When autumn winds rise, the snakes grow fat.
As an experienced foodie, Ian had always longed for the legendary chrysanthemum-and-three-snake soup—sweet, refreshing, rich but not greasy. Back when he lived in Guangzhou in his past life, he dreamed of tasting it, but he lacked both courage and time, and it became a lifelong regret.
This time around, fate must've taken mercy. When he opened his eyes, someone across from him was already stewing snake soup.
The fire was roaring, and the pot water was boiling.
On the grass opposite him stood a young man with golden hair, red eyes, and a face so cold and perfect it could've been carved from marble. He idly sliced vegetables using a curved knife inlaid with rubies.
In the hazy steam, onion chunks, parsley leaves, and finely diced mushrooms sloshed and bubbled in the pot, while fragrant spices layered in to release an irresistible aroma.
Too tempting…
No—this is downright cruel!
A drop of hot water splashed onto Ian, making him hurriedly swallow his saliva. He gasped, trying to soothe the pain in his throat from the pepper.
He glanced down at the boiling soup pot, then at his own slender body suspended on the rack. His fleeting thoughts snapped back to the grim reality, and he mentally screamed in frustration.
"Hey, hey! Something's seriously wrong here!"
"I wanted to eat snake soup, not be made into it!"
That's right—the ingredients were all in place. The only thing missing was the main ingredient: him.
Ian curled up the tip of his tail scorched by boiling water, gazed at the black mystic patterns that covered his body and the layers of cool scales, and stuck his tongue out in utter bitterness.
Once again, reality proved more fantastical than fiction.
In his previous life, he was just another ordinary guy in modern China, caught in the grind of 9-to-9, six days a week—working himself to the bone, coasting through life. A textbook "model worker," or as folks back home say, a perfect little wage-slave.
But adulthood comes with all sorts of pressure, and he needed an outlet.
As Lu Xun once said, "If you don't explode in silence, you'll distort in silence."
Ian leaned more toward the latter. In his spare time, he'd write articles online to make a few bucks. He'd bait his readers with dark humor, suddenly ghost them mid-series, then dive back in under a new alias to dupe another crowd.
Every time he disappeared mid-story, he could practically hear the comments section erupt: "I'm mailing you a knife!" "Next time, it's ghostwriter stew!"
But that only made him laugh—and eat more. Nothing boosted his appetite like a comment section in flames.
But karma came calling. A fed-up reader, after slogging through half a dozen mediocre unfinished novels, snapped. He pulled out his cable in rage—but couldn't beat Ian's cunning. So he used hacking to track him down, traveled thousands of miles, and showed up with a kitchen knife.
That's when Ian realized—right as the blade sank into his chest: ghostwriters don't make good stew, and they definitely don't make it out alive.
And apparently, reincarnation doesn't save you. He awoke not a pigeon, but a snake—on a rack, about to be cooked.
Still, after paying for past misdeeds with his life, Ian had no shortage of survival instincts.
His slender body writhed on the rack, he struggled and even shed a few scales—but then he faced a brutal truth: the rope binding him, etched with strange cuneiform symbols, wouldn't budge.
His forked tongue flicked in his mouth, probing the ropes near two hard, sharp things. His dark vertical pupils reflected a flicker of self-comforting bravado.
"No worries—I'm venomous! I'll launch a sneak attack before he even knows I'm in the pot!"
But when that looming, somber figure cast his shadow over Ian's head, every counterattack he'd rehearsed dissolved. He felt like a spicy strip of jerky caught in the stare of a king cobra.
His heart instinctively froze, limbs turned to mush, and he forgot even to protect his tail from the steam.
"Sneak attack, my ass!"
Sneak attacking tigers? That's amateur hour. The guy opposite him could treat lions and tigers like housecats!
His skills were completely irrelevant!
