A thousand years ago, Su Qingyao, a green snake spirit beneath West Lake, was swept into a rift in time and space while taking a lightning tribulation meant for her elder sister, the white snake spirit Bai Suzhen. In the height of summer in 2025, she fell beside the Broken Bridge at West Lake. Dressed in a Song Dynasty gown and holding a jade hairpin, she was mistaken for a cosplayer. But her unfamiliarity with modern customs led to one mishap after another: she mistook a smartphone for a “demon-revealing mirror,” spilled tapioca pearls all over a customer while working at a bubble tea shop, and, while delivering food, stumbled beneath the umbrella of Lin Shen, a man in a white coat.
Lin Shen is an emergency room doctor. Seeing that she had nowhere to go, he took her to the stray-cat rescue center he often visited. From then on, a thousand-year-old demon and a modern human began sharing each other's lives: she learned to use WeChat, make bubble tea, and keep Lin Shen company while he worked overtime; he taught her how to navigate the subway, watch movies, and understand that “loving someone means wanting to share many meals with them.” The jade hairpin became a token of their love, a fortune slip at Lingyin Temple declared, “Three lifetimes have bound your fate, and being a demon is no obstacle,” and even the stray cats became their matchmakers.
In the end, Su Qingyao learned the human meaning of “love.” It wasn't some immortal art gained through a thousand years of cultivation, but morning soy milk, a warm light late at night, and a baby's first cry. They got married, renovated a new home with a “snake den,” and named their baby “Xu Nianqing,” in remembrance of their thousand-year bond. On the Mid-Autumn Festival, they held their baby and gazed at the moon. Su Qingyao smiled and said, “I never knew the sweetest thing in the human world wasn't a thousand-year-old lingzhi mushroom, but the bubble tea you give me, and the little life we've built together.”
