Xuan 2
"So-ryong! So-ryong!"
"Kid!? Snap out of it! Why's the boy suddenly like this again?"
Two hands and a web shot out like lightning and caught So-ryong by both arms and the nape of his neck just as he was about to pitch into the campfire.
Hwa-eun and Seolpyo, who had been sitting on either side of him, seized his arms while Yo-hwa, behind him, fired a strand of silk that stopped his body cold.
Kish!
Yanked back a heartbeat before he would have face-planted into the flames, So-ryong's body now tipped gently backward instead. The moment he was laid on the ground as if he had simply fallen asleep, Hwa-eun and Seolpyo bent over him with startled faces, checking him over.
The first thing Hwa-eun examined was his eyes.
She had already checked him twice before he ate the white ants, but she needed to know whether his consciousness had blurred for some other reason—or whether some poison had paralyzed him.
She pried open his lids and looked. So-ryong's eyes were vacant and clouded. If he had simply fainted, the whites should have shown; if he were paralyzed, some light of awareness should still have remained. The eyes behind those closed lids looked as though the soul itself had slipped away.
"Why?"
"Could there have been poison after all?"
"No. I don't think it's poison. I checked twice before he ate them, and the symptoms don't look like poisoning now either."
Startled Shintu pressed her in a frantic voice, but Hwa-eun had verified there was no toxin in the white ants before So-ryong ate them, and So-ryong himself—who knew poisons better than anyone—had said the same. Even now, the look in his eyes was wrong for either poisoning or paralysis.
That was when Seolpyo, who had been taking his pulse, caught Hwa-eun's hand.
From the lips of a blank-faced Seolpyo came words Hwa-eun had heard once before.
"Beast… Beast Heart Technique…"
"Beast Heart Technique? You mean…?"
Beast Heart Technique was one of the source arts of the Beast Palace folded into the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art that So-ryong practiced. The memory of the time Cho had become a Flying Centipede and put So-ryong to sleep for half a month flashed through Hwa-eun's mind.
"Cho! Cho! Come down here!"
Hwa-eun hurriedly called down the centipede So-ryong had left circling somewhere in the sky on watch. What if Cho had grown again and the same thing as last time was happening? Cho had recently shed once more, and at the moment she was the only one who seemed a plausible cause. Seolpyo and the Beast Palace Lord himself had warned that communing with a poison beast of the Ten Great Poisons could scramble a person's mind.
When she urgently summoned her, Cho came fluttering down without the faintest idea what was going on.
Tsurut?
"Cho, Papa collapsed. Do you know anything about this?"
Tsurut!? Tsuru!
Only then did Cho notice So-ryong lying behind Hwa-eun. The cry that burst out of her was pure shock. Hwa-eun couldn't understand the words, but the way Cho was panicking made it clear she was not the cause.
Seolpyo recovered her wits and offered the same conclusion.
"It's not Cho. I don't feel the Beast Heart Technique energy like last time. And if Cho were the reason, wouldn't she have fallen asleep too, the way she did before?"
Hwa-eun thought it over and realized Seolpyo was right. Back then Cho had sunk into sleep right alongside So-ryong; if she were the source now, she would be sleeping as well.
"Then… could it be Hyang!?"
"Hyang? Now that you mention it—!"
Hyang, sulking from the scolding she had gotten earlier for not listening to her father, was still curled asleep on Hwa-eun's shoulder. What if this was not ordinary sleep?
The fact that she had not woken amid all the commotion made her the next suspect. Hwa-eun called to her softly. If both of them had fallen under the Beast Heart Technique, forcing them awake would be unwise—but she had to know whether Hyang had truly lost consciousness the way So-ryong had.
"Hyang? Hyang-ah? Are you sleeping?"
Under the taut gazes of Hwa-eun and Seolpyo there was no answer at first, and for a moment they really thought it might be the Beast Heart Technique. Then Hyang's front legs swept over her antennae as if something itched, and she began making the exact same little sounds she always made while sleeping.
Tsuru… tsuru…
She was definitely just asleep. Even in this chaos the little one was scratching her antennae with her front legs and snoring away, so deeply gone that someone could have carried her off without her noticing.
