Chapter 158: Absorption (6)
Translator: bjgoofy
Hwa-eun was, for the moment, in agreement with my view that the Five Poisons Sect was behind this.
Though it was simply on account of the geography.
Working on the assumption that this really was the Five Poisons Sect's doing, tossing a few Bed Bugs into each of the countless boats passing through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze on a dark night would spread the Bed Bugs across the whole of the Central Plains in no time.
'Bed Bug delivery across the Central Plains by boat, huh.... It's plausible. Boats have always been one of the main vectors for epidemics and pests, after all.'
Even going by my past life, boats were among the best means of spreading pests or disease, so it was a sound theory.
But my reason for thinking the Five Poisons Sect was involved in this lay in something else entirely.
As I was fleshing out the thoughts taking shape in my head, I heard Seol noona, who had caught Hwa-eun's words of agreement, cry out in surprise.
"Wait, are you serious!? Then shouldn't we tell the Tang Family or the Murim Alliance right away!?
No, no, w-we'd need solid proof for that.
Never mind Hwa-eun, but you, Ryong, why do you think so? Explain your reasoning, quick!"
Seol noona, demanding I explain just what had made me suspicious.
Calming Seol noona, who was practically breathless as she pressed me on why I suspected the Five Poisons Sect, I began my explanation.
"Calm down, Seol noona, and I'll explain why I think this, so listen carefully. The small Bed Bugs we're familiar with were originally creatures that lived as parasites on the bodies of bats, feeding on their blood."
"Bats? The flying ones? Those bats we saw in the cave?"
"Yes. But as people came to live in caves or to hunt bats for food, the bugs crossed over to humans and began sucking the blood of people, who were far larger than bats."
"Bed Bug" is a general term for the blood-sucking insects of the Cimicidae group, but when people speak of Bed Bugs, they usually mean the species with the scientific name Cimex lectularius.
These Bed Bugs originated as parasites of bats, and scientists suspect, just as I'd explained to Seol noona, that they crossed over from bats to humans and came to live as parasites on people.
Since they ate nothing else whatsoever and fed solely on blood, humans must have made far better prey than bats.
"Hmm.... That makes sense. Living among humans, who are bigger and carry more blood than bats, would definitely suit them better."
"Yes, that's exactly the reason, Seol noona. For creatures that can eat nothing but blood, a human is far more appealing than a tiny bat. And so the bugs that made the jump from bats to humans, well, they'll occasionally suck the blood of other animals, but they came to feed mainly on human blood."
"So Bed Bugs feed mainly on human blood? They're such tiny things, and they have no venom, so the family never looked into them in much detail. I should listen closely and record this for the family too."
Unlike a moment ago, when she'd been so frantic, Seol noona was now listening to my explanation with a look of fascination.
I looked back and forth between Hwa-eun and Seol noona, then shifted my gaze to the huge Bed Bugs lying dead in the village, and continued.
"And these large Bed Bugs here are no different from the small ones we usually find in our homes. No, I'd say they're the very same creature."
"What? You can't be serious. You're saying the two are the same creature?"
"Yes, most likely. Hwa-eun."
"But Ryong, when there's such a difference in size?"
At my claim that the two were one and the same, Hwa-eun and Seol noona blinked in astonishment.
It seemed they couldn't believe that creatures with such an enormous gap in size could be identical.
But there was no doubt the two were the same.
I'd checked them over meticulously, and it wasn't merely that there were hardly any differences. They were completely identical.
Aside from the natural variation between individuals, antenna length, body length, the shape of the proboscis, there wasn't a single difference in proportion or form.
"They're the exact same creature, just grown larger. And that means their food is blood as well. Human blood, no less."
"Well, we already knew that. We watched them crawling up at night to suck people's blood...."
Even after I'd explained all this, Seol noona still hadn't caught the strange part.
I put the question to the two of them again.
"Think about it. Have either of you ever seen, or even heard of, Bed Bugs this large?"
"No, never. Not once, never seen or heard of them."
"Neither have I, Soryong."
The two looked at each other, then shook their heads together.
With a smile, I posed my final question.
"I said these things feed mainly on the blood of humans or animals, right? So if creatures this large had been in the Central Plains all along, how would they have survived until now?
They feed on human blood, and they're this enormous, so why is it that we're seeing them for the first time?"
"Ah!"
"Ah! I see!"
As the two of them, seeming to grasp my meaning at last, looked at each other and nodded, I offered a bit more explanation.
"To explain in detail......."
The reason I couldn't help but conclude these creatures hadn't arisen naturally was, as I'd told the two of them, that Bed Bugs are parasites that feed on nothing but blood.
Sure, depending on circumstance they sometimes fed on animal blood too, but since Bed Bugs were parasites that fed chiefly on human blood, creatures that large could not possibly have gone unknown to people.
A parasite that threatened human lives would surely have already been known to everyone.
No, then again, perhaps people might not have known after all.
