Something Strange
“That’s strange.”
“It really is strange, Sister Seol. They should have arrived long ago by now.”
Sister Seol and I stared up at the open, pitch-black ceiling of the cave, matching expressions of confusion on our faces. It made sense that we would be puzzled—the main force led by my foster father and Grandfather still had not reached us, even though two full days had passed since our own arrival.
No matter how I ran the numbers, the distance between us and the main force should only have been an hour or two at most. We had even left Yo-hwa’s spider silk behind when we first descended through the hole, so even on the most generous estimate it should have been that short a gap. And yet two days had already gone by without so much as a distant trace of approaching presence.
“Yo-hwa? Still nothing?”
Kishit!
At my question, Yo-hwa poked her head down from the dark hole in the ceiling and shook it firmly. Worried the cave system might be a maze, she had spun a long, fine thread the entire way we traveled; when she climbed back up the hole to check it, she reported that even there she felt no vibration at all.
A spider’s sense for vibrations along its web is extraordinarily sharp. In my previous life, the spider known for spinning the longest webs was Darwin’s bark spider, which could cast a strand twenty-five meters long—two hundred fifty times its own body length. That spider was only about a centimeter in size, yet it could detect the vibration of an insect caught at the far end of the thread. Scaling that up for Yo-hwa’s size put her detection range at a minimum of two to three kilometers. As a spirit beast it was surely longer still—and if even she could not feel them, the main force might not have entered the passage at all.
Thinking about it, the main force should have caught up to us before we even reached the end of the hole. We had moved as slowly as possible because we could not see what lay ahead, but Grandfather and Foster Father’s party knew we were in front of them. There was no reason they should have failed to overtake us.
“Why, do you think?”
“Hmm… maybe they never found the writing Ryong left?”
“I wrote it large in two separate places. It’s on the wall—there’s no way they could have missed it.”
Sister Seol and I put our heads together, trying to figure out why the main force had never followed us down, when Hwa-eun, who had been perched carefully on Cho’s coiled body, spoke in a cautious voice.
“Maybe…”
“Maybe?”
“I’ve only just thought of it, but the mechanical formation has been bothering me.”
“The mechanical formation?”
“Yes, So-ryong.”
The mechanical formation was weighing on her mind. I rested my chin in my hand and thought it over, then asked, “Ah—you mean it might have worked once after a hundred years and then broken?”
As Hwa-eun said, a hundred years was more than enough time for something to fail. I nodded, thinking it a plausible theory, but she shook her head.
“No. That too, but… the energy. The Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art written outside has been bothering me. What if the door doesn’t open to just any energy, but only when you pour in the energy of the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art?”
“Ah!”
Of course. What kind of secret door opens for just anyone? That would just be an automatic door. Since it was a door of the Five Poison Sect, it could very well respond only to the energy raised through the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art, exactly as Hwa-eun suggested.
“But Grandfather knows the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art, doesn’t he?”
It was Grandfather who had taught me the art, even guiding my qi circulation himself. I offered that he ought to be able to pass through, but Hwa-eun shook her head again.
“Of course Grandfather knows the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art, but that isn’t the only art he used to build his internal energy. You, on the other hand, raised your energy with the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art alone.”
She was right. Grandfather knew the art, but for him it was more of a foundational technique; his primary internal cultivation was the Twin Origins of the Ten Poisons Art. I, however, was pure Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art through and through. If that difference could keep the door from opening, her explanation made perfect sense.
“Hmm… that does track. So what do we do now?”
If Hwa-eun was right, Grandfather was never going to appear through that hole. That left us either continuing the search on our own or hiking back to Mt. Namna—or else returning to the Beast Palace.
Sister Seol picked up a piece of charcoal from the cold fire and pointed upward.
“We can’t just sit here forever. Just in case, let’s write on the cave wall up there that we’re heading back to the Beast Palace, then go back and wait. You said Blood Cult bastards might be in the area, right? It’s too dangerous for just us. Let’s turn around. If the entrance won’t open, the adults will come back for sure. Once we reach the Beast Palace we can always send someone to Mt. Namna. How does that sound?”
