Suspecting the Five Poison Sect
Hwa-eun had agreed, for the moment, with my suspicion that the Five Poison Sect was involved.
It was only because of the geography, of course.
If we assumed it really was their work, all they would have to do was toss a few bedbugs onto the countless ships that passed through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze on a dark night. That alone could spread the insects across the entire Central Plains in no time.
Bedbug delivery by ship through the Central Plains… Yeah, that actually makes sense. Ships have always been one of the main ways plagues and pests get around.
Even by the standards of my previous life, ships were one of the best vectors for spreading pests or epidemics, so the idea held water.
But the real reason I suspected the Five Poison Sect’s hand in this came from an entirely different angle.
As I was trying to pin down the thoughts swirling in my head, Seol Nui’s startled shout cut through after she heard Hwa-eun agree with me.
“Wh-what? Really!? Then shouldn’t we tell the Tang Family or the Murim Alliance right away!?
No, wait—we need solid proof first.
Hwa-eun’s one thing, but why do you think that, Ryong? Explain it already!”
Seol Nui wanted to know exactly why I was pointing the finger at them. I soothed her as she pressed me, looking ready to hyperventilate, and started explaining.
“Calm down, Seol Nui, and listen carefully while I tell you why I think so. The little bedbugs we know originally lived as parasites on bats, sucking their blood.”
“Bats? The flying ones? Like the bats we saw in the caves?”
“Yes. But once people started living in caves or hunting bats for food, the insects jumped over to humans—who had bigger bodies and more blood than bats ever did.”
Bedbug is the general name for blood-sucking insects in the Cimicidae family, but when most people say “bedbug,” they mean the species with the scientific name Cimex lectularius.
These bedbugs began as bat parasites. Scientists believe, just as I had explained to Seol Nui, that they switched hosts from bats to humans and adapted to live off people.
They eat nothing but blood, so humans would have been a far better meal ticket than bats.
“Hmm… Yeah, that tracks. Bigger bodies, more blood—living among people would definitely be better than hanging around bats.”
“Exactly, Seol Nui. For creatures that can’t eat anything but blood, people are a lot more appealing than little bats. Once they made the jump from bats to humans, they mostly stuck to human blood after that—though they still take a sip from other animals now and then.”
“So bedbugs mainly feed on human blood? They’re so small and don’t have any poison, so our family never studied them in detail… I should remember this and make sure it gets recorded back home.”
Seol Nui was listening with genuine interest now, the earlier panic gone from her face. I glanced between her and Hwa-eun, then looked over at the huge dead bedbugs lying around the village and continued.
“And these big bedbugs here aren’t all that different from the little ones we usually find in houses. No—they’re the same creatures.”
“What? You’re saying the two are the same?”
“Yes, probably, Hwa-eun.”
“No way, Ryong. Look at the size difference!”
Both of them blinked at me in shock when I said the two were the same. The enormous gap in size made it hard for them to believe.
But they really were identical. I had checked carefully, and there weren’t just almost no differences—they were completely the same.
Antenna length, body proportions, the shape of the mouthparts… Aside from ordinary individual variation, not a single trait was different in ratio or form.
“They’ve just gotten bigger. Otherwise they’re exactly the same. And that means their food is still blood. Human blood, specifically.”
“Well, yeah—we already saw them crawling up to suck people’s blood at night…”
Even after all that, Seol Nui still hadn’t spotted the real problem. I turned the question back on both of them.
“Think about it. Have either of you ever seen or even heard of bedbugs this big?”
“No. Never seen them, never heard of them.”
“Neither have I, So-ryong.”
They looked at each other and shook their heads together. I smiled and asked the final question.
“I told you these things mainly feed on human or animal blood, right? So if bedbugs this big had always lived in the Central Plains, how did they survive until now?
They drink human blood, they’re this huge—so why are we seeing them for the first time?”
“Ah!”
“Ah! That makes sense!”
The two of them finally caught my meaning and nodded at each other. I added a little more detail.
“To explain it properly…”
The reason we had no choice but to conclude they weren’t natural was exactly what I had just told them: bedbugs are parasites that feed only on blood.
They might take animal blood on occasion, but they primarily live on human blood. Creatures that large could never have stayed unknown.
A parasite big enough to threaten human lives would already be famous.
Or maybe not. Given the era and how little ordinary people knew about insects, it was possible.
But at least one of the three of us should have known.
Who were we, after all?
Me—once called a walking encyclopedia of venomous creatures, the spicy Fabre—plus Seolpyo of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, and Dang Hwa-eun of the Sichuan Tang Family.
We were basically the dream team when it came to animals, insects, and poisons in this age.
You could even call us the top expert team of the era. Of course.
I was a newbie in this martial world, so maybe I could be excused for not knowing. But Seol Nui of the Beast Palace, who dealt with more wild beasts than anyone, and Hwa-eun of the Tang Family, unrivaled in all things poisonous—both of them clueless?
That was impossible.
If the bedbugs had grown this large, human blood alone wouldn’t be enough; they would have to attack animals too. Seol Nui would definitely have known. And if they carried a paralyzing poison like that, Hwa-eun would have known.
And that wasn’t the only strange part.
Even if giant bedbugs did exist, these were an absurd size.
It wasn’t just that they were too big.
Leaving genetics aside entirely, bedbugs are parasites that feed on human blood.
So what do you call a parasite large enough to kill its host?
From an evolutionary standpoint, parasites are supposed to stay hidden on the host, quietly siphoning nutrients and reproducing so their offspring can continue. Killing the host?
That already puts them outside the category of “parasite.” It’s evolutionary failure—destroying your own means of survival. How could that be natural?
