Evolution 4
I let out a delighted scream as I stared at her, and Sister Seol watched me with an utterly incredulous look on her face.
“Well, it’s a shame about the inner elixir. But still, it’s as good as if you’d eaten it yourself…”
Sister Seol clearly couldn’t shake her regret that Cho had been the one to swallow the inner elixir.
But whether it was a hundred and twenty years, twelve hundred, or twelve thousand—none of that mattered anymore.
Looking at Cho, grown so beautifully, I couldn’t have cared less what became of the thing.
I rushed straight back and swept her into my arms.
“Cho-ya, to grow up this pretty! This dad is so moved! Were you upset I didn’t recognize you? But you got so beautiful I just couldn’t help it!”
Wasn’t celebrating a daughter’s growth a father’s duty?
And when she looked this magnificent, celebrating her a thousand times, ten thousand times, was only natural.
-Tss, tsrurut…
With a bashful little sound, Cho’s body settled into my embrace, and I felt the smooth yet hard chitinous shell fill my arms.
But her shell wasn’t merely rigid and unyielding.
Within that hardness lived the peculiar elasticity unique to a centipede’s carapace—the very quality that let a centipede slip into any narrow crevice. Hard yet pliant: that was Cho’s new body.
It felt almost exactly like the time I had embraced a fully grown Azure-Spotted Centipede, the mother of these dream-realized children.
Yes! This is it! This is what I’ve been waiting for!
And with that sensation came another wave of emotion I used to feel from the large snakes I had raised in my previous life.
That overwhelming toughness only massive creatures possess was pouring from Cho’s body as well.
This is like petting a cat and then suddenly petting a tiger!
I had filmed at zoos a few times in my past life. As a venomous-animal YouTuber, zoos were frequent shooting locations, and for my last shoot—when I was closing in on a million subscribers—I got to handle not only all kinds of venomous creatures but ordinary animals as well. Touching Cho’s body brought back the exact feeling of stroking a hundred-day-old tiger cub.
When people meet something unknown, they naturally reach for their own experience and try to compare it.
So before I touched that tiger I had been thinking of dogs or cats. When I took hold of the tiger’s ankle I fully expected the same sensation as a dog’s or a cat’s.
That was pure foolishness.
The moment my hand closed around the hundred-day-old tiger’s leg, what I felt was pure, overwhelming power—bones and muscle packed tight beneath the hide. Calling it a feline and thinking of a housecat was an insult to the tiger. With dogs or cats the first thought when you touch a leg is how fragile it is; with a tiger the first thought is, This is a strong creature I have never encountered before. Skeleton and muscle both proclaimed that this being possessed overwhelming strength.
Holding Cho now felt exactly the same.
She had grown to roughly six meters—not quite the size of her mother the Azure-Spotted Centipede, but enormous all the same. Unlike the fragile body she had worn until now, an overwhelming power that belonged at the very peak of the ecosystem pyramid radiated from her shell and from everything inside it. Her body was not as thick as the Flying Divine Snake’s, so the sheer volume was smaller, yet a toughness that seemed to surpass even the Flying Divine Snake poured from her. Powerful legs and a sturdy frame radiated pure, crushing presence.
Emotion swelled until I thought my chest would burst.
This is one of the Ten Great Poisons! And one I raised with my own hands!
Of course I already had Yo-hwa, one of the Ten Great Poisons, but this felt different. Yo-hwa had been more of an adoption that left a little something to be desired; Cho was a Ten Great Poison—the absolute summit of the Central Plains—that I myself had raised from the egg. That made all the difference. I had taken a creature of that caliber and brought it nearly to adult strength with my own hands; of course my heart was overflowing. Hadn’t I cherished them from the egg? I had thought they were low-tier trash, and then they evolved. Cho was now her father’s pride and treasure.
“Aigoo, so pretty. Our Cho. Dad doesn’t mind the inner elixir one bit. Good job! You ate well!”
