Murim Nymph # 9
"Liu Hua defeated?! How do you intend to take responsibility for this disaster?!"
"If we let things stand, our Murim suffering humiliation is a foregone conclusion…!"
"If a Korean Wave sweeps through Murim a second time, no power on earth will be able to stop it─."
The elders in the VIP room were plunged into despair, as though the heavens themselves had come crashing down.
In fairness, that was more or less exactly what had happened.
China's brightest rising star had been cut down by a Korean awakener in front of an audience of thousands upon thousands.
Granted, there were all sorts of circumstances involved, but this was a major incident bound to send shockwaves through everything.
Which left only one course of action.
Present Ha Ildo with an even greater trial, knock him down, and salvage the situation.
Zhuge Thompson, master of inscrutable strategy, glared through the screen at the honeybees buzzing this way and that, his shoulders shaking with malicious glee.
"Dang So-hae. She will bring Ha Ildo firmly to heel!"
In the twenty-first century, the Tang Clan of Sichuan had once partnered with the pharmaceutical division of Ohsa Group, the global megacorporation, to manufacture a certain medicine.
Its name was Geeriphwan — a pill that made all manner of things stand up.
Since the fall of Lee Jeonghun, the former head of Ohsa Group's pharmaceutical division, the two organizations had begun sinking together in more ways than one — but a drug's efficacy was something that never faded. And among all those medicines, Geeriphwan had been an especially formidable one.
"It's a thing no man can possibly endure."
"If it can make dying old men spring to their feet, how could Ha Ildo, in the flush of hot-blooded youth, possibly resist it?"
"Mwahahaha—!"
The elders were in high spirits at the prospect of toppling the Korean awakener Ha Ildo.
For them, this tournament had warped into something else entirely: a campaign to destroy Ha Ildo.
Not everyone was so optimistic, of course.
The Mount Hua Sect Master felt an inexplicable unease gnawing at him.
'Would that Ha Ildo fellow really fall so easily? He's the man who defeated my granddaughter Liu Hua! Surely he won't go down that simply!'
# # #
"Well, well. Want the antidote? I put ten times the required dose of the aphrodisiac Geeriphwan into your system! At this concentration, even a stone Buddha would get up off its cushion!"
Dang So-hae cackled with wicked delight.
Meanwhile, I was experiencing firsthand, in real time, that the blood boiling through my body was very much not normal.
Auntie Dang Yeong-yeong had warned me so earnestly to be careful of the Tang Clan's schemes and hidden weapons — and it turned out I'd been caught in one of those very schemes from the moment I'd laid eyes on Dang So-hae.
To think I could make such an oversight.
Trickle, trickle—
Sweat beaded down my forehead.
Given how things stood, I had no choice but to wrest the antidote from Dang So-hae within five minutes.
"Keong-keong!"
━Woof-woof…!
Pounce—
Keong-keongi leapt down from my shoulder.
The sight of him growling, fur bristling at the figure of Dang So-hae before us, seemed to register my own urgency.
I spoke to him.
"Keong-keong! Ram-G Thunder!"
Ram-G Thunder was a combination attack performed with Ang-ang-i.
Keong-keongi rode on Ang-ang-i's back as he took flight, then plummeted straight down to strike the enemy like a bolt of lightning — its power was nothing short of a thunderbolt falling from the sky.
"Not so fast! Go, my honeybees!"
Bzzzzt—
But a swarm of adorable bumblebee-like honeybees intercepted Ang-ang-i's flight.
What I needed to do now was—
"Kwang-kwang! Sing!"
━Hio-ong…!
Kwang-kwangi began to sing, hio-ong, hio-ong—
With eight legs he even strummed a tiny guitar woven from his own spider silk, strung with the Mana Hydrolite we'd rescued from inside the typhoon — ding-ding-ding!
Kwang-kwangi's songs had all sorts of strange and wondrous effects.
The biggest one, if I had to pick a single standout: it made everyone who heard it start bobbing their shoulders.
━Hio-ong…! Hio-ong…!
At Kwang-kwangi's beautiful melody, the honeybees began beating their wings — bzzzzt— — and moving as though performing a synchronized dance, until at last a gap opened up for Ang-ang-i to slip through.
━Zzji…!
Ang-ang-i spread his wings and dove, and Keong-keongi riding on his back at last hurled themselves toward Dang So-hae like a lightning bolt plunging earthward.
━Grrrrr…!
Keong-keongi plummeted with tremendous speed, trailing a sound like rolling thunder.