Even deadly human viruses usually evolve toward lower toxicity and higher infection rates if they keep killing their hosts.
So bedbugs this enormous could only exist if humans had intervened.
“…For all those reasons, I couldn’t help thinking someone had a hand in it. And the only ones in the Central Plains who could pull something like this off are…”
I trailed off at the end, and the answer slipped out on its own.
“The Five Poison Sect.”
“Yeah—those Five Poison Sect bastards are the only ones.”
Hwa-eun and Seol Nui’s eyes lit up as they followed my science-based deduction. Both of them started heaping praise on me.
“As expected of So-ryong.”
“So-ryong, you’re amazing! Sometimes this big sister really wonders if you’re some kind of prodigy.”
Prodigy? Come on… If you count my previous life, I’m a forty-year-old prodigy in a fifteen-year-old body. Wait—I’m still growing… Growth? Wait a second—!
Right then, while I was giving them an awkward smile under the praise, one fact slammed into my mind.
Something unimaginable might have already happened. My face turned serious.
“But if this really is the Five Poison Sect’s doing… something far more horrible than we thought may already have taken place.”
“Something horrible, So-ryong?”
“Horrible? It already happened? Besides the bedbugs swarming?”
Both of them stared at me with wide eyes. I nodded.
“The bedbugs that swarmed us yesterday—they were all adults, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, they were all adults. So what? What’s that got to do with something horrible?”
“They were adults, So-ryong?”
Seol Nui kept asking what adults had to do with anything terrible, but I had a solid reason for my fear.
“Adult bedbugs, you see…”
Bedbugs can suck blood the moment they hatch, but they don’t die if they go without it.
The immature stages of insects that undergo incomplete metamorphosis are called nymphs. A nymph can survive two or three months without a blood meal, and an adult can last up to a year.
But to reach adulthood, a bedbug has to molt five times—and every single molt requires a blood meal.
Without blood at each stage, a nymph can never become an adult. That’s simply how bedbugs work.
So if every last one of the insects that attacked us yesterday was already an adult, it meant each of them had fed five times somewhere. And that meant a large-scale slaughter—of animals or people—might already have happened.
Judging by how much they ate and how many there were, one or two victims wouldn’t have been nearly enough.
“…So to raise that many to adulthood, you’d need a huge amount of human or animal blood. Which means…”
I couldn’t bring myself to finish the grim thought. Hwa-eun and Seol Nui’s faces twisted as they filled in the rest themselves.
“Those Five Poison Sect bastards would do it without batting an eye.”
“Looking at everything so far, they absolutely would.”
Then Hwa-eun asked the next question.
“By the way, where did these things come from? It doesn’t seem like someone raised them somewhere and just dumped them here.”
“Hmm… Hard to say. Mountains behind us, river in front—there don’t seem to be any villages nearby.”
We were trading guesses about where the bedbugs had come from and where all that blood had been harvested when a cautious voice called my name from the side.
“Um, Young Master So-ryong?”
I turned my head. Lee Tae had somehow approached and was looking at me with a careful expression.
“Ah, did you need something?”
“Well… I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but…”
He trailed off, unable to spit it out. Seol Nui, clearly frustrated, snapped at him.
“Just say it already! It’s driving me crazy!”
Lee Tae flinched and stammered out his answer.
“Th-the truth is… we belong to the Yangtze River Water Bandit Alliance, right?”
“Yeah, we heard that.”
“Well, the heroes of the Central Plains…”
“Heroes? You mean bandits…”
Seol Nui shot back at him for calling themselves heroes. Lee Tae’s face looked like he’d bitten into something foul, but he pushed on with a pout.
“Right… The bandits can be divided into three big groups. First, the Dongting Eighteen Strongholds based around Lake Dongting. Then our Yangtze River Water Bandit Alliance. And finally the Green Forest Seventy-Two Strongholds.”
How are there this many bandits? Is it just because the land is so big?
Ninety bandit chiefs even without counting the Yangtze River Water Bandit Alliance—I was genuinely stunned. Central Plains security was a joke.
“And…?”
“See that mountain beyond the little hill behind us? Well… this is a matter of loyalty… Should I really be saying this?”
Lee Tae pointed at the larger mountain past the small hill the bedbugs had come down from. When I nodded, he muttered something about loyalty that didn’t fit him at all. Seol Nui’s eyes flared again.
“Tsk!”
At the sound of her tongue click, Lee Tae hurried on.
“Yes—that place is called Seokhwang Mountain. One of the Green Forest Seventy-Two Strongholds has a mountain base there! Cross one more mountain and a narrow river and you hit the official road. That’s their territory.
It’s a pretty big stronghold—about three hundred bandits. Since you were looking for villages nearby…”
Three hundred people still seemed far too few for the number of bedbugs we’d faced yesterday, but at least it meant there was a place where people lived.
“Looks like we’ll have to check it out…”
I muttered that we should probably investigate, and Seol Nui answered with a gloomy look.
“Go where? We still have to stop the ones that’ll come tonight… Ugh, I hate this.”
She was clearly worried about tonight’s swarm, but I expected things to be quieter today.
“You don’t need to worry too much tonight, Seol Nui.”
“Why!? You got a good idea?”
Her face lit up at my words. I smiled back.
“They’re not spirit beasts—just plain bedbugs. They can’t swim, and they can’t cross water.”
Our position sat on a jutting piece of land. Once Bing returned, I planned to have her dig a canal straight across that protruding section.
And now that I thought about it, we already had a natural insecticide on hand.
What would happen if we sprayed the water Hwa-yang had been splashing around in?