The Termite Tower
Shintu ran his hand over the red peak and asked again.
"In—inside this...? Are you truly certain?"
I nodded.
"Yes. Didn't you say the previous Thief Emperor obtained both the eggs and the cocoons from this very place?"
"That's right."
"My guess is that for some reason, the white ants' nest collapsed, and the previous Thief Emperor found the Heavenly Silkworm cocoons and eggs that spilled out together. That's what I think."
Someone like the previous Thief Emperor, who knew nothing about insects, managing to obtain both eggs and cocoons from a single place—the only way that made sense was pure chance.
The cocoons would have been in the deepest part of the termite tunnels.
The eggs, by contrast, would normally have been laid outside the nest, near the tunnel entrance.
So if I considered the one possible case: for some reason one side of the nest had collapsed, a cocoon had spilled free, and a Heavenly Silkworm adult had laid its eggs near the broken face of the mound.
In my previous life, the double-tailed blue butterfly laid its eggs at the entrance of Matsumura's tail-bearing ants' nests. For both conditions to be met, nothing short of that kind of overlapping coincidence would do.
And then the previous Thief Emperor had simply passed by and gotten lucky—that was my theory.
Shintu listened to my explanation and nodded as if he found it plausible.
"Ahem... Indeed."
And right then, Hyang's frantic cry suddenly rang out.
—Churrr! Churrt!
I had definitely set him on my shoulder, but when I turned my head he was screaming in front of the termite tunnels.
He was raking his own head with his feet and thrashing around on the ground before the nest.
"Hyang, what is it? Are you hurt!?"
I had told him it was dangerous, but clearly he had climbed down at some point and was facing off against the termites again.
Ignoring Dad and approaching the ants once more earned him a solid smack reserved for later, but first I hurried over to check on Hyang.
Just in case a soldier termite had bitten him badly.
"What is it? Where did they bite you? Hold still, Hyang."
"Hyang got bitten? So-ryong?"
I soothed him in a worried voice, and Hyang put on a full performance of how much it hurt.
—Churrt. Churrurt...
But after I calmed him down and examined every inch of his body, nothing that looked like a wound caught my eye.
"There's nowhere that looks hurt?"
—Churr. Churr...
"You really got hurt?"
There was no special injury, yet Hyang kept making a fuss.
Thinking I might have missed a wound, I checked him again—and only then did I notice that his antennae had taken on a strange shape.
Thankfully they weren't severed or bent, but Hyang's antennae had somehow stuck together.
Those antennae that never stopped moving, forever seeming to drink in fragrance—the very reason I had named him Hyang—were, for some reason, glued firmly to each other.
"What's wrong with your antennae, Hyang? Does it hurt here?"
—Churrr.
I soothed him again and touched the stuck antennae. A sticky liquid clung to my fingers.
Ah, so this little guy got hit with sticky fluid?
Hyang must have been fooling around and taken a shot of the termites' glue.
Some soldier termites spit sticky fluid, or burst their own bodies in battle to spray the goo inside. Worker termites mix that same stuff with earth to build their nests. Hyang had gone and provoked them for nothing and gotten his antennae glued shut.
I peeled them apart with my sleeve and wiped them clean, and only then did his theatrics die down.
"Hyang, that's why Dad told you no earlier, right? It's dangerous, so from now on you listen to Dad. Understood?"
—Churrt...
At my stern tone, Hyang's antennae drooped like the ears of a scolded puppy.
Seeing him so crestfallen hurt, but if he got hurt again it would be a real problem, so I scolded him firmly. Shintu shook his head from side to side.
"That little fellow really has no sense at all. Anyway—how are we supposed to dig this thing open?"
Once the ruckus over Hyang settled, Shintu began fretting over how to crack open the termite tower.
Hwa-eun and Sister Seol added their own worries to the pile.
"But So-ryong, can we even dig this? It doesn't look like something you dig—it looks like we'll have to call stone masons and smash it."
"She's right, So-ryong. I don't know how the white ants built this, but it's no different from rock. Can we really dig through it?"
As Sister Seol and Hwa-eun said, that part was worrying.
In my previous life, the nests of mound-building termites were infamous for how hard they were—and these ones were dozens or even a hundred times larger. Creatures that could fairly be called low-grade, no, lowest-grade spirit beasts, so their homes would be that much harder.
The sticky fluid I'd felt earlier was no ordinary stuff. Mixed with earth into a nest, the strength would be considerable. If Shintu, Sister Seol, and Hwa-eun could all mistake it for solid rock, it was no stretch to think it was tougher than concrete.
But Shintu was a martial artist counted among the Five Emperors of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors.
Word had it that the Three Emperors and Five Emperors possessed formidable martial attainments, didn't they?
And Shintu had a solid, sturdy build, not unlike a young thief. Couldn't he just shatter this tower with a palm technique or a blast of palm wind? Looking at him with hopeful eyes, I asked.
"What we're looking for is probably in the center of this pillar, a little below ground level. And the inside should be softer than the outer shell, so if we just smash the surface, breaking the interior should be easier. Couldn't a palm technique handle it?"
"No reason it couldn't. All right—shall I put some strength into it for once?"
"Oh, as expected!"
"Master's single palm! I've never seen it before!"
"An opportunity to witness the Thief Emperor's palm technique?"
At my question Shintu rolled up his sleeves and stepped forward.
His disciple Yeong-ryeon's claim that she had never seen his palm technique worried me a little, but Shintu looked unconcerned as he began to draw up his inner power before the enormous red termite tower.