Seolpyo quickly laid a hand on Hyang's body to double-check, then shook her head.
"Not Hyang either. I don't feel any Beast Heart Technique energy from her."
"Then why all of a sudden? It isn't that thing you warned us about before—having his mind swallowed by the beasts—is it?"
Hwa-eun asked with a worried face, half-afraid So-ryong's heart was being consumed by the poison beasts through the technique. Seolpyo shook her head.
"No. If he were being swallowed he'd be thrashing around like a beast. Right now he just looks asleep."
"Th-then… why in the world…"
If it was none of those things, the whole business was strange. Hwa-eun stared down at So-ryong with growing anxiety. Seolpyo suddenly clapped her hands as if she had figured it out.
"Ah! The ones So-ryong linked with through the Beast Heart Technique aren't just Cho and Hyang!"
"Not just Cho and Hyang… Ah! How could I have forgotten that?"
The shock of So-ryong collapsing must have blanked her mind for a moment, but when she thought about it, the beings whose minds So-ryong had joined through the Beast Heart Technique were not only Cho and Hyang. There was one more.
"Bin?"
"There's still Bin."
The youngest daughter who had left home.
Bin.
When I opened my eyes, what filled my vision was a space choked with pitch-black, smoke-like fog.
No matter which way I turned, there was nothing but that black mist. How I could even perceive black fog in a place without a single speck of light was a mystery, yet the smoke-like darkness registered with uncanny clarity.
"Wh-what is this?"
The panic lasted only a second. The first thought that hit me in a situation like this was that one.
Don't tell me… am I locked inside my inner world or something!?
When Older Sister Seol and my adoptive father had taught me the Beast Heart Technique, their warning had been that my mind might get swallowed by Cho's far stronger spirit, so I had to be careful. Spiritual beasts had minds far more powerful than a human's; they had worried I would be the one consumed.
The fact that I was still relatively clear-headed in this dark, lightless place made me wonder if my spirit had been shoved somewhere while Cho's spirit had taken over my body.
In comics, whenever the hero gets his body stolen for some reason, doesn't he end up squatting in a gloomy corner of his own mental landscape, sunk into depression mode until someone from the outside comes to rescue him?
"Damn it. Am I out there doing something weird right now? No—if Cho took over, she wouldn't do that… right?"
That felt certain. I decided to call for Cho's help first.
There was no way Cho would deliberately steal my body. This had almost certainly happened because her spirit, being that of a spiritual beast, was simply too lofty and refined. Since our minds were linked, she would help me for sure.
My daughter would never do this to her dad on purpose. Of course not.
"Cho-ya! Cho-ya! Dad's here! Help your dad!"
I shouted myself hoarse for Cho, and the black fog began to heave and roll as if it were alive. That had to be Cho reacting.
Oh! She's definitely answering!
The black mist surged and writhed every time I called her name; she must have been just as startled as I was.
I decided to soothe her with praise so she wouldn't panic, and ask her to get me out.
"I'm sure you didn't mean to do this, right? It was probably a mistake, or something that just happened even though you didn't want it. Our Cho's a good girl—the daughter who loves her dad most of all—so let's think of a way to get Dad out of here."
I kept calling for her in every direction, asking for help. Then the black fog seemed to darken into something like an angry thundercloud, and a moment later one side of it parted, revealing a narrow path.
A slender road of light.
It felt exactly as if the light itself were saying, Come this way. I hurried toward it. Cho was clearly showing me the way.
"That's my girl! Pretty daughter!"
It felt as though Cho had already found a solution. I praised her as I followed the light for a short while.
At the place where the light ended, a human figure came into view. At a glance the presence was similar to the Cho I had seen once before.
"Cho-ya!"
I called her name and broke into a run. I reached the woman—and the person standing there was not Cho.
"Wh-who…?"
The Cho in my memory had been a strangely alluring beauty with blue hair and blue eyes. The woman before me had jet-black hair and jet-black eyes. She carried that same uncanny air Cho had, but I had never seen her before.
