Secret Cave 4
One of them hadn’t been enough, so three more bats met their end when Hyangi loosed her killing intent.
And yet the little one had gotten a taste for it and kept pestering me for more.
Churrut!
“Aigoo, that’s enough now. Three was plenty. Hyangi did great.”
“Yes. Well done.”
Churr…
I barely managed to soothe Hyangi and stepped into the passage. Even so, their soft churring followed us for quite a while. The little ones perched on both my shoulders kept churring at the occasional bugs that appeared along the way, as if practicing their killing intent. In the end I had to give them a stern warning not to take lives carelessly before their sounds finally stopped and we could pick up the pace.
“Hey now. You don’t kill living creatures without a good reason.”
After I’d propped up second child Hyangi and third child Bini like that, we pressed deeper inside for a good while.
Plip. Plip.
Only the drip of water from the ceiling and the sound of our footsteps quietly filled the cave. Seol-noona’s voice traveled along the walls as she examined them while we walked.
“But there’s nothing special here? I figured there’d be something, since they said this was where the Five Poisons Sect was sealed.”
Just as she said, the long cave simply kept going, with no special traces to be found. There was not a single sign of human presence in the passage. All that met the eye was water seeping from rock crevices into other crevices, and stalactites that had grown down from above to fuse with stalagmites into stone pillars.
Churr!
Hyangi, who had been peering around from my shoulder, took a cold droplet square on the head and startled, frantically shaking her antennae.
“That startled you, Hyangi. Hold still—Daddy will wipe it off.”
I dabbed the water from her head with my sleeve and answered Noona.
“There might have been something in the cavern we first dropped into, but the entrance there collapsed and the place was buried under bat droppings… This just looks like a corridor. Let’s go a little farther.”
“True enough, but how long does this passage even go?”
“Who knows?”
We set off again and followed the long cave for roughly the time it takes to finish a meal.
“Huh!? Looks like something’s coming up!”
Just as Noona said, the passage seemed to widen a little—and then a fairly large space revealed itself. A big rectangular chamber of about a hundred pyeong, clearly artificial, opened before our eyes.
“What kind of place is this?”
“A training ground, maybe?”
When we first stepped in it had felt like a martial training hall, but once we advanced to the middle the light from our lanterns laid the surroundings bare at a glance.
“There are quite a few tunnels.”
“There! The Five Poisons.”
Just as Seol-noona said, several openings a little smaller than the cave we had come through branched left and right, and on the wall Hwa-eun pointed to, the forms of five poisonous creatures had been magnificently carved. Centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard, and toad—the five venomous beasts were splendidly embossed, still almost perfectly clean even after a hundred years. Scattered across the floor here and there were skeletons. Perhaps this had been the final battlefield.
“This must be the last stronghold of the Five Poisons Sect.”
“Seems that way. What do we do? Wait here? Or poke around a little?”
We had agreed to go in first and check the area, but we had never drawn a clear line for how far the mission went. I glanced around once and thought, Doesn’t exactly feel like any surviving Five Poisons Sect types are hanging around… Fine white dust lay over everything, and the fact that the bodies had never been collected suggested no survivors had ever returned. Nothing dangerous had happened so far, and nothing dangerous seemed likely to, so I smiled at Seol-noona and answered.
“Hmm. Shall we look around a bit more? Feels like it could be fun.”
Until a moment ago it had been rather dull, but facing a wall carved with five poisonous creatures that looked for all the world like an ancient ruin, I suddenly felt as if we were archaeologists exploring some lost site and decided it might actually be entertaining. Kind of tomb-raider vibes too?
“Shall we? I’m finally starting to get interested myself.”
“Unnie, So-ryong, we didn’t come here to play…”
“It’s not like we’re trying to play. We’re saying we should search a little further. Right, So-ryong?”
“Of course. Seol-noona. Then let’s start with that cave over there.”
“Alright, let’s go!”
Seol-noona and I… had we been siblings in a past life? No— the life before that? Hwa-eun shaking her head at how perfectly in sync we were caught the corner of my eye, but I pretended not to notice and decided we would search the right-hand caves first.
The moment we stepped into a passage maybe two meters high, a string of connected rooms came into view. Everything looked carved from living rock; the space we had entered was a long corridor lined with rooms like a dormitory.
“This side is all connected rooms?”
Living quarters?
Whether the place had been wiped out and thoroughly looted, we searched every room and found nothing of note. Rotting blankets and wooden pillows, boxes that had once held personal belongings—smashed open or left scattered. There seemed to be some kind of ventilation, because the air was better than expected. The next tunnel looked like a dining hall; the stored food had either dried to leather or rotted and fallen apart. Beside that was a grain storehouse, then an area for clothes and bedding. That was about all of it.
After we had carefully checked every cave on the right, Seol-noona pulled oil from her pack, refilled the lantern, and spoke with a distinctly bored look.
“This whole side is just for eating and sleeping, isn’t it? Boring.”
“Yeah.”
Just as she said, there was nothing special on the right—only the spaces needed for daily life. Still, we had come looking for signs that people of the Five Poisons Sect had survived and fled, so we turned toward the left side of the cavern.
“By the way, we came to find traces of Five Poisons survivors, but this is making me think maybe only the ones who were outside made it.”
“Probably. If anyone had lived, they would have at least gathered the bodies.”
Looking at the skeletons still dressed in rotting clothes, we all reached the same conclusion: the people who had been here had not escaped. We moved into the left-hand section, only to find a burned-out library and storehouse and a few large rooms filled with smashed furniture and mostly charred space.