-Tss, tsrur…
I was still nuzzling my face against her in pure joy when Hwa-eun’s and Sister’s worried voices reached me from the side.
“So-ryong, please calm down.”
“They said connecting with a Ten Great Poison could swallow your consciousness, and just like Father warned—has something gone wrong with his head!?”
“N-no, this… this seems normal… He’s always been like this.”
“He’s always been like this!?”
I was making such a spectacle of myself that Hwa-eun and Sister Seol tried to settle me. Their exchange ended on Sister’s dumbfounded expression, and Hwa-eun pulled me down into a seat.
“So-ryong, please calm down. Now that you’re awake we need to check your body first. Just breathe and sit here.”
“Ah, right. Ryong’s ruckus made me forget we still have to examine him. I’ll go fetch Father and Elder Man Dok Shin Gun.”
“Yes, Unnie.”
At the mention of calling the adults, Sister Seol started to dash out; I caught her sleeve.
“My body is fine. I seem to have just blacked out for a moment. There’s no need to trouble the elders…”
I truly thought it had only been a brief spell, and nothing felt wrong with me—aside from being completely swamped by emotion.
Sister Seol raised one finger and spoke in a tone that brooked no argument.
“You just woke up after half a month, Ryong-ah. So we are absolutely checking your body.”
“H-half a month?”
My eyes flew wide; both Hwa-eun and Sister Seol nodded. Sister Seol bolted out to fetch the elders, and Hwa-eun sat down to explain.
“The instant Cho swallowed the Flying Divine Snake’s inner elixir, you collapsed. Then the suddenly grown Cho coiled around you, and you’ve only just woken after half a month. Cho herself woke after ten days, but another five days passed and you still hadn’t stirred, so we were worried sick.”
“Is that so?”
I had thought it was only a moment. Half a month…
I stared at Cho again, unable to believe it.
Then Hwa-eun’s hesitant voice returned.
“So-ryong, um… and there’s a bit of bad news as well?”
“Bad news?”
She suddenly brought up bad news. But Cho had evolved into a Ten Great Poison—what could some minor bad news possibly matter? Great joy always smothers small sorrows. I answered lightly.
“I don’t know how bad it is, but since Cho grew up this pretty, some minor bad news is nothing…”
“?”
I blinked at the warning, and Hwa-eun’s transmission came again.
Kids are angry?
At first I had no idea what she meant—then Hyang-i and Bing came crawling up over Hwa-eun’s shoulders.
-Tsrurr!
-Tsrurrrrr!
Cries that were unmistakably furious.
Only then did I understand who the two angry ones were, and why they were angry. Their fight on the table had been a battle for the inner elixir, and because I had interfered, only Cho had gained anything. It was as if three daughters had been fighting and Dad had stepped in to help only the eldest.
A rough replay of the scene unspooled in my head.
“The centipede who wins the fight becomes the Flying Centipede!”
“Got it, Unnie. I’m not planning on losing either!”
“I’m going to eat that and hog all of Dad’s affection!”
“Eh? D-Dad, you can’t do that!”
“Unnie, that’s cheating!”
“Little sisters? This too is destiny.”
I had never once soothed an angry girl before, and now I had to figure out how to handle two of them.
Oh no! Just like Hwa-eun said—this is a real disaster!
“Dad was wrong. Hyang-ya. Bing-ya. Dad didn’t know, so won’t you forgive me?”
-Tsrut!
-Tsrurut!
I begged for all I was worth, but Hyang and Bing were thoroughly sulking; they whipped their heads away on Hwa-eun’s shoulders. According to her, until I woke they had been a little hurt, yet whenever she came to check on me they still came out to look. The moment they saw me, though, every buried grievance rose to the surface. What I felt from them was pure resentment that Dad only played favorites with big sister Cho. On top of that, they had watched me cling to her and rejoice, so the hurt ran even deeper.
“N-no, really! Dad loves our Hyang and Bing just as much—”
-Tsrut!