A dog-squirrel's fur was highly susceptible to magical charge, and now, crusted with the crackling static generated by his friction against the air, Keong-keongi's tail slammed into Dang So-hae at last.
"Ram-G Thunder!"
CRACKLE-BOOOM—!
The thunderous impact of Ram-G Thunder!
"Kyaaaaahk!"
The effect was absolutely spectacular — you could literally see great currents of electricity bursting outward in every direction.
Against a single strike that could fell B-rank monsters in one blow, Dang So-hae staggered — but somehow, some way, she held her feet!
"Ugh! You think I'd lose here? I am not a honeybee — I am a phoenix!"
━Hoo, hoo…!
In that very instant, Kalinoi — who had been lying in wait for precisely this opening — dropped like a stone.
And with her two enormous wings she began battering Dang So-hae — flapflapflapflap—! — and since Kalinoi's raw mass rivaled that of an A-rank monster, the blows were devastating, each wingbeat kicking up gusts of wind.
Oinoi, watching the spectacle, cried out.
"That is the act of slapping wildly with one's wings…! It is a fearsome secret technique available only to animal nymphs who can transform into owls like Kalinoi, it is…!"
"Mhehehe~. So you finally know-know that kung-fu has its origins in nymph-fu, is it…? From now on you must call it not kung-fu but nymph-fu, you must…! Its origins are even painted on the walls of Chamwido, they are…!"
Flapflapflapflapflap—!
Dang So-hae took it on the head, again and again.
She curled herself into a ball and bellowed.
"This is cheating! How many animals are you planning to sic on me, exactly?!"
Cheating, she says.
That's a rich complaint coming from the person who poisoned me before the match even started.
In the end, Dang So-hae took wing-slaps from Kalinoi until she was thoroughly flattened and passed out.
━Pirrrrrrr…!
Perhaps it was the joy of felling Dang So-hae, but Kalinoi let out a cry in a soaring register. She looked utterly valiant and magnificently proud — the sort of figure who belonged in a five-part nature documentary.
Watching her, the man whose beard had been groomed into the shape of Guan Yu's let out a breathy gasp of admiration — ho-ho—
"The Tiger Owl, was it? It's as though the phoenix of legend itself has descended into our reality on beating wings! I, Meng Zhutian, Alliance Leader of the Murim Alliance, wish to bestow upon that owl the title of Bong — the Phoenix!"
Bong.
It was a kind of honorific conferred upon the women who distinguished themselves in this martial tournament.
And Kalinoi was receiving it!
"Poison Phoenix, Sword Phoenix, and so on — it is customary to craft the Phoenix title around the bearer's defining traits. That auspicious Tiger Owl is already a phoenix in her own right, so how about Bong-Bong Kalinoi?"
Bong-Bong Kalinoi.
Among the four thousand years of Chinese history's countless Phoenix honorifics, surely none had ever been this adorable.
I thought it was a splendid title.
Bong-Bong.
Seriously cute, honestly.
So that Murim Alliance Leader guy knows how to give good nicknames, huh.
Kalinoi, however, didn't seem particularly thrilled — she whipped her head away and flew off into the distance.
━Hoo, hoo…!
Anyway.
The outcome of the match was now beyond all doubt.
Having eaten a Ram-G Thunder from Keong-keongi and then a full helping of Kalinoi's Wild Wing-Beating, Dang So-hae lay sprawled across the arena like a lump of kneaded dough, utterly incapable of rising.
Truthfully, it was only to be expected.
Kalinoi alone could hold her own against even a decent A-rank awakener with room to spare. Her feathers were as thick as a hawk-eagle's, rendering the honeybees' stingers all but useless.
"Now, then. Hand over the antidote, if you please."
"Dang-hehehe…! So it would seem you've won, Ha Ildo? No. The fight is not over yet."
And yet Dang So-hae's expression was far too confident for a loser's face, her attitude dripping with arrogance. Shff— At last she sprawled herself flat across the arena floor in the shape of the character for great.
She spoke.
"If you want it that badly, come and take it yourself! Dig through my body and find it!"
"What?"
I was flabbergasted.
Had Dang So-hae hidden the antidote somewhere on her person?
That little round bead of a thing?
"The sight of you pawing through my body in search of an antidote would make for magnificent viewing on camera. Do you have the guts for it?"
They say a master looks one move ahead, and a genius looks two moves ahead.
But Dang So-hae was looking three moves ahead.
What on earth were you supposed to call someone like that?
"You fell into my trap the moment you stepped in. Do you know the Tang Clan's supreme martial art? Rain of Ten Thousand Sky Flowers? No — that's old news. Watch closely! Rain of Ten Thousand Phoenixes!"
