Family Member 1
—Thud! Thud-thud-thud!
“Gyaaaaaaah!”
My voice, thick with admiration for the eggs, and the torchlight startled something fist-sized overhead. Whatever it was began raining down without mercy.
—Bzzzz! Bzz!
—Thwack!
I swung the torch like a man possessed and slammed a few of them to the floor. What I saw were long antennae and arched backs.
Camel crickets!
—Crunch.
I quickly stomped the one thrashing its legs after the torch hit it, then swung the flame to drive the rest deeper into the cavern.
“Get the hell out of here! You bastards! What kind of crazy camel cricket is the size of a fist?!”
I liked every insect under the sun… except camel crickets. Those things just rubbed me the wrong way.
I patted my startled chest and decided I had better grab the eggs and get out of there fast.
Camel crickets were carnivorous and vicious. I had no desire to become dinner for a swarm of fist-sized ones.
So I advanced on the egg pile with the torch held out in front of me.
—Whoosh.
Every time the flame drew near, the camel crickets retreated.
There looked to be twenty or thirty of them, and my first worry was for the eggs.
“Are the eggs okay?”
I fretted over them not only because of the camel crickets, but because centipedes were peculiar creatures that guarded their eggs until the young hatched and became independent. The mother even licked them to keep mold from growing.
With the mother already dead, I feared two days without care might have let mold claim the entire clutch.
If I’d known there were eggs, I would have come sooner…
I reached the pile and shone the torch. The sight was pitiful.
I had thought them a brilliant yellow, yet most bore gnaw marks—probably the work of the young camel crickets—and the ones nearest the floor were already furred with white, cotton-candy mold.
“Damn it. You camel cricket bastards!”
The mold wasn’t their fault, but I cursed them anyway and began rummaging through the pile with an unlit torch.
—Squish.
Please… just one of you, be alive.
Sticky mucus and dripping fluids clung to the torch tip, dripping thick broth.
As I worked my way down through the slimy eggs, three brilliantly colored ones appeared beneath an egg scarred by camel-cricket bites.
I thrust my hand in and scooped up the three eggs.
Something viscous made my fingers sticky, but the thrill of finding the giant centipede’s eggs made the sensation feel almost pleasant.
“I-I found them!”
Out of roughly fifty eggs, only three were uninjured and still glowed that pure yellow. They must have been nestled in the very center of the pile, safe from harm.
Most of the clutch was ruined—either spoiled or savaged by the fist-sized camel crickets—but three was better than none.
“Damn. I should be glad I got three? Anyway, this is no time to stand around. I’ve got to get them home and clean them first!”
I wiped the eggs roughly on my sleeve, dropped them into a jar, and scrambled out of the cave. Then I ran like a madman toward the abandoned Taoist temple.
If even these three rotted, it would all have been for nothing. I needed sterilized cloth and a careful cleaning at once.
“My little centipedes, just wait a bit. Big bro’ll give you a bath soon.”
The eggs looked slightly oval, but I figured that was just the mark of a new species and hurried my steps.
“W-what am I supposed to do about this…?”
The next morning I found myself in a bit of a pickle. No—make that a very large pickle.
—Skrrrr.
To keep the humidity right I had carefully cleaned the centipede eggs, lined a jar with a lightly dampened cotton cloth, and set it by my bedside. When I woke, every last one had hatched.
I never expected them to emerge so quickly.
The reason the hatching caught me completely off guard lay in the unique biology of centipedes. They did not simply crack open and spill out larvae; the egg itself transformed into the larva. That yellow orb turning into a young centipede was their metamorphosis.
All three eggs had become larvae.
Centipedes belong to the subclass Epimorpha—mother and child look identical, differing only in size—so three adorable yellow centipedes were now clinging to my body.
The problem was not that they had hatched. The problem was that they had crawled out of the jar and wrapped themselves around me.
Until they molted twice, young centipedes stayed glued to their mother’s body. These three had clearly decided I was Mom.
When I tried to peel them off they clung tighter. Forcing them only sent them skittering up my back where I could not reach.
They would not eat until after those two molts, so feeding was not an issue. The sheer awkwardness of having them attached, however, was another matter. Three sausage-thick youngsters stuck to me felt… uncomfortable.
Then the idea hit me.
“Ah! That’s it! If I go into the water they’ll drop off on their own!”
I grabbed the jar, decided a long-overdue bath would not hurt either, and sprinted for the waterside.
“Young hero, are you there?”
Dang Cheol-san arrived at the abandoned Taoist temple and called toward the ruined pavilion where the young hero stayed.
Only silence answered.
“Young hero?”
He called several more times. Still nothing.
He hesitated at the threshold.
Has he stepped out? Or caught a chill from the rain these past few days?
The reason Dang Cheol-san had come alone after several days was simple. Yesterday, after racing through the rain to the port of Hainan Island, he had made a request of his father, the Myriad Poison Divine Lord.
“Father, take the uninjured warriors and set out for Sichuan ahead of us.”
“Hmm? What are you talking about?”
The Myriad Poison Divine Lord looked puzzled by the sudden request to leave first.
Dang Cheol-san answered with a smile.
“With the inner core we now possess, Hwa-eun’s life can be saved. My own wounds would only slow the party if I traveled with you. I will remain with the injured warriors and move at their pace. Father, lead the healthy men and make all possible speed.”
“You mean to split into two groups? Even so, would it not be wiser to separate after we reach the mainland?”
His father was right that splitting on solid ground would be safer, yet Dang Cheol-san had another reason.
“There is still something that must be done here.”
“Something that must be done?”
When his father tilted his head, Dang Cheol-san smiled again.
“Carve enmity into blood; carve grace into stone.”
The Myriad Poison Divine Lord’s eyes widened.
