Heavenly Silkworm 3
There had been a brief uproar, but once Shintu began dividing up the gold bars, most of the silk-reeling masters agreed to take the gold he had set aside as their reward and head back.
A few, however, refused to return — Old Man Baek and two other masters among them.
The moment they laid eyes on Yo-hwa’s silk, they had fallen into something like a trance. Even with the gold bars in front of them they still refused to go home, and instead pleaded with me with desperate sincerity.
"You want to try making silk fabric out of this?"
"Yes! In the thread Young Master showed us, we saw the finest silk there is!"
"Well, technically the finest thread would be the Heavenly Silk side of things…"
"Heavenly Silk is far too hard, and weaving it into cloth would require inner energy. That is absolutely impossible for ordinary people like us. Turning it into clothing of any other kind would be no simple task either. On top of that, Heavenly Silk doesn’t have much luster, so even if you did weave it, it would come out closer to cotton cloth than to true silk. But…"
I had already wondered myself what a proper bolt of fabric woven from Yo-hwa’s thread might look like — not the rough stuff she had spun offhand, but the real thing — so their proposal was, of course, a welcome one.
Still, I hesitated over the answer, knowing I would need permission from the family’s elders. Then a resolute voice cut in.
"…The silk Young Master showed us stretches soft and yet remains tough, and its luster surpasses any thread I have ever seen. It is silk from which the finest fabric in the world can be made! Fifty years as a silk-reeling master — if I meet thread like this and die without ever weaving it into cloth, this Baek will never close his eyes even in the next world!"
"He’s right! We don’t even need wages. Please — just let us weave it! Young Master!"
What is with these guys? They’re acting like they’ve gone completely insane over silk… Wait. Hold on. Could it be? Is that what this is?
I had been thinking they were volunteering to be slaves to silk, but in their blazing eyes I recognized something that lived in me as well: the soul of an otaku.
If someone dangled an irresistible venomous creature in front of me, wouldn’t I look exactly the same?
Please, just let me have one to raise.
No — I’ll be your slave, just let me keep them.
It overlapped uncomfortably with my own decision to become the Tang family’s son-in-law just so I could raise venomous creatures.
In my past life, whenever word came that a new species had arrived, I would bolt out mid-broadcast just to claim a share. And that first lizard from Africa — the one I hadn’t managed to reserve — I had gone down to the shop on the day the shipment came in and begged them to at least let me touch it once.
In the end, every obsession leads to wanting to make the thing yourself.
I myself had aimed at producing lizards in every pattern imaginable, so I understood their desperation perfectly. If I was a venomous-creature maniac, these three masters were silk maniacs.
Every otaku in the world respects and supports every other otaku’s tastes.
Recalling that unspoken rule of the fandom world, I nodded.
Taste is sacred, after all.
So I gave them a solid thumbs-up.
"Wh-what does that mean?"
The three of them blinked at my raised thumb. I winked and answered.
"It means I respect your tastes — no, your resolve."
"Th-then…?!"
"Fine, all right! But in return, you have to weave me the most beautiful, magnificent silk in the world!"
"Of course, Young Master! This Baek will stake his life on creating a masterpiece beyond compare!"
"Thank you, Young Master!"
When I brought the three silk-reeling masters into the family compound, the elders stared at me in open surprise.
Did I mess up?
"So-ryong brought silk-reeling masters home?"
"Yes. They said they wanted to try weaving silk from Yo-hwa’s thread. Is… is that all right?"
I had made a big show of bringing them in, but I had done it without a word of warning. With the elders reacting like this and the people still waiting outside, I half expected to get spectacularly rejected. What I got instead was praise.
"Is that so? That boy — he really is a walking lucky charm, isn’t he?"
"My goodness. Silk-reeling masters aren’t people you can just find whenever you want, are they?"
"You’re right, my dear. Securing skilled masters is no easy task. Well done! I knew our son-in-law was good at catching venomous creatures — turns out he’s surprisingly good at catching people too."
Silk manufacturing was a lucrative export business, a real cash cow, so masters were never easy to come by. I did worry a little that these were masters Shintu had effectively stolen as loot, but when I mentioned it, they told me that was the masters’ own affair to handle.
