Silver 1
When Hyang-i declared that she finally had Daddy all to herself, Cho and Bin’s antennae had stood straight up in shock for a heartbeat—but they seemed determined to brush the boast aside as nothing serious.
After all, Daddy had said bigger was prettier, and he’d also pointed out that Hyang-i couldn’t even carry him and fly. Bin seemed to have misunderstood that as “bigger is always better,” while Cho was busy advertising her own ability to take to the skies.
They were spinning happy little circuits in their heads, and it wasn’t as if they were completely wrong. Bigger really was better than smaller, and being able to fly was a genuine advantage.
But then the little troublemaker rubbed her cheek against mine from her perch on my shoulder, teasing them until Cho and Bin huffed and puffed with fury—at which point she vanished with a soft plop into the folds of my collar.
I’d thought Hyang-i was just a slightly mischievous, sleepy little daughter. Turns out she was a full-blown rascal.
-Churrrrr!
-Churrr!
The second child who had slammed the door and fled the fight. “Come out! Get out here!”“Just come out for a second!” She ignored her big sister and little sister’s demands as if they were nothing, and from inside my clothes she let out a smug little victor’s croon.
-Churr.
Naturally that only made Cho and Bin angrier.
As their father I could not tolerate a household monster war, so I calmed them both down.
“Daddy loves all three of you the same. So no fighting, okay? Daddy will hate whoever fights. Centipedes who fight, that is.”
I managed to soothe them with the equal-love speech, yet that very night we all learned exactly why Hyang-i had been so full of herself.
No matter how hard parents try to treat their children equally, differences inevitably creep in without anyone meaning them to. Bite all ten fingers and none of them fail to hurt—yet some fingers still hurt more than others. That’s favoritism.
Of course I’m not like that. I’ll divide my affection among the three of them with perfect fairness.
But favoritism is something that can bloom even when neither parent nor child wants it.
When I was little, Father left for work before dawn and always came home late. On the rare day he rested, he only scolded us sternly, so he felt a little frightening. We barely saw him, and when we did he was strict—hardly the recipe for closeness. Naturally we clung more to Mother, and the nightly battle over who got the spot beside her in our one-room home became the biggest evening war between me and my little brother. One side of her was reserved for Father when he returned, so the remaining place next to Mother was our fiercest prize.
After several fights Mother, wise as Solomon, instituted a rotation. Who would have thought that same midnight competition would break out in my own quarters?
-Churrrr!
-Churr!
The growling of an enraged Cho and Bin.
In my room the two of them faced off again over who would sleep right beside me. Even if Hwa-eun was their mother, they had been with me since the moment they hatched; they followed me more closely. Unless something special came up, they always slept with me. And so the battle for the spot next to me erupted between Cho and Bin exactly the way it once had between me and my brother in my previous life.
“H-hey, girls, c-calm down!”
The Central Plains, like the West, had a developed standing culture, so people even wore shoes indoors. Consequently, like the West, they favored bed culture—raised wooden platforms rather than bedding spread on the floor. You slept on a wooden dais big enough for a single quilt. The one I’d used on Hainan Island had been little more than a plain platform, but the Tang Family was wealthy; their beds were luxurious by default. Three sides were enclosed by carved wooden panels hung with fine cloth; the only entrance was along one long side. The trouble was the bed measured only about two meters. With two creatures the size of six or seven meters, neither of them could climb fully onto it. The big ones had to sleep with just their heads poked in from the entrance.
Before Bin grew, Cho would stick her head through the doorway while the rest of her loosely coiled around me on the floor. Once Bin also got big, that doorway spot became contested ground.
“I’m sleeping next to Daddy!”
“You already slept next to him a lot while I was gone!”
“I couldn’t sleep either because I was out looking for you!”
The two enlarged daughters shoved their heads toward the entrance, competing for the prime spot. They still kept a thread of reason—they were careful not to smash the bed—until Hyang-i poked her head out of my arms and tossed a single sound at her sisters.
-Chit!
It was the perfect little snort of mockery. Of course it was—she could just wrap herself around my body and sleep. Unwanted favoritism born of size. Exactly as Hyang-i had said earlier, the winner of the daughters’ affection contest for Daddy was Hyang-i. Her victory by default. She was completely outside the competition. Whether traveling or sleeping, she alone could stick to me like glue.
