Chapter 127: Heavenly Silkworm (1)
Translator: bjgoofy
-Hisss! Hiss-hisss!
I had never once gotten an earful from Hwa-eun, yet the moment I arrived, here came another heaping serving of nagging.
The culprit, once again, was Yohwa.
The instant I reached the Nine Progress Gate, Yohwa came flying in from the direction of Tang Family Mountain, as if she had somehow sensed my return.
Just like last time, she had taken on Hwa-eun's appearance, arms folded, scolding me in a sulky voice.
Seeing her point at the red thread around her ankle and then at my chambers, it was pretty clear she was asking why I hadn't kept my promise.
The red thread was worn as a token of that promise.
Well, more like shackled onto me, really.
"Yohwa, what's wrong? I told you through Grandpa Divine Thief that I'd be a little late. You should forgive something like this. When a man's out working, these things happen, you know?"
'Wait, now that I've said it out loud, something feels off.... Why am I even making excuses to her?'
-Hisss!
But even after my plea, Yohwa's reaction was ice cold.
At first I assumed her response meant something like, "So a one-sided announcement is supposed to be enough?" But the Divine Thief's demeanor seemed off somehow.
When I turned to look at him, sensing something strange, the Divine Thief was gazing pointedly at the distant mountains for no apparent reason.
'Don't tell me? He didn't pass on the message?'
Judging by the Divine Thief's demeanor, it very much seemed like he had never delivered what I'd asked him to tell Yohwa.
Sure enough, when I asked Yohwa whether she'd heard the message, the Divine Thief's face went pale with shock.
"Wait, you really didn't hear?"
"A-ahem...."
I shot the Divine Thief a look that said he'd better come clean, but he just turned his head away and refused to meet my eyes.
It was obvious that after arriving, he'd gotten into a fight with Grandpa Man of Ten Thousand Poisons over the piggyback-ride issue and completely forgotten to pass the message along to Yohwa.
'Haah....'
So it seemed Yohwa was thoroughly sulking because, from her perspective, I'd broken my promise without so much as a word.
At times like these, a swift apology was the meta.
"Something urgent came up. It's all my fault."
-Hisss! Hiss-hiss-hisss!
After throwing one icy glare at the Divine Thief, I apologized to Yohwa again and again, but she still wouldn't let it go.
Normally this much groveling would have done the trick, so I was wondering why she was this angry, when Captain Gu Pae came to greet us, and only then did I learn the real reason.
"Soryong!"
"Oh, hey, Captain Gu Pae. Have you been well?"
"Please, feed Lady Yohwa at once! She hasn't touched a drop of Yang energy this entire time!"
"What!?"
Perhaps because Yohwa had taken on Hwa-eun's appearance and they couldn't bring themselves to treat her carelessly, the warriors had at some point started calling her "Lady Yohwa". But far more shocking than that was the fact that Yohwa had been starving herself.
Hearing Captain Gu Pae's words, it dawned on me: the round trip from when we left the Tang Family estate to when we returned had taken a full fortnight, and Yohwa was still wearing Hwa-eun's face.
It wouldn't have been strange if the Venomous Creature Squad warriors, who had promised to feed her in my absence, still considered Hwa-eun the most beautiful woman.
But not everyone thinks the same way, and if a man has a woman he loves, then no matter how actress-level gorgeous Hwa-eun might be, his own woman would be the most beautiful in the world.
For that reason, it wouldn't have been odd for Yohwa to have shifted into a different appearance by now, yet she was still in Hwa-eun's form.
Just as Captain Gu Pae said, she hadn't consumed a single grain of Yang energy.
Startled, I grabbed hold of Yohwa and spoke.
"Yohwa, you need to eat! Why haven't you been eating!?"
-Hiss-hisss!
This was the same Yohwa who, if she went even two or three days without Yang energy, would get so hungry she'd secretly bewitch people. And it had been a full fortnight.
Alarmed, I held out my finger to the pedipalps near the mouth of Yohwa, still in Hwa-eun's form, but she whipped her head away.
It seemed she'd decided she would rather wait than consume anyone's Yang energy but mine. With my return delayed without a word, she must have been both starving and furious.
But she probably also didn't want to admit that she was sulking because of hunger, so she refused the Yang energy.
"Don't be like that. Eat first, and then we can talk, Yohwa. You'll make yourself sick at this rate."
-Hisss!
Dealing with Cho, Hyang, and Bin's power struggles and running away from home was already more than enough, and now Yohwa was staging a hunger strike on top of it.
No matter how much I begged, Yohwa wouldn't budge.
"Yohwa, Soryong is right. There was a sick person who needed help, and things got delayed while we were trying to assist them. He really did ask the Divine Thief to let you know. I saw it myself, so please don't be upset. It seems the Elder simply forgot to tell you."
-Hisss?
"Yes, I saw it with my own eyes. Soryong wasn't lying."
