Hebei Peng Family 6
The group insect hunt began at dusk.
I stepped into the room where Yeong-yeong had been staying, lit a lantern, and looked around. Inside, the clothes confiscated from her and handed over to the Peng family members, along with the sweets, still sat untouched on the table. With no human presence about, ants had swarmed the surface and were happily sucking at the candy.
My sister sighed at the sight.
“Ha… We’ll have to have the maids clean this up. Ants have gathered. It seems the maids haven’t been paying attention with so many guests lately.”
Ma-ui was the Central Plains word for ant.
I hurried over to check the swarm. The ones I was after were probably right there among them.
Now then, where the hell is this little bastard?
As I studied the ants, my sister’s voice came from beside me.
“So-ryong, don’t tell me what you’re looking for is ants? Are ants related to bees?”
Unlike my sister’s pseudoscientific taxonomy in which centipedes could turn into dragons, by the standards scholars of my previous life had established, ants were insects of the order Hymenoptera, family Formicidae. So describing them as roughly related to bees was fair enough. What I was hunting, however, was no ordinary ant.
I asked her to shine the lantern for me.
“Ants are related to bees, that’s true, but that’s not what I’m looking for. Could you shine the lantern a little more this way?”
“Alright.”
Curiosity written across her face, she brought the lantern closer to the table. Looking carefully over the surface, I spotted, among the seething black ants, a single peculiar one nimbly hunting the others.
I knew it would be here!
I quickly stretched out a finger and gently pinched its body. It thrashed, whipping the stinger at its rear end back and forth. Holding the creature out toward my sister and the Peng Family Head, I said,
“This is the one!”
“This is related to bees? Oh!? It really has a stinger on its rear!”
“Huh? Ants have stingers?”
The sharp stinger was clearly visible on the rear of the ant I held so carefully. Everyone looked startled that an ant could have one at all. Honestly, when did ordinary people ever examine ants that closely? If they crawled nearby, you just squashed them.
I nodded at their questions and explained.
“This is the cousin of the bee that brought Yeong-yeong down. It’s called the King Sting Ant. She collapsed after being stung by one of these.”
“King Sting Ant!”
“King Sting Ant… That name suits the Tang Family quite well.”
“This!?”
The ant in my hand was unmistakably an ant, yet oddly formed, with a stinger like a wasp or honeybee. Its defining trait was the sharp stinger rising pointedly from its rear, and its Korean name was the King Sting Ant. Rarely seen back home, it was fairly common in China; if an ant sting ever triggered anaphylaxis, this creature was almost always the culprit.
“You’re saying Yeong-yeong got like that from being stung by this ant?”
“Yes. I’m almost certain.”
“And this is related to bees?”
There was a reason these things provoked anaphylaxis: they were kin to the vicious ones.
“Yes. More precisely, related to the yellow wasp.”
“Yellow wasp?”
Yellow wasp was the Central Plains term for hornet. Yes—these stinging ants were relatives of hornets.
“Ah! Because they’re related to yellow wasps, when you saw Young Lady Yeong collapse after being stung by the Thin Yellow Hornet earlier, you realized these were the culprits?”
“That’s right, Young Lady Hwa-eun.”
My sister—whoever’s wife she was going to be—figured out ten things the moment you taught her one. Just as she said, watching Yeong-yeong go into anaphylaxis from a ground-wasp sting had let me guess that these were the true offenders.
The King Sting Ant (Pachycondyla chinensis) belonged to the order Hymenoptera, family Formicidae, subfamily Ponerinae. You might wonder what business an ant had with a stinger, but these creatures possessed one because they had diverged from the same ancestors as wasps and still retained many wasp traits. Taxonomically, the wasp superfamily split into Vespidae and Formicidae—that was the relationship between ants and wasps. It was not merely a matter of classification; scientists generally held that around a hundred million years ago, in the mid-Cretaceous, wasps and ants had branched from wasp-like ancestors. More recently, genetic analysis had confirmed ants and wasps as each other’s closest relatives. That was why papers studying the venom of King Sting Ants and wasps also reported that patients who suffered anaphylaxis from stinging ants showed the same reaction to wasp venom.
Careful not to get stung myself, I went on.
“These ants live by hunting other ants. It probably came to eat the ants drawn to the sugar from the sweets, and stung Yeong-yeong in the process. The sting marks would have looked much like the spots that rose on her body, so at the time no one could tell what had stung her. By the time she woke a few days later, they simply assumed the spots had been left behind.”
“Oh! Is that really true!?”
“Yes, Elder.”
When I caught and displayed the culprit that had endangered Yeong-yeong and laid out the explanation, the Peng Family Head cried out with joy. He seized my hand and asked,
“To think it was because of such a trivial little creature! Thank you! Then, since we know the cause, can you make an antidote—an antidote?”
Looking to my father-in-law, the Tang Family Head asked whether an antidote could be prepared. But my father-in-law shook his head.
“There are antidotes for bee venom, but in cases like Young Lady Yeong, who is hypersensitive to the poison, the antidote does not take well.”
“This… Then must my daughter always live in fear of such trivial little creatures!? How can this be!”
The Peng Family Head’s voice was thick with lament. He had clearly been counting on an antidote, yet of course none would work on Yeong-yeong. Anaphylaxis was a hypersensitivity reaction to an antigen. The venom itself was not the problem; the illness arose from the overreaction of antibodies such as immunoglobulin E (IgE) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) inside the body. It was not the venom attacking Yeong-yeong—it was the antibodies within her own body recoiling at the foreign substance and turning on her.
