About

A small white snake in the deep forest waited a thousand years with a dream in its heart to become a gentle Imugi. That Imugi, with a merciful soul, waited another thousand years to become a dragon and ascend to the heavens. Or so he believed. At the very moment he hid within a storm to ascend, he was spotted by a foolish human. His thousand years of cultivation scattered like foam, and his snow-white scales turned pitch black, like a charred heart, as he plummeted back to earth. Contaminated by a human's gaze and cursed, the Imugi turned into a foul black serpent. Every trace of his former beautiful, gentle light vanished, leaving only a corrupted black body that slowly began to rot. Unable to return to his pristine pond, the black Imugi dragged his wretched body through a stormy night, seeking a new sanctuary within the damp, stench-filled crevices of a rocky cave. And he resented that fact with a madness. That resentment became a grudge, and the fallen Imugi's grudge soon spread as a plague through the human world. Starting with the young man who had witnessed his ascension, the plague consumed first a village, then a region, and finally an entire nation. He resented, despised, and loathed humanity. Yet even as the years of revenge passed, the void in his heart and the decay of his flesh did not cease. No matter how much he became an Imugi of pestilence, the thing he had desired his whole life never returned to him. That sense of loss turned him cynical and pessimistic, eventually leaving him a self-deprecating man. Years after he fell to earth, a human herbalist, smelling the stench of rot and pus leaking from a rock crevice, discovered a helplessly wounded black snake for the first time in years. It was the fallen Imugi who had lost his strength and was merely waiting for death. However, because his collapsed form looked more like a giant black snake than an Imugi, the herbalist felt only pity and cared for the snake with utmost devotion, suspecting nothing. But by what cruel twist of fate did this happen? The moment the herbalist's hand touched the Imugi, the sublime and noble energy he had craved so much flowed through his bloodstream, rapidly healing his decaying flesh. Feeling desire for the first time since his fall, the Imugi maintained a cynical attitude while looking at the herbalist with greedy eyes, as if possessed by desperation. Then, in an instant, he realized that this lowly human was his one and only mate. To the one destined to become a dragon, half of the Cintamani is detached and imprinted upon the soul intended to be their mate. That energy, meant to help them recognize each other more quickly and surely, had been wandering aimlessly after the Imugi's fall. Now, having lost its original meaning, it had finally found its way to the mate. Staring at the herbalist who had treated him out of a pull of fate without knowing the black snake's true identity, the Imugi found no answer to this joke of destiny. He rejected the human herbalist's touch, yet craved it, feeling an unquenchable thirst for the energy of the Cintamani. What should he do? That this lowly human is, in the end, his mate.