The Immortal (5)

Having repelled the incursion of the foreign tribes and even driven Gongsun Zan's faction to utter ruin, I had cleared two enormous assignments—only to find myself saddled with yet another. Somehow it felt as though I'd come to have one boil lanced and walked off with a second. After everything I'd been through, it was far too late in the day to be either elated or dismayed over a thing like that, so I simply let ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it slide.

"Locusts, huh."

Say the word locust and it carries a certain gravitas, but what the word actually denotes is, in the end, a grasshopper—the very insect any man born in modern Korea knows well from the classic line, "I know over a hundred species of grasshopper."

To an onlooker it might seem like nothing more than a swarm of grasshoppers on the march, but this phenomenon belongs, quite officially, to the ranks of natural disasters. You could set it beside tidal waves and earthquakes and be nowhere near out of line. Such is the locust's power that the Bible once depicted this very phenomenon as the judgment of God.

So you get a rough sense of it, no? It means we are well and truly in trouble.

"...How on earth am I supposed to handle this?"

So now even the Earth itself was out to screw me over. Just as I heaved a sigh at a situation that only grew more of a headache the further it went, a familiar voice rang out nearby.

"What do you mean, how?! We solve it fast, that's what!"

"Lü Bu?"

When I turned my head, Lü Bu's eyes were sparkling as she swiftly pressed on.

"Did you not hear what that old man said?! He'll treat your body if you settle his request!"

At her words, I found myself replaying the scene from moments before.

Having said his piece, the old man had then vanished from his spot in the blink of an eye, as though he'd used some teleportation art—a figure who was, in the truest sense of the word, mystery itself.

"......"

A "passing" immortal entrusting me with a request, like something straight out of an old folktale.... Honestly, it still felt unreal even now. Isn't it practically a rule that mysterious figures tagged with the word "passing" turn out to be absurdly powerful, whatever the nation or the era? Joseon alone brims with folk tales of a scholar traveling to sit the civil examination who happened to be passing by and neatly untangled some hopeless case—putting down a monster that meant to prey on the people, or sweeping away a band of bandits with a single stroke of his sword....

Well, either way, with a marvel like this landing in my lap, the right thing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was to move with everything I had. Had I not heard the prophecy that a locust swarm would descend before long, the damage might well have been beyond reckoning.

"What are you doing? Let's get moving!"

"All right."

Watching Lü Bu take my problem to heart as though it were her own, I broke into a warm, gratified smile.

"That's why I said quit tempting me!"

"......"

So now even smiling was against the rules? I glanced at Seo Yeo, as unreadable as ever, and at Lü Bu, who looked ready to bounce clean out of her skin, then started slowly on my way.

Once I'd returned from the prison, the first thing I did was think through countermeasures against the locusts. A horde of insects that devours every plant along its route—even in the modern era these massive swarms appear from time to time, a vicious natural disaster that burns through the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars without blinking.

Grasshoppers, by nature, favor hot and humid climes, and as a rule they breed right where they are. Come summer, Hebei turns into precisely the sort of sweltering, humid environment that makes grasshoppers delirious with joy. No wonder the immortal had singled Hebei out, of all places, as the land the swarm would sweep through. Grain enough to gorge on and a lovely climate besides—the swarm could have awarded the region five stars and a thumbs-up as it devoured everything in sight, and who could have called it strange?

Alone, a grasshopper is a small green creature, but once they begin to swarm, the pheromones of the kin around them turn them vicious, and their bodies swell to the size of a grown man's palm. Their wings lengthen too, I hear, built for long-distance flight. A swarm evolved to that pitch can cover roughly a hundred kilometers a day, roaming back and forth across national borders and laying waste to every plant in its path—a biological disaster tailor-made for devastation.

Now, then—let's think hard. In the modern world, with all its advanced technology, how did they deal with these things? My first thought was to take the Tiger Chariot Zhuge Liang had invented and spew fire from it like a flamethrower, but the more I turned that plan over, the worse it looked. Burn every last insect in a horde numbering at least tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions? Wasn't that a touch unrealistic? Worse, the day a burning locust somehow survived its roasting and dropped onto a nearby city or a field of crops would be the day of instant catastrophe. The old proverb about burning down the whole ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠house trying to catch a bedbug could genuinely come true—not that a locust swarm is a thing you'd measure against a bedbug.

