A Guide to Raising Snake Spirits - Chapter 13

After a long wait, the Sentinel finally replied. His profile picture was still the grey, default system icon.

Shiraishi Hare: Is it okay for me to come?

Guanyue Xi: Of course it is. Why else would I ask?

Shiraishi Hare: Okay.

Guanyue Xi: You’ll come with me this Friday evening.

Guanyue Xi’s parents were scheduled to arrive on a starship over the weekend. They lived quite a distance from his apartment; if the Tower was the heart of the Special Star, then his parents’ home was far to the southwest.

Fortunately, transport on the Special Star was efficient, taking only an hour or two. Truthfully, Guanyue Xi had always been a bit puzzled—his family’s assets were more than enough to buy a nice place in the city centre, yet his parents insisted on living in such a remote area.

Eventually, he’d stopped caring. Besides, his memories of living in that house as a child were quite hazy.

Time flew by in a blur of teaching for Guanyue Xi and homework for Shiraishi until the weekend arrived.

Friday evening, after Shiraishi finished his classes, Guanyue Xi hailed an interstellar taxi to take them to his parents’ old house.

His parents lived in a small row of townhouses. Most of the Special Star consisted of high-rise apartments now, and these types of standalone little houses only existed in the outskirts.

It was a two-story building made of imitation wood, featuring a courtyard of about a hundred square metres. Guanyue Xi’s father had planted various flowers and greenery and even built a small pavilion—a very tranquil setting. Although his parents were rarely home, the smart home system kept the garden in excellent shape. Overgrown branches peeked over the fence, lush and green.

The neighbours didn’t seem to be home; at this hour, Guanyue Xi’s house was the only one with the lights on.

Guanyue Xi led Shiraishi to the door and rang the bell.

“Is that Xiao Xi back with a friend?”

A woman’s voice drifted from inside. It was gentle and soft-spoken; one could almost feel her maternal warmth just from the sound of it.

“I’m back!” Guanyue Xi called out.

The door opened to reveal a woman who looked exactly as gentle as her voice. She had medium-length black hair and the same grey-blue, almond-shaped eyes as Guanyue Xi. She even had the same beauty mark under her eye, though hers bore more traces of time. She was wearing travel clothes and practical trousers, clearly having just returned from her trip.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Your father’s in the garden. The second he got back, he rushed out to see his precious plants. Honestly, you’d think they were his actual children.” When she spoke again, her style shifted—she had a bit of a fiery spark when mentioning Guanyue Xi’s father.

Shiraishi Hare offered a greeting: “Hello, Auntie.”

“Oh, you must be Xiao Hare, right?” The woman turned back to Shiraishi with a warm smile.

“Yes. I’m Shiraishi Hare.”

Guanyue Xi was secretly amused. Shiraishi looked perfectly composed, but through their mental link, the Guide could sense that the Sentinel was so nervous he was practically walking in a synchronized limp.

“Come in. There are slippers by the door.”

The Guide released the Black Mamba. The dark serpent slithered past his mother’s feet, but she didn’t react at all, walking right past it without looking.

Guanyue Xi whispered an explanation to Shiraishi: “My parents are ordinary people. They can’t see Spirit Bodies.”

“You’re back?”

A man walked in through the back door, wiping soil from his hands with a waist apron before tossing it into the laundry bot’s bin.

“Just been messying around with the flowers. Don’t mind the dirt.”

As he walked over, Guanyue Xi’s father suddenly froze. It was an almost imperceptible hesitation, and his expression looked strained for a fraction of a second, but he quickly masked it with a smile.

The entryway was piled with suitcases of all sizes—spoils from their galactic tour.

Guanyue Xi’s mother excitedly beckoned him over.

“Xiao Xi, look! Look at the graduation gift we got for you!”

Without another word, his mother began rummaging through the cases, soon covering most of the living room floor with treasures.

Guanyue Xi silently pulled Shiraishi back a few steps to give her space.

“My mom’s like this. She looks like she’s got it together, but she’s basically an eternal eighteen-year-old,” Guanyue Xi whispered to Shiraishi, only to be silenced by a playful swat on the head from his mother.

After chatting for a while longer, his parents shooed them off to bed. Shiraishi was placed in the guest room, and Guanyue Xi went to his own old bedroom.

He was dreaming again.

The layout of the house felt familiar. Guanyue Xi stood there for a moment before a few memories resurfaced.

He remembered the two previous blurry dreams now. He wasn’t sure what the trigger was, but he suddenly recalled them clearly.

However, the setting this time was different.

The last ones were in a laboratory, and while this was also a lab, the perspective had shifted.

To put it simply, the last dream felt like the height of a sitting adult. This time, he was seeing through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy. Everything around him felt taller.

Guanyue Xi hadn’t studied laboratory equipment, so he couldn’t tell how old or what model the machines were.

But if this dream belonged to the same person as before, it must be from over a decade earlier.

This time, there was a benefit: he wasn’t restrained. He could walk around freely in the limited space.

He stretched his body and realized he was wearing a laboratory gown that was open at the sides—essentially just a piece of cloth with a hole for the head, held together by two ties.

Guanyue Xi: “…”

At least it was a boy’s body.

Guanyue Xi made a point of looking away from himself and carefully smoothed down the hem of the gown.