"Finding masters willing to relocate is the hard part. If they themselves say they want to stay with our Tang family, you’ve nothing to worry about, son-in-law."
"Is that so?"
"Of course. Wherever they used to belong, we can negotiate."
Having secured Father-in-law’s permission, I decided to introduce the three masters to Yo-hwa at once. They would be working together, after all — better to let them get used to her face.
"First of all, please try not to be startled. That silk didn’t come from silkworms."
"Pardon? Not from silkworms? Then…?"
As we left the family head’s hall and headed for the well, the three masters blinked when I told them the thread had not come from silkworms at all.
"Yo-hwa!"
Thump!
The moment we reached the well and I called up into the trees, Yo-hwa dropped straight down in front of me.
"Eek!"
"A s-spider!"
"A spider with a human body?! A m-monster?!"
The masters recoiled in horror at the Hwa-eun-like form attached to Yo-hwa’s body as she landed. I stroked her head as if to say there was nothing to fear.
"There’s no need to worry. Yo-hwa is an Inmyeonjiju — a human-faced spider that can take a form like this. She understands human speech perfectly, and she won’t harm anyone who doesn’t threaten her. And if you ask, she’ll produce as much silk as you want."
I finished my explanation — or rather, my introduction — of Yo-hwa. The three masters stood frozen, still looking stunned. What was strange, though, was that all three of their gazes were fixed on the same single point.
I followed the direction of their blank stares. It was the ankle of Yo-hwa’s pedipalp, the part that had taken on Hwa-eun’s form — more precisely, the red thread bound around that ankle.
Why the thread?
Their eyes flicked back and forth between my ankle and Yo-hwa’s. Then, all of a sudden, the three masters thrust their thumbs up at me and shouted,
"I-I respect it, Young Master!"
"Excuse me?"
They said they respected my tastes, but I had the distinct feeling a massive misunderstanding was taking root.
No, it’s not like that! She’s not my lover — she’s a pet!
"You’re seriously taking all of them?"
"What choice do I have? It’s already come to this. And they’ll be useful."
At Shintu’s question I glanced around me.
Seol-i and Bing-i perched on either shoulder. Hyang-i on top of my head. Yo-hwa and Cho to my left and right. Yeondu coiled around my neck.
I had already left them behind once and traveled a long distance without them, so the moment they heard we were only going somewhere nearby, the whole lot of them had lined up to follow. My plan of slipping off quietly with just Shintu had completely collapsed.
Once Hwa-eun, Sister Seol, and even Yeong-ryeon — Shintu’s disciple — joined in, the party could no longer be called small. At that point I simply decided to take the trip at a leisurely pace. We would be using only mountain paths, and the place wasn’t far from here anyway.
More than anything, even if I had tried to shake them off, my instincts — Fabre’s instincts — were telling me that this time we would need everyone on deck.
"They’ll be useful, you say?"
"Yes. If any dangerous venomous creatures turn up, these kids will protect us."
The two defensive weapons we had found on the Heavenly Silkworm — the powerful silk and the scent-spraying organ called an osmeterium. Thinking about those, it was entirely possible that something extremely strong was preying on the Heavenly Silkworms. If so, there might come a moment when Cho and Yo-hwa were absolutely necessary.
Who knows? We might even discover another of the Ten Great Poisons.
If the opponent was one of the Ten Great Poisons, the best way to face it was with another of the Ten Great Poisons. And if that was the case, both Cho and Yo-hwa would be essential. I had learned that for certain after facing Gong — that monstrous Howling Tiger — who had only been manageable at all because our Cho and Yo-hwa, young as they still were, had fought it together.
So we left the Tang family and headed for a forest on the border between Sichuan and Qinghai Provinces.
We pushed deep through a forest of trees that soared toward the sky, and before long a rather unusual stretch of terrain opened up before us.
Along the rim of a vast basin the trees stood dense, but inside the basin itself not a single blade of grass grew. Red earthen rocks rose here and there into tall, sharp little peaks. Even at a rough estimate they looked twenty or thirty meters high, and the forest of crimson pinnacles made for a spectacular sight. It reminded me of the Stone Forest I had briefly visited in Sister Seol’s homeland of Yunnan.
