The Five Poisons Sect
With a sharp thwip!, a thread shot from Yo-hwa’s rear toward the cliff near the second mouth of the gourd-shaped valley where everyone had gathered.
In an instant a strand of web stretched between the central pointed rock and the cliff face. The moment it was complete, Yo-hwa wrapped her arms around me and launched herself onto the line.
Kishit! Kishishi! Kishiiit!
Even while she rode the silk she kept up a constant stream of scolding clicks and hisses. If I could translate Spider-speak, I was pretty sure it would have gone something like: I’m so upset! I’m going to tell Unnie to give you a proper scolding! She sounded less like a legendary venomous beast and more like a wife with a grudge.
Seeing her do it while wearing Hwa-eun’s face somehow made the whole thing feel even more like I was getting the wooden ladle treatment.
Tsurrr…
Cho, perched on Yo-hwa’s shoulder, seemed to understand every word. She bobbed her head in vigorous agreement, the two of them thick as thieves. Ever since Cho had bitten me they’d been a little cool with each other; now they looked like best friends for life.
Fine. Go ahead and team up against me. I’ll sacrifice this body for the peace of the household.
Swaaaah…
While the scolding continued, Yo-hwa glided smoothly across the whirling river of giant ants on her silk highway. Once she was above the heads of the people below she simply dropped the line and we fell.
Naturally, the first one to come flying was Noona.
“So-ryong! Are you all right? Was there any venom in the devil ants’ fangs? I told you not to get hurt… Blood!?”
The wound wasn’t that bad, but she made a huge fuss the moment she saw it. Even at the beginner stage, the Iron Safe Technique kept the muscle from tearing as long as I circulated my internal energy properly; all I had were a few scrapes on the skin. She made it sound like I’d lost a leg.
While she fretted, the light around us gradually dimmed. I turned my head and found the warriors of the Beast Palace had silently closed in, surrounding us completely.
Just as Noona yanked my pant leg all the way up to examine the wound, the booming voice of the Beast Palace Lord rolled across the clearing.
“The Southern Savage Beast Palace has received a great favor!”
“““We have received a great favor!”””
Behind us the massive ant vortex still spun, yet every warrior of the Beast Palace was prostrated, eyes shining with gratitude and respect.
Noona, you’re killing the cool factor. Could we maybe put the pant leg down…?
It was the first time in my life I’d gotten to look even a little bit badass, and she was ruining the moment like we were heading out to weed a rice paddy.
Swaaaah…
Swaa…
What had begun as the roar of a bamboo forest thrashing in a gale had dwindled to a soft breeze. Even that breeze was slowly dying away.
By the second day the once-ferocious ant cyclone began shedding stragglers along its outer rim. On the third day the circular meadow was carpeted with the bodies of ants that had simply dropped and never risen again.
Army ants can go two weeks without food, but without water five days is the hard limit. These ones had been running nonstop without food or water; one by one they collapsed, until only a handful still twitched.
From the first day the flow of ants into the gourd’s mouth had completely stopped. Once every last invader inside died, the colony would be extinct, leaving nothing but a faint, sour-sweet pheromone haze lingering in the valley.
Crunch.
One ant staggered out of the thinning ranks, lurched toward my feet, then curled up and went still. The Beast Palace Lord’s voice came from above as he crushed it underfoot.
“Is it finally ending?”
“Yes… probably.”
Then, in a distinctly reluctant tone:
“Still… I’m only going because the benefactor asked…”
The reason for the Palace Lord’s half-hearted trailing-off was simple: we were walking into the very heart of a dying army-ant colony solely because of my request.
Normally we could have waited until every last ant was dead. The only reason we were stepping among still-living (if exhausted) insects was that I was a collector.
And not just any collection—this was a chance to collect a queen ant.
With most of the colony already gone, there would be almost no workers left to guard or tend her. In other words, a rare solo audience with the queen herself. Whether I could actually raise her was a question for after I caught her. Ants protect their queen to the bitter end; she was almost certainly still alive.
I specialized in venomous creatures, so ants were a little outside my usual wheelhouse—but ants are the absolute foundation of pet insects. What grown-up child doesn’t have at least one childhood memory of catching and raising ants?
Ants are pure childhood romance.
Crack.
Ant heads crunched underfoot as listless survivors stumbled past. Everywhere I looked, neglected pupae were dying where they lay.
When we finally reached the pointed rock at the center of the circular meadow, a great heap of ants lay piled around its base. I called out to the warriors who had followed me.
“Look for one with a bigger abdomen than the others.”
“Understood, Benefactor! You all heard him!”
“““Yes!”””
Palace Lord Maeng Ho, Seolpyo, and the Beast Palace warriors fanned out, finishing off the living ants and searching for the queen. We hadn’t been at it long when voices rose from the far side of the rock.
“Benefactor! You need to see this!”
Found her?
I sprinted around the rock. What met my eyes was a single enormous ant, half-buried in the pile of corpses, greedily stuffing dead ants into its mouth.
Crunch. Crunch-crunch.
The ant was the size of a five- or six-year-old child. It hadn’t even noticed our approach; it just kept devouring its own kind.
Slither…
A stream of pure-white eggs spilled from its abdomen. Most of them were already turning black from lack of care, yet the creature never stopped eating and laying.
