A chthonic abyss yawned between our shuddering sedan and the leviathan, its contours obscured by the necrotic embrace of streetlamps whose shattered luminescence pooled like phosphorescent mercury around the aberration. The entity loomed eight and a half feet at minimum—a coiled perversion of natural law, its arrowheaded cranium arcing skyward in eternal defiance, onyx-dark tongue suspended mid-oscillation as though dissecting the molecular structure of our terror. The very air crackled with static charge, each inhalation carrying the acrid tang of ozone undercut by reptilian musk.
Dread seeped through my capillaries like cryogenic syrup. Glacial torrents cascaded along my vertebrae as atavistic revulsion erupted across my dermis, each hair follicle standing sentinel against the profanity confronting us. My palms fused to cracked vinyl seats reeking of three generations' worth of sweat and spilled baijiu, fingernails carving parquet patterns into upholstery stuffing that erupted in miniature mushroom clouds of dust. Somewhere beneath the driver's seat, a forgotten mint roll liquefied in its wrapper, its peppermint stench warring with the burgeoning odor of my own fear-soured perspiration.
"Father! Mother! Illuminate that abomination!" My shriek shredded the cabin's stagnant atmosphere, its vibrato oscillating between command and primal ululation.
Their battle for vehicular supremacy ceased mid-grapple—a truce forged in the crucible of existential dread. Four bloodshot oculars tracked my quivering digit toward the void, pupils dilating to eclipse irises. The digital thermometer on the dash read -3°C, yet sweat cascaded down Father's jowls like monsoonal rivers.
"Ophidian Overlord..." Father's whisper congealed into a death rattle textured by sixty years of unfiltered cigarettes. His complexion transitioned from rice-paper translucence to the grey of exhumed catacomb remains, arthritic fingers spasming against the steering wheel's frayed leather sheathing. A cataract-filmed eye twitched in remembered violence—ghost of the 1998 cobra attack that cost him their firstborn son.
Mother's hand struck the headlight switch with pit viper velocity, her jade bangle clattering against the gearshift in discordant carillon.
Reality crystallized under the xenon glare.
What we had perceived as singular behemoth resolved into seething blasphemy—a writhing ziggurat of ten thousand serpents interlaced into profane homage to their deity. Scales shimmered like spilled crude oil beneath a blood moon, their synchronized undulations crafting the illusion of monolithic movement. Forked tongues lanced outward in unholy metronome, their collective hiss resonating through the Toyota's chassis to vibrate our molars. The atmosphere curdled, thick with musk reminiscent of opened ossuaries and reptilian cloacae. Beneath this living monument, the asphalt bubbled like tar pits, releasing methane belches that set dashboard warning lights flickering in panicked semaphore.
Return... Return... Return...
The sibilant command now infected all three occupants. Father's nicotine-stained knuckles cracked like kindling against the wheel's circumference. "Compliance. Before mercy evaporates."
I devolved into purest amygdala terror—a jerboa beneath the steppe eagle's shadow. The cabin's atmosphere congealed into viscous aspic, my lungs laboring against invisible anacondas. Through the nightmare cacophony, I registered the flickering GPS screen—23.4km from the provincial highway, its pixelated arrow spinning like a dervish. The rearview mirror reflected my own face as a Edvard Munch study: mouth a rictus oval, eyes wide enough to reveal bloodshot sclera circumscribing dilated pupils.
"Heretical cowardice!" Mother's tungsten-edged rebuke severed the paralysis. Her mahogany hairpin quivered like a seismograph needle as she slammed open the glove compartment, retrieving a road flare from amidst expired insurance papers. "Combustion conquers crawling things! Advance!"
Admiration pierced my dread—here was Boudicca charioting through Roman legions, Tamamo-no-Mae weaponizing her vulpine curse. While I liquefied into spinelessness, she strategized with Sun Tzu precision. The flare's crimson glow bathed her face in hellfire hues, etching decades of suppressed ambitions into sudden sharp relief.
As though summoned by her defiance, titan ophidians materialized at every window—their girth rivaling sacred banyans, obsidian eyes level with ours through glass fogged by panicked exhalations. The car groaned its metallic dirge as scaled coils constricted its flanks, windshield fracturing into cubist abstraction beneath piston-force tail strikes. My smartphone slid across the dashboard, its cracked screen illuminating a half-completed WeChat message to my college roommate about postponed graduation plans—surreal artifact of a life being erased.
We became a caravel in typhoon—elevated, rotated, suspended in the jaws of forces that predated wheel and fire. My stomach performed parabolic acrobatics as gravity's laws dissolved. Through nausea's haze, I glimpsed the odometer spinning backward—178,302km... 178,301... 178,300—as though time itself unraveled. When equilibrium grudgingly reasserted, our headlights now illuminated the village's lichen-crusted archway, its sandstone keystone carved with the Drakos manticore devouring its own offspring. Moonlight bled through the sculpture's hollow eye sockets, projecting bestial silhouettes that danced across the bonnet.
