Chapter 135: Silver (2)
Translator: bjgoofy
A cocoon gleaming with brilliant silver light, utterly unlike the pure white ones.
Roughly twenty-five centimeters long, oval in shape.
In outward form, it was clearly the same size as a Heavenly Silkworm cocoon, yet the texture of the silk was entirely different.
It seemed to reflect the soft glow emanating from the Night-Luminous Pearl on its own, giving it a dazzling, glittering quality.
No, it wasn't just an impression. It really was reflecting the light with a brilliant gleam.
'Wh-what is this? A different species?'
The cocoon was nearly identical in size, but its completely different color made my first thought obvious: could it be a different species altogether?
The reason this thought crossed my mind, despite the Heavenly Silkworms already being symbiotic partners here, was that termite mounds typically housed far more guests than just their symbiotic Heavenly Silkworms.
Even ordinary termites served as prey for over eighty species of birds and beasts, and dozens of insect species lived inside their mounds, benefiting directly or indirectly from the termites' labor.
A considerable number of insects stole termite eggs, fungi, or wood byproducts for food, or used the sturdy mound walls as shelter.
Termites had plenty of natural enemies, but their mounds were like the Tang Family estate, overflowing with freeloading guests.
The only difference was that while the Tang Family only took in useful guests, termites, when you got down to it, were generous pushovers among insects.
So, hoping it might be some other rare moth species with habits similar to the Heavenly Silkworm, I quickly reached out and gently pressed the cocoon.
I wanted to check whether there was a larva still inside, since I would need to be careful if there was.
But when I carefully squeezed the cocoon, it didn't budge at all.
The silver cocoon felt as rigid as if it had been wound from wire.
Wondering if the Heavenly Silkworm cocoons were the same, I pressed one of the neighboring white cocoons, and sure enough, it was just as unyielding.
Thinking about it, a cocoon would need to be at least this sturdy to protect itself from termite soldiers. I decided to pick the cocoon up and examine it more closely.
"Please still be pre-emergence.... Please."
But the moment I held the cocoon in my hand, there was no weight to speak of.
When I turned the cocoon upside down, I found a small round hole at its tip.
The telltale exit mark of an emerged adult.
"Damn it."
I had held on to a sliver of hope that it might be a cocoon whose occupant hadn't yet finished molting, but what I held was an empty shell.
The owner had already emerged and departed long ago.
Just as I was thinking, 'So close, yet so far,' the Divine Thief's voice drifted in from the entrance of the tunnel Bin had dug.
He must have heard the commotion from inside and was curious whether I had found any Heavenly Silkworms.
"Well? Did you find any Heavenly Silkworm Thread?"
I turned my head and could faintly make out the Divine Thief far off near the tunnel entrance.
The hole Bin had bored wasn't very large, and the Divine Thief's bulky frame couldn't fit through it. In response to his question, I decided to bring the Heavenly Silkworms outside first.
I stuffed the cocoons into the pouch I had brought and shouted toward the entrance.
"Yes, I found about thirty!"
"What!? Thirty!?"
The Divine Thief's voice rang out in shock at hearing that I'd found thirty.
The cocoons were large enough that I would need to make at least two trips. I loaded roughly half into the pouch and carried them out first. The moment the Divine Thief saw the Heavenly Silkworm cocoons, he and his disciple Yeong-ryeon both cried out in astonishment.
"Ohh! It's, it's true! This many Heavenly Silkworm cocoons! The, the previous generation only managed to procure about ten!"
"Master, so these are the Heavenly Silkworm cocoons used to make Heavenly Silkworm Thread!?"
While the two of them pulled cocoons from the pouch to inspect them, I went back into the tunnel, retrieved the rest of the Heavenly Silkworm cocoons along with the silver ones, and brought them all out to ask the Divine Thief.
"Have you ever seen this before, by any chance?"
I had decided to ask whether the Divine Thief recognized the silver cocoon.
"Wh-what is this!?"
"Oh, so you do know!?"