He wandered around the lab, but he couldn’t find a single word of text, and the equipment was Greek to him. He thought irritably that once he woke up, he’d have to look up what these instruments were for. Maybe he should take an elective in Chemistry.

The brain of a special species remains a mystery to this day. People explore, study, and develop it, but they’ve only scratched the surface. Whether in myths, urban legends, or personal accounts, there are plenty of stories about dreams connecting to reality.

Since this was his third such dream in a short span, Guanyue Xi grew curious and decided to take it seriously.

He tried the door, but it was locked.

However, combining the clues from the first two dreams, this body was likely a Sentinel.

First, because of the super-hearing in the first dream, and second, because this child’s physical stats were incredible. Although he felt weak, his grip strength far exceeded that of a normal adult.

There were a few cabinets in the lab. Guanyue Xi pulled at them, but they wouldn’t budge. A reckless impulse took hold—he was in a Sentinel’s body, and it was a dream. What did it matter if he broke something?

He gripped the handle of a cabinet, adjusted his stance, and yanked with all his might.

Snap.

Guanyue Xi silently placed the snapped-off handle onto a nearby lab bench, pretending nothing had happened. The cabinet door was still closed.

He refused to believe he’d find nothing. The first two dreams had been too short; he’d woken up before hearing anything useful. This dream was lasting quite a while, yet he still hadn’t found a single clue.

He went back and searched the equipment he’d already checked. Maybe he’d missed something.

Finally, luck was on his side. Beneath a strange-looking machine, he found a string of code.

Guanyue Xi memorized the code. He guessed it was an equipment model number; that would at least tell him the general time period.

After that, no matter how much he rummaged, he didn’t find a single letter. But a lack of clues was a clue in itself. Normal lab equipment always had model numbers engraved on them. The fact that these didn’t was highly suspicious.

Guanyue Xi woke up from the dream with a heavy heart.

But it wasn’t daylight as he had expected. In the darkness, a blurry figure was standing silently by his bed.

Guanyue Xi: “?”

He gasped, catching a scream in his throat just in time as his eyes focused on the grey-haired Sentinel.

Seriously? It was one thing to stage a midnight raid in his own home, but doing it in front of his parents was a bit much.

Fortunately, Shiraishi didn’t lunge at him. He just stood there.

Seeing that Guanyue Xi was awake, Shiraishi said cryptically: “I’ve remembered something.”

Guanyue Xi stared at him with his mouth half-open, feeling completely bewildered. Before he could ask what Shiraishi had remembered, the Sentinel turned and vanished from the room as silently as a cat.

The Guide sat in silence. He was confused. He pulled the covers over his head and went back to sleep.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to drag the Sentinel back for an interrogation, but he knew he didn’t have a Sentinel’s stealth. If he woke up his parents and they caught him in Shiraishi’s room… they were adults, sure, but he didn’t want to deal with the inevitable gossip. He closed his eyes and slept.

When Guanyue Xi woke up again, it was because the sun was streaming through the glass and hitting his bed.

He scrambled up and immediately typed the code he’d memorized into his terminal.

It was a very old model. In an era of rapid technological growth, equipment from over a decade ago was considered an antique—outdated and obsolete. No manufacturers sold it anymore, and even the original brand had gone bankrupt.

Refusing to give up, he searched for the company name: “Shaoyun Technical Systems.” Strangely, it had been a subsidiary of a major corporation on the Special Star. Usually, such subsidiaries don’t go belly-up, yet this one had.

He decided to set the company mystery aside for a moment. He had a bone to pick with Shiraishi Hare for his midnight visit. He got up and knocked on the guest room door.

His mother happened to pass by. “Xiao Hare went out with your father to go fishing ages ago.”

Guanyue Xi: “…”

Right. He’d forgotten his dad was a plant-obsessed fisherman. He just hadn’t expected Shiraishi to go along with it.

Feeling quite annoyed, Guanyue Xi slumped onto the sofa.

His mother called out to him, “Don’t just sit there. You still haven’t looked at your graduation gift from yesterday.”

Guanyue Xi was forced to squat in the middle of the living room “flea market” and sort through his parents’ travel souvenirs.

The gifts included, but were not limited to: unidentifiable meteorite fragments, the green bones of a strange creature, and a blue eyeball bubbling away in a sealed transparent container.

His mother pointed at a jar he was holding and started laughing so hard she nearly fell over.

“That one! When your father bought that, the seller’s face turned green—actually, it turned blue.”

She sat up, eyes sparkling with interest. “And can you believe it? The intelligent life on that planet were like octopuses—all tentacles. One of those tentacles is used exclusively for mating.”

Guanyue Xi: “…Please tell me you didn’t bring home someone’s genitals in this pile.”

The item in his hand suddenly felt like a hot coal.

“No, that’s in the other pile.”

Guanyue Xi swore that if he had any weird tendencies, they were purely hereditary, though he wasn’t nearly as extreme as his mother.

After sorting through everything, he guessed the real reason his parents didn’t want to move was that no city-centre apartment could possibly hold all this bizarre junk.

A while later, his father and Shiraishi finally returned.

The Guide watched as his father walked in, chatting and laughing with Shiraishi, his gaze far more affectionate than it had been the day before.

Guanyue Xi wondered: What, is Shiraishi some kind of master fisherman? Did he charm my dad into a stupor?

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