Roar
The instant Sister Seol tore the bastard apart, I sprinted for hyung.
He had taken a grievous wound—his side punched clean through by that man’s hand—and I needed to check it at once.
"Hyung, are you all right!?"
"Kh… Forget me. Check Geom-bong and Changryong first…"
His own side had been run through, yet he was telling me to look after the other two before him. A man who truly had every virtue a tank could ask for.
I shouted toward Hwa-eun and Sister Seol at once.
"Hwa-eun, Sister Seol—Geom-bong and Changryong!"
"Got it! Hurry!"
"Understood, So-ryong."
At my request Hwa-eun latched onto Geom-bong, while Sister Seol began examining Changryong’s wounds. Both of them had only been knocked unconscious by the Blood Cult elder’s fists and palms, though. The worst off was still hyung.
"Those two are in Hwa-eun and Sister Seol’s hands. Come on—quick!"
I soothed him and checked the wound.
"I sealed the pressure points. The bleeding’s stopped."
"Well done."
A human hand had punched through his side, but the organs didn’t feel damaged. Following his word that he was holding the blood back by blocking his own meridians, I packed trauma salve into the gash and tore at his clothes to bind it. Holding the blood in wasn’t the same as a complete stop—the wound was so large that blood still seeped out in a stubborn trickle.
—Rip!
But the moment I tore the cloth, what met my eyes was the thick black grime caked into it. Weeks of intelligence work without a bath or a wash—of course the clothes weren’t fit for use. And it reminded me that people of the Central Plains weren’t exactly famous for bathing to begin with. Sichuan was hot enough that folks washed fairly often, but around Huangshan, where the Namgung Clan lived, they didn’t. Anywhere farther north, where hyung was from, would be worse still.
This is going to get infected…
Infection was a real worry. Stripping and tearing my own clothes wasn’t much better—two days of hard riding had left me just as sweat-soaked—so I needed another way.
Then I heard a sound beside me.
—Kish?
Yo-hwa had sidled up while I was tending the wound, and a good idea hit me at once.
"Yo-hwa, wrap hyung’s stomach in silk!"
—Kishishi!
Spider silk was the finest fiber the human body wouldn’t reject. Add elasticity on top of that, and wrapping him would compress the wound and help stop the bleeding for sure. In my past life, some of the most expensive medical implants had been made from spider silk.
"S-spider silk?"
Hyung was flustered by his first experience with it, but the moment Yo-hwa wound thread around his side, the blood that had been seeping through vanished.
"Done!"
The silk was so elastic that hyung must have felt like he was wearing a pressure bandage. He said as much himself.
"This cinches the wound. Feels much better for moving."
"Then let’s move—now."
"We should."
With the wound treated so quickly, we had to hurry. While Cho kept the brown-leather warriors from closing in, we needed to get clear of this place. Linger any longer and more of them might show up. A few of them looked ready to slip past Cho and come our way, yet strangely they only kept him in check and never approached us—as if they were stalling for time. Their elder was dead, and still they showed no other reaction, not even surprise.
"Changryong, lend a hand. We need to support hyung."
"Understood. Are you all right?"
I asked the newly conscious Changryong to help me brace hyung, then sent a thought to Cho.
Cho—keep them from getting close, but only check them lightly and follow us. Don’t come down no matter what.
Cho’s assent came back through the link. While he held the brown-leather fighters at bay, we tried to put distance between us—and that was when a strange sound rolled in from far away.
—Woom. Woom.
A deep, chest-rattling drone began to rise from the distance, like the thump of a bass or a drum, and it was unnervingly close to the wingbeat of the bee we had shaken off earlier.
As the sound swelled, a shout went up from the one who looked like the leader of the brown-leather warriors.
"It’s the Roar! The Toad Unit has delayed them long enough—fall back!"
Roar?
That had to be the name of the sound. And Toad Unit meant a unit of toads. I filed away the scrap of information about their identity as the brown-leather warriors peeled off at once. Whatever was coming, their retreat was not a good sign—so we decided to put distance between us the same way they had.
