Seol and Bing 1
There was a reason my sister and I both looked a little confused.
According to Military Advisor Jegal Hu of the Murim Alliance, the inside of the cavern was supposed to be a place where light poured down from overhead and strange plants bloomed in abundance. In the Advisor’s words, a paradise unto itself—an utterly mysterious and wondrous place. The cavern we had just stepped into, however, felt nothing like what he had described.
Something’s off.
Light was indeed pouring in from above. A narrow hole high in the ceiling let a beam of sunlight stab down like a searchlight, illuminating the interior. That much matched the Advisor’s account of the place’s strangeness. But the claim that peculiar grasses thrived everywhere simply did not hold up. The circular shaft of light fell squarely on the center of the cavern; outside that circle, most of the plants were withered and dead. Even the ones still clinging to life in the middle looked somehow listless, as if all the vitality had been drained out of them.
“It doesn’t quite match what the Military Advisor said, but we should check it out anyway.”
“Yes, So-ryong.”
I hadn’t come here to survey the environment. All I needed to confirm was the blue lizard. Keeping that firmly in mind, I carefully made my way toward the center of the cavern where the creature had been sighted, with the head of the Peng Family taking the lead.
According to the Advisor, the lizard had charged him. He might look like a desk-bound administrator, but my father-in-law had said the man was roughly his equal in skill—so I was taking every possible precaution. Even a master like that had been startled by it, after all.
“That rock ahead shaped like the character for ‘person’—that’s the one he mentioned, right?”
“Yes, Lord Peng.”
The rock Lord Peng pointed to did indeed look like a human figure with its arms and legs splayed. We had barely begun following him toward it when—
—Kyaaaaah!
A lizard’s warning cry blasted through the cavern, the roof-shaped rock acting like a natural megaphone. Lord Peng immediately drew his great saber and settled into a ready stance.
—Srrrng.
At my request he held the flat of the blade forward so he wouldn’t actually wound the lizard.
“Just as you said, there’s definitely something over there. The Advisor made everyone step back and told us to be careful, didn’t he?”
“Yes, Elder.”
“Understood. Stay right behind me. Everyone, stay sharp.”
“Yes, Family Head.”
“Understood, Lord Peng.”
We tightened our formation again and advanced toward the rock in a long, snake-like line.
—Kyaaah!
—Kyaa!
More warning cries followed. We still couldn’t see the creature itself, but its voice sounded far fiercer than I had expected.
Full of fight, aren’t you?
The fiercer it was, the more excited I became. My heart started hammering. Lizards basically come in two temperaments: the timid ones that avoid every other living thing, and the aggressive ones that rattle off warnings and then charge if you annoy them. For keeping, the avoidant type is easier to manage and control. But as someone who actually raises them, I prefer the ones with attitude. There’s a special charm to a creature that threatens you the moment you try to touch it and then pretends it couldn’t care less about humans. Why else do people dote on cats that do nothing but eat your food and ignore you? It’s that aloof, indifferent air that makes them irresistible.
Wondering how magnificent it would look, I reached the spot where the roof-shaped rock came fully into view—and there, under the shade beneath it, two glittering eyes stared back at us.
—Kyaaaa!
On a smooth stone about thirty feet into the shade, the creature finally revealed itself. Roughly a foot long, it had round, adorable yellow eyes, a body the pure blue of a clear sky, and a white stripe running like a high-speed road from the top of its head all the way down its tail. Capping it all off was that plump, fat tail, which swayed lazily above its head.
Holy crap! That’s a fat-tailed gecko!
It was larger than a typical specimen, but the shape was textbook fat-tailed gecko. “Gecko” is the general term for the family of lizards that can climb walls—though some people mistakenly think the name means “lizard-sticker.” The English name comes from the sound they make, which is said to resemble “gecko.”
While I was inwardly raving over its sleek form, my sister’s admiring voice reached me as well.
“What a beautiful blue wall-tiger.”
Wall-tiger? A tiger that climbs walls. So that’s what they call geckos around here.
The name actually suited it surprisingly well. I nodded and answered.
“Yes. It looks a lot like a fat-tailed lizard. Truly beautiful.”
“Fat-tailed lizard? Ah, because its tail is so plump?”
“Exactly, Young Lady.”
Having already raised the Ogongis with me, her tastes had clearly started to align with mine; she was showing real interest in the little creature.
—Kyaaaa!
—Kyaa!
Under our gazes the gecko bared its teeth and threatened us without mercy. That plump tail writhed above its head like a viper’s.
We kept a respectful distance and studied it carefully. Then Lord Peng, who had been holding it at bay in front of us, dropped an enormous bombshell.
“Huh? There’s another one further in.”
“Another one?!”
Buy one, get one free. Two of them could mean a breeding pair. Heart racing, I immediately employed the eye-strengthening technique I had learned before we set out.
Send qi to the eyes…
As I pushed internal energy toward my eyes, my vision grew steadily sharper. Behind the gecko that was leaping and snarling at us, a pale shape began to take form. Its outline grew clearer by the second.
“Huh? That is—”
The moment I roughly made out its shape, my sister’s voice came first.
“So-ryong, the one in the back is just lying there without moving.”