“Looks like a library. Completely burned.”
“They must have wiped out the Five Poisons Sect a hundred years ago and torched everything.”
In the end we found nothing and returned to the central plaza-like chamber. We couldn’t just stand there forever, so I glanced around and noticed something like an altar in front of the central wall where the five poisonous creatures were carved.
“Standing around waiting feels weird. Shall we go sit over there?”
“Shall we?”
“Yes, So-ryong.”
As we drew closer the carved wall came into clearer detail. A round stone orb about the size of a palm sat in the center, with snake and centipede, scorpion and lizard, and toad arranged around it as if competing. I pulled a cloth from the pack on my back, spread it across the altar-like surface, and we sat side by side facing the wall.
“….”
A silent space where not a single sound reached us. Feeling awkward just sitting there without speaking—and with a mischievous impulse stirring—I turned to Seol-noona.
“Seol-noona, you know what?”
“What is it?”
When I suddenly asked if she knew, she tilted her head. I stepped closer to the wall of the five poisonous creatures.
“Walls with orbs like this set into them… if you press the orb, a hidden door might open.”
“What?”
“Really?”
It was the ironclad cliché of every ancient-atmosphere escape game I had played in my previous life. Press the orb carved among the poisonous creatures and a secret passage would appear—that was the classic structure of those games. Well, it probably wasn’t true here, but to break the awkward silence I walked right up under the orb and tapped it. With a thoroughly mischievous look on my face, of course.
“Like this.”
Tap tap!
Seol-noona hopped down from the altar, came right up beside me, and started pressing the orb-shaped stone herself in rapid succession.
“What. No hidden door.”
“Haha. I only said it could happen, not that it necessarily would.”
It was just a game cliché—there was no way it would actually work here. When I answered with a smile, Seol-noona pouted.
“What, if that’s all it was…”
“Or maybe you pour energy into this orb-like thing…”
I was still teasing her when I actually fed a thread of energy into the stone orb.
Rumble-rumble-rumble.
A deep grinding sound suddenly rose from behind the stone wall, and light flared in the eyes of the five poisonous creatures.
Flash.
Centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard, toad. Something red, blue, green, white, and black embedded in the eyes of the five beasts began to pour out light.
No way—this actually works!?
The beams from the five poisonous creatures swept across the altar where we had been sitting. I startled backward with an expression of pure disbelief, and Seol-noona and Hwa-eun, who had come up beside me, started praising me at once.
“So-So-ryong, that was amazing!”
“I thought Ryong was just joking around, but you figured out how to activate the mechanism in one try!”
Rumble-rumble.
While the two women were still praising me, the orb I had charged sank inward with a solid push, and a large passage opened right in the center of the five poisonous creatures.
“Ohh! Ryong, a real door opened!”
“So-ryong, just like you said—a door opened and a passage appeared!”
Churr!
Kissit!
Kookkoo!
The centipedes, the lizards, even Yo-hwa—all of them seemed to be showering me with praise. It was pure accidental success, a cow stepping backward and catching a mouse, but I put on my best “of course” face and answered.
“Haha. Well, yes. More or less as expected?”
Opportunities to look this intelligent don’t come around often, after all.
Whooosh.
The first thing that rushed through the newly revealed passage was wind—proof the air still circulated. Seol-noona raised the lantern and lit the far side. What met our eyes was a long corridor running on into darkness beyond the reach of the light. Seol-noona peered into it with a face full of curiosity.
“What should we do? Go farther? Or wait?”
Decide whether to push on or wait for the others. I looked at Hwa-eun first. She had already poured cold water on us once when we started talking about fun, so I wanted her read. Contrary to every expectation, the eyes that met mine were sparkling.
“Let’s go!”
“Really?”
Seol-noona had clearly braced for opposition and hadn’t expected Hwa-eun to jump at the chance. Hwa-eun scratched the lizards under their chins as if making an excuse.
“W-well, m-mechanisms are a-amazing, right? E-even in the Tang Clan we treat mechanisms as something important… S-seeing one up close isn’t bad… C-could use the idea for hidden weapons too…”
Huk. Does Hwa-eun actually like this kind of thing?
A machine-loving streak was peeking out of her. Seol-noona would of course want to go, and I wanted to go farther myself. I quickly called to both of them.
“Wait a moment!”
“So-ryong? Where are you going? So-ryong?”
“Ryong!?”
Even the usually cautious Hwa-eun had been won over by a single mechanism, so I sprinted to the burned left-hand section, grabbed a piece of charred wood, and came racing back.
“Huff… huff… These doors often close behind you once you go through. So we should leave a note saying we went inside.”
“Aha! Right—hurry and write it, then let’s go in.”
I swept the cloth off the altar and quickly scrawled the same message in two places—on the altar itself and on the wall of the five poisonous creatures. Put energy into the orb at the center of the five beasts. Then I gathered everyone and stepped into the open hole. The sound of the mechanism started up at once.
Rumble-rumble.
“It’s really closing!?”
“So-ryong, how do you know these things so well?”
“W-well, just…”
I answered awkwardly while watching the wall seal. Thinking about Hwa-eun’s question, I wondered—maybe the games of my previous life had been simulators for exactly these kinds of mechanisms? Something like that crossed my mind as the machinery finished its work. The wall we had come through closed completely, leaving only a smooth, featureless surface. On that blank stone, a single savage line of writing written in something dark red caught the eye.
The Five Poisons Sect will never forget this grudge.
Those Five Poisons Sect bastards had almost certainly used this very passage for a few of their number to escape.