Five Poisons 4
"No… it could just be a coincidence. Yeah. It could totally be a coincidence."
I forced my pounding chest to settle first.
Once I'd calmed down and thought it through, I remembered that this sort of thing happens from time to time when you keep pets—an owner making a huge fuss over a pet that just happened to react to something they said.
It's a trap owners fall into easily, the ones who are convinced the creature they're raising is the prettiest and smartest of them all. A pet does something meaningless, the owner assigns meaning to it, and before long they're certain they've got a genius dog or a genius cat on their hands.
But I was an objective man who didn't fall for delusions and thought things through carefully. Once is coincidence, so a proper check was in order. I sent another thought to Cho in my mind.
Cho, climb up onto my head.
-Tsurr!
When I spoke in my mind again to double-check, Cho answered with a sound as if in reply and climbed straight up onto my head. I could feel the little one curling up on top of me like a hat.
"Holy crap…"
Cho had understood words I hadn't even spoken out loud and moved accordingly. My conviction had already crossed the nine-tenths ridge, but still—who was I? Was I not Spicy Fabre, the poison-creature YouTuber who had raised countless venomous creatures in my previous life? Thorough verification was an essential element of any broadcast.
I set Cho down for a moment and asked the little one to stay put.
"Cho, wait here a bit, and when I call you, come over, okay? Be good and wait, and when you hear Daddy's voice, come running."
-Tsurr!
Then I went somewhere Cho couldn't see and thought once more in my head.
Cho, Daddy's hiding behind the front gate. Come here.
A little later, sure enough, Cho peeked its head out from beyond the gate as if playing peekaboo. Having confirmed I was truly behind the gate, Cho came toward me, waving its antennae. My whole body shuddered at the sight.
Once is coincidence, twice is inevitability, and thrice is destiny, right? I'd confirmed it three times in a row, so this couldn't be me deluding myself. Which meant I no longer needed to stay calm.
"Gyaaaaaah! C-could it be?! Is our Cho a telepathic scorpion?!"
I switched from intellectual mode to full-on glowing mode, and a shout I couldn't hold back burst out. How was anyone supposed to hold this in? It felt like telepathy was working between Cho and me. Cho couldn't understand the words I spoke in my mind… no—Cho understood the words I spoke in my mind perfectly. I just couldn't hear Cho's thoughts.
I scooped Cho up and said,
"H-how did you understand that? Cho, how did you understand?"
-Tsurr?
Cho, who had understood so well until now, tilted its head as if it didn't understand this time. As expected, our Cho was a little genius at holding Daddy's heart in its claws and letting it go again—a master of push-and-pull who was going to make a whole bunch of male scorpions cry someday, and a telepathy genius on top of that. Our Cho.
"Since you've molted twice and left the larval stage behind, did you awaken as a mystical creature or something? Maybe the others can do it too? Cho, can the other little ones do it as well?"
-Tsu?
I quickly hugged Cho, who was tilting its head again, and headed for Big Sister. I needed to check whether the other kids could do the same.
I bolted out of the area around the Hall of Myriad Poisons and raced to the siheyuan of the Tang family's direct line. Bursting through the open gate, I crossed the central courtyard and entered the rear garden—and there I saw Big Sister, with the kids up on the pavilion, asking them something.
"But where on earth did Cho go? Mommy gets so worried when you keep wandering off. The other two wandered around so much I had a hard time finding them too… Haa…"
Big Sister's voice reached me as I drew near. Apparently she'd put the kids up on the pavilion and was interrogating them about where Cho had gone.
-Tsurrr?
-Kkuk?
Big Sister had one hand lightly bent against her waist. Judging by her expression and tone, the scorpions' second molt had been giving her no end of trouble. And that little rascal Cho had apparently snuck off to the entrance of the Hall of Myriad Poisons to find me without telling Big Sister or the others.
"Hwa-eun!"
I shouted as I ran toward the pavilion. Big Sister's sulky face brightened into a smile the moment she spotted me. Realizing she was smiling at me, she hurriedly fixed her expression, embarrassed, and stood up.
"So-ryong… are you feeling all right?"
"Yes, of course. Look, I'm perfectly fine. Thank you for worrying about me."
"Hm? Cho?"
In the middle of greeting me, she noticed Cho perched on my shoulder and finally figured out what had happened. She scolded Cho.
"Cho, I told you not to go far because I worry, didn't I? When you go somewhere, you have to tell Mommy first!"
At Big Sister's scolding voice, Cho's antennae drooped. Partly to rescue Cho from her and partly to share what I'd discovered, I quickly told Big Sister the news.
"That isn't the important part right now, Hwa-eun. Cho understands human speech!"
Big Sister tilted her head.
"Cho always understands human speech well, doesn't he? Why bring that up all of a sudden…"
Ah, right.
In my excitement I'd cut the front half of the story. I started over.
"I mean he understands even when I only think the words in my head, without speaking out loud!"
"What?"
"Watch."
Cho, turn around once. Then jump up onto Daddy's body.
I had Cho spin once on the pavilion and then leap from Big Sister's body onto mine, then said to her,
"See this? I only thought it inside my head, and he followed along like this."
"You're saying you only spoke that in your mind?"
"Yes!"
Big Sister's eyes went round as she watched Cho move, clearly finding it marvelous.
"H-how?"
"Amazing, right? Isn't it?"
"Yes!"
"I should check whether the other kids can do it too."
"The other kids as well?"
At my suggestion that we check the others, Big Sister's eyes sparkled. With Big Sister now in full cooperation mode, we lined the three kids up and decided to test whether the others could do it too.
All right, everyone—raise your heads!
