Twenty-Four Poison Branches 5
The sight of a single cobalt-blue snake undulating through the sky like a living wave felt utterly alien.
Watching it soar was like watching a sea serpent swim through a blue ocean.
As it glided and rolled to show its flank, the two emerald horns on its head and the ridge running from crown to spine caught the sunlight and glittered. Is that a dorsal fin?
Something like a dorsal fin rose along its back. Floating between the valley walls made its true size hard to judge, yet it looked about as long as the python I had caught not long ago.
Size, appearance, the simple fact that it flew—there wasn’t a single thing about the creature that failed to please me.
It was magnificent, true. Fast things that glide, leap, and charge I can handle in my own way. But a snake that flies?
I had never once faced such a thing, so all I could do was stare up at it, dumbfounded.
I was, after all, a specialist in collecting the ones that crawl. How the hell am I supposed to catch that?
I watched until the creature vanished completely from sight.
“Well then, we should fall back. Withdraw a hundred jang for now.”
Grandfather’s voice ordered the retreat—roughly three hundred meters—because the snake’s sudden appearance had scattered everyone into cover.
People hurried to obey and followed him.
Even after hearing the command my head was still full of the problem of how to catch the thing, so I kept glancing back. Seol-noona stepped up beside me and urged me on.
“Yong, what are you doing? Let’s go.”
“Ah—Noona. Yes, understood.”
Her prompting snapped me out of it. I turned and started after Grandfather.
Staring forever wasn’t going to produce a method.
Perhaps she read something in my face; Seol-noona smiled and asked,
“That look is full of worry, nothing like the eager face you had earlier. Why? Think you can’t catch it? Or that it’ll be too hard?”
“It’s not that I lack experience, but a flying snake is a first for me. How am I supposed to pull that thing out of the sky?”
Exactly as she said—I still had no idea how to approach it.
At my words she pinched both my cheeks and gave them a playful shake, as if I were adorable.
“I thought Yong would know the basics since you walk around draped in spiritual beasts, but So-ryong doesn’t even know the fundamentals? Is it because you only ever bring back the spiritual ones?”
“Don’t know what? What basics?”
This fiery Fabre being lectured on the basics? I was about to feel a little wounded, but once I heard her explanation I realized I really was the guy who didn’t know the first thing.
“I don’t know how it flies, but it can’t stay aloft forever. Sooner or later it has to come down. It’s alive, so it has to eat and sleep, right?
In our Beast Palace we catch and tame fierce beasts that way. No matter how savage they are, they let their guard down when they eat and when they sleep. That’s when they’re easy to take.
The reason the Poison God ordered us back is probably so we can watch it for a few days—find out what it eats, when it sleeps, and where.”
Ohh… Why didn’t I think of that?
What she said was the most basic approach of all.
Hadn’t I spent days watching Seol-i and Bing-i just to learn what they ate when I caught them?
This was simply waiting for one of those vulnerable moments.
As Seol-noona said, a living creature has to sleep and eat.
Even if it lived on energy like the Oh-gongs, it would still come down to the ground to sleep.
In every game I had played in my previous life, the moment of the hunt was when the opponent was most exposed. Yeah—farming CS is always the most vulnerable window.
That also explained why Grandfather hadn’t panicked at the sight of a flying snake and had simply pulled everyone back to the valley mouth.
“There was a method like that!?”
“Yeah. So just trust this Seol-noona. Noona will catch it and hang it right on our Yong’s shoulder. This noona already said she’d catch it for you.”
Her bold promise somehow made me feel secure. Wait—what about all those friends in my past life who claimed sisters were nothing but trouble?
I decided the things my friends with sisters used to say, and the nonsense floating around the internet, were not to be believed.
Just as Seol-noona had predicted, once we had withdrawn a hundred jang Grandfather immediately began scouting a new campsite.
Until now we had simply wandered and spent nights under trees. Now that we knew where the creature appeared, we needed a fixed base.