She was right. Waiting here any longer for Grandfather and Foster Father’s main force was pointless. And continuing the search? If the adults could not reach us, both waiting and searching on our own were extremely dangerous. The Five Poison Sect people who had been our enemies a hundred years ago might still be nearby—and on top of that, the Blood Cult might be around as well. So Sister Seol’s plan—return to the Beast Palace, send word to Mt. Namna or simply wait—was the sensible one.
But going back won’t be that easy either, will it?
For the same reasons waiting was dangerous, returning would not be simple either. The fact that Murim Alliance martial artists and sect experts were conducting intelligence work in this area strongly suggested a Blood Cult base was probably nearby. That was why I was still turning Sister Seol’s words over in my mind when Hwa-eun offered a different idea from beside me.
“Going back to the Beast Palace on our own doesn’t sound easy either, so how about we join up with Doryong’s party and head for their rendezvous point instead?”
“The rendezvous point?”
“Yes. From what we heard, they’ve been searching this whole area, so they should know the safe routes. And if they’ve found any traces of the Five Poison Sect, we might get information. With a possible Blood Cult base nearby, moving with them would be safer than just the four of us. Geom-bong said that after checking the rendezvous they’d turn back if they found any trail. We could join them there and return together.”
She had a point. If we went to the rendezvous where the people carrying out secret orders were supposed to gather after spreading out to search the region, we could obtain whatever intelligence they had collected. And if we joined their return, we could travel back safely using the information they had gathered through their reconnaissance.
I was nodding along, thinking it a solid plan, when Brother Gyu-seong—Doryong—who had been listening beside us, clapped me on the shoulder.
“Do that, little brother. This Paeng Gyu-seong will see the three of you safely back to the Central Plains.”
“Shall we go with that, then?”
Our course of action settled, I was nodding at Brother Gyu-seong’s words when Changryong, who had been quiet until now, spoke up carefully.
“Young Hero So-ryong, just in case I should ask—do you know how to hunt? Or find water?”
“Hunt? And water?”
The sudden question about hunting and finding water caught me off guard. Thinking back, Changryong had been solely responsible for our meals these past two days. I had wondered why he was doing all the hunting and water-fetching like a servant, and at his question Geom-bong and Brother Gyu-seong both turned their gazes into the dark depths of the cave.
“Ahem…”
“Hmm…”
Their reactions and Changryong’s question struck me as odd, but I answered anyway.
“Well, of course I can. Sister Seol and Hwa-eun can too, but…”
I had lived in the Yunnan jungles myself; I could at least catch and eat a snake. And with Yo-hwa around, hunting was never going to be a problem. The same went for Hwa-eun and Sister Seol. Hwa-eun could put down any game that crossed her path with her paralysis-poisoned hidden weapons, and Sister Seol was from the Beast Palace. For Beast Palace people who got most of their meals by hunting, it was basic skill.
“R-really!?”
Changryong’s face lit up. Eyes nearly brimming, he seized my hands and pleaded.
“Then since you’re not guests anymore but companions, will you please help me out a little!? Please!”
At our first meeting he had seemed a bit lacking; now I wondered if the other two just pushed him around. I answered,
“Well, of course we should help.”
“Then we hunt right away! We’ll need provisions if we’re heading for the rendezvous. Our own supplies are gone, and hunting while we move is too risky.”
Once I agreed to help, Changryong explained that with our party larger we needed to prepare food. With Blood Cult possibly nearby, we could not afford to hunt the whole way. This area around the cave was safe, so we should stock up here before setting out. We only had about a day’s worth of jerky and dried rice cakes on our backs ourselves; for a long journey we would need more. I nodded.
“Understood.”
“Though to be honest, around here I’ve only managed to find rabbits. It’s a real problem.”
Changryong fretted that he had only caught rabbits since arriving, but the food issue resolved itself almost immediately.
“Oh! Yo-hwa, you caught a deer?”
Kishi!
I had never actually ordered her to hunt, but I had assumed she would be good at it, so I asked Yo-hwa to bring back some animals. In no time she returned with a large deer she had taken somewhere nearby. Sister Seol immediately set to work dressing it with practiced skill.