"Let’s go!"
I shouted toward the river—and then:
"So-ryong! The sky!"
"The sky?"
At Hwa-eun’s cry I looked where she pointed. Far off in the air hung a black-and-yellow speck. The speck grew larger by the second, and with it the sound swelled.
—Woom! Woooom!
Pain slammed into my skull; my chest thrummed with the vibration.
"Gyaaah!"
"Urgh…"
Hyung clutched his side—the wound had burst open again—and sank to his knees. I barely swallowed the nausea rising in my throat before Hwa-eun’s urgent voice transmission cut in.
"Th-this is one of the Ten Great Poisons—the Strange-Crying Tiger Cub! So-ryong, protect your ears with inner energy! If you don’t, your qi and blood will twist and you won’t be able to move!"
One of the Ten Great Poisons!? The Strange-Crying Tiger Cub? Tiger Cub…?
The frantic warning had come as a voice transmission, not out loud—probably to spare her own ears. I drew up my inner energy and shielded them exactly as she said. The noise fell away, and my churning stomach settled.
In that same instant, a violent wind poured down from the sky. I threw a hand over my face and looked up—and there it was. A colossal hornet.
A giant hornet the size of a car hung in midair on stationary wings, staring down at us.
Holy…
I glanced around. Hyung, Changryong, Geom-bong, and even Sister Seol now—all of them were clutching their ears and slumped on the ground. The only ones still on their feet were Hwa-eun, me, and Yo-hwa at her side.
The giant hornet drifted down and settled beside the already-dead Blood Cult elder. Insect-world thug, tyrant, and big brother—the great hornet had arrived.
The moment the car-sized hornet touched down, a woman in a trailing black dress that looked half like a gown leaped from its back. She carried a faintly gothic air, something alluring and off-kilter at once.
"…"
Her lips moved in our direction. She seemed to be speaking to us, so I eased the energy shielding my ears—and her voice came through.
"…Well, well. Dead already. I suppose that’s only natural for someone who practiced such garbage martial arts. A technique that falls apart at a trivial bleeding toxin? Why on earth did we ever ally with trash like this? And I even made them an antidote. So why did he die?"
She poured venom on the Blood Cult elder she had apparently counted as an ally—who was already a corpse. Cho came streaking toward us from farther off, and the woman smiled at the sight, dabbed a finger in the blood pooling from the elder’s body, and brought it to her lips. Then, with uncanny precision, she identified the poison mixed into it.
"This is hornet venom? Both toxins cause bleeding, true, but to think he’d be this vulnerable to every hemorrhagic poison… Well. Filthy bloodsuckers that they are… It seems our alliance with the Blood Cult will need some rethinking."
The woman rambled on to herself like someone not entirely sane, but Hwa-eun and I didn’t dare move—not with that giant hornet watching us. On top of that, Hwa-eun’s warning had been clear: the woman was far stronger than she looked.
"So-ryong, be careful. She may not match Grandfather, but she’s as strong as Father."
—Tsurrrrr…
But Cho came forward with a growl like a dog’s, placing himself between us and the threat, matching its wariness with his own.
That was when the woman finished her monologue. She crushed the dead elder’s face under her toe, then turned a smile on us.
"A One Poison Lord following a human… How curious."
"One Poison Lord?"
"Ah—do they call it the Flying Centipede in the Central Plains?"
One Poison Lord was what she called Cho, standing guard in front of us. More conversation seemed about to follow—then her smile vanished, and she shouted at the hornet.
"Bring him!"
At once the hornet dove for Cho, who stood between us. It skimmed past Hwa-eun and me, tangled with Cho, and the two of them went tumbling backward through the air.
"Cho!"
—Woom!
—Tsurrrrr!
In a real fight the wingbeat no longer carried that crippling effect—it was only noise. Cho’s furious cry rang out as the battle lifted into the sky, the two of them locked and thrashing.