At my question, the Divine Thief's eyes went wide.
He shook his head as he answered.
"No, this is my first time seeing it as well. Is this also a Heavenly Silkworm?"
'Oh, come on, seriously!?'
The answer that came back was, predictably, that he didn't know. Just then, Bin's cry rang out again from deeper inside.
-Tsurur!
And with a loud noise, dust began billowing up from the hole.
-Crack crack!
-Rumble.
"Bin! Are you okay!?"
Worried the tunnel might have collapsed, I rushed to the dust-spewing entrance and shouted inside. Bin's cry answered, accompanied by a wave of reassurance that I shouldn't worry.
A moment later, Bin emerged, hauling out a large, flat boulder roughly the size of two human torsos placed end to end.
-Tsururur!
A smooth, reddish, flat oval stone.
There was no doubt. She had found the queen's royal chamber.
"Oh! You found it!"
-Tssrit!
Bin was telling me there was something inside.
I examined the sides of the boulder Bin had set down and located the entrance first.
Termite species could vary in the number of entrances their chambers had, so I checked along the rim of the oval stone and found a single hole on one side.
Startled termites were poking their heads out of the hole and retreating back in, over and over.
"Bin, try biting here. Along this direction."
The way to open a queen's chamber was to split it horizontally.
The queen's chamber was sturdy, but its horizontal axis was its weak point.
That was why the flat, oval-shaped royal chamber would split cleanly in half when cracked along the horizontal line.
When I asked Bin to bite along the entrance side to create a crack, there came a sharp snap, followed by the sound of the stone fracturing.
"All right, shall we open it up?"
The termite concrete, a mixture of saliva and soil, wasn't particularly heavy. With the Divine Thief's help, I pried open the ceiling of the halved chamber.
On both the floor and the lid, termites swarmed in dense clusters.
And right there in the center of the floor, the massive queen termite lay with her body stretched out in full display.
The individual termites were certainly smaller than the army ants from last time, but in terms of the queen-to-worker size ratio, this queen dwarfed that one by comparison.
That was because a termite queen was typically dozens of times larger than her workers, and her lower body resembled a giant larva more than it did an ant.
A termite queen could live over fifty years depending on species, spending her entire life holed up in her royal chamber doing nothing but laying eggs.
As a result, the ovaries that aided in egg-laying had developed to grotesque proportions.
She had only two ovaries, but they contained over two thousand ovarioles, which was what gave her that larval appearance.
Off to one side, I also spotted the king termite, a male that looked distinctly different from the other termites.
His body was white, but rather than resembling a termite, he looked almost like a cockroach.
Well, termites were taxonomically closer to cockroaches than to ants, so the resemblance made sense.
"Eeeeek! Wh-what is that?"
The Divine Thief's disciple Yeong-ryeon recoiled in horror.
Seol noona, too, grimaced at the queen as if she found it rather revolting, and asked.
"Th-that's a bit disgusting. What is it, Soryong? Is it an empress like last time? That thing?"
"Yes, this is the white-clad empress and emperor."
After letting everyone get a good look at the termite queen, I quickly closed the lid again and asked Yohwa to rewrap it.
"Yohwa, tie this up tight with your silk. We need to bring it back to the Tang Family. Bin, now we just need to find the larvae inside."
-Kisshi!
-Tsurur!
While Yohwa repackaged the queen termite's royal chamber,
I took Bin and the Divine Thief's disciple Yeong-ryeon back inside to search for the Heavenly Silkworm larva I had hatched previously.
The Heavenly Silkworm I had hatched earlier to confirm the symbiotic relationship.
It hadn't been in the queen's chamber, so it had to be somewhere in the fungus cultivation room, the colony's food storehouse.
The reason I absolutely had to find it was to positively identify what it was eating.
I had assumed it would feed on the nutrient exchanges provided by the termites, or on termite larvae themselves. But if it turned out to be eating the fungus, I would need to revise my plans.
"Eeek! M-me too?"
