Xuan 3
“Bi-Bin!”
-Chirrr…
Bin’s color now was real all black.
Just what kind of evolution was this, for her to turn out this luxurious?
My gaze was instantly stolen by the glossy, high-class chitin of her jet-black exoskeleton. From her eyes to the tips of her antennae, not a single spot had escaped the pure black dyeing. The elegance that radiated from that black completely captivated me.
If you had to name the rarest, most luxurious colors in nature, pure white and pure black would top the list—and of the two, pure black was the rarer prize.
Rare! Way too rare!
Pure black was especially precious among animals because it was not a natural coloration at all; it only appeared through melanism—an increase of melanin pigment in the body. White had two possible mutations, albinism and leucism, so while still difficult, you at least had a decent chance of seeing it. Black, born from melanism alone, was far rarer. In my previous life I had sold quite a few white specimens that luckily hatched or turned up during breeding; I had never once laid eyes on a melanistic individual. That was why, between the two, black was unquestionably the more precious. And that was why I was completely entranced.
Because this black one was my own Bin.
Ah… she’s beautiful!
I stared blankly until our eyes met. Bin’s dark gaze and mine wavered as they locked on each other. Then the sunlight reflected off her black surface and dazzled me again—and without either of us deciding who would move first, we both charged.
“Gyaaaah! My daughter! Look at how pretty you’ve become…!”
-Tsu, tsurrr…
A tearful reunion between a runaway daughter and her dad. Even tsundere Bin, for this one moment, made no attempt to pull away despite her embarrassment.
When I threw my arms around her I felt an overwhelming sense of mass. Cho was solid enough, but as a flier she always felt a little light; Bin carried a denser, heavier weight of hard chitin. That black-armored hardness, plus the sheer bulk, carefully composed every inch of her body. If Cho felt like a fighter jet’s airframe, Bin felt like a tank.
And in the same instant I realized I had completely misunderstood her. How could I have thought this daughter who loved her dad so much had run away from home?
“That’s right—you never ran away! Dad was the one who got it wrong! My girl would never do that.”
I had assumed she vanished because she was sulking, but I must have been mistaken. Even when people tame wild animals, the wildness never fully leaves them. Cho, Hyang, and Bin had been with me since the day I was born, yet that wildness had clearly remained. So Bin’s “running away” hadn’t been running away at all; just as a tamed wild beast seeks a secret place when it is about to give birth, she must have gone looking for a private space in which to evolve. Cho’s evolution had been a sudden thing caused by swallowing an inner core; Bin’s had been something she had to accomplish through her own solitary effort, so of course she needed a secluded spot. How exactly she had managed such a miraculous evolution I still didn’t know—but Sister Seol had suggested she might simply have been sleeping, which made the theory even more plausible. And if that wasn’t the case? Well, so what? If it wasn’t, it wasn’t. There was no way my pretty, good daughter would do something like that.
The moment I clung to her body, Bin finished pulling herself free of the underground hole and coiled around me as if vowing we would never be parted again. Hwa-eun, Sister Seol, and every last person of the Tang Clan could only stare at us with expressions that said they had no idea what to do.
“Bin’s back!?”
Once Bin and I had calmed down, Grandfather Mandok’s voice rang out from the entrance of the courtyard. I turned my head and found three people standing there with blank faces. Following the commotion raised by the warriors, Grandfather Mandok, my father-in-law, and my mother-in-law had come running from the direction of the clan head’s residence; the moment they confirmed Bin’s transformed appearance their eyes went wide with shock.
“Bi-Bin? This is Bin?”
“No—our cute little Bin?”
Clearly her metamorphosis was a stunning surprise.
“Yes, Bin has returned. Looking this beautiful, no less.”
I stroked her proudly. Grandfather Mandok quickly circled her once, then spoke in an astonished voice.
“Could it be… Xuan?”
“Xuan?”
Out of nowhere he said “Xuan.” Hwa-eun, Sister Seol, and I all tilted our heads. Grandfather Mandok told us to wait a moment and then launched himself into the air with lightness skill.
“Warriors, all of you withdraw! You three, wait right there!”
Before long he reappeared carrying an ancient book—four times the size of any ordinary volume I had seen. While I was still marveling at its bulk he set it down on the pavilion table. The characters written on the cover leaped clearly into view: The Secret Record of All Poisons Under Heaven.
“Oh! So this is the Secret Record of All Poisons Under Heaven!”
“Indeed. This is the very book you have been dying to see.”
I had heard the stories. The secret manual handed down in the Tang Clan—a kind of comprehensive bestiary of the Central Plains’ poisonous creatures. Every time I begged for even a single look, they had refused, telling me to devote myself to martial arts first. Parts of the pages were already rotting away; the whole thing looked tattered and worn. Grandfather opened the first page and beckoned me closer, as if he had finally decided to show it to me.
“Come, So-ryong. Look.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Shall I excuse myself?” Sister Seol asked, offering to step away.
Grandfather shook his head. “We call it a secret manual, but it isn’t martial arts, so there’s no need. Come and look together.”
With my heart pounding I approached the pavilion and examined the first page that lay open. The writing that met my eyes read:
I, Tang Hwa-seong, youngest son of the third clan head Tang Mun-ryong of the Tang Clan, leave this record for posterity.
The name of this secret manual is The Secret Record of All Poisons Under Heaven.
While traveling the entire Central Plains to capture poisonous creatures, I recorded their forms, habitats, and peculiar habits. The reason I gathered knowledge of these poisons is that the Tang Clan has long neglected the toxins of venomous beasts.
In the mountains, fields, and forests where creatures devour one another and life and death coexist, I saw infinite possibility in those poisonous beings.
May what I have recorded prove of use to the poison arts of generations to come.