Something’s wrong here.
Except for the few species that begin life as parasites inside another nest, every ant queen starts alone. After the nuptial flight she digs a chamber by herself, lays eggs, and builds the colony from nothing. That’s why ants practice cannibalism early on: with no workers to bring food, a founding queen eats some of her own eggs to raise the rest. Five eggs become four, then one of those larvae is sacrificed to feed the others—classic colony founding.
But that only happens at the very beginning. Once a colony reaches this size, a queen never eats her own kind.
Yet here she was, stuffing corpses into her mouth. Even stranger: to an ant, a freshly dead nest-mate is still “alive.”
Ants don’t immediately recognize death. Only after about three days does oleic acid form on the body; only then do they treat the corpse as dead. So a queen devouring her own children who had died mere hours earlier was, in ant terms, eating living offspring. The sight was pure madness.
Everyone stood staring in stunned silence.
“So-ryong… look.”
Noona pointed. Something glittered on the queen’s forehead, right between the antennae. At first I thought it was a reflection off the cuticle or an ocellus. It wasn’t. Clear gold light.
“What is that?”
“It’s strange… it looks almost like a gold acupuncture needle.”
Gold needles were the sort of thing the Tang Family’s medical hall occasionally used. While the queen continued to gorge herself, Noona carefully reached toward its head.
“Be careful.”
She nodded, fingers closing on the metal. A long needle—easily ten centimeters—slid free from the ant’s skull.
The queen went limp mid-bite.
That was how the queen of a vast army-ant kingdom—one large enough to trample elephants—met her end: quietly, almost pitifully.
“Why was there a gold needle in a devil ant’s forehead…?”
“Young lady of the Tang Family, do you know what that is?”
At the Palace Lord’s question, Noona wiped the needle on her sleeve and turned it over in her hands, then shook her head.
“I’m not sure. Our family uses gold needles, but never ones of this length or shape. Hmm?”
“What is it?”
She peered closer, frowning.
“The center is hollow. Something—medicine, or poison—was stored inside…”
Palace Lord Maeng Ho threw his head back and roared like a great tiger.
“So there was a culprit behind all of this!? Who dares strike at our Beast Palace!”
The ant’s behavior reeked of human interference. The more I thought about it, the stranger it became. If these creatures had always lived inside Poisonous Insect Valley, they would have had no reason to suddenly explode outward and leave the valley.
“If human hands were involved, I will find the villains and make them pay!”
While the Palace Lord still seethed, several figures streaked into the clearing. Grandfather—the Myriad Poisons Divine Lord—and the people of the Sichuan Tang Family landed among us.
“Hwa-eun! So-ryong!”
“Young Master So-ryong!”
Grandfather and Commander Gu Pae rushed straight to me, checking every inch. I had already sent word by Beast Palace owl, but they must have been worried sick; the moment the ants vanished they had come running.
“Grandfather.”
“We caused you concern, Grandfather.”
“So you did get hurt a little. Nothing serious?”
“No, sir. Thanks to the Iron Safe Technique.”
After the brief reunion, Palace Lord Maeng Ho stepped forward and bowed deeply.
“Our Southern Savage Beast Palace has received a great favor from the son-in-law of the Tang Family. As Lord of the Beast Palace, I, Maeng Ho, offer my gratitude.”
“Ah—there’s no need to go that far…”
Grandfather looked thoroughly flustered. Noona quietly explained by sound transmission:
“I am the Myriad Poisons Divine Lord. This old man thanks the Palace Lord for such courtesy.”
“It is only proper. We shall treat the great elder of the Tang Family with the utmost respect. Please, enter the Beast Palace.”
“Then we shall gratefully accept.”
After days of wandering the jungle, the Tang Family people needed rest. The invitation was accepted at once. Just as we started inward, Grandfather smiled and asked,
“Wherever So-ryong goes, there’s never a dull day. Haha. I have a great many questions, so you’ll have to tell me everything. By the way—what were you doing here just now?”
The tone clearly said “walking disaster.” I scratched my head and gave an awkward laugh. Noona held out the gold needle she still carried.
“So-ryong threw a tantrum until we came looking for the queen devil ant. This was stuck in her head. Grandfather, it looks a little like a Tang Family gold needle—have you ever seen one like this?”
She placed the needle in his hand. The moment Grandfather examined it, his eyes flew wide.
“Wh-where did you find this!?”
“In the queen devil ant’s head…”
He dashed to the spot she indicated, re-examined the queen, and pulled two more needles from the sides of her head—hidden near the cheeks where we had never noticed them.
“Elder, do you know what these are? They seem to belong to the villains who caused this disaster.”
Palace Lord Maeng Ho’s voice was ice-cold. Grandfather answered in a voice just as low and grim.
“It would appear that those who hold a grudge against both the Sichuan Tang Family and the Southern Savage Beast Palace are still alive.”
“Those who hold a grudge against both the Tang Family and the Beast Palace?”
Someone bold enough to hate both our houses at the same time?
I stared at Grandfather in disbelief. From his lips came a name I knew all too well.
“The Five Poisons Sect…”
At the same moment, Palace Lord Maeng Ho’s eyes went wide with shock.