-Churrrrr!
-Churrut!
The moment that truth sank in, Cho and Bin’s reason collapsed. Fine, I don’t care anymore—I’m sleeping next to Daddy! That was the feeling. And the instant their reason crumbled, so did my bed.
Two six- and seven-meter monsters locked in a wrestling match left a wooden bed with no chance of survival.
-Crack-crunch!
-Crash-bang!
The bed collapsed outright, and my table and chairs shattered along with it. Pretty much every piece of furniture in the room was reduced to splinters.
“What on earth is going on!?”
“So-ryong? What happened?”
“What is the meaning of this racket, So-ryong?”
Hwa-eun, Sister Seol, and the other adults came running in shock at the midnight remodeling noises from my room. I was buried under the wreckage of the bed while Cho and Bin were still demolishing it—of course they were startled. In the end I asked the guards on night watch to haul every remaining piece of furniture out, then filled one side of the room with dry grass.
This wasn’t a fight that would end with a scolding; it would resume every single night. Better just to spread straw and sleep on the floor with all three of them. I’d slept on floors plenty in my previous life. Peace demanded sacrifice.
The dry grass I’d prepared for the hamsters was piled thick where the bed had stood, a quilt laid over it, and the moment I lay down the two big ones instantly claimed positions on either side of me. Calm returned.
I closed my eyes to sleep, then carefully asked them,
“Girls… could you maybe go easy on the arm-pillow thing? Daddy’s arms are going to be numb by morning…”
-Churut!
-Chut!
Apparently I was supposed to endure it just for tonight.
After the uproar, the next morning Shintu came looking for me the moment she heard I was awake, bringing her disciple Yeong-ryeon along.
“You’re awake? I was terribly worried something serious had happened.”
“Are you all right, young hero?”
“I’ve caused both of you needless worry. My apologies.”
“But why has your room turned into a barn? There’s not a single chair.”
“P-please sit on the floor. Because of the children…”
“I step into the room of the son-in-law of the Sichuan Tang Family, one of the Seven Great Clans, and find bare floor covered in straw.”
Shintu looked utterly flummoxed by my interior décor. I seated them both on the floor and asked what had happened after I collapsed. I’d already heard the rough outline from Hwa-eun and Sister Seol the day before, but I wanted to know how the stonemason issue Shintu had promised to handle had turned out.
“By the way, how are the preparations for going after the Heavenly Silk coming along?”
At my question Shintu shook her head.
“I was going to ask Elder Brother Geolhwang to find me some stonemasons, but then I realized this is not the sort of matter for that.”
“Pardon? Why not?”
She’d told me to leave it all to her and now she was changing her tune. I was wondering what she was talking about when Hwa-eun, sitting beside me, nodded in understanding.
“Ah—you’re worried it might become known to outsiders.”
“Exactly. This is the method for obtaining my sacred treasure. The fewer people who know, the better.”
“Ah…”
In short, there was no need to create more people who knew the secret just to find a fist artist or stonemason strong enough to smash the tower. Shintu lowered her voice.
“So since you said you’d raise the Heavenly Silkworms yourself anyway, I figured we might as well get help from the Tang Family. Though whether that poison-obsessed old man will lend us anyone is another question.”
True enough—we would be the ones doing the contracted rearing, so using our own people made sense. It was a good idea, except for one problem. Warriors would have to go and dig with chisels and hammers, yet with the Five Poison Gate and Blood Cult issues we couldn’t easily pull many fighters out of the clan right now.
Just as I was about to say that taking many people from our family would be difficult and might take time—
“G-girls! Put that down! You’ll get scolded!”
Sister Seol’s flustered voice floated in from outside. I shot to my feet and turned to Shintu.
“I’m terribly sorry, but I think I need to step out for a moment, Elder Shintu.”
I’d asked Sister Seol to keep the children from fighting until the pecking order settled, at least while I received guests. Something had clearly gone wrong. After begging Shintu’s pardon I dashed outside.
I’d expected a fight, yet in the rear garden my daughters were adorably playing jacks—except with rather large jacks.
What in the world…?
Cho and Bin were competing in a show of strength, each gripping landscape stones bigger than a human torso.