Bzzzzt—
The honeybees that had been resting their weary wings near Dang So-hae shot up into the sky in an instant.
Then, like a cloudburst of rain, they came hurtling down upon me.
"Uwah!"
I'd once seen a video of honeybees repelling a hornet invasion. They swarmed the giant hornet's whole body and cooked it helpless with the heat their mass generated.
Right now, I was that hornet.
A pile of plush, downy bumblebees blanketing me from head to toe!
"Stung full of Bashkir bumblebee venom, even an awakener like you would be laid up in agony for days! Well? Regretting your refusal to surrender yet?"
It was a tense situation on multiple fronts.
And I simply couldn't hold it in any longer. I burst out laughing.
"Puhahahaha — that tickles!"
The bees were crawling this way and that, and it tickled.
They weren't stinging me at all. They were just clinging on.
Like puppies clamoring for affection.
"There, there. Good bees."
I gently brushed the honeybees off my body. They were perfectly docile, fluttering their wings — bzz-bzz— — as though utterly reluctant to let go of me.
Watching this, Dang So-hae was stunned.
"Why won't the bees sting you?"
"Well — they've got no reason to, do they? These honeybees are good bees. And anyone who becomes friends with such good bees must be a good person too, Dang So-hae. That's why they call you the Honeybee of the Tang Clan, after all."
People called Dang So-hae a schemer without blood or tears.
But having met her in person, I didn't see it that way.
The honeybees liked Dang So-hae.
The nymphs liked her too.
I figured there had to be some desperate circumstance that had made her the way she was.
"Hand over the antidote. In exchange, I'll hear you out about whatever problem you're carrying, and if it's something I can help with, I'll help you as much as I can."
# # #
Dang So-hae was reeling.
Because every single one of her moves had been thoroughly sealed.
The animals Ha Ildo commanded were far more powerful than the rumors suggested, leaving her unable to use so much as a hand or a foot.
She herself had been through her own trials and tribulations before befriending the honeybees and learning to command them — so she understood better than anyone just how extraordinary it was for Ha Ildo to wield beasts so freely.
'At this level, he could have gone toe-to-toe with that A-rank Liu Hua and….'
What astonished her even more was that Ha Ildo hadn't wavered in the slightest even after being hit with the aphrodisiac Geeriphwan.
In truth, the drug must have started circulating back when he and Liu Hua had been locked together, tumbling this way and that.
When Liu Hua's clothes had torn, Dang So-hae had fully expected Ha Ildo to lose control and pounce on her.
But he hadn't.
Even now, sprawled helpless on the ground as she was — nothing.
'His body's been exposed to an incense strong enough to make a man's head swim from the mere scent of a woman. And yet this man… just how ironclad is his self-control? What could be driving this man's mind this hard?'
Self-restraint pushed to its absolute limit.
The pinnacle of self-cultivation — a discipline that drives the self mercilessly, without mercy.
It deserved to be called nothing less than doksim — the Poison Heart.
'This man never needed an antidote in the first place.'
And in another corner of her heart, she felt a flicker of indignation.
'I lost. I was defeated. As a martial artist. As a poison-arts master. As a beast tamer. And… as a woman.'
To be left untouched by so much as a fingertip, despite dosing a man with an aphrodisiac.
Shaken by an emotion she had never once felt in her life, Dang So-hae's heart wavered mightily.
"Ha Ildo. You said you wanted to help me. But you also said you came to save So So-hee. Saving So So-hee, and helping me — those two are dreams that cannot be achieved at the same time."
Did this strong-hearted man know?
That sometimes, to gain one thing, you must lose another.
That there are dilemma-like situations in this world where you are forced to forfeit one of the two, no matter what?
"But just this once — just for this moment — I'll offer you my congratulations. Ha Ildo, congratulations. The championship of this martial tournament is yours."
"We've barely made the round of eight, though? And more importantly — 'saving you and saving So So-hee can't happen at the same time'? Explain what that's supposed to mean first. And hand over the antidote while you're at it."
The elders of China, watching the scene unfold on their screens—
They soon received astounding news from the staff on site.
"What? The remaining competitors are all citing stomach pain and withdrawing, one after another?"
"This is — at this rate…!"
The remaining fighters, all complaining of inexplicable stomach cramps.
There was only one thing it could mean.
For the first time in the tournament's history, a foreign champion had been crowned.
"Mhehehe~. This Illinoi bet a mountain of money on the House Master's victory, she did…! With these China-moneys, this Illinoi shall once again become the Kaiser — no, the Emperor Illinoi, she will…!"