—Flutter.
His robes began to billow as he raised a great surge of energy.
In the next instant his hand shot toward the pillar at a speed the eye could not follow.
—Tang!
The sound of impact rang out.
It was lighter than I expected, but still—this was a single palm from the Thief Emperor.
I clenched my fists and waited for the termite tower to collapse. Not so much as a crack appeared in the red pillar.
At first I thought it might be something like Penetrating Force, where the surface stayed intact while the inside took the damage.
So I waited for the next moment—but even after a little time passed, the termite tower did not so much as twitch.
What?
Hwa-eun, Sister Seol, and I all stared at him in blank disbelief. Shintu cleared his throat for no good reason.
"Y-you brat, I'm outstanding at light footwork, body technique, and acupoint striking. Palm techniques are a bit... Ahem! Well, it's rather hard."
Then why did you strike every single pose like that?
Shintu really was an absurd old man.
"We've found it, so I'll look for a method. Whether I ask someone skilled in palm techniques for help, or fetch stone masons as you said earlier."
Hwa-eun, Sister Seol, and even Shintu's disciple took turns pounding away with palm techniques, but the white termite tower did not budge.
In the end we concluded that we would have to find another way to open it.
The walls were simply too hard; some other approach was needed.
As Sister Seol had said—bring in a number of stone masons, or request help from a master whose palm techniques were truly exceptional.
I considered taking Tang Family warriors out with us, but with the Five Poisons Sect and the Blood Cult around, that seemed unlikely. So finding a method fell to Shintu.
"Understood. Then when the Thief Emperor is ready, we'll return."
"Fine. At any rate, it looks like we'll have to camp here tonight."
At Shintu's words I looked toward the ridge of the basin. The sun was already setting.
The sun hanging at the ridge's edge was spilling a red dusk across the land.
"It does seem so."
"Those things won't come out and attack us at night, will they?"
He was worried the termites might raid us after dark, but there was no need.
Termites almost never leave their nest if they can help it.
And even if they did, they would emerge at the far end of the basin.
They had stripped the surrounding trees and grass for food and carved out this hollow in the process; they would not come out onto this barren side where not a single blade of grass remained.
"Yes, there's no need to worry. White ants never leave their nest if they can help it. Even if they do come out, it will be toward that ridge."
"Good. Then I'll go hunting. A wild boar ought to do."
He nodded at my explanation and said he would bring back a boar. I tilted my head and asked.
"With so much food right here, do you really need to hunt? Maybe gather some branches from up there, but that's about it."
"Hm? There's food? Where? Is there still food left from what the Tang Family packed?"
I smiled and answered.
"White ants—termites—are actually delicious."
"What!? E-eat white ants?"
"We're eating those!?"
Shintu and his disciple Yeong-ryeon looked thoroughly shocked, but Hwa-eun, who had already tried mealworms—Gosoae—and Sister Seol, whose hometown was Yunnan, took it in stride.
"So those can be eaten as well?"
"Well, in Yunnan we eat bamboo insects, and grasshoppers, and cicadas too."
"Do you think they'll be savory?"
She even looked a little expectant.
I haven't tried them myself, but I've always wanted to.
Honestly the queen was said to be the best, and I had wanted to taste that most of all—but right now we couldn't dig open the nest.
In Uganda they catch termites and fry them, stir-fry them, or roast them.
This seemed like a perfect chance to raise my spicy Fabre experience points.
Looking less than eager, Shintu and Yeong-ryeon still went and gathered branches.
In Hyang's place, Cho and Yo-hwa collected the termites.
Cho and Yo-hwa were large enough that the soldier termites posed little real threat, and whenever either of them tapped a termite with a foreleg, it got skewered one by one onto their limbs like insect kebabs.
Even so, we did not catch the soldiers.
Their surface shells were more developed than expected—extremely hard, and no good for eating.
—Sizzle, sizzle.
We threaded the termites we had caught onto sticks and roasted them gently over charcoal.
Juices dripping from the cooking termites hit the campfire and released a rich, savory aroma.
"Th-that smells good."
"W-well, so it does."
As the termites roasted on their skewers, the legs and antennae burned away until they looked a little like rice-cake sticks—and the smell was incredible.
"Elder, please eat."
I held out the first skewer, nicely browned, to Shintu. He flinched.
With an awkward smile he said,
"Y-you eat first. I'll take my time. You're the youngest, so you must have worked the hardest."
"Can I really do that? There is etiquette in the murim."
"Ahem—i-it's fine, I said."
I offered the skewer toward him again, and he flinched and waved his hands. Clearly I would have to set an example, so I decided to try the large, savory-smelling termite skewer first.
"Then I'll gratefully dig in."
—Crunch.
I bit into one of the termites on the skewer, and a savory burst of juice filled my mouth.
They called it a delicacy, and the flavor was genuinely excellent.
I finished the whole termite, smiled at the others, and said,
"This is really good. Everyone, hurry and ea—"
And in that instant my mind seemed to go blank, and Hwa-eun and Sister Seol's startled voices began to echo in my ears.
"So—So-ryong... So-ryong......"
"So-ryong!? Stay with—"
Poison... There clearly wasn't any, so what is this?
I had checked for poison before catching and roasting them; there had been none, which made it strange.
And somehow the sensation I felt now was one I was sure I had experienced before.
My awareness drifted hazily away, and everything before my eyes went black.