“Ah! In my haste to save Hwa-eun I nearly forgot the great debt we owe. You are right—I would have committed a grave error without you.”
“Yes, Father. However young the hero may be, he has rendered us an enormous service. How could the Sichuan Tang Clan simply walk away?”
Indeed. A life-saving debt could not be ignored. To leave without acknowledgment would blacken the clan’s name throughout the martial world.
The Myriad Poison Divine Lord nodded slowly.
“A boy living alone in these mountains, surviving on snakes he catches himself… It will be hard for him. We should take him in as a guest retainer of the Tang Clan so that he need never worry about his next meal, and grant any request he makes.”
“I think the same.”
That was why Dang Cheol-san had left the wounded warriors resting at an inn near the port and come alone to meet the young hero—only to find him absent.
After a moment’s thought he carefully opened the pavilion door, fearing the rain might have left the boy seriously ill.
“Young hero, I am coming in.”
Inside he found a most peculiar sight. Medicine cabinets lined the walls, and jars of every shape and color filled the room.
Is the young hero a physician?
The cabinets and jars first made him wonder whether the boy practiced medicine. Yet the owner was nowhere to be seen, and barging further into an empty dwelling felt improper. He was about to close the door again when strange sounds rose from the jars and medicine chests.
—Scratch-scratch.
—Chirp-chirp. Chirp-chirp.
—Skrrrrrrr.
The eerie noises froze him in place. Something about them felt familiar. Forgetting courtesy, Dang Cheol-san stepped inside as though drawn, and lifted the lid of one jar.
What on earth is in here?
A large black spider sat calmly inside.
“Th-this…!”
His eyes flew wide. One after another he opened jars and chests. Lizards, spiders, snakes, crickets—every container held something alive. The crickets remaining in jars that also held spiders or lizards looked like feed stock. Shed skins in one chest proved the creatures had been raised for a long time. Several spiders even cradled egg sacs, and near a warm brazier lizard eggs lay buried in sand.
The sight was unbelievable. Even the Tang Clan, famed for its mastery of poisons and venomous beasts, had never bred its creatures this thoroughly. They kept them only long enough to harvest venom, never to multiply them by taking eggs.
I thought a small stroke of fortune had saved my daughter’s life… but the true fortune is the young hero himself!
Dang Cheol-san carefully replaced every lid and stepped back outside. He sat on the stone steps to calm his racing heart. The boy’s secret techniques for raising venomous creatures could elevate the Tang Clan’s poison arts to an entirely new level.
He was still organizing the questions he would ask when the young hero returned.
“Oh!? Elder!”
Water still dripping from his hair, the boy entered the temple grounds with a bright, welcoming voice.
“Ah! Young hero!”
Dang Cheol-san rose with equal joy and hurried toward him—then a sudden killing intent slammed into him.
—BOOM!
He raised one hand and barely blocked the ferocious force that hurtled at him, yet the impact still hurled him backward until he crashed against the pavilion wall.
“Khuh! Cough! Cough!”
A mouthful of blood spilled past his lips. The internal injury was far from light. The attacker’s skill rivaled his father’s; using only one hand to defend had been a costly mistake.
“E-Elder! Ghk—!”
The young hero’s cry was cut short as an old man’s iron grip closed around his nape. A chilling voice followed.
“I heard the Tang Clan had come to Hainan Island, so I came to look. Never did I expect to find the Myriad Poison Divine Lord’s son alone and wounded. For ten years I have not forgotten the faces of you and your father, even from afar. Today I will send your head to him as a gift! Hahahaha!”
The left half of the old man’s face was a melted ruin, and his hands glowed blood-red. A half-remembered name stirred, yet that man was supposed to be dead.
Dang Cheol-san forced himself upright.
“Cough! Who are you, senior, to threaten both this young hero and myself?”
The old man threw back his head and laughed, pointing at his own ruined face.
“Hahahaha! Do you not recognize this face and these crimson fists? I am Tak Un-yang, the Blood Hand Rakshasa, the one your father reduced to this state!”
So it was indeed the Blood Hand Rakshasa. A notorious arch-demon who had terrorized the Guizhou and Guangxi regions more than a decade ago. In Qinzhou he had been struck in the head by the Myriad Poison Divine Lord’s poison palm and had fallen from a coastal cliff. Somehow he had survived and fled into seclusion on Hainan Island.
In those days his strength had been roughly equal to Dang Cheol-san’s own; the internal energy now radiating from him was terrifying. Dang Cheol-san doubted he would live to see another dawn, yet he still rose and pleaded.
“That young hero is no martial artist and has no connection to us. Will you release him? Your grudge is with the Tang Clan alone. If you let him go, I will offer my neck without resistance.”
He had come to repay a debt; instead he was about to repay kindness with disaster. At least he could try to save the boy.
The Blood Hand Rakshasa only sneered.
“Anyone who so much as brushes sleeves with the Tang Clan will be slaughtered! Do the Buddhists not say that even the brushing of sleeves requires three thousand past-life affinities? Hahaha!”
This arch-demon has no intention of sparing the boy!
Despair flooded Dang Cheol-san as the Blood Hand Rakshasa slowly tightened his grip on the young hero’s nape.
“Gyaaah! H-help—!”
—Skrrrrrrr!
With a strange skittering sound, three yellow forms burst from the boy’s collar and sleeves, leapt onto the Blood Hand Rakshasa, and sank their fangs into his throat and both wrists.
“Khuhk!”
His skin blackened in an instant. Eyes wide with disbelief and despair, the old man crumpled slowly to the ground.
The young hero stared down at the corpse with a thoroughly awkward expression.
“Uh… this guy was a bad person, right? H-he seems… dead?”
In Dang Cheol-san’s mind the two characters for “guest retainer” slowly, inexorably transformed into the two characters for “family.”