“It’s true!”
They cut me off with sharp warning cries that sounded almost like shouts.
Just then Sister Seol, who had gone to fetch the elders, stepped back into the Palace Lord’s hall escorting Elder Man Dok Shin Gun and my foster father, the Beast Palace Lord.
“Ohh, you’ve woken.”
“Has So-ryong woken?”
Both of them hurried straight to me and seized my hands, one on each side.
“Let me take a look!”
“Let me take a look!”
“Huh?”
The moment they said it, both my arms were claimed. I looked back and forth between foster father and Elder Man Dok Shin Gun; they gave each other awkward smiles and tried to yield.
“E-Elder, please go first.”
“Ah, no. Palace Lord, you first.”
They deferred politely, yet neither released my arms. It looked exactly like two people insisting on paying the bill when neither actually intended to calculate, and the standoff dragged on for some time. In the end the winner was Elder Man Dok Shin Gun.
Eyes closed while he examined me, Grandfather finally nodded.
“Your poison-arts realm has certainly risen. It seems connected to the strengthening of Cho’s venom. We’ll examine it properly once we return to the Tang Clan.”
Just as he said, my internal energy had climbed considerably. I could guide the energy far more smoothly, and the poison I had taken in from Cho was, as Grandfather noted, markedly stronger. Tang Clan poison arts treat internal energy as fuel and poison as an additive. When you release a palm wind, for example, pure internal energy might produce something like a strong fan’s blast; add the poison you have absorbed and you achieve a greater effect with less energy. That is why both the number and the potency of one’s poisons matter. He told me the efficiency was now three or four times higher than before Cho’s evolution.
“Yes, I understand, Grandfather.”
After I answered, foster father’s voice came next.
“Then it’s my turn. Come here quickly.”
He had been waiting with obvious impatience. After examining me at length just as Elder Man Dok Shin Gun had done, his face brightened.
“Your Beast Heart Technique has reached a realm even I do not know. Remarkable.”
“Is that so? I don’t really feel any different.”
He insisted something had changed, yet I noticed nothing. The link with Cho felt the same as before, and nothing about the other children had altered either. I was beginning to doubt the realm had risen at all when foster father turned to Elder Man Dok Shin Gun.
“Elder Man Dok Shin Gun, may I examine So-ryong’s body more carefully at the Beast Palace?”
“Do so. So-ryong is also a man of the Beast Palace.”
“Thank you, Elder Man Dok Shin Gun.”
Just when I thought the conversation was finished, foster father’s bright expression clouded with a touch of worry.
“Ah, Ryong-ah—have you by any chance been seeing illusions or anything of the sort?”
“Illusions?”
He was suddenly asking whether I was seeing things. I tilted my head, and he explained.
“Yes. When someone whose Beast Heart Technique is still low accepts the consciousness of many beasts, they can be swallowed by the beasts’ collective mind. You have connected with a Ten Great Poison, so you must be careful. Creatures that understand human speech tend to possess strong wills, and true spirit beasts are rare enough—but a Ten Great Poison is another matter entirely. If anything strange appears before your eyes, run to me at once and tell me. Understood?”
“Yes, I understand.”
The idea of having my consciousness swallowed made me a little uneasy, yet Cho would never harm me; the worry faded almost as soon as it appeared. Thinking back, the memory of the blue-haired woman that had lingered when I lost consciousness—that had definitely been Cho. Rather than devouring my mind, it had felt as though she were healing me.
There’s no way Cho would do that.
Once the examination was finished, the two elders looked at each other.
“Since So-ryong has woken, we should take care of what we have been putting off.”
“I suppose we should.”
“What we’ve been putting off?”
It sounded as though something important had been delayed on my account. At my muttered question, foster father nodded.
“The Five Poison Sect. We intend to investigate the stronghold of those who were destroyed a hundred years ago.”
So that was why foster father had not joined our raid—he had stayed behind to look into the Five Poison Sect.