Oh, Heaven!

The flowers bloomed in decadent splendor, petals falling lightly, while the clear brook murmured on. Upon a mossy green stone in the water, a great indigo serpent lay coiled and peacefully asleep, a faint golden radiance enveloping its body, golden scales already sprouting along its tail.

On that day at Mount Hua, after drinking a hundred-day intoxication brewed by a flower spirit, it had slumbered for three hundred years. When it opened its eyes again, peonies were in full bloom, radiant in crimson and purple hues. The dawn breeze swept past the willow tips, carrying petals that fluttered before its eyes. The serpent raised its triangular head, flicked out a bright red tongue to taste the fragrance, and gazed down with jade-green eyes at the flowery-bellied koi swimming in the brook. The flowers and leaves were as they had always been before its den, filling it with contentment.

Just as it intended to stretch its body, coiled for three centuries, an unexpected mishap occurred.

With a splash, it tumbled to the ground. The tail that could once hook and anchor itself to the stone had stiffened into two human legs.

It stared, dazed, at the pair of human feet now encased in peony-embroidered shoes. Suspicion arose in its serpentine heart—for all its years as a spirit, though somewhat indolent, it had long since mastered the art of transformation. If it had not willed it, how could it awaken in human form?

"Your Majesty?!"

Before it could think further, a sharp, frightened woman’s cry shattered the silence, as if breaking a bounda