Chapter 484: A Quiet Snake, hides his anxiety
‘Of fucking course the fucking flying lizard otter thing is being a bastard and having its presumed kits try and kill my family…well then, time for me to go otter fis-‘
[Director I hate to interrupt, but can I bail from this battle?]
‘Wait, what? I thought you’d want to take this opportunity to shine on the battlefield or something like that…’
[Normally yes, but I am getting a fuzzy feeling in my core that is telling me that there is something I need to do, well, someone I need to possess.]
‘Oh! Okay…tell me where and who, I’ll load you up on the way there.’
[Thank you, director. I do believe he is currently over…]
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The Zhen Clan of Stampeding Bison could best be described with the term, “rough and tumble, ready to rumble”.
While this sounded silly, it was a rather apt description given the fact that they had managed to become a regional powerhouse in a frontier town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by beasts, bandits and bigots, granted that latter one would no longer be an issue after a certain incident several years down the line.
This reputation and subsequent rise to power was thanks to none other than the Patriarch Zhen Shi, his wife Bai Hua and their seven talented sons.
Each of Zhen Shi’s sons had proven themselves over the years of being capabable, powerful warriors that could survive basically anything on their own out in the frontier, but could reach even greater heights when they worked together.
Amongst the seven sons of Zhen Shi though, there was one who stood out precisely because he didn’t stand out.
This son was Zhen Ye, the Sixth Elder of the Zhen Clan, the master of both snakes and torture, and he could best be described with the words: a quiet and unassuming introvert.
Zhen Ye was the type of guy who could stand in the middle of a crowded room and nobody would be able to register his existence unless he said something. Even then, they would immediately forget he existed after he said his piece.
He was the type of guy who could walk into any service establishment in town, restaurant, bar or theater, it didn’t matter, and people would automatically assume they were a regular due to how well they seemed to blend in. Both owner and staff alike would just assume Zhen Ye was a long time regular that they would never really think about until pointed out.
He was the kind of guy that if anyone attempted to tail or stalk, they would end up losing track of them immediately after turning a corner, even ones leading into dead ends.
In essence, Zhen Ye was so quiet and unassuming, that he wasn’t just a background character, he actually became part of the background.
The only exception to this quiet and unassuming introverted persona was when Zhen Ye got dragged into a fight, or his snakes got involved, at which, point, he was just as crazy as his six brothers.
However, all of this was simply the impression people from outside of the family had in regards to Zhen Ye. In fact, his whole “quiet and unassuming introverted” persona was due to a much bigger issue haunting the man.
The reality was that the sixth elder had something that a certain otherlander would know as “social anxiety disorder”.
Around his family and clansmen, Zhen Ye was fine, he could communicate without a hitch and even came off as surprisingly eloquent at times.
Around other people though, especially strangers, we would become cold and quiet to the point people assumed he was a statue or a misanthrope.
That last possibility was especially popular, given the fact that he once killed a man in broad daylight after he was publicly challenged to a duel, having only nodded as a sign that he accepted the terms in the first place.
Only his brothers and wife knew that the reason why he quickly murder the guy who was about to murder him in public, was due to a mild panic attack of having so many people stare at him at once.
Evidently, the man felt so bad about killing someone out of anxiety and not obligation, that he made funeral arrangements for him under an anonymous identity. That was a secret that only his wife knew about, though.
However, Zhen Ye wasn’t always like this.
When he was but a child, he was bright, sociable and more than willing to speak his mind against practically anyone.
In fact, many people assumed that when he grew up, he would become the main spokesperson/politician for the Zhen Clan due to how articulate he was as a child.
Unfortunately, fate had other plans in mind.
It was on some random sunny day, some unremarkable afternoon, that before everyone’s eyes, Zhen Ye was swallowed up by the sudden appearance of a wandering ruin’s entrance, right on top of him.
What followed after this event could best be described as desperation and worry, merging into madness.
Zhen Shi and his wife ended up diving headfirst into this wandering ruin, as soon as this event occured, discovering that the wandering ruins in question was massive network of dark, artificial tunnels that seemed to cross every which way.
It had taken two weeks of exploring the wandering ruins for them to finally find their son Zhen Ye and get him out of there,but it was in this timeframe that he would be changed forever.
As the clan would learn later on, Zhen Ye had initially spent a few days searching the artificial tunnel network for a means of escape, and possibly find some treasure on the way out, until he ended up triggering a trap door and landed in a room that turned out to be life or death situation, for an entire week.
That week was what made the child into the social anxiety riddled mess he was today.
Because the room he had entered wasn’t a simple trap trigger room, or a force isolation room that required outside assistance, but instead, it was a room full of beasts.
A beast room filled from top to bottom with giant lizard-like aether beasts known as Sound Eaters.
These creatures earned this name not because they could eat sound, but because they hated sound to the point that they would do all that they could to eat whatever or whomever made that sound in the first place. The damn things were so sensitive to sound that they would react even to the footsteps of a cat.
Now imagine being a child stuck in a room for an entire week surrounded by these sensitive bastards, knowing that single loud exhale or even a footstep could spell out certain death and it isn’t hard to imagine how someone would end up growing up to desire silence and anonymity above all else.
After this accident, Zhen Ye became quiet, withdrawn, always afraid of being too loud or making too much noise. In his mind, making noise soon became associated with the idea of “calling death”.
Thankfully though, he managed to get to a place where he could talk to his family again without panicking.
A huge reason for this turn around?
Snakes.
Like his brothers before him, Zhen Ye also ended up involving himself in the family business of aether beasts, but unlike them, he had a wickedly bad time doing so.
Every single beast that he worked with caused him to flinch or panic due to how much noise they made at any given time.
A growl, a bark, a small yip, even the vistation of small insects buzzing, all of these were enough to send Zhen Ye reeling into a corner.
Zhen Ye had been told time and time again that he didn’t have to force himself to do this, but he still insisted upon doing so, as if something in him wouldn’t want him to give
And then…it happened.
A client had come in with something a bit out of the ordinary if the usual mammalian aether beasts Zhen Shi and his sons had become accustomed to working with, a Purple Anaconda.
The Purple Anaconda was a tier one aether beast known for its size and brute strength and not much else. It’s appearance and mannerisms were alien enough though that the Zhen Clan charged a bit extra for having to work with such an unusual beast.
At the sight of this strange snake beast, many of Zhen Ye’s brothers balked and backed away from having to try and care for it, but for Zhen Ye, it was like something in his mind just clicked.
Zhen Ye had found the Purple Anaconda’s silence soothing, its movement subtle and quiet yet meaningful and overall, found it much more charming than the hairy loud brutes his brothers cared for.
And it was from this one singular moment of interaction with a snake type aether beast, that the rest was history.
Zhen Ye would eventually become the snake beast master he is in the present day, take up the mantle of torture master elder and would have a wife and kid, the latter of whom would have a sharp contrasting personality to his own.
For all intents and purposes, this should be where the story ends, a happily ever after if there ever was one…but…there was just one thing.
Zhen Ye had never admitted this to anhkne, not to his parents, not to his brothers and not even his wife, but there are days, when the quiet becomes a bit too unbearable, that the silence becomes almost deafening, that he couldn’t help but wonder a single question.
“What if I wasn’t so…quiet?”
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‘And you’re positive that’s who you want me to shoot you into?’
[Damn sure director, now please be quiet and let me get my mind in the right place.]
‘Aight…’
