Chapter 9: Uphill Mountain

The garbage collection station was unusually quiet deep into the night.

A king cobra, over four meters long, slowly slithered out from the pile of trash.

Its scales were jet black and glossy, and its neck gradually flattened from a cylindrical shape, eyes gleaming with fierce light. It opened its mouth and emitted a warning hiss toward An Sheng.

This king cobra in the garbage station was a ferocious mutant, its patterns and scale colors markedly different from ordinary king cobras.

Foxes were not part of the king cobra’s usual diet.

Yet it still glared fiercely, radiating a deadly aura as if it considered An Sheng one of its prey.

“Yip yip...”

An Sheng, upon seeing the cobra’s menacing gaze, neither retreated nor showed fear. Instead, he wagged his tail, gradually sidestepping to try and move into the cobra’s blind spot.

“Kid! Do you know who I was in my past life? I’m the renowned Song Jiang of South City Tea Street!”

“I, An, have a fondness for black silk, famous all over South City Tea Street!”

An Sheng grinned shamelessly, wagging his tail wildly to distract the king cobra while softly whining, making the cobra so preoccupied with him that it couldn’t watch its surroundings.

In truth, there was no history between An Sheng and the king cobra; this was their first encounter—and it was a disaster.

In a certain sense, the king cobra was the beast overlord of Changxi Town, highly intelligent.

It never made war on the villagers, instead reigning supreme within trash bins and garbage collection points.

That day, when An Sheng returned to Changxi Town for the second time, having just snagged a meal at the village chief’s house, he passed by a roadside trash bin. The king cobra seemed to sense something, lifting its head and staring fixedly at him.

This... outsider, a filthy beggar—he’s a threat! He cannot be allowed to stay!

Without any warning, the king cobra shot out from the trash bin, attacking An Sheng, who was passing by with a bottle of Maotai.

If not for Yu Xueqing grabbing An Sheng that day, An Sheng would have surely straightened the entire snake, bending it into a delicate black-silk leg.

“Hiss—”

Seeing An Sheng wag his head and tail to attract attention while circling, the king cobra sensed it had lost the initiative. If it did not strike soon, it might be cornered and beaten with blunt force.

The cobra swiftly slithered forward, spitting venom toward An Sheng’s eyes in an attempt to create an opening for an ambush.

“You black silk!”

An Sheng suddenly ducked, avoiding the venom, then sprang backward upright.

At the very moment the cobra rushed in, An Sheng raised a paw and delivered a heavy fox’s slap directly to the cobra’s neck spoon.

“Smack—”

The nearly twenty-kilogram king cobra was sent flying like it had been hit by a heavy truck, sprawling across the asphalt, its massive body wobbling and stars flashing before its eyes.

An Sheng pushed with all four limbs, quickly circling behind the cobra and pressing a fox paw onto its forehead.

“Black silk! Who goes hunting waving around a rice spoon like that?”

An Sheng extended both fox paws, firmly pinning the cobra’s neck spoon to the ground, then slammed it repeatedly.

The cobra’s head collided madly with the asphalt, but it didn’t utter a single sound.

“Clang clang clang—”

Under An Sheng’s relentless head-banging assault, the cobra’s head struck the ground hundreds of times in an instant—its neck spoon flew off, and the snake straightened out.

“It’s been so long since I’ve ‘pressed’ a spicy strip, it’s bringing me pure bliss...”

An Sheng exhaled a thick breath, looking at the sprawled king cobra with a triumphant smile.

When he lived in the northern summer district, the forest was filled with deer, wild boar, plump bamboo rats, and occasionally black bears and tigers.

Those large beasts were beyond An Sheng’s control, but the spicy strips and rodents were meek.

An Sheng had extensive experience in ‘pressing’ spicy strips in the forest.

Their casting time was too slow; he only needed to circle behind and deliver a kick to roast them.

“Pack it up and take it away!”

An Sheng licked the corner of his mouth but restrained himself from devouring the black silk like noodles. Instead, he rummaged through the garbage station and found a snakeskin bag.

He placed the king cobra inside, dragging the bag uphill.

An Sheng hadn’t forgotten his main task that day: investigating the cause of the rodent infestation in A Qing’s tea fields.

The king cobra was his ultimate weapon against the rats; otherwise, he would never have risked fighting a cobra in a garbage station.

Why would a big snake defecate in such a foul-smelling place?

“Ssshhh—”

Tying the bag’s mouth tightly, An Sheng dashed along the road, dragging the king cobra uphill.

The friction of the snakeskin bag against the asphalt produced a rustling sound.

Chen Fengshui, sitting in his courtyard sipping tea and enjoying the cool breeze, heard the strange noise and peeked outside. He immediately spotted the fox sprinting wildly while dragging the heavy bag, his eyes twitching slightly.

Late at night, a white fox dragging a heavy bag at full speed...

How would the village chief interpret this?

Chen Fengshui withdrew his wandering gaze with a complicated expression and solemnly looked down at his phone, muttering to himself:

“Times have changed, technology has advanced, the legal system’s perfected. Mess with a national second-class criminal and you’re done for...”

“Almost retired now. If you become a spirit, become one, but don’t go licking cat butts and looking for trouble.”

“Win the fight, you go to jail; lose, you get hospitalized and still go to jail.”

The village chief glanced at his front door, picked up the tape measure on the windowsill, and checked if the door was crooked.

---

An Sheng didn’t stop by old Chen’s door because time was tight and the mission urgent.

It took half an hour to reach the uphill mountain and another half hour to climb to the top.

Greeting old Chen and asking for water would have to wait until he came down.

After about forty minutes, An Sheng arrived at an altitude of over sixteen hundred meters. On the other side of the uphill mountain was a tea plantation named Downhill Road, where Yu Xueqing’s family’s tea fields were located.

“Squeak, squeak?”

The tea fields of Downhill Road were even livelier at night than in the early morning. Light mouse calls echoed from all directions.

Sated mountain rats chirped in the tea fields, breeding and thriving.

Under the moonlight’s glow, An Sheng could even clearly see male mountain rats driving their ‘big trucks.’

“The tea field’s name is terrible, and the atmosphere here is utterly debauched!”

Sniffing the strong, pungent odor emitted by the mountain rats, An Sheng’s expression grew increasingly strange. The number of mountain rats here was far greater than before.

The rats were indeed breeding fast, but An Sheng had already released over thirty snakes here.

Could these rats multiply faster than the feeding speed of over thirty snakes?

Although the summer eastern region’s rats were plump, the fierce and greedy mountain rats only grew up to seventeen centimeters.

Could they possibly outfeed more than thirty large snakes?

An Sheng didn’t believe it.

Yet the facts were right before him: the snakes he released were all gone, and the mountain rats were throwing a wild party on the mountain.

Yu Xueqing’s tea fields... definitely held some mystery.

Thinking this, An Sheng glanced at the just-awakened king cobra glaring resentfully at him.

“I didn’t want to do this originally, but it looks like this black silk up there... might get killed from overeating.”

In the forest, although rats burrowed, foxes were no slouches at digging themselves.

Humans needed cars and houses to marry in the city, but foxes also needed dens for their weddings. Foxes could dig underground villas as skillfully as beavers built dams.

The mountain rats here bred abnormally fast. To solve the rodent problem, the root cause of their anomaly had to be found—

“Yip yip yip—”

An Sheng’s face darkened, like a teacher catching a student peeking during self-study. He hopped into the tea field and loudly whimpered.

“You throw wild parties without inviting me, you selfish rats of the summer east!”

“With such behavior, don’t blame me for coming to pay you a home visit!”

“Now, it’s inspection time!”