Mountain Fire 4
No way. That name is a total mismatch.
At the cool, stylish name that clashed so badly with her pathetic looks, I turned my head—where flames were crackling and popping—and looked at Hwa-yang.
What filled my vision was her utterly ordinary, vacant face.
The moment our eyes met, the flames rising from her back swelled and shrank, over and over.
For a second I thought that vacant face suited something cute like Orange Horse-Bell Toad far better than the flashy Blue Fire Magma Toad.
The reason that name popped into my head was her potato-like appearance. In my past life, the Central Plains tongue had called potatoes ma-ryeong-seo—horse-bell tubers—because they looked like the oval bells hung on horses. The name was so odd it even showed up as material in fantasy novels. So Orange Horse-Bell Toad simply meant “orange-colored horse-bell toad.” An extremely cute name. Absolutely nothing else.
Now that’s a cute, realistic name.
I nodded to myself and asked Hwa-eun why our pathetic little Hwa-yang had such a grand title.
“Blue Fire Magma Toad?”
Seom-seo meant toad, so the Central Plains people must have classified Hwa-yang as a toad. Even this Fabre wasn’t entirely sure about her taxonomy, though. Classification could wait; I set it aside for later.
Hwa-eun didn’t answer my question. Instead she hurried over and asked in an urgent voice,
“S-So-ryong, how much internal energy do you have left?”
I was still more curious about the origin of the name, but I answered her first. The way she pressed me made it sound important. Plus I’d messed up again, so I needed to stay on her good side if I wanted to take even one fewer smack on the back later.
“Uh… about half right now? Why do you ask about my energy?”
Hwa-eun wiped the cold sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, stepped right up to me, took a couple of deep breaths, and explained.
“Listen carefully, So-ryong. Don’t panic. Calm your mind as much as you can. You have to keep your heart peaceful.”
“Huh? Okay.”
I knew that if my mind grew restless the energy would burn faster, so I nodded. Then came the explanation that spilled from Hwa-eun’s lips—something I could hardly believe.
“Hwa-yang is a Blue Fire Magma Toad. She is a poisonous creature who holds a seat among the Ten Great Poison Beasts—the queen of toads.”
“Hah!? H-Hwa-yang is one of the Ten Great Poison Beasts!? A q-queen!? A-Are you serious!?”
That pathetic-looking thing was one of the Ten Great Poison Beasts and the queen of toads? I asked again with an expression that said I couldn’t believe it. Hwa-eun nodded.
“Yes, I’m certain. I’ve never seen one either, but the Compendium of the World’s Poison Beasts that you had me re-check last time said, ‘Magma flows across its back and blue flames leap high.’ That’s exactly what I remembered. So I’m sure.”
“If you’ve never actually seen one… maybe it’s something else that looks similar…”
Even if the book description matched, the idea that an orange potato was both one of the Ten Great Poison Beasts and the queen of toads was hard to swallow. I floated the possibility that another poison creature might look alike. Hwa-eun pointed at the flames above my head.
“Blue Fire. It says that once a person or beast is poisoned, Blue Fire blooms above their head and burns away every last bit of their qi. And when the qi is completely gone…”
“When it’s gone?”
I repeated the trailing end of her sentence. Hwa-eun lightly closed her hand as if cradling an egg, then flung her fingers wide and uttered a single sound.
“Boom.”
“Eeek!”
—Whoooosh!
At her words the flames above my head roared upward. No matter how hard I tried to stay calm, this was not a situation that allowed calm. The baldness I’d been fretting over would at least leave me with a head; this meant everything would vanish. The fire on my head would keep burning my internal energy as fuel, and the moment every last drop of qi was gone I would explode. Ordinary people and beasts had some qi, but far less than martial artists, so they would pop almost instantly. For a martial artist it simply handed out a death sentence with a timer. A poison this vicious absolutely deserved its place among the Ten Great Poison Beasts.
The surging flames were draining my energy fast, so I asked in a panicked voice,
“W-What do we do!?”
“Hwa-eun! What about our little dragon, then!?”
At my and Sister Seol’s urgent questions, Hwa-eun rolled up her sleeves.
“There is a way. I’m a little worried that Grandfather and Father aren’t here, but Sister Seol and I are, so if anything happens we’ll handle it as best we can. We’re going to accept Hwa-yang’s poison.”
At her words my head cleared instantly.
“Ah! That method!”
“Ah! Th-That’s right!”
Sister Seol and I had been so flustered we hadn’t thought of it, but of course. If I took Hwa-yang’s poison into the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art—whose root was the Beast Heart Technique—as one of the five poisons, the poisoning would be resolved. Poison arts granted absolute resistance to any poison one accepted in order to raise one’s realm. Because Hwa-yang looked so pathetic I had completely written off the idea, but if she was one of the Ten Great Poison Beasts, that single step would solve everything.
Then why the hell did I suffer so much last time?
The moment the realization hit, the memory of struggling like a dog when the flood washed trees into the boat upstream flooded back and left me blank. I should have just listened to Hwa-eun then. If I had accepted Hwa-yang’s poison back then, none of that hell would have been necessary. I had thought the world was stacking unfairness on unfairness, but it had probably been heaven trying to stop me from choosing the hard road when an easy one was right there.