"Would you rather I bring Elder Divine Thief in instead?"
"No, that's not what I...."
"Even if he wanted to come, his build is too large to fit through, so you'll have to go in, Young Miss. It'll be fine, I promise. Bin chased out all the termites, so it's safe for the time being."
"But the other young ladies...."
"None of them could manage it in those clothes."
When I pointed at Hwa-eun and Seol noona, Yeong-ryeon's face crumpled in dismay.
Yeong-ryeon was the only woman wearing a Stealth Garment, the form-fitting outfit designed for covert work. Seol noona wore the short skirt favored by Yunnan's ethnic minority women, and Hwa-eun was dressed in the flowing traditional garments of the Central Plains, so neither of them could crawl hunched over into the tunnel.
And so, with a thoroughly miserable-looking Yeong-ryeon in tow, I spent quite some time searching through the termites' fungus cultivation room.
While picking fungi for the termites to use as food until they could regrow their gardens, and rummaging deeper inside, I found the Heavenly Silkworm on a patch of fungus growing on the wall, feeding on termite larvae.
"Th-there! Over there!"
"Oh! Indeed!"
Yeong-ryeon spotted it before I did.
I looked up at the ceiling where she was pointing and saw the Heavenly Silkworm, now a second-instar larva.
Already the size of a palm, it sat beside a fungus patch bearing obvious bite marks, and was, curiously enough, devouring a termite larva it had procured from somewhere.
"Ah, does this one eat the fungus too?"
The fungus it had almost certainly been gnawing on.
At my words, Yeong-ryeon tilted her head.
"It's eating a bug right now, though?"
"Once it finishes that, it'll probably eat the fungus too."
"Really?"
"Yes, the tooth marks on that fungus look like they match this one's bite."
Soon enough, the larva devoured the termite larva at impressive speed, then, just as I'd predicted, began tearing into the fungus as well.
"Oh! You were right!"
Yeong-ryeon seemed amazed that things had played out exactly as I said, but the thought that came to my mind while watching it tear into the fungus was that it would be difficult to take this one home right now.
It seemed like the larva's primary diet was fungus, supplemented with termite larvae for the protein it lacked.
'At this rate, I can't take it with me right now.'
Even Twin-tailed Hairstreak Butterflies initially fed on the nutrients exchanged with ants, only resorting to eating ant larvae later when they needed more protein, so the larva-eating behavior made sense.
But the fact that it was already consuming both fungus and larvae at only the second instar made me think it would be too risky to bring it back to the Tang Family now.
I had planned to entrust it to a starter colony, but if I did, it would likely devour all the fungus the colony needed for food and eat through the larvae the colony needed to grow its numbers.
As for the fungus, if supplies ran short, the Tang Family, ever devoted to poisons, was already cultivating poisonous mushrooms as well. Bringing back a batch of the termites' fungus culture would make establishing a fungus farm straightforward enough.
Even in my previous life, I had heard that termite mushrooms were sold as food in China, so I didn't think it would be too difficult.
But the larvae were limited to what was inside the royal chamber we were taking back with us.
The queen would lay more eventually, of course, but the plan was to bring the queen's chamber to the Tang Family, feed the small population dead wood, and grow the colony. If I also had to supply this larva with termite larvae starting from its second instar, the fledgling colony might wither and die before it could ever establish itself.
Normally, even Twin-tailed Hairstreak Butterflies didn't start eating larvae until their fourth instar, right before pupation. This one was turning carnivorous far too early.
I would need to let the fungus and the termite colony grow first before I could properly raise a Heavenly Silkworm. If this larva kept consuming fungus and termite larvae at that rate from one side, the starter colony might never take hold and simply perish.
It was a shame, but the termites had to be established before any Heavenly Silkworms could be raised. I decided to leave this one behind for now.
"Can't be helped, then."
"Let's leave this one here."
"What? Why?"
Yeong-ryeon's eyes went round at the idea of leaving the Heavenly Silkworm behind.
