Chapter 133: Cheongpyeong
Chapter 133: Cheongpyeong
31. Cheongpyeong
"It stopped moving."
"Ah, shit... What do we do?"
I crouched behind an abandoned truck by the roadside and surveyed the area.
A small restaurant stood on the right side of the road ahead.
The left side was nothing but mountain.
"Let's wait a little. If it doesn't move, we'll detour through the mountain."
The source of our dilemma was an enormous snake blocking the road ahead.
The moment I saw it, I wondered whether we were still in Korea.
It lay coiled in the shade, making its full length impossible to judge.
Even from a distance, its body looked about as thick around as my thigh.
A tongue flicked constantly from a head nearly as thick as the rest of its body.
Its scales had an overall reddish sheen, broken by square crimson markings.
"Would you like some water?"
"Yeah, thanks."
"How can something like that just wander around beside the road? Is this the legendary Korean countryside?"
"Right? Keukeuk. This is absurd."
We could afford to joke because the creature hadn't moved at all.
We waited for a while, but the snake apparently liked the cool shade cast by the restaurant wall and showed no intention of leaving.
"Trying to kill that snake would be too much, right?"
"I don't know... If it's venomous, the risk is too great."
None of the three of us knew anything about snakes.
The full extent of my knowledge was something I had once heard about venomous snakes having triangular heads.
Besides, animals were changing too, so there was no telling what ability the snake possessed.
'If I could only be certain it wasn't venomous, I thought I could handle it.'
The snake itself didn't frighten me.
It was huge, but not so huge that defeating it seemed impossible.
In short, the risk was difficult to judge.
"Ki-ya-ock."
"Huh? Kitty? When did you get here?"
I had been considering throwing a rock to drive the snake away when the black cat appeared behind us.
I'd caught a glimpse of the cat moving around when we departed.
Apparently, it had followed me.
"Wow... You called it your friend, and it really followed you?"
"Yeah. Honestly, even I don't know exactly what our relationship is."
"Cats are territorial animals, so that's unusual."
It met my eyes, then walked straight down the road.
Even the sight of its four-legged stride was graceful.
"Huh? It's just walking toward it."
"Yeah. There's no way it failed to notice the snake. Is it actually going over there to fight?"
The black cat advanced in a straight line toward the coiled snake.
Their size difference was so extreme that I began to worry.
"This won't do. You two stay here. I'm going to help."
"What? What if it bites you?"
"Then I'll make sure it doesn't."
I raised my shield in my left hand and drew the captured machete with my right.
After a deep breath, I steeled myself.
A professional snake catcher might have rejoiced at the sight, but I certainly didn't.
I'd never confronted a snake before, and the prospect made me tense.
Just as I finished preparing myself and stepped around the truck...
"Ki-ya-yak. Kaek."
Thwack, thwack.
All that mental preparation proved completely unnecessary.
The snake was utterly helpless against the cat.
The cat overwhelmed it in both speed and reflexes.
"Wow... What am I looking at?"
"What the... The snake can't even escape."
The black cat was beating the red snake senseless.
Having lost all will to fight, the snake tried to flee toward the river.
The cat seized its tail and refused to let it escape.
"Am I seeing this correctly? That looks exactly like..."
"I know... I feel as though I've seen it somewhere too."
"Kitty punches..."
The red snake reeled under a barrage of the cat’s tiny paw strikes.
The two monsters scuffled for roughly five minutes.
By the end, the red snake’s head had been severed from its body, leaving behind something that had once been a snake.
"It wasn't even a contest."
"Wow, what a thriller... My palms started sweating just from watching."
The cat was a god. The cat was invincible.
It was a spectacle possible only in this ruined world.
Watching monsters fight was remarkably entertaining.
#
"Ki-yaak. Nyaaa~"
The victorious cat looked toward us and cried out.
The way it seemed to boast about its victory suddenly made it look adorable.
"I think it's calling us."
"Let's go."
The cat had bitten into the snake’s neck and was chewing the flesh.
I couldn't tell whether the snake lacked venom or the cat possessed some form of resistance.
"Meat... And hide..."
"Does that mean it wasn't venomous?"
"Wait. Don't touch it yet, just in case."
I caught Eun-ah before she could approach the dead snake without a trace of fear.
Hye-ji, apparently terrified of snakes, remained well back with a grimace.
"Eun-ah, you've a knife enhanced for sharpness, right? Give it to me, along with the gloves."
"Here..."
"What are you planning to do?"
"It would be a waste to leave all this snake meat and hide behind."
The severed head looked grotesque.
Its clouded eyes were entirely gray, without visible pupils.
The sight gave me an eerie feeling, so I kicked the head toward the mountain.
Then I began splitting the hide from the exposed cross-section where the cat had severed the head.
I was not sure whether “neck” was technically correct, but it was the part that had connected to the head.
Using the ability-enhanced paring knife, whose edge was exceptionally keen, I carefully separated flesh from skin as I worked.
"Have you ever done this before?"
"Of course not. I'm improvising."
"Big Brother Tae-sik, are we going to eat snake meat?"
"I don't know. Bear Grylls ate it."
"Here is a container."
"Eun-ah, put on a pair of gloves."
My knowledge was limited, but I knew that Korea had few snakes whose venom was lethal to humans.
Even venomous snakes generally delivered venom through their fangs from glands in the mouth. I'd never heard that a snake’s entire body could be poisonous to the touch.