Listen to me—you’re going to suffer like a dog.
Heaven had been flashing signs the whole time, yet I had cheerfully picked the most dangerous route and felt perfectly safe.
The sages of my past life said to listen to the GPS, to Mother, and to your wife for a reason… sniff…
Feeling a waterfall of tears inside, I said to Hwa-eun,
“A-All right, Hwa-eun.”
“Cho-ya, keep watch and don’t let anyone come near. Sister, watch over So-ryong and me; if anything happens, help us deal with it.”
“Got it, Hwa-eun!”
—Zzt!
At Hwa-eun’s request, Cho rose into the air and began circling. I lifted Hwa-yang into my arms. She had reached adulthood, but that only meant she had gone from tadpole to frog form; she was still small. Sitting cross-legged, I set the toad—a little larger than a human head—on my knees and recalled the formulas of the Beast Heart Technique in my mind.
The flames rising from Hwa-yang’s back merged with the fire burning on my head, and a great blue blaze bloomed around us both.
—Whoooosh!
My eyes closed and my consciousness slowly sank.
I recited the formulas of the Beast Heart Technique, closed my eyes, and opened them again to find a vast pond before me.
The only difference from an ordinary pond was that it was filled to the brim with bubbling, boiling lava.
—Glub-glub.
The sight was bizarre, but I had already been through this twice with Cho and Bin, so I didn’t panic this time. This place was clearly some kind of mental image or inner landscape.
Now I just have to find Hwa-yang, right?
Judging by what happened with Cho and Bin, the next step was to locate Hwa-yang, so I decided to search for her. When Cho had come to, she had already been holding me, but Bin had been separate, so I had needed to go find her. I had been holding Hwa-yang, yet she was nowhere nearby—why, I didn’t know.
Hwa-yang’s a toad, so she’ll be in the pond, right?
Since she was a toad, the odds she was in the pond were high, so I started examining it first.
I circled the pond for a moment looking for her and spotted a small island in the center, beyond the rising flames of lava. Focusing my vision through the fire, I saw a human figure lying in the middle of the island, wavering among the flames.
That must be Hwa-yang.
From Cho and Bin’s cases, if a person appeared inside this mental image, it was almost certainly the poison beast itself. I found the closest point to the island and shouted toward it.
“Hwa-yang! Hwa-yang!”
But she lay motionless on the island. Looks like I would have to go myself.
“How am I supposed to cross this, though?”
I needed to get over there, yet what stretched before me was a pond of boiling lava. While I fretted over how on earth to cross it, rocks jutting up like stepping stones throughout the pond caught my eye. That was clearly the only way. I would have to use my lightfoot technique as much as possible and hop across them to reach her.
Hoo. It’s just a mental image—let’s try it.
After a moment I calculated the optimal stepping-stone route, locked it in my head, took a long run-up, and leapt toward the pond.
—Tap!
As I flew over the lava toward the first rising rock, heat poured up from the bubbling surface. The stones were close enough that my lightfoot technique could handle the gaps with ease, and I reached the central island without trouble.
Once I landed, what met my eyes was a woman with short orange hair lying on her side, sound asleep.
Hwa-yang was a female!? Nice!
The single word that burst out of me the moment I saw her form was “Nice!” If a woman appeared here, it meant Hwa-yang was female. From Cho and Bin’s experiences, a woman inside the mental image meant the poison beast itself was female, so admiration came naturally.
Of course it wasn’t because I was happy she was a girl; it was because among amphibians the females are usually larger and more impressive than the males. Females that lay huge numbers of eggs are typically far bigger, so I could raise her large and magnificent. A female among the Ten Great Poison Beasts—setting aside her pathetic real-world looks, she was a creature that truly pleased me.
“Hwa-yang?”
In high spirits I approached the sleeping figure and called her name. Only then did she twitch.
“Hwa-yang, wake up. It’s me.”
I kept calling while crouching beside her. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked at me with half-lidded eyes. The vacant expression was almost identical to her true form. The look in her eyes confirmed it was Hwa-yang.
Okay, found her. Next step is…
I had woken her, yet I couldn’t remember what came next. Thinking back to Cho and Bin, what surfaced was a hug. Looking at her, though, I felt awkward. Just blurting out “Let’s hug” felt a little off. With Cho and Bin I had raised them from eggs, so they felt like daughters even in human form and it hadn’t been strange. Hwa-yang, however, appeared as an adult woman, and that made it awkward. She had mostly stayed in her water jar, so we hadn’t built much closeness either.
What should I do?
I fretted over how to hug her without it feeling weird, then decided I should at least introduce myself properly first. Since our minds were linked through martial arts, a simple greeting of sorts?
“Hwa-yang, uh, our minds are about to be connected through martial arts, so we—”
The moment I started speaking, she began nodding off, her head drooping.
Is this girl for real?
To wake her I decided to use the word she loved most.
“Food!”
The instant the word “food” left my mouth, Hwa-yang’s body shot upward and she charged straight at me as I looked down at her.
“Guh!”
She landed on top of me as I toppled over.
My vision slowly darkened. Apparently this much physical contact counted as enough of a hug. Even as the world blacked out, one thought stayed crystal clear: Hwa-yang was still the same consistent little glutton she had always been.