"It seems to feed on both fungus and termite larvae, and the colony we're taking back won't be able to sustain its appetite before the termites can grow their fungus gardens and build up their numbers."
"Ah...."
'Well, returning one to the wild isn't the worst thing. But those last two eggs had better be one male and one female....'
A small worry nagged at me, but I left the larva where it was and crawled back out of the cave. As the gas cleared from the exposed cross-section, termites began pouring out, and the termite mound started rebuilding itself at remarkable speed.
***
We brought the termites back to the Tang Family estate and buried them in an area of Tang Family Mountain with plenty of dead trees.
People tended to think of termites as pests, but in truth, termites were beneficial insects.
They broke down dead wood that would otherwise go unprocessed, turning it into rich soil.
That red earth, without a doubt, if you dug it up and used it for crops, it was so packed with nutrients that anything would grow well.
In any case, once the termites were transplanted into the ground, a mound swelled up within a single day.
Worried they might not have enough to eat before their fungus gardens grew in, I asked the Tang Family to cultivate some mushrooms as well, and requested the Venomous Creature Squad to make sure the termites were well fed with the fungi we had gathered.
The Divine Thief seemed content for the moment with the cocoons he had obtained, and set about working with the Sericulture artisans who had settled in the Tang Family estate, spinning the cocoons into thread.
He said that Internal Energy was required to weave the silk, which was why both the Divine Thief and the artisans were needed.
Meanwhile, I turned my attention to unraveling the secret of the silver cocoons.
-Splaaash.
"All poured in, Master Soryong."
"Thank you. Now then, shall we get started?"
Into a large basin filled with lukewarm water brought by the warriors, I placed one cocoon I had named the Silver Silkworm alongside one Heavenly Silkworm cocoon.
This wasn't to draw out thread. It was to examine what the cocoons' former occupants had looked like.
A cocoon was a chamber a moth built to protect itself before pupation.
Inside, the pupal shell of the cocoon's original owner would remain.
So if I could restore the pupal shell to something resembling its living form, I could get a rough idea of what kind of insect it was, and how it differed from the Heavenly Silkworm.
The reason for soaking the cocoons in lukewarm water was to rehydrate the molted pupal skins, which had shriveled and stuck fast during emergence, so they could be peeled free from the cocoon walls.
Two cocoons, one silver and one white, bobbed half-submerged in the lukewarm water.
After a short wait, the skins loosened and separated.
I carefully fished them out, blotted away the moisture, and began the restoration.
Using two pins, I slowly straightened the bodies back into their living posture, then used glue and paste to repair any sections that had come apart.
I stuffed cotton inside and firmly sealed the split along the back where the moth had emerged. Two large pupal specimens took shape before me.
One, a translucent white.
The other, silver.
"Ohh! Remarkable, Master Soryong! I've never seen such skill before!"
The warriors marveled at my expert restoration work.
I wiped the sweat from my brow and put on an expression of nonchalance.
"Heh, it's nothing special."
In my previous life, people who raised venomous insects or other bugs would preserve them as specimens when they died, to commemorate their size or other traits. The skills I had learned then hadn't rusted one bit.
I examined the two completed specimens with care.
To see what differences there might be.
After comparing the two thoroughly, my conclusion was this:
'Wait, aside from the color, why are these two identical?'
Remarkably, the Silver Silkworm and the Heavenly Silkworm differed only in color. In form, there was no distinction whatsoever.
From the spiracles to the body segments, the eyes, the mouthparts, the abdomen, every single structure was identical.
Just as I was staring in bewilderment at the fact that they were the same species differing only in color, Hwa-eun, whom I had tasked with the document research, came running over with startling news.
"S-Soryong. You told me to check 'The Compendium of Venomous Creatures Under Heaven' in case it might be listed there, right? Here it is."
The section near the front of the book Hwa-eun had rushed over with, open in her hands.
Just a few pages in, one of the Ten Great Venomous Creatures: the Silver Silkworm Moth.
That was the name of the venomous creature that leapt out at me.
*****
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