“We’ll need somewhere to stay for a few days. Is there a cave nearby where we can keep out of the rain? Or a large boulder in the valley?
We’ll have to follow it for days—learn when it eats, what it eats, where its den is—so it looks as though we’ll be living here a while.
It would be good if we could stay out of the night dew.”
Grandfather, the All-Poison Divine Monarch, put the question to Noona, who had brought Beast Palace warriors to help us.
She answered with a question of her own.
“Then may we build one right here?”
“Build one?”
“Yes. We can make it quickly.”
“This spot is good, but… build one?”
It was the valley mouth; water flowed nearby, drinking water was easy, and quite a few fish swam in the stream.
Not a bad campsite at all. When Grandfather looked around and agreed, Noona immediately jerked her chin at the Beast Palace warriors.
“Prepare.”
“Yes! Elder!”
Noona was the Beast Palace Lord’s daughter and held the title of elder. From what I had heard, her father was essentially the chairman, so she wore the rank to gain experience before becoming Palace Lord herself. At her command the Beast Palace people shot into the jungle like arrows.
-Thud. Thump.
-Crash.
Moments later large bamboo poles, banana leaves, and jungle vines were being hauled to the edge of the valley where we stood.
The great sabers at the warriors’ waists—tools that had already cut a path through the jungle—proved useful in every possible way.
With nothing more than bamboo, banana leaves, vines, and those sabers, the Beast Palace men began throwing up temporary shelters in the blink of an eye.
They worked with the practiced speed of long experience; watching them reminded me of the YouTubers who built jungle shelters in Vietnam in my previous life.
To keep ground moisture from rising they cut bamboo into raised platforms, set four corner posts, and roofed everything with banana leaves. The temporary quarters were finished in no time. Is this what living in the jungle does to people? Man, if I brought these guys along the view counts would be insane.
Once the campsite stood complete after only a few hours, orders came down at once.
Grandfather put the warriors on watch duty without delay.
He was every bit as serious about poisonous creatures as I was.
Like me, he wanted the thing caught as soon as humanly possible.
“Haha, to have a resting place ready so quickly. Then we can begin the next task without worry. First we’ll climb higher into the valley and watch the creature in secret. Will the Beast Palace take the nights?”
“Yes, Elder. We’ll handle the nights. We’re better suited for it, after all.”
“Then the Tang Family by day, the Beast Palace when darkness falls. Gu Pae, take two men, follow the creature, confirm its position, and report back.”
“Yes! Supreme Family Head!”
Daytime watch for the Tang Family, nighttime for the Beast Palace. At Grandfather’s command Gu Pae, the deputy commander, took men from the Poison Blood Squad he had once belonged to and climbed the valley, moving stealthily in the direction the Flying Divine Snake had vanished.
Seol-noona’s orders followed immediately.
“Beast Palace people, rest until nightfall. A few of you prepare dinner.”
“Understood, Elder!”
At her word roughly half the Beast Palace warriors disappeared into the newly built bamboo shelters; the rest headed out of the valley to hunt.
Noona quietly beckoned me over.
“Yong, come here.”
“You called?”
Wondering if she had something to say, I approached. She nodded.
“Yeah. So-ryong, later tonight while the warriors are following the Flying Divine Snake, want to go check on them with me? We’ll take Hwa-eun too—just the three of us.”
“At night? Together?”
“Mm.”
It sounded like a patrol to make sure the watchers were doing their job. When I hesitated a fraction of a second she blinked and asked,
“You don’t want to?”
The question was polite, but her face said there was no way I would refuse.
I waved both hands quickly.
Would I really turn down a chance to see the Flying Divine Snake?
Even if it had been someone I disliked I would have followed first and asked questions later.
What did it matter who stood beside me when I was looking at a creature I loved?
All I had to do was ignore everything else and pour my attention onto the one I liked.
The real reason I hadn’t answered at once was different.
“N-no way. It’s not that. I’ve learned how to enhance my eyesight, but I’m still clumsy with it at night.”