"Quite the view. Is this the place?"
"It is. The previous Shintu is said to have discovered cocoons and Heavenly Silkworm eggs here."
"Here, then… It’s bigger than I expected."
"Seems that way, doesn’t it?"
Looking down into the basin from above, my first impression was simply how large it was. This place, named the Crimson Rock Forest, looked to be about half the size of Yeouido from my past life. The peaks numbered in the dozens — no, closer to a hundred.
Faced with that sheer scale, the idea that we would just drop by for a quick look was clearly a mistake. On top of that, while Shintu knew that a Heavenly Silkworm had been found somewhere in this basin, he didn’t know the exact location. Between the rule that you could only pass things on if you had stolen them yourself and the ban on keeping written records — something about thieves not leaving ledgers, I suppose — all location information had been handed down by word of mouth alone. There was no precise spot to aim for.
In the end, if we wanted to find the Heavenly Silkworm’s food source, we would probably have to comb the entire place.
"This isn’t going to be easy to find, is it?"
I had thought an expert’s eye might see something different, but all that met my gaze was a landscape of red stone mountains. To find anything here, we would almost certainly have to search every one of those hundred-odd peaks, one by one.
Tap. Tap.
"What an unusual rock."
We descended into the basin to begin the search and came face-to-face with the first peak. Hwa-eun picked up a loose stone and rapped it against the rock face. An echo rolled out across the basin.
As she had said, the crimson peaks were truly strange. Each one was large enough that dozens of people could have stood around its base, yet the surfaces were utterly smooth — as if something had melted the outside of a massive boulder. It felt a little like concrete, or like a cluster of red high-rises standing in Yeouido.
"Anything up top?"
I used light-body arts to scale the rock peak and called up to Shintu. From the summit, where he had been scanning the surroundings, he shook his head.
"Nothing of note."
From above the basin the floor had looked like a desert — not a blade of grass, only red earth that seemed to have weathered and fallen from the rocks themselves. Looking up from below didn’t change the impression much.
"So-ryong, I don’t know insects and venomous creatures the way you do, but I don’t think there’s much here a Heavenly Silkworm could feed on."
Even Hwa-eun, who normally deferred to me on anything venomous, was of the opinion that a barren place like this wouldn’t have any food worth speaking of. However mystical a Heavenly Silkworm might be, laying eggs here would make finding food nearly impossible.
"Still, Shintu says this is the right place, so let’s search thoroughly for now."
"All right."
"You lot help Mom and Dad look carefully too. What we’re looking for is… round red eggs, or anything venomous, okay?"
Kishit!
Kku-kku!
Tseurrr!
At my words Cho launched into the air, and Yo-hwa scrambled up a peak. Yeondu stayed on my head while Bing-i and Seol-i scanned in every direction from my shoulders like a pair of watchtowers.
Tseurrt!
Then Hyang-i decided she would search on her own two feet. She climbed down off me and began inspecting the area around us.
"Hyang-i, be careful, all right? Don’t go too far. Yeondu, stick with Hyang-i. It might be dangerous."
Shaaa!
Just in case, I assigned Yeondu as Hyang-i’s minder, but Hyang-i was adorably determined — fetching round red pebbles in her mouth, climbing the pillars, carrying out her own thorough little search.
Churut?
"No, that’s not it. That’s just a pebble."
She would bring me some red stone she had picked up somewhere and tilt her head at me. It was already the fifth one; the slightest difference in shape was enough for Hyang-i to carry it over and show me.
Tseut?
Not long after, her questioning chirp came again — was this the one? Assuming she had brought yet another pebble, I smiled and crouched toward the sound. And then I saw it.
In the shadow beneath me, thrashing in Hyang-i’s jaws, was a single insect.
I jerked back in shock and sat down hard.
"Hyang-a! Where did you get that?!"
No one else had found a thing — and out of nowhere Hyang-i had come back with an insect about the size of an egg clenched in her mouth, the creature thrashing madly to get free.