Admonition... Admonition... Admonition...
The hiss fractalized into Dolby Atmos menace. Fresh abominations manifested along the verges—serpents disgorging twitching tributes: a snowshoe hare's hindquarters still spasming in death throes, its thoracic cavity blooming carnation-red innards onto hoarfrost-laced gravel. Squirrels rained from pine boughs, necks torqued at angles mocking avian flight. A juvenile red panda struck the windshield with wet astrophysics, its ochre fur matting into Rorschach patterns across glass. Most horrid of all—a still-bleating goat kid, its obsidian pupils locked onto mine as serpentine jaws unhinged to swallow it whole, the muffled cries persisting even after disappearance down scaled gullets.
Father's Adam's apple undulated like a hanged puppet's jerks. "Progression... or capitulation?"
The answer glistened in lagomorphic vitae dripping down Mother's window. She nodded, her iron-wrought posture crumbling into mortal capitulation. The dashboard's sapphire backlight etched fresh canyons across her face—cartography of surrender. Her hand, steady through a thousand market negotiations, now trembled like a seismograph needle tracing pre-eruption tremors.
Ignition sparked. As we crawled village-ward, the serpentine honor guard withdrew into nocturne's embrace with parade-ground precision. Their parting gift endured—windshield wipers smearing hemoglobin and cerebrospinal fluid into abstract watercolors, the scent of copper and pineal enzymes permeating recycled cabin air. The climate control system, set to 22°C, now blew arctic gusts that raised goosepimples on arms already jewelled with fear-sweat.
Through this carmine prism, I glimpsed impossible elegance—a figure enthroned atop the disintegrating serpentine ziggurat. Moonlight sculpted his hanfu robes into quicksilver drapery, raven hair cascading over shoulders blending scholar's poise with warrior's topography. His smile radiated parchment-scroll warmth, jade-ringed fingers raised in benediction. For three heartbeats, our gazes locked—his eyes twin obsidian pools containing constellations unborn. Then, as moths are drawn to funeral pyres, every serpent craned toward him in hieratic homage.
I blinked. Void swallowed his presence, the air vibrating with phantom guqin arpeggios. A single scale remained where he'd stood—iridescent as dragonfly wings, its surface etched with minuscule characters from some antediluvian syllabary.
The serpentine monument dissolved in languid collapse, its constituent snakes flowing uphill like bitumen rivulets seeking their mountain origin. Our defiled vehicle carried us homeward, tires compressing serpent cadavers that detonated with moist percussive notes. The stench of burst gallbladders mingled with my voided bladder's acrid tang—a symphony of biological shame. The fuel gauge, miraculously, still read half-full, though the needle now quivered like a dowsing rod above cursed ground.
Dawn's first rays unveiled Lujiagou transformed. Each household bore scaled invoices for our hubris—shattered poultry coops exhaling feather blizzards, goat carcasses adorned with serpentine chokers of paired puncture wounds. Old Widow Chen's prize peacock lay decapitated in the town square, its iridescent train nailed to the wishing tree in mocking approximation of angel wings. Beneath the village well's frozen surface, carp floated belly-up, their scales picked clean to reveal flesh etched with serpentiform patterns.
The ancestral hall's vermilion doors gaped like a suicide's wrist wounds when we returned, their lacquer peeling in leprous patches. Within, the Drakos reliquary gleamed with fresh sanguine offerings—our names inscribed in cursive vermilion across parchment older than the Qing dynasty. Mother's protective iron filings lay scattered across the threshold, their carefully arranged bagua formation overwritten by serpentine glyphs in the dust. The air hummed with static, every surface dusted with iridescent scales that clung to skin like malignant pollen.
As Father collapsed into his Ming-style armchair, erguotou bottle already uncorked, I traced the marks beneath our sedan—not mere fang indentations, but cuneiform symbols repeating a single phrase in infinite loop. The message transcended linguistic barriers, its meaning seared directly into the hindbrain:
Prepare the bride.
In my bedroom, the family genealogy lay open to a page previously sealed with wax. The illumination showed our first ancestor kneeling before a serpentine throne, his hands offering a bridal veil woven from lunar filaments and viper skins. Marginalia in faded ink warned of cyclical reckonings, of ophidian suitors demanding their due. Outside, the mountains exhaled mist that coiled into copulating serpents above every roof—a living canopy of prohibition.
The village elders materialized at dusk, their procession lit by paper lanterns painted with coiling mambas. Without words, they placed an ornate lacquer box containing hairpins forged from shed serpent fangs and a veil spun from arachnid silk and ghost moth wings. Their eyes held neither malice nor pity—only the glacial patience of those who tend graveyards.
As midnight's hourglass emptied, the distant mountains echoed with nuptial drums. The earth itself seemed to undulate in anticipation, each tectonic sigh carrying whispered admonitions in a language that predated tongue and teeth. Somewhere beyond the forbidden archway, scales rasped against stone in bridal procession.