I still wasn’t practiced enough with the technique to see perfectly, but one of them was exactly as she said—eyes closed, completely still. The deeper part of the rock was shadowed, so I couldn’t be certain, but its color looked duller than the lively one in front, and it wasn’t so much as twitching.
I tapped Lord Peng’s shoulder.
“Lord Peng, let’s fall back for now.”
“Fall back? We’re not catching them right away?”
“We can’t catch them yet.”
“Why not?”
Lord Peng looked completely baffled by the idea of not grabbing them on the spot. But seizing them the moment we found them would be the worst possible plan. I didn’t need specimens—I intended to raise them. Snatching them up now would only cause trouble. I had no idea what they ate or what their basic habits were. Hauling them off in that state, with zero knowledge of their diet or preferred environment, would almost certainly end in failed husbandry and death. If I had prior information it would be different, but when you know absolutely nothing, the first rule of collecting is to observe at least the minimum ecology before you take them.
“I want to catch them and keep them, but if we grab them now we’ll learn nothing about what they eat or what kind of places they prefer.”
“Can’t we just try feeding them this and that?”
“No. Animals like these die the moment you give them the wrong food.”
“What a high-maintenance little beast. Fine. We’ll pull back for now.”
As we slowly retreated, the gecko watched us warily, then folded its upright body and began licking the one behind it.
—Sizzle. Sizzle.
The savory smell of jerky roasting over the campfire below began to tease my nose, followed by my sister’s voice.
“So-ryong, come down and eat.”
“Yes, Young Lady.”
I had been perched on a jutting rock on the cavern wall, observing Bing and Seol. I quickly dropped down. In my place, Commander Gu Pae of the Poisonous Creature Squad scrambled up the slanted wall. We passed each other midway, and I entrusted the watch to him.
“Commander Gu Pae, I’m counting on you. Let me know the moment anything happens.”
“Of course! Leave it to me!”
The reason we were swapping places was simple: it was mealtime for the man who had been studying the habits of the two lizards we had named Bing and Seol.
I slid down the sloping wall and found my sister holding out fire-roasted jerky and dried rice cakes boiled in water. On her shoulder, the three Ogongis cheerfully waved their antennae at me.
Wife and three daughters greeting Dad when he comes home from work?
The dream-image of the Ogongis flashed through my mind. For a second the sight of my sister offering food with the little ones on her shoulder looked exactly like a wife and daughters welcoming their husband and father home. I froze for a beat, then hastily accepted the food.
“Thank you for the meal, Young Lady.”
This was our evening dinner. I may not know much about the martial world, but I once heard that travelers in these stories eat something called Fasting Pills. When I asked about it, she told me those were only for Taoist cultivators during training. Ordinary people just packed dried rice cakes and jerky like this. You roast the jerky over the fire; the dried cakes go into a porcelain pot with water and get boiled. Sometimes you eat them plain, sometimes you toss everything into one pot and stew it together.
“So, any progress today?”
I sat down beside Lord Peng, who was already settled in and tearing into jerky, and began eating the boiled rice cakes. He asked about our current situation while chewing noisily.
“They haven’t moved at all.”
“I watched them all night for two nights straight because you kept pestering me, and they never budged from that spot.”
“Living things have to eat something. It’s strange.”
“You’re telling me.”
At night Lord Peng, who could push his eye strength to the maximum, observed them; during the day it was my turn. We were already on the third day, and the lizards still hadn’t stirred from the rock’s shade. We had no clue what they ate. Fat-tailed geckos and ordinary lizards sometimes go days without food. Fat-tailed types in particular store energy in those plump tails, so they can last weeks or even a month without eating. That made it hard to know how long we should wait. Healthy ones usually eat every day, or at least every other day when you’re keeping them, so this was becoming awkward. And while I didn’t know how long they could keep fasting, the one that never moved was starting to worry me. If it wasn’t eating and it was sick, it was probably surviving solely on the reserves in its tail.
If it’s sick, that’s bad…
“So-ryong, what are you thinking about?”
My sister’s question pulled me out of my thoughts about the second lizard’s condition. I answered while tearing into the jerky.
“I’m worried about the one that won’t move.”
“Ah…”
After answering her I fell silent for a moment, weighing whether we should wait longer. No matter how I looked at it, simply sitting here indefinitely no longer seemed possible. Thinking it over carefully, I suddenly understood why the first lizard only threatened and never charged: it was protecting the sick one behind it. The Advisor had said they would rush anyone who so much as approached the rock. Yet one stood at the entrance of the hollow and only threatened, while the other lay motionless. If one of them was ill, the behavior made perfect sense. I needed to check the condition of the unmoving lizard.
“I think we have to examine the one that isn’t moving.”
“Examine it? You mean catch them?”
“Not catch them right away. Their wariness will go up, but I at least need to see if something’s wrong with it. And if it expends energy because of us, it might get hungry and actually eat something. Lord Peng, could you help? If you could lure one of them away for a moment, that would be perfect.”
Lord Peng stretched with a crack of joints and answered with a grin.
“Ah, I’ve been sitting still so long my joints are killing me. Let’s see just how impressive this spirit beast really is. Heh heh heh.”