She clapped her hands, remembering what I had said about being a murim newbie.
“Ah, right. Yong said you haven’t been a martial artist for long.”
“Yes, Noona.”
“Then until nightfall, So-ryong will learn proper eye enhancement from me.”
“I already know the method, Seol-noona.”
I simply wasn’t practiced at it yet; I had already been taught how to raise my vision.
When I said there was no need to relearn it she waggled a finger at me.
“Do you know why the Poison God gave the night watch to our Beast Palace?”
“Hmm?”
I scratched my head. She pointed at her own eyes and smiled.
“Watch carefully.”
I met her gaze a little awkwardly. Her pupils slowly dilated until the irises vanished completely, leaving only vast black circles that made her eyes look unfocused.
“This is—!”
I had always believed pupils adjusted automatically according to the light. She was controlling them at will.
With pupils that large she would take in far more light; moonlight or starlight alone would let her see almost as clearly as day.
“Amazing, right? One of the techniques the earlier generations of the Beast Palace devised after watching owls. Forcing inner energy into the eyes tirelessly exhausts you, but this method lets you see the night more brightly with very little energy. We call it the Cat’s Night Vision Art.”
There’s a martial art this good?
Most of the poisonous creatures I wanted to catch were nocturnal—centipedes, scorpions, snakes, toads, frogs.
A technique this useful was pure honey. I had to learn it at once.
It was the same as being handed night-vision goggles.
“Want to learn?”
She asked with a bright smile. I nodded so hard my head must have spun three hundred times a second.
-Splash!
The fin-like membrane between the green horns folded flat. The Flying Divine Snake plunged into the moonlit valley water and sent up a glittering spray.
A moment later it rose again with a carp thrashing in its jaws.
As it slowly began to swallow the large, flopping fish in mid-air, Seol-noona and Hwa-eun watched in low-voiced admiration.
“As expected—it’s a Fire Carp!”
“It was the same three days ago. So the creature is definitely feeding on the Fire Carps that live in this valley.”
“But why only Fire Carps? It definitely wasn’t anything like a Hundred-Year Fire Carp.”
“Who knows? Maybe they just taste better?”
What the snake held was no ordinary carp but a red brocade carp.
I had checked earlier just to be sure; it was not a spiritual-beast-level fish.
Seol-noona and Hwa-eun found the diet fascinating. The first thought that filled my head was, Ah, that bastard’s food bill is going to be ridiculous.
Why does it have to pick brocade carps instead of ordinary ones…
In my previous life I never could have afforded to raise it. But I wouldn’t be the one paying for its meals—my future father-in-law would—so I decided to concentrate on catching the creature.
I began summarizing what we had learned so far.
“So far we’ve found out that it eats a Fire Carp once every three days, that it has no den, and that after eating it sleeps on sun-warmed rocks during the day?”
“Also that once it takes flight, about one shichen is its limit.”
“Ah—that too.”
As Hwa-eun said, its flight had clear limits.
Thirty minutes aloft was roughly the maximum.
Its speed was not especially great, and after each flight it needed a similar stretch of rest.
Watching it take the Fire Carp confirmed Grandfather’s words: its venom was not particularly strong.
The way the carp stiffened suggested a paralysis toxin.
We had gathered everything useful. The very next day we compiled the information and struck when the snake dove for another Fire Carp.
The data we had collected felt almost too ordinary; I had begun to wonder why this creature ranked first among the Twenty-Four Poison Branches. The moment combat began, its true worth revealed itself.
-Shaaaa!
-BOOM!
“Gyaaah!”
A body nearly six meters long.
Skin of uncanny hardness.
And the sheer kinetic force of its diving weight.
In pure toxicity it could never enter the Ten Great Poisons, yet when it slammed into the rocky floor the way it did when hunting Fire Carps, shards of stone flew in every direction and the wounded piled up. What is this thing, a missile!?
“Everyone fall back!”
The first attempt on the Flying Divine Snake ended in complete failure.