“For dinner we’ll rinse the heart, intestines, and liver and roast them over the fire. The meat we’ll smoke and take with us. The organs spoil fast, after all.”
Changryong already looked stunned by how efficiently Sister Seol handled the deer; his next question came with an even more astonished expression.
“H-huh! Not just dressing game—you can smoke meat too!?”
“Of course. If you live in the jungle, that’s just something you have to know how to do, isn’t it?”
“As expected!”
At Sister Seol’s words Changryong shot Geom-bong a pointed look that said see?, and Geom-bong pouted.
“What! What is it this time!”
From the story Changryong told, he had been stuck playing servant for nearly two months while dragging Brother Gyu-seong and Geom-bong around. When I casually glanced his way I only got a scolding, so I took Sister Seol with me to rinse the organs. As I bent to drink from the little stream, Sister Seol caught my arm.
“Ryong, don’t drink that. Drink this instead. Stream water can give you a stomachache if you’re unlucky.”
“A stomachache?”
“Mm. There might be a dead animal upstream or something. If you’re thirsty, drink this.”
Slash.
Sister Seol climbed a tree, cut a vine, and held it out to me with a smile.
“This?”
“Yeah. Water comes out of it.”
Almost before she finished speaking, droplets began to fall in a steady patter. When I drank the water dripping from the vine it was faintly sweet, reminding me of the coconut water I had tasted in my previous life.
“A-amazing!”
Changryong was staring at Sister Seol with open reverence—no, with something even more heated than mere respect. Don’t tell me this bastard falls in love at first sight? Apparently Changryong was the type who tumbled headlong into affection in no time at all.
“By the way, Young Hero So-ryong, this is incredible. Those little ones have grown so big. And one of them even to the sky.”
As we moved through the brush, Changryong pointed first at Hyang-i and Bin-i perched on my shoulders, then stared in disbelief at Cho, who floated high overhead like a dark speck. Last time he saw them they had been so small—how had even one of them become so impressive and learned to fly?
Cho truly had become remarkable. Not just in appearance; her flight ability improved by the day. When we first followed the Flying Divine Snake, her maximum flight time had not been long. Whether it was because she was one of the Ten Great Poisons, or because the inner core she had swallowed last time was still being evenly absorbed, she could now stay aloft for a solid three or four hours. Her recovery was short too—only about ten minutes on the ground before she could climb again. Someday she might simply fly all day without rest. Was there any greater pleasure than hearing your well-grown daughter praised?
I was smiling and about to answer when—
“Well, you know…”
Tsrut!
Tsrut!
Hyang-i and Bin-i glared at Changryong, making angry little sounds. I wondered what was wrong, then realized they were upset at being compared to their much larger sister. Aigoo, comparisons are the worst thing for anyone’s mood… I was still flustered about how to fix it when Cho and Bin-i’s antennae began to quiver.
Tsrrrrr.
I felt their intention clearly: That guy needs a talking-to for saying whatever he wants about us. It was the look of someone trying to project killing intent. They could not actually fire real killing intent, of course, but they were earnestly adjusting the speed of their waving antennae as if that counted as control.
Faced with Hyang-i and Bin-i’s open hostility, Changryong panicked—then suddenly looked toward Hwa-eun with an expression of pure disbelief.
“Wha—!? W-why are these little ones acting like this? Huh!?”
Hwa-eun gave a cool little nod. She must have sent him a sound transmission, because Changryong suddenly squeezed his eyes shut and rolled on the ground, wailing in agony.
“A-aigoo, I’m dying! Aigoo, it hurts!”
It was terrible acting, but I understood the situation well enough. Hwa-eun’s disgruntled sound transmission arrived next.
I told him by sound transmission to pretend he’d been hit by killing intent. So-ryong, stop Hyang-i and Bin-i at the right moment. Comparing them to Cho and calling them small just to upset the children… what was he thinking? Really, the man has no sense at all.
Even I, who loved venomous creatures, had not caught on that fast. Maybe this was what a mother’s heart looked like.