And if the plan to spit-roast the swarm on the spot was a nonstarter, then next came spraying insecticide to cull them by the millions.... ...Hm. Even I had to laugh at myself for thinking it. Like that would work in an ancient age starved of science. If my memory served, insecticide wasn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠first developed until the nineteenth century—more than a thousand years and change from now. Unless aliens suddenly appeared to hand over the technology, this plan was impossible too. Cut.

"Hmmmmm...."

After piling thought upon thought, right around when my reasoning finally arrived at those insects are pests, something flashed through my mind. Right—come to think of it, there was that method, wasn't there? I finished the thought, rose from my seat at once, and went straight to see the Little Strategists.

Zhuge Liang, who had been studying a bamboo slip with calm eyes, went round-eyed at my explanation.

"You speak of the locusts, my lord?"

"That's right."

I nodded. "As a countermeasure, I plan to raise their natural predators in large numbers. What do you think?"

"Natural predators, you say...?"

"Livestock. Chickens and ducks, that sort of thing."

I called to mind a war of staggering scale that had even unfolded in the modern era—the prelude to a battle in which tens of millions of locusts faced off against hundreds of thousands of chickens and ducks. The internet had christened it the Great Duck-Locust War, and it gathered everyone's expectations into a single point. As it happened, that war never came to pass: the locust swarm abruptly died down as it crossed the border, and the livestock were judged unable to endure the climate of their deployment zone. Even setting that aside, though, the Chinese government had a track record of crushing locusts by turning loose ducks and chickens en masse. I couldn't say exactly when or where they'd done it, but apparently they released a hundred thousand ducks and six hundred thousand chickens and mercilessly annihilated the swarm. This was a proven method—one used not in some distant past, but in the modern era itself.

Hearing my plan against the locusts, Zhuge Liang tilted her head slightly.

"A swarm vast enough to sweep across Hebei, as you say, my lord, would number at least tens of millions. Could releasing a handful of predators possibly suffice?"

"That's what we're about to find out."

Frankly, beyond this method, I had no particularly clever countermeasure up my sleeve.

"Bring it here."

"Yes, my lord!"

At my command, Sun Quan, who attended me, darted out of sight and promptly reappeared from outside carrying a duck—a single duck, fetched for the purpose of showing Zhuge Liang.

—Quack. The brown-feathered duck—a name like Yellowy would have suited it to a tee—no sooner touched the floor than it went waddling this way and that around the room.

"Now watch closely. See just how many locusts this duck can put away."

"...Y-yes, my lord!"

The Little Strategists looked faintly flustered, as though they hadn't expected me to stage a demonstration in person. To think I'd actually startled the great Zhuge Liang herself. I'd have to add that to my list of achievements too.

"Commencing the demonstration!"

"Go ahead."

With my permission granted, Sun Quan drew a locust from the cloth bundle she'd brought in alongside the duck. A face that looked vaguely dim. Short antennae twitching this way and that. Wings sheathing most of its body, and hind legs lined with faintly sharp spines.

"......"

Genuinely disgusting. How on earth was she gripping that thing with her bare hand?

"Here, ducky! Eat up!"

Quack!

Yellowy, evidently accustomed to human hands, devoured the locust Sun Quan held out in an instant. Its eating speed was such that all I caught was an afterimage. Naturally, Sun Quan's feeding session didn't stop there.

"Eat this one too!"

Quack!

"And this one!"

Quaaack!

What a dutiful duck, answering every single time. Watching the scene, Zhuge Liang murmured:

"...It has a surprisingly hearty appetite."

"Ducks are always like that."

By now the brown duck had polished off more than ten locusts and, apparently still hungry, showed no sign of stopping.

"Hmm...?"

Thirty.

"Huh?"

Then fifty.

"Still going...?"

Even as the count crept toward a hundred, the duck's beak never stopped moving.

"......"

What was this thing—had it truly earned the name Yellowy? A hundred locusts is more than both hands piled high could hold, and it had eaten every last one?

"...That was the last of them, my lord."

The hundred locusts they'd bought intending to feed it for days had all vanished into the duck's belly, leaving the pouch hollow and empty.

Quaaack—!

Having taken in the sight of Yellowy letting out a triumphant roar(?), as though it had just won a war, I turned my head to Zhuge Liang.

"Well? Looks promising, doesn't it?"

"...I shall have proclamations posted throughout the realm."

And so, several months later, the curtain rose on the great war that would break out in Hebei.