One Thousand Years Ago I Was a Serpent

One Thousand Years Ago I Was a Serpent Synopsis: A millennium ago, I was born a serpent, small and hidden among bamboo groves, yet destined to witness the fragile balance between life and death. Over countless lifetimes, I have drifted through human and divine realms, learning, growing, and seeking the elusive path of enlightenment. My existence stretches across centuries of meditation, desire, and the relentless turning of karma. Long ago, a monk struck me down—yet even death could not sever the bond forged in that instant. Across reincarnations, he returns: as an old man, a young noble, a devoted practitioner. With each encounter, our connection deepens, evolving from vengeance to love, from love to inescapable entanglement, until the final moment when fate separates us forever—he attains ultimate enlightenment, and I left to wander the world as a restless spirit. A story of immortality, reincarnation, and a bond that defies lifetimes. Love, vengeance, and the aching impossibility of reunion—One Thousand Years Ago I Was a Serpent asks: can the soul ever escape its fate? Chapter 1 The Shackles One thousand years ago, I was a serpent. At first, I was only a small thing, hidden in a bamboo grove, waiting to swallow any careless bird. Perhaps the moon was too clear — I woke at night, watching bamboo shadows flicker in my obsidian eyes. Cold moonlight pooled between my scales and filled me with feelings I could not name. I was still young then and did not know why; only my scarlet tongue moved in and out, breathing. Joy and sorrow braided together; longing and fear sat side by side. Time passed — I cannot reckon how long, though I remember this precisely: beneath that moon I shed my skin three hundred times. I grew. I ate every creature in the woods until the grove could no longer hold my bulk; bamboo stalks crunched beneath me like weeds. Then I met a man. He stood before me with a cleaver raised. It was my first sight of a human. His warm blood and taut muscles stirred my appetite. With a ring of metal, the blade struck my brow and flung a spark — a sting that spread. Angered, I threw off the cleaver, coiled around him, and before long his strength left him. I ate him. Was that a crime? I did not think so. A snake eats; that is the law of being. Besides, he had nicked my smooth, beautiful scales. I felt no guilt in taking food; hunger makes one restless. After that, I ate a lot of men like him. I do not recall how many — such counts seem insignificant. The only constant was the moon, laying its pale light on the earth with a quiet voice, as if it were always speaking to me. I grew larger still. One stormy day, thunder shaking the mountains, I left my shed skin on a ridge — my greatest mistake. They called me monstrous: ninety-nine eaten, a scourge on the people, an offense that roused both gods and men. While I was most vulnerable, just after shedding, they seized me. In the downpour, I twisted and broke the necks of nine more. But they were many; a monk hurled a string of prayer beads that bound me, and I had no more strength as they cinched iron collars tight. I knew then I would die; fear flashed in my eyes. Yet I did not hate them. The strong eat the weak; the wind snaps fragile branches; tigers devour deer — such is nature. I was bound because I was outmatched. But I could not accept the monk’s words. He proclaimed: “This serpent poisons the land. Heaven is wrathful; by decree the gods command its destruction.” There were other speeches, but fire had already licked beneath me and my courage split; I remember little. His meaning was plain: I was monstrous; his killing me was justice done in Heaven’s name. The burning blinded me. Flesh tore; my spirit unbound itself and rose as a vast serpent from the c***k. In an instant all pain fell away and sight returned. I looked down at the earth, at those once food to me — frail, helpless people. The flames consumed my body and danced across their faces; the smell of blood and sweat grew fiercer in their outrage, making them seem smaller. They fancied themselves righteous. Ridiculous. Kill me if you must — there was no need to drench it in sanctimony. Then I saw my enemy: the monk with a jade-blood blade. His face was complex. For an instant, I thought he had glimpsed enlightenment. Instead, he ordered the iron restraints tightened. I strained to shed my mortal coil and flee, but they had bound the very seat of my heart, leaving me powerless to do more than watch. He cut his palm; crimson fell on the jade blade. The blade struck my spirit. With a keening hiss, a mist rose; I shuddered as the air warped, and the ants below clapped their hands to their ears. That was not enough for him — That was not enough for him — he sought to extinguish my spiritual awareness, the deep storehouse of karmic seeds, so that I might never be reborn. Did he hate me? We had no quarrel; we had never met. Why this fate? My serpent eyes froze on him as his blade rose and fell, cleaving my body to a thousand fragments that scattered in the wind. The fire burned for three days and nights; deep within my memory the reek of charred bone remains. After that I know nothing, save that a final thread of awareness lingered in the world. That slender strand of spirit had no thought, no sensation — vague, muddled, like a breath of wind, like a shaft of light: intangible, barely there. Rain soaked through it; lake water set it drifting. A fawn’s sprint could lift it; a flower’s fall could carry it down. That wisp of awareness was the most inconsequential thing in the world. A moment’s inattention and it would have dissipated. (To be continued)