We went through the verification process several times, but other than Cho, none of them reacted. We checked them one by one, but the other kids didn't respond. Big Sister even tried something with them, thinking maybe the others could understand her words, but even Cho didn't react to anything she said.
Big Sister looked a little hurt that it didn't work for her, and eventually we held a little conference in front of the kids on the topic of why only Cho and I could do this.
"I thought it was because he'd molted twice and left the larval stage, but maybe that's not it?"
"What could be different about Cho compared to the other kids?"
"Hmm…"
We were puzzling over why only Cho could do it and the other two couldn't when Big Sister, who had been lost in thought while looking at the kids with me, lit up as if she'd figured something out.
"Ah! Cho has something the others don't!"
"Something different about Cho?"
"What is it?"
Big Sister claimed Cho was different from the others. There were subtle differences, but Cho, Hyang, and Bin all looked almost the same, so I could only tilt my head…
"The Great Method!"
"The Great Method? Ah! The Great Method!"
Thinking about it, she was right. The only real connection between Cho and me was the Great Method. I had absorbed Cho's poison directly, after all.
"We have to go confirm this with Grandfather right away!"
"I'm coming with you, So-ryong!"
We dashed to the Hall of Myriad Poisons and managed to catch Grandfather just as he was coming out. When we showed him Cho and reported what we'd discovered, Grandfather was every bit as astonished as we'd expected.
"Th-this is…?!"
"Amazing, isn't it? Even when I speak only in my mind, he understands this well. I think it's because of the Great Method—is that right?"
"It doesn't work with the other kids, so it probably is the Great Method. Did you already know about this, Grandfather?"
What we'd discovered immediately put the Tang family on high alert, and three or four hours later a closed-door meeting of only the direct line was convened in the Family Head's Hall. Learning something new about the martial arts counted as an emergency situation, apparently.
"Is it really because of the Great Method?"
The meeting began in a quiet atmosphere with my question. Grandfather shook his head at my question.
"No."
"No? But Cho and I clearly have nothing connecting us except the Great Method…"
"That's right, Grandfather. Other than the Great Method, isn't it hard to explain how So-ryong and Cho ended up like this?"
As Big Sister said, Cho and I had no other link, so I couldn't understand Grandfather's firm denial. But once I heard his explanation that followed, I found myself nodding along.
"In the history of the Tang Clan, quite a few people have accepted the poison of a mystical creature through the Great Method. It may not be mainstream, but there have always been attempts to research it. Yet there has never been a single recorded case of something like this.
"Of course, most mystical creatures were killed to extract their poison and create spiritual pills, but there were also times people tried to raise them. If an ability like this had been discovered, there would have been a record of it. But I have never seen or heard of such a thing even once, so this is clearly due to some other reason."
"You're right, Father. I think so as well."
That was a reason I could accept.
"Then what on earth is the cause?"
When I asked what the reason could be, Grandfather answered.
"It is clearly because of the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art."
"You're right, Father. I think so as well. The Great Method was created to accept poison, after all. And So-ryong is the only one who has ever accepted the poison of mystical-grade five poisons through the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art."
"Yes, and the fact that something like this has happened is probably that side's influence, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes, I think so too. When I looked through the records from a hundred years ago, there was quite a heated exchange of opinions with the other side over this Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art and the Five Poisons Martial Arts."
"The other side?"
At Big Sister's question, Father-in-law nodded.
"Yes—the Southern Savage Beast Palace."
"Ah, the Southern Savage Beast Palace…"
Thinking back a few days, I recalled hearing that the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art and Five Poisons Martial Arts I had learned were martial arts created by the Five Poisons Sect by blending the strengths of the Tang family's arts with those of the Southern Savage Beast Palace. Grandfather, the Myriad Poisons Divine Lord, continued with words that only deepened my conviction that it made sense.
"You may not know this well, but the Southern Savage Beast Palace commands beasts as if they were their own limbs. Their secrets are probably woven into the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art."
"Then figuring out the reason this happens is going to be a distant prospect, isn't it?"
"Most likely."
I couldn't quite follow the conversation between Big Sister and Grandfather, so Father-in-law explained it in a way I could understand.
"They're called the Southern Savage Beast Palace because they command beasts—and now you, too, can command poison creatures, can't you?"
"I suppose so?"
"If we want to uncover this secret, we would need their help, but why would they ever reveal their most precious secret? And if they learned that their secret had leaked to our side a hundred years ago, there's no telling how they would react."
Considering how, two hundred years ago, they had pursued a leaked secret for a hundred years and ultimately destroyed a sect over it, their obsession with martial arts was far beyond anything I could imagine. Looking at how the Blood Cult had come looking for the Blood-Handed Poison Bird again, or how everyone had been so happy when the Murim Alliance Leader gave me a secret manual, it was clear that uncovering this secret would be a long shot.
The most precious and important thing here was clearly the martial arts manuals, after all. And if there was a core element to that manual, it would almost certainly be the Southern Savage Beast Palace's greatest secret.
But the regret was real too. Not just Cho, but Hyang, Bin, Seol and Bing, the Golden-Furred Bee Kings, and even Yo-hwa… I'd been daydreaming about registering them all and putting together something like the Bremen Town Musicians. That was why I wanted to know whether it might be possible to "register" the other kids the same way if they shared the same poison, and so I asked Grandfather again.
"Isn't there still some way it might be possible? Paying them money to request help, for instance…"
There's a saying that if a deal doesn't go through, you should check whether you simply didn't offer enough money. That was why I asked—but Grandfather answered with a smile.
"Well, unless you prevent the Southern Savage Beast Palace from being destroyed, I suppose not."
Grandfather's personality was apparently not the best. Did he really have to twist it and put it like that? I was already feeling disappointed enough as it was…