Anaconda Calamity

Anaconda Calamity is an evolution-and-mutation web novel by the Qidian author Ba E, serialized on Qidian around 2013 and completed on March 13, 2014, running about 1.86 million characters. At the outset, the protagonist, a master of Chinese martial arts, dies seeking revenge, only to wake and find himself reborn as a small snake. Steering a snake's body with a human consciousness, he steals food in a cold storage, ekes out a living in the sewers, and after several brushes with death enters the mountains and wilderness to survive, unexpectedly gaining an opportunity akin to a dragon pearl as his body and bloodline begin to transform. Thereafter the protagonist evolves step by step: from an ordinary small snake to a venomous python, then a giant python, then a soaring serpent, and finally toward a divine dragon. He awakens the intelligence of python packs and becomes king of the species, clashing violently with the human world; with a great war on the verge of breaking out, the stunning scenes that give the book its title arrive. After breaking out of Earth, he contends as an alien being with the various civilized races of the cosmos. The book's main draws are its dark tone, its decisive and ruthless style, and its dense evolution and leveling; it is a representative work of Qidian's beast-stream genre and frequently appears on recommended lists for such books.