In the end, it was only after Hwa-eun stepped in and vouched for me that Yohwa finally, as if she just couldn't resist any longer, took my finger into her mouth.
-Hisss....
'Phew, did that finally do it?'
With Yohwa's anger settled for now, it was time to assess the situation with the next problem child.
While Yohwa sucked away at the Yang energy, I checked on the whereabouts of Bin, who had run away from home.
I was wondering whether she might have come back while we were gone, or perhaps been found by the warriors.
"By the way, has Bin come back?"
"No, Soryong. We've been searching every corner of Tang Family Mountain, but......."
Captain Gu Pae said he had been taking warriors out whenever he had the chance, meticulously checking every crevice between the rocks, but the fact that they hadn't found her only reinforced the feeling that Seol noona's theory was correct.
If Seol noona was right, then Bin had holed up somewhere and was deep in a long slumber.
Running away from home only to nap without a care in the world, not sparing a single thought for the worry she was causing back home.
I was making up my mind to give that little rascal a good smack on the back when she returned.
That was when Captain Gu Pae stared at me with a startled expression.
"Soryong, your n-nose."
"My nose?"
At the mention of my nose, I brought my hand up above my philtrum, and blood came streaming down.
What followed was the sensation of all my energy draining away.
Yohwa had been fasting for a full fortnight, so it seemed she had been absolutely famished.
'Wait, I didn't even do anything, and I feel like this....'
Then my legs began to tremble.
***
I kept feeding Yohwa Yang energy until her empty stomach was full, and in the end, it drained me so completely that I had to spend the entire next day resting.
From having my Yang energy sucked to the limit, I learned two things: first, that it wiped out my stamina, and second, that Sage Time set in afterward.
Sage Time, even though I hadn't done a single thing. [TL: Sage Time aka Post-nut clarity]
It was a truly mystifying sensation.
A sudden wave of emptiness washed over me out of nowhere, and then my mind snapped into focus, as sharp as if I'd downed ten cups of coffee all at once.
And so I had no choice but to spend the full day in deep rest.
The morning after that thorough rest.
My morning began with a bit of commotion.
"Right then, you've had a full day of rest, so that should be enough, yes?"
The Divine Thief had come barging in at the crack of dawn, pestering me to hurry up and hatch the Heavenly Silkworms.
He meant that since he'd done everything I'd asked, it was time for me to keep my end of the bargain.
Considering that his share of the blame for my current ordeal was not exactly small, I decided to lie back on my bed and play up my fatigue.
I fully intended to honor the promise, of course, but I had to extract at least a little payback for what Yohwa had put me through, all because of him.
"Oh, I had so much Yang energy drained yesterday, I might need another day of rest. I'd love to help you, Elder, but my body just isn't up to it...."
"What!? Good grief, why is your body so frail? What kind of training does the Tang Family put this boy through.... One good day of rest should be plenty for something like that. Tsk, this is what happens when you rely on poisons...."
Just as the Divine Thief was grumbling about the Tang Family's training regimen in response to my theatrics.
Grandpa Man of Ten Thousand Poisons came storming into my quarters, shouting.
"What was that? This old coot!? How dare you drag our Sichuan Tang Family into this? You couldn't even handle one simple errand and made this whole mess."
He must have overheard the mention of the Tang Family from inside.
"No, that's not what I...."
"Don't 'that's not what' me! I heard every word, clear as day."
As I understood it, no matter how close two people were, badmouthing the other's family or martial arts was strictly off-limits.
I thought the Divine Thief might apologize, but I'd momentarily forgotten one crucial fact: these two were sworn rivals.
The Divine Thief's response was not an apology but a counterattack, flipping the blame right back around.
Here was a thief accusing the other man of being toxic.
"Eavesdropping like a common thief...."
"What!? A common thief? If anyone here is a thief, it's you!"
"What did you say! You poison peddler!"
Things looked like they were about to come to blows at any moment.
I hurried to step in and pry them apart.
"Please, both of you, calm down. What would people say if two great elders of the martial world were seen bickering like this?"
"Hmph!"
"Grrhm!"
The fight stopped, but leaving these two together would only lead to more of the same, so I decided to follow the Divine Thief and go inspect the hatching facility he said had been set up on the outskirts of Chengdu in Sichuan.
"If you could both stop, please. I'm actually feeling a bit better already. Elder Divine Thief, let us go together and take a look at this place you've prepared for raising the Heavenly Silkworms."
"O-oh? Very well then."
Of course, before leaving, I didn't forget to promise Yohwa that I would absolutely return today.
"Yohwa, I'm going out with Grandpa Divine Thief for a bit, just nearby. I'll be back today. That's okay, right?"
-Hisss.
It sounded like a yes, but this time, as if to make sure I wouldn't dare forget my promise, Yohwa added one more strand of red thread around my ankle.
***
Where the Divine Thief took me was a crumbling, abandoned Taoist temple.
My hometown... no, it reminded me of the derelict Taoist temple on Haenam Island where I had lived after first being reborn into this world.