“This is…?”
“The words of the ancestor who compiled this secret manual.”
A book that began with the solemn declaration of a man who, though only a fringe figure in the Tang Clan, believed in the boundless potential of poisonous creatures. The words unexpectedly struck a chord in this modern-day Fabre’s heart; I offered a silent prayer for Tang Hwa-seong’s soul and turned the page. There, drawn solely in ink, was a simple illustration accompanied by brief descriptions and habits—truly a Central-Plains version of a poison bestiary.
When its wings spread, five cheok. Its beak is copper-colored and sharp; its body is covered in purple-vermilion feathers. When enraged it unfurls its wings and everything nearby blackens and dies, transforming into poison. Upon its head it wears a golden crown—truly the bearing of a sovereign.
This is called the Zhen, or the Poison Feather Bird.
The first page was, of course, the Poison Feather Bird. A creature much like the one we knew was depicted with surprising precision by a fine brush. But before I could examine it closely, Grandfather Mandok flipped the pages at high speed. The turning stopped on a page painted almost solid black with ink.
What…?
Even while the pages raced past I had been scanning them; most of the drawings were simple ink outlines, yet this one poisonous creature alone had been rendered with a thick brush as if the artist had simply smeared the page with black. Looking closer, I saw a single centipede painted jet black. Beneath the illustration were the characters: Twenty-Four Poison Branches—Ink-Black Demon Centipede. When I shifted my eyes to the accompanying description, astonishing things were written there.
The Ink-Black Demon Centipede occupies the seat of Xuan among the Twenty-Four Poison Branches—a formidable venomous beast. It suddenly erupts from the earth to attack men and beasts. Its form is a pitch-black giant centipede, like a black ghost of a centipede; hence the name Ink-Black Demon Centipede.
The creature appears to hear the sounds of people and animals above ground with exceptional clarity; even if one flees onto rock one must not feel safe, for it smashes through stone itself as it rises.
“Huuuh!”
The description in the book was exactly about our Bin. She might not have reached the Ten Great Poisons, but she had claimed the third seat of the Twenty-Four Poison Branches—those just below them—and become a truly formidable venomous creature.
“Our Bin isn’t one of the Ten Great Poisons, but she’s the Ink-Black Demon Centipede of the Twenty-Four Poison Branches!”
Even the Twenty-Four Poison Branches were more than enough. She might not be a Ten Great Poison, yet to this dad she was every bit their equal. Overwhelmed with pride that my daughter had evolved into such a magnificent poison beast, I shouted toward her.
“Bin! Our Bin has become the third seat of the Twenty-Four Poison Branches—the Ink-Black Demon Centipede!”
But Bin, apparently not fond of the name, recoiled in disgust and let out a loud cry.
-Tsurrr!
“Why? You don’t like Ink-Black Demon Centipede?”
-Tsut!
It’s not that I hate it… Cho…
The moment that feeling reached me—
-Tsurrrrr.
Another low centipede cry sounded from above my head. I looked up and saw Cho slowly descending from the sky. Come to think of it, Cho had not been at my side when I woke. For a child who loved her dad no less than Bin did, it would have been natural for her to stay by me after I collapsed; her absence was strange. Just as I was wondering where she had gone, Hwa-eun and Sister Seol supplied the explanation.
“We thought we ought to find Bin, so we asked Cho to search for her.”
“Since the reason you collapsed seemed to be Bin, we decided to look for her. Last time she and Cho had grown together, after all.”
In short, they had suspected Bin was the cause of my collapse and set out to find her. The instant Hwa-eun finished speaking, Cho landed right in front of Bin and began examining her from head to tail. Bin shoved her body forward as if to push Cho away. A contest of strength began at once.
-Tsut!
-Tsurrut!
Bin was a little larger, yet Cho, backed by the status of a Ten Great Poison, refused to yield. A real fight looked about to break out and I was ready to intervene—when, strangely, I began to sense something like words or feelings passing between them. Until now I could feel their hearts only when they deliberately sent a personal message to me; now I was picking up the exchange itself.
What? Does this telepathy-like ability evolve too?
The feelings flying back and forth were:
“Dad said I’m pretty. Prettier than you.”
“Dad said I’m the prettiest.”
The moment I understood the content of their conversation, every hair on my body stood on end. Both heads snapped toward me at once, and their mental questions exploded simultaneously.
-Tsut?
-Tsut?
“So? Between the two of us, who does Dad think is the prettiest?”
“So? Between the two of us, who does Dad think is the prettiest?”
Huuuh!
The prettiness ranking among my daughters was clearly a matter of life-and-death importance. One wrong word and a massive fight would erupt between them—and that fight would be a monster battle. If a Ten Great Poison and a near-Ten-Great-Poison started thrashing each other, the poison qi they unleashed would leave nothing standing. It would be no different from a nuclear war breaking out inside the Tang Clan. I swallowed hard, unable to answer rashly.
-Tsurrr.
From Hwa-eun’s sleeve, Hyang crawled out rubbing her antennae and looked at Bin and Cho. She must have been sleeping and just woken up—adding insult to injury. If Hyang started wailing because she alone had failed to evolve, that would be hell itself. One crying, two fighting… the approaching reality was enough to make my mind blank out. Yet instead of throwing a tantrum, Hyang hopped lightly from Hwa-eun onto my shoulder. She coiled around my neck, fixed Bin and Cho with a steady gaze, and transmitted the triumphant feeling of a victor.
Now that she thought about it, she alone got to monopolize Dad. If those two got any bigger Dad would have a hard time, so she would never grow that large; she would stay stuck to Dad’s body for the rest of her life.
Is she saying she’ll never get married and just live with Dad forever…?
At that feeling, Bin’s and Cho’s antennae shot straight up over their heads.