“Still, just finding the cause is something. Haven’t we at least escaped the danger of her collapsing without warning and without knowing why?”
“Is that so… Come to think of it, I haven’t even said thank you. Thank you, Young Hero.”
The Peng Family Head looked downcast at the news that, though we had found the cause of Yeong-yeong’s illness, there was no cure. But of course her older brother could not simply stand by. I carefully asked the Peng Family Head,
“There is one way to treat Yeong-yeong, though…”
At my words his eyes went wide and he seized both my arms. He shook me with tremendous force as he demanded,
“W-what on earth is it!?”
“It’s something called desensitization…”
“Desensitization!?”
“The characters for remove, sense, and make…”
“Strip her again!?”
“No, that’s not it…”
The Peng Family Head was asking whether I meant to strip Yeong-yeong once more. Startled, I had to explain in a hurry.
Desensitization was an immunotherapy that anaphylaxis patients like Yeong-yeong often received. Anaphylaxis only occurred once a specific substance exceeded a certain concentration; therefore the treatment consisted of administering tiny doses of the allergen and gradually increasing the amount in order to lower the patient’s sensitivity. It was a way of dulling her reaction so that even an ant sting would not trigger hypersensitivity—administering minute amounts of the wasp venom to which Yeong-yeong reacted so violently, until her body no longer overreacted to it.
“…so at first once every seven days. After a certain period, once a month, introducing the venom into the body so that it adapts. It takes about three to five years of treatment, but it is not as if there is no method at all.”
“Hmm. Making her body stop reacting hypersensitively to the venom? That does sound feasible. Even in the Tang Family we have methods of injecting poison little by little to help the body overcome it.”
It would be a long course of treatment, yet if we only brought her sensitivity down far enough that a stinging-ant bite no longer sent her into shock, she could live without constant fear. When even my father-in-law agreed that the idea was sound, the Peng Family Head cried out with delight.
“Thank you! Thank you! You’ve saved my daughter!”
He clutched both my hands, beside himself. Unable to contain his passion, he made an offer.
“Having received such help, we cannot simply let it pass! Yes—I will grant you anything you desire. So, is there something you want!?”
Whether blank checks were simply the local custom whenever someone did a favor, the Peng Family Head was promising me anything. I smiled at the open-ended offer and replied,
“Yeong-yeong is now like a little sister to me. How could I seek a reward for helping my sister?”
“No, my good man, that’s not right. You must speak! There is no humility in our Peng Family!”
I had declined once out of courtesy, but the Peng Family Head grew stern. Covering the hands that gripped mine, I smiled.
“Then, since you’ve come all the way to Sichuan from so far, how about we go see a famous mountain together while you’re here?”
“A famous mountain?”
“Yes—Mount Gongga in Sichuan. It is a famous mountain of extraordinary beauty, where beautiful stone lizards are said to live…”
Wasn’t it only natural to visit a famous mountain when you arrived in a foreign place?
With the Peng Family Head and the Peng Family’s martial force accompanying us, permission was of course granted. The Peng Family’s strength alone made danger unlikely wherever we went, so both my father-in-law and Grandfather agreed readily enough.
“Even so, you must be careful. They said it possessed divine power enough to make the troops withdraw.”
“I understand, Grandfather.”
Yeong-yeong had to remain at the Tang Family to begin desensitization treatment. Five days later, I, my sister, the Peng Family Head, the Peng Family’s martial force, and the Poison Corps arrived at the foot of a waterfall with Mount Gongga in clear view.
—Kwaaaaaaah!
A torrent of water plunged downward, flinging white foam and mist into the air. The Peng Family Head pointed across and shouted,
“Over there!?”
“Yes! Elder!”
“Come here!”
He beckoned me over to him by the water’s edge. I swallowed hard and stepped before him; he set both my feet upon his massive hands and said,
“Since you said you do not know the mystery of Treading Waves Flying Swallow, I will throw you to the other side. Here we go!”
And he hurled me straight toward the opposite cliff.
I really do experience all sorts of things!
“Kyaaaaah!”
In my previous life no amusement-park ride had ever frightened me, yet with the cliff face rushing toward my own, a scream tore free of its own accord. I recovered my wits just in time, twisted my body, and managed to land vertically against the rock face.
I lived.
The moment I turned and set my feet on the cliff rocks, the Peng Family Head’s great bulk drifted lightly down beside me as though he were a balloon.
“Hahaha. Your body is quite agile.”
“Th-thank you.”
Next came my sister, crossing the river against the waterfall backdrop with a figure like fluttering red flower petals. On the far bank I could see the Peng Family warriors staring with their mouths hanging open. After she crossed, several members of the Poison Corps skilled enough in light footwork followed, and our journey continued up the cliff.
After a long climb we reached the small cave atop the fist-shaped rock the Murim Alliance soldier had described.
“This must be it.”
Just as the soldier had said, we crawled into the cave and soon found ourselves in a cavern. Until now his account had been flawless—yet the interior of the cavern looked nothing like the place he had described.
“This is a bit strange, isn’t it? The soldier couldn’t have lied…”
“Indeed.”
At my words my sister also wore a look of complete incomprehension.