“Girls?”
Startled by my voice, Cho and Bin froze.
-Thud!
The stone in Cho’s mouth dropped to the ground.
-Crack-crunch.
The one Bin held shattered outright. So it was true that as the Ink-Black Demon Centipede she could smash rock.
“Th-this is—?!”
Shintu’s astonished voice came from beside me as she followed me out. Watching Bin’s monstrous strength, I suddenly thought of the perfect Tang Family member who could help Shintu—one who wasn’t human, so the number of people who would learn the secret would shrink even further.
“This little one can really break it, you say?”
Three days later we stood once more before the nest of the creatures I had named Pagoda Termites. In front of the tallest tower at the center of the basin, Shintu asked in a tense voice whether Bin could truly destroy this tower.
“You saw for yourself, Elder. She smashes rocks harder than this.”
“That’s true, but…”
She was fretting about the possibility of a wasted trip. Yet I had tested Bin several times while Shintu wasn’t around; there was nothing to worry about. Bin had lost the venom fangs she possessed as an Azure-Spotted Centipede, but in exchange she had gained far sharper teeth, monstrous strength, and the ability to dig through earth. The reason she remained among the Twenty-Four Poison Branches was probably the same as Yeondu the Flying Divine Snake—she simply lacked an especially potent toxin.
“Bin, right there. Make a big hole.”
-Churut!
I estimated where the queen’s chamber ought to be and asked her to open a large hole. Bin charged at once. The moment she sank her teeth into the side of the peak, the concrete-hard outer wall of the termite nest crumbled away like Styrofoam.
-Crunch. Crunch.
As Bin peeled away the outer shell and light began to pour into the interior, a sudden vibration rose from somewhere.
-Drrrrrrrrrrrr.
The whole termite nest started to tremble.
“What is this!?”
“What is that sound, So-ryong?”
Termites communicate through vibration. A sound loud enough to shake the entire nest could only be a summons for every soldier termite.
“The soldier termites are swarming. Bin! Get your poison ready!”
-Churut!
I ordered Bin to prepare her toxin; she drew a deep breath until her body puffed up like a plump sausage. She might have lost her fangs, but she had not lost her poison entirely. Like Cho’s mist venom, she could spray toxin from the spiracles along her body—not a true poison that infected the blood, but something more like tear gas that stung the eyes, made breathing difficult, and, being denser than air, hugged the ground.
-Pssshhhh.
The instant thousands upon thousands of soldier termites thrust their heads out of the cut surface, a black, smoky toxin billowed from the vents along Bin’s flanks. The soldiers that had come rushing out flinched in panic and scattered in every direction. Termites, when faced with an enemy they cannot handle, simply retreat inside, seal the passages, and dig in for a siege.
Once the soldiers had fled, I asked Bin to carefully locate the queen’s chamber.
“Bin, if you hit something even harder while digging, let me know.”
-Churut!
A termite queen’s chamber is oval and extraordinarily tough; find it and seal the entrance and you can capture the queen, the king, the attendant workers, and the brood all at once.
-Crunch-crunch.
At my request Bin dug deeper inward. After only a short while—
-Churut! Churrut!
“You found it?”
Hearing Bin’s cry that she had discovered something, I followed her in. The interior was so bright I didn’t even need the luminous pearl Shintu had lent me. Phosphorescent mushrooms carpeted every surface.
Ah, so these termites are the kind that cultivate and eat ant mushrooms?
The unexpected appearance of the fungi reminded me that this was their food. Most people assume every termite gnaws wood, but not all of them do; some build fungus gardens from wood pulp and live on the mushrooms they grow. I made a mental note to collect the mushrooms as well when we took the termites, and started walking again—only to freeze.
Ahead of me lay pure-white cocoons. Exactly as I had expected, not too many—about thirty cocoons heaped in one corner of the termites’ mushroom farm.
“Found them!”
My main goal was still the queen’s chamber, but I had already secured the secondary objective. I hurried over and examined a cocoon the size of a peanut squash.
-Rustle-rustle.
And at that exact moment the pile of cocoons collapsed, revealing in their very center a single cocoon that shone with a brilliant silver light, utterly different from the pure-white ones around it.
“Hah?! Wh-what is this?”
An unexpected windfall.