I was worried. A centipede was a formidable venomous creature, no question—but if that thing was a poison beast built on a hornet base, Cho was at a disadvantage. He was still a young specimen after only his fourth molt, and a hornet was an insect-world thug: thick armor, razor mandibles, and venom to boot. Its shell was far harder than Cho’s; his fangs might not even pierce it.
I called at once to Yo-hwa, who had been waiting quietly beside Hwa-eun.
"Yo-hwa! Help Cho!"
—Kishit!
Yo-hwa revealed the body she had been concealing and loosed a strand of silk at the two thrashing figures not far overhead.
—Pew!
The silk struck one of the hornet’s wings. Yo-hwa worked her legs and hauled the creature down; Cho, still tangled with it, barely tore free and slammed into the thing head-on.
"An Inmyeonjiju!"
The woman cried out the moment Yo-hwa showed herself.
"Y-you’ve tamed a Human-faced Spider as well? Just what are you!?"
Watching the children move at my command, she stared at me as if she couldn’t believe it and demanded my identity. When I didn’t answer, her hand dropped—and Changryong’s discarded spear flew into her grip as if sucked in.
"You don’t have to tell me. I’ll make you."
Thinking she was about to charge us, Hwa-eun and I both settled into ready stances—but the woman suddenly drove the spear into Changryong’s abdomen at her feet.
—Thuck!
"Kyaah!"
What we heard instead was a thin scream. Amazingly, the spear was buried in Geom-bong’s back—she had thrown her body over Changryong.
"G-Geom-bong! Wh-why!?"
Whether the scream snapped him awake or he had already been conscious, Changryong’s eyes flew wide as he realized what had happened. Geom-bong stroked his face, looked up at him with an expression of pure exasperation, and said:
"Y-you idiot…"
Then her eyes slid shut.
"G-Geom-bong! You witch! Uwaaaaaah!"
"You’re noisy. Quiet down, you little fly."
—Thwack!
Changryong’s eyes rolled back as he lunged at her, only to take a chop to the neck and collapse unconscious again. Whether Geom-bong’s death in his place had spoiled her mood, the woman tossed the spear aside and said:
"Well, who does it matter? What’s important is that you’re the master of a One Poison Lord and a Human-faced Spider. I like you. Become mine."
What?
Out of nowhere, she wanted me to be hers. I stared at the clearly insane woman in blank disbelief—and looked to Hwa-eun just as a voice thick with fury burst from her lips.
"How dare you say that to my fiancé!"
She had told me to be careful, but the demand that I be handed over was more than she could swallow. The woman tilted her head.
"Fiancé?"
In the next breath she was right in front of Hwa-eun, her hand driving for a hole through Hwa-eun’s chest.
"That fiancé won’t be around much longer, will he?"
Hwa-eun jerked backward, but those nails were already boring in—
—Bang!
In that instant, two streaks of blue light shot from under Hwa-eun’s skirt and slammed into the woman.
"Kyahk."
—Kook-koo!
—Kooo!
Seol and Bing had been hiding under the skirt and only revealed themselves when Hwa-eun was in real danger. Ice bloomed along the woman’s arm and across her chest as she staggered back. She stammered, eyes wide.
"F-Four Poison Lord!"
Whether from shock or impact, her hands were trembling.
"Seol, Bing—nice work!"
The moment I praised them, the woman’s eyes went even wider.
"A One Poison Lord and a Four Poison Lord—and a Human-faced Spider on top of that?"
By now I had a fair idea who she was. Riding a venomous hornet, the way those retreating men had called themselves the Toad Unit, the way she tore into the Blood Cult elder—and calling Cho and the little ones One Poison and Four Poison. She was almost certainly a descendant of the Five Poison Sect.
Seol and Bing had scored a solid hit; it felt like we might actually win this. I looked at Hwa-eun and spoke.
"Adopted son of the Beast Palace, and the Tang Clan’s only son-in-law. So-ryong."