The pool of steam, the Mesopotamian cuneiform, that eerily familiar face, the heavy gold decorations—at least ten kilos on his body—and that cold, wicked smirk… It all, along with residual memories from his original hunger host's mind, made even Ian, ignorant as he was, realize just how terrifying this person was.
Yes—the one cooking him was Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, the King of Heroes from ancient Babylonian myth.
The world's oldest epic, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the Mesopotamian civilization. It's a hymn to Gilgamesh, hero of Uruk—the city-state of the Sumerian dynasty ruling ancient Mesopotamia.
The handsome, cold-eyed blond youth standing before him was the living legend from the tales.
According to the epic, after the gods grew wary of humanity's rapid growth and expanding power, they created a being to restrain mankind—a wedge between gods and humans—by uniting a king of the mortal realm with a goddess. That wedge was Gilgamesh.
As a half-god, half-human, he bore the divine lineage of "two-thirds god, one-third man," and possessed the unique perspective of both deity and mortal.
In his childhood, Gilgamesh had been the ideal ruler—revered, admired by all, and embodying the finest traits of any king to walk the earth: tolerance, thoughtfulness, justice, and a deep respect for virtue. Those who passed him on the streets could only shower him with praise, enamored by his presence.
But as time passed and he grew from a boy into a young man, Gilgamesh's path took a turn. No longer content with simply ruling, he sought to impose divine judgment upon humanity through storms and chaos.
To establish the standard by which humans would be judged, he brazenly seized and hoarded wealth, acting on his own whims.
Concerned that Gilgamesh might neglect his role in restraining mankind, the gods had, during his youth, created a warrior to oppose him—Enkidu, the "Chains of Heaven."
When Gilgamesh reached adulthood, the gods, seeking to reclaim him and show divine wrath, sent Enkidu to confront him. The two clashed, but neither emerged victorious.
Yet from that evenly matched battle, something unexpected was born: the first true equal Gilgamesh had ever met became his closest friend.
Together, they set out to protect Uruk and save its people from starvation. Side by side, they defeated the Divine Beast Huwawa in the Cedar Forest, setting the city back on course and ushering in an era of prosperity.
With Enkidu's support, Gilgamesh forged a thriving civilization and, in doing so, became a formidable yet brilliant tyrant.
But their actions stirred divine fury. For offending the gods, Anu sent down the strongest of divine beasts—Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven—to punish the world.
Even then, Gilgamesh and Enkidu stood united. They repelled the Bull of Heaven, sparing the earth from the ravages of a divine flood.
However, the gods could not tolerate such defiance from the "Chains of Heaven" and the "Wedge of Heaven" acting in unison.
Though they could not directly punish Gilgamesh, they cursed Enkidu, who was bound by divine obedience, condemning him to wither and die as retribution.
Losing his dearest friend, Gilgamesh fell into a grief so profound it consumed him. Witnessing Enkidu's death with his own eyes, he was struck by the harrowing realization that he too would one day face the same fate.
Thus began his journey in search of immortality.
He crossed endless lands and seas, enduring countless hardships, until he reached the Underworld and encountered a man named Utnapishtim, who granted him the Herb of Immortality.
As a mortal son of man, Gilgamesh resolved to bring this power of eternal life back to his people.
But on the return journey, while bathing in a clear spring—liberated in body and spirit—a snake silently crept in and devoured the herb during his moment of rest, gaining the ability to shed its skin and be reborn.
So yes, that's how it happened.
Ian had become one of the characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh...
Except he was the snake that stole the Herb of Immortality.
"You've got guts, daring to swallow what belongs to this king, mongrel!"
The King of Heroes, Gilgamesh, stood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking down with a chilling, lofty glare. His eyes, red as blood-rubies, gleamed with a sinister amusement.
"Tch. Might as well stew you now while it's still effective."
Ian's body trembled uncontrollably. As he stared into the bubbling pot of boiling water, a chill ran through his scales.
It really looked like he was about to go from snake... to snake soup.