If it carried toxins throughout its body like a pufferfish, then this work was pointless, but at least the skin seemed safe.
Still, I planned to test it after butchering the carcass, just in case.
"The cat’s eating it just fine. Looks like it thinks it’s tasty."
"Yeah. It doesn't seem to be eating carelessly either. Ugh... This hide is incredibly tough."
"I've never seen a snake before..."
"Neither have I, at least not one this large. I've seen them in movies. Oh, and if anything feels even slightly wrong, step away immediately."
Skinning it was difficult at first.
As I continued, though, I gradually found the knack.
I cut along the grain of the hide and separated it from the flesh.
With Eun-ah assisting me, the work proceeded faster.
"Ah, shit! That startled me. What is this?"
"A rat?"
We had processed roughly half of the carcass, which measured more than five meters when stretched out.
Then the membrane surrounding what appeared to be its organs ruptured, and an animal carcass protruded from within.
It looked somewhat different from an ordinary rat.
"I think this is a mole."
"Oh my. Is that a mole? It swallowed it whole..."
The undigested mole appeared more than fifty centimeters long.
Its fur was gone, exposing wrinkled pink skin.
Only its forepaws were grotesquely enlarged, with enormous, razor-sharp claws.
"I don't think I could bring myself to eat this..."
"Yeah... It's disgusting."
I carefully lifted the mole carcass and offered it to the cat, but even the cat showed no interest.
After confirming that, I threw the carcass toward the mountain and resumed our work.
"What should I do with the pile of meat?"
"Place it in front of the cat. It caught the snake, after all."
"All right... It'll not bite me, will it?"
"Keukeukeuk. Who knows?"
The black cat was grooming itself beneath a nearby wall.
Trembling, Hye-ji carried the accumulated meat toward it.
The cat raised its head and stared silently at Hye-ji.
"Phew... We finally finished skinning it. Wow, this hide is enormous."
"What are you going to make with it?"
"I don't know. I only skinned it because we could."
The snake hide looked ragged in several places.
My amateur skinning was probably to blame.
Even so, it remained extremely tough, so it might prove useful.
"Kitty, may I take the hide?"
"Nyang. Nya-ong."
"Oh, all right. Thanks. What about the meat? May we take that too?"
"Nya-o-ong. Purrrr."
Holding the hide, I approached the cat to negotiate the division of the spoils.
It had eaten only a third of the butchered snake meat and left the rest untouched.
Apparently, the remainder was ours.
"Thanks. Tell me if you ever need anything."
"Nyaa-ong."
I folded the hide roughly and hung it from the handcart.
I placed the meat in a container and stored it in the duffel bag.
"What did it say? Did it tell us to take everything?"
"Yeah. I think it's full."
"Really? Big Brother can talk to the kitty?"
"Of course. We're best friends."
When I returned from my conversation with the cat, Hye-ji and Eun-ah stared at me in fascination.
Naturally, my claim that we understood each other was a joke.
I was merely guessing from instinct.
Thanks to the creature, we had gained an unexpected bounty.
We decided to test the meat for venom at lunch and resumed our journey.
#
We walked diligently along the river.
Near Daeseong-ri, we came across a guesthouse.
[Riverside Story]
It stood directly beside the river.
The blazing sun had made the heat almost suffocating, so we decided to rest briefly.
"Hye-ji, give the cat some water and set out food for it."
"Okay~"
"Eun-ah, help me prepare the hide."
"Okay..."
The cat reappeared when we entered the guesthouse grounds.
While we inspected the interior for danger, it prowled around the yard and surveyed the surroundings.
We planned to process the hide and meat here before eating lunch.
"How?"
"Look here. Bits of flesh are still attached to the hide. Tilt the knife and scrape them away gently."
"Middle-aged men know how to do everything... It's amazing."
"No, I don't really know either. I only thought we should scrape it clean so it wouldn't rot."
What kind of image did Eun-ah associate with the words “middle-aged man”?
I had been born and raised in Seoul.
I possessed no special knowledge of plants or animals.
I only remembered a little basic information about tanning hides from research I had once gathered on a computer.
"Huh? Why did I collect videos like that?"
"Hm?"
"Ah, no... Wait a moment."
Another memory surfaced.
I remembered logging into a game on a computer in an unfamiliar room.
Then I remembered searching for survival information, such as instructions for farming.
The room in that memory wasn't part of the home where I had lived.
I tried to probe the strange memory more deeply, but another headache struck.
'Phew... My head is throbbing.'
I stopped thinking and returned my hands to the work.
With old memories repeatedly resurfacing, my amnesia didn't seem permanent.
Perhaps the rest would return soon.
"Mister, should I light a fire?"
"Yeah. I told you to get the rice started, didn’t I?"
"Yes~ I only wondered whether I could use the burner because it's so hot."
"You saw the stack of firewood earlier. We need to conserve the burner fuel."
"Yessir!"
Hye-ji answered with a grin.
Apparently, even she knew that asking to use the burner because the weather was hot made little sense.
'Was she deliberately testing the waters?'
She had probably wanted to see how I reacted.
Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but I had reasons for my suspicion.
Scrape, scrape.
Eun-ah worked diligently at the tail end of the hide.
She did not slack off at all and was drenched in sweat.
As I watched Eun-ah, I traced my memories backward.
Several details were too strange to dismiss as trivial.