What… what is this?
On top of that, her expression looked thoroughly furious. I blinked in shock, and the woman let out a long-suffering sigh, as if she found me exhausting.
The word that rose unbidden in my mind was darkening.
Don't tell me Cho went dark!?
Turning completely black had to mean a blackening. Blue Cho becoming black could only mean that.
Afraid that for some reason Cho had undergone a blackening, I asked in a careful voice,
"Cho?"
The woman's eyes turned frightening. Even if Cho had gone dark, she would never look at her father with eyes that cold. The thought hit me that I might be barking completely up the wrong tree.
"A-ah, not you? Th-then… who are you?"
Don't tell me it's the queen termite? No—I never ran the Beast Heart Technique to register anything.
I thought carefully. Right before this happened I had eaten roasted white ants. Could the queen of those termites have been a spiritual beast, and because the worker ants had exchanged nutrients with her before they died, eating their fluids had somehow registered the queen?
But that didn't make sense either. Registering a poison beast required circulating the special formulas of the Beast Heart Technique while consuming the creature's fluids; it shouldn't have been possible to register something against my will.
Under the woman's piercing glare I found myself taking an involuntary step backward.
That was when her expression suddenly flipped to pure fluster. She whipped her head away so she wouldn't have to look at me—and then snatched at the collar of my robe near my shoulder.
I stared at the place she had grabbed, and the blank question left my mouth.
"Don't tell me… Bin?"
The spot she had seized was exactly the place our tsundere Bin always nipped when she was pretending she couldn't help revealing herself. Whenever she got angry and started to slink away, she would lightly bite that collar as if to say don't go. The place this woman was holding was that exact spot.
Her face flooded with shock and emotion, and an instant later she threw herself into my arms.
And of course—the feeling that Dad was the best in the world came pouring into me.
As if this dad wouldn't know that.
I'd made a bit of a fool of myself at the start, but at this level I still passed as a father. My consciousness began to blur.
"Bin-ah!"
When I opened my eyes, the familiar ceiling greeted me.
I sat bolt upright calling Bin's name, and two startled women's voices answered at once.
"So-ryong, are you awake?"
"Kid! You came to?"
I turned my head. Hwa-eun and Older Sister Seol were staring at me with wide eyes.
"Where… how…?"
I was lying in my own quarters in the Tang Clan, on my own bed. I had seen Bin inside my mind, but my last clear memory was of going out to find heavenly silkworms, discovering the white ants, and eating them.
When I asked how I had ended up here, Hwa-eun came over and smoothed my forehead as she answered.
"We would have left you where you were, but Older Sister Seol said it would be better to move you closer to the clan, so we brought you here."
So after I collapsed they had carried me home.
"Right—Bi-Bin? Has Bin come back?"
The moment Bin's name left Hwa-eun's mouth I asked for news of her, but Hwa-eun only shook her head.
"No. So the reason you collapsed this time really was Bin, then?"
"Probably…"
I trailed off at the news that she still hadn't returned—and then a sudden uproar rose outside.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
A low tremor rolled through the earth, and the startled voices of the martial artists outside began to shout.
"St-stop it!"
"That way!"
"It's heading for the Four-Harmony Courtyard!"
I tried to push myself up from the bed, but my body, after lying so long, refused to move properly. I asked Hwa-eun and Older Sister Seol,
"Outside. Quickly."
They must have sensed something in the commotion themselves; neither of them refused. Supported between the two of them, I stepped out of the room—and at that exact moment the ground of the rear garden heaved upward in a long, mole-like ridge that raced straight toward us and then burst open right in front of my quarters.
Fwoosh!
From inside erupted a giant centipede I had never seen before, its body a glossy, jet-black sheen.
Even after crawling through the earth its carapace was sleek and polished, a black as deep as the abyss itself. Its body looked a little larger than Cho's after she had become a Flying Centipede.
Tsururr.
I couldn't help it—a real scream of pure black beauty tore out of me.
Sh-she's insane!
"Gyaaaaah!"
There was no doubt about it. The Bin who had left home had come back upgraded.