The poor man who had tried to commit suicide had returned to the home of the beautiful yet mysterious woman who had saved him, as promised, after seeing his family.

But not before hearing the voice of his grandfather warn him that the girl was in fact a centipede a thousand years old, and the only way to protect himself was to spit tobacco juice onto her face. So he went to the market and bought the strongest tobacco he could find. Then he set out again, and smoked hard all the way to his mistress’s house. He carefully stored the tobacco juices in his mouth.

When he got to her house, he peeped in through a crack in the gate, and there he saw the tail of a great centipede in the house. Nothing daunted him. He was determined to see her once again, whatever the outcome. So he boldly knocked at the door. She came out and opened the gate and received him happily. But he spoke not a word, for he was still holding the poisonous tobacco juice in his mouth. Seeing his clenched mouth and the strange expression of his eyes, she guessed that something must have happened, and she turned pale in her alarm.

He came into the room and gazed at her. She was as beautiful as ever, just as he remembered her. Her raven hair, her eyes clear as crystal, the curve of her brow, her nose and mouth — all were just as they had been before.

He was torn between his love for her and the dire warning his grandfather’s spirit had given him. He was at the point of spitting the tobacco juice in her face, when she suddenly gave a sob. She bowed her head and wept. He stared at her, undecided, and it seemed that she became twice as beautiful as before. As he looked he relented and turning to the window, he spat out the tobacco juices.

Her anxiety passed and she smiled. ‘Thank you for sparing me,’ she said. ‘The voice that you heard is not your grandfather’s. It was the accursed snake that lives in the hollow tree. I am a daughter of the Heavenly King, and the snake was one of the servants in the palace. He fell in love with me and seduced me. The matter came to the ears of my Heavenly Father, and he punished us both. He ordered me to live for three years in the world of men as a centipede, and my seducer he condemned to live eternally as a snake. Ever resentful of his fate he has always tried to do me further harm. Today is the last day of my sentence, and tomorrow I return to my father. Had you spat in my face, I should have had to suffer three long years more.’

So they had just one more day of happiness together, and that night they dreamed the sweetest of dreams. When the man awoke in the morning he found himself lying on a rock. There was no sign of the house, and he was quite alone.