hard to hold on to one breath of true energy. Hearing this, she was so angry her eyes rolled white, and she fainted on the spot.
Oh no, she fainted!
The little black snake was ugly, but she was still a life with awakened intelligence.
As the saying went, saving one life was better than building a seven-story pagoda. A snake might not count as a person, but since she was badly wounded and close to death, Fu Xiaoba could not simply leave her there.
After thinking for a moment, Fu Xiaoba copied the way Fu Zhuochen had grabbed her back then. She stepped forward, picked up the little black snake by the back of her neck, the place fate had chosen, and dragged her happily all the way back to the bamboo courtyard deep in the mountains.
*
When the little black snake woke, she found herself coiled in a soft little nest that opened upward. Many bloodstained bandages were wrapped around her body in a messy way. It was not hard to guess how clumsy the hands of the one who bandaged her had been.
Luckily, many of her wounds had stopped bleeding. No matter what, this was better than curling up beside the rocks and forcing herself to heal through her own power.
She raised her head, just about to look for her “benefactor,” when she saw, lying beside the soft little nest, a muddy yellow pheasant with a green neck.
You look ugly in a pretty unique way. Your forehead is full of bumps.
Ugly in a pretty unique way. Your forehead is full of bumps.
Pretty unique. Forehead full of bumps.
Pretty unique, pretty unique, pretty unique…
Full of bumps, full of bumps, full of bumps…
Very unpleasant memories began echoing in her mind.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
Do not get angry. Do not get angry.
Fu Xiaoba heard the movement beside her and quickly opened her eyes. She said in delight, “You are finally awake! You were unconscious for six days! I thought you might not make it!”
As she spoke, she stood and flapped her wings, happily turning several circles around the room. At last, she hopped to the little black snake and stretched out one wing.
The little black snake froze in confusion.
“Oh, sorry. I forgot you snakes do not have hands.” As Fu Xiaoba spoke, her small wing patted the little black snake’s bumpy head. She said seriously, “The past is past. Do not worry. I will not dislike you for being ugly!”
The little black snake froze in confusion.
“Since I saved you, I will do the good deed to the end! Across all Wuyou Mountain, aside from my brother, I am the greatest demon here. From now on, follow me. I will raise you and protect you. I will never let anyone bully you again!”
The little black snake froze in utter confusion.
Ignorant little demon. Truly infuriating! So infuriating that it pulled at her wounds. Pain. Pain enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Seeing what seemed to be tears in the little black snake’s eyes, Fu Xiaoba deeply sensed this “unique little thing’s” gratitude toward her and felt very comforted.
“What is your name?”
“Hiss…” The little black snake twisted her tightly wrapped body. She was thinking about how to tell this pheasant her name when she saw Fu Xiaoba shake her head and sigh.
“Ah, why am I asking such a useless question? A little demon who cannot even talk probably has no name.” As Fu Xiaoba spoke, her eyes lit up. She said happily, “I will give you one!”
Little black snake: “Hiss… hiss…” (filthy language)
Her chest was tight. Her breath was blocked!
If she were not so badly injured that she could not speak, how could she let this ignorant little demon spout nonsense here?
“Let me introduce myself. My name is Fu Xiaoba. Since I picked you up and raised you, you can take my family name. From now on, hmm… from now on, you will be called Fu Yao-San-Ba!”
The little black snake almost spat out a mouthful of old blood.
Fine, Fu was fine. But Fu One-Three-Eight too? Did she not need any dignity?
Luckily, Fu Xiaoba thought it over and noticed something was not quite right.
This little black snake had not hatched from the eggs of her parents, who had died hundreds of years ago. How could she so easily take a number in Fu Xiaoba’s family line?
“Forget it. Since you are so black all over, I will call you Little Black.” As Fu Xiaoba spoke, she patted Little Black’s forehead with her wing again and giggled foolishly. “Little Black, Little Black. Sounds pretty good, right?”
Little Black: “…”
Calm heart, clear mind, empty of all things. I am someone with status. I will not lower myself to argue with an ignorant little demon.