Half-collapsed buildings everywhere, overrun by wild grass.
As I stepped deeper inside, there was one building in relatively decent shape, much like the one I had used back in Haenam, and people were gathered there.
"Elder Divine Thief, you've arrived?"
As we entered the abandoned temple grounds, people who had been sprawled about scrambled to their feet.
"Yes, have you all been well?"
"Yes, Elder. Is this the young hero you spoke of?"
"That's right. Soryong, say hello. This is Baek Ga."
It seemed the Divine Thief had given them a heads-up about me, because they crowded around and looked me up and down.
From among them, the oldest man stepped forward and bowed his head toward me.
"I was told you are a young hero of Sichuan's Tang Family. Pleased to meet you. My name is Baek Ga."
"Ah, good sir, I'm Soryong. Pleased to meet you as well."
This old man seemed to be their leader.
He led us further inside and spoke.
"Shall I explain what we've tried and failed? It might be of some help."
"Oh, would you? Please."
I had gotten the gist from the Divine Thief, but for the details, it was always best to hear it from the people who had actually done the work.
I decided to listen to why they had failed.
It wasn't that his account would help me in the way he imagined, but I was curious about how much people of this era understood about moths and silkworms.
When I nodded, the old man pointed at some already-withered plants deeper inside and began his explanation.
"First, since they were silkworms, we tried feeding them mulberry leaves. But there was no reaction whatsoever, so next we tried different parts of the mulberry tree: its leaves, stems, and even roots. They wouldn't eat any of it."
Since they were called silkworms, the natural first instinct had been to try mulberry leaves.
Ordinary silkworms were raised on mulberry, after all.
These were supposed to be master sericulturists, but it seemed they'd initially assumed these would be no different from regular silkworms.
"After that, following what the Divine Thief told us, we gathered every type of leaf that would have been in season during the time one of the previous Divine Thieves obtained the eggs, and tried feeding those to the silkworms.
It occurred to us that silkworms are the larvae of moths, and not all moths eat mulberry leaves."
After failing with mulberry, they had recalled that other moth species feed on different leaves and tried those instead.
For master sericulturists, they had actually proceeded quite systematically by this era's standards.
"But every single attempt ended in failure. The one regret is that after the final failure, once the Elder had already departed, we realized that moths don't feed exclusively on plant leaves.
When we thought about it, there are moths that eat grain, moths that eat through clothing; moths are an incredibly diverse group, aren't they? If only we had thought of that sooner...."
What the old man was describing sounded like pantry moths that infest rice and grain, and clothes moths that devour fabric. Their failures hadn't been entirely in vain, it seemed.
For people of this era, they had actually made considerable progress.
Despite the vastly different appearances, they had recognized all three types as belonging to the same family of moths.
But their limitations were still probably clear.
It seemed they'd eventually realized the cause of their failures, yet I had a feeling they would have continued to fail regardless, because from what I was hearing, they had only been expanding their thinking within the scope of moths they had personally seen.
'You'd never succeed that way.'
Looking at the old man and the Divine Thief, I decided to share some of what I had figured out.
For educational purposes.
"There are a few things I've discovered from examining the Heavenly Silkworm Thread and the dead larvae that the Divine Thief showed me. Would you like to hear them?"
"You've discovered something?"
"Wait, what did you figure out? When did you even have the time?"
The Divine Thief's eyes went wide with surprise at the claim that I had learned something.
His expression said he couldn't believe it. Did he think I was the kind of person who forgot my responsibilities the way he did?
Even while riding on his back during the trip to and from Wuhan, a corner of my mind had been turning the problem over the whole time.
"Well, I did some thinking on the way to and from Wuhan."
"Really?"
"Yes. Please, hear me out."
"Alright, let's hear what you've figured out."
When I said I'd learned something, everyone gathered closer. I looked around at them and began my explanation.
"First, let me ask you this. Do you know why a fully grown larva spins silk?"
"Well, isn't it to build a cocoon?"
"That's right. Even we know that much."
If they said "to build a cocoon," then they only knew half the story.
I smiled and continued.
"No. I wasn't asking what it builds. I was asking why it builds one."
"Why?"
"Yes. A fully grown larva spins silk to construct a cocoon in order to protect its body until it becomes an adult moth.
Didn't you say that Heavenly Silkworm Thread resists being cut even by an Energy Blade when Internal Energy is channeled into it, and that it becomes incredibly sharp and hard?"
"That's right. If you channel Internal Energy into it and swing, it can sever limbs like a blade."
Heavenly Silkworm Thread: sharp enough to sever limbs when infused with Internal Energy, and harder than steel even in its normal state.
Others might not have thought twice about it, but when I looked at the thread, a single question had come to mind.
What on earth did they need silk this strong to protect themselves from?
'Their food source must be near where they pupate. That's the critical question here.'
At my words, the people, especially the Divine Thief, stared at me with eyes wide as saucers.
*****
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