Given the era, and ordinary folk who knew little about insects, it was possible.
But even so, at least one of the three of us absolutely should have known.
And just what sort of people were the three of us gathered here?
Myself, Maewoon Fabre, once called a walking encyclopedia of Venomous Creatures; Seolpyo of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace; and Tang Hwa-eun of Sichuan's Tang Family.
Weren't we, perhaps, this era's dream team when it came to animals, insects, and Venomous Creatures?
'You could even call us the finest team of experts of the age. Absolutely.'
Fine, as a newbie to this martial world I might simply have failed to recognize the thing, but for Seol noona of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, who handled wild beasts more than anyone in this world, and Tang Hwa-eun of Sichuan's Tang Family, said to be unrivaled where Venomous Creatures were concerned, to not know it?
That made no sense at all.
If they'd grown that large, human blood alone wouldn't suffice, which meant they'd have to attack animals too, so Seol noona of all people should have known; and if they possessed a paralytic venom like that, then Hwa-eun should have known.
And was that all?
There was yet another strange thing.
Even granting that large Bed Bugs existed, that size was preposterous.
It wasn't simply a matter of being too big.
Setting aside all the genetics and the like, a Bed Bug is a parasite that feeds on human blood.
So what should a parasite grown large enough to kill its own host even be called?
From an evolutionary standpoint too, parasites were supposed to cling to their hosts as stealthily as possible, drain their nutrients, breed, and leave behind offspring; and yet this one killed its host?
That alone was proof of an evolutionary failure, something that had already fallen outside the very category of parasite.
How could it be called natural, to kill off the very means of one's own survival?
Even a virus deadly to humans, if it kept killing off its human hosts, would normally grow less virulent while becoming more infectious.
And so a giant Bed Bug like that was something that could never have come about without human intervention.
"......For these reasons, I couldn't help concluding that a human hand had to be behind it, and the only ones in the Central Plains capable of such a thing...."
When I trailed off, leaving the thought hanging at the end, out came the right answer.
"The Five Poisons Sect."
"Just as I thought. It could only be those Five Poisons Sect bastards."
Hwa-eun and Seol noona, their eyes lighting up at my deduction grounded in scientific reasoning.
The two of them heaped praise on me, saying how impressive it was.
"That's our Soryong."
"Soryong, you're incredible! Your big sister here honestly wonders sometimes whether you're some kind of prodigy, you know?"
'A prodigy, really.... Then again, counting my past life, I'd be a forty-year-old prodigy in body. Does that even count? And sure, I'm right in the middle of a growth spurt, but I'm fifteen right now.... Hold on. Growth? Haah!'
It was at that moment.
As I gave an awkward smile at the two's praise, one fact surfaced in my mind.
It seemed something unimaginable might have taken place, so I spoke with a grave expression.
"But, if this is the Five Poisons Sect's doing. Then something far more horrific than we'd imagined may well have already happened."
"Something horrific? Soryong?"
"Something horrific? It's already happened? Something besides the Bed Bugs swarming in?"
At my talk of something horrific, the two of them widened their eyes and pressed me.
I nodded at their question.
"Those Bed Bugs that swarmed in yesterday were all Adult Insects, were they not?"
"So those were all Adult Insects? And? What does that have to do with anything horrific?"
"Adult Insects? Soryong?"
Seol noona's question, what their being Adult Insects had to do with anything horrific, followed, but I had my reasons for suspecting that something terrible had taken place.
"You see, when it comes to an adult Bed Bug......."
A Bed Bug can suck blood the moment it hatches, but failing to do so doesn't kill it.
The immature stage of insects that undergo incomplete metamorphosis is called a Nymph, and a Nymph can survive two or three months even without feeding on blood, while an Adult can live as long as a year without a single meal.
But to become an Adult, a Bed Bug must molt a total of five times, and to molt, it absolutely must feed on blood.
A Bed Bug simply cannot pass from Nymph to Adult if it fails to feed before each and every molt.
For that reason, if the creatures that swarmed in yesterday were all Adults, it meant they had drunk blood somewhere no fewer than five times, and that, in turn, meant a mass slaughter, of beasts or of people, might well have taken place.
Judging by how much they ate yesterday and the sheer numbers that swarmed in, it would have taken far more than one or two humans or beasts.
"......And so, to raise them to adulthood would require a great deal of human or animal blood, which means...."
When I couldn't bring myself to carry the grim thought any further and let my words trail off, Hwa-eun and Seol noona both frowned.
The two of them agreed with me.
"Those Five Poisons Sect bastards? They'd do exactly that and worse."
"Thinking about everything so far, they certainly would."
And then came Hwa-eun's question.
"By the way, where do you suppose these things came from? It doesn't look like they were bred somewhere and then scattered here."
"Hmm.... Hard to say. There's mountains behind us and a river in front, and I doubt there's any kind of settlement nearby."
It was while we kept trading such questions back and forth, where had these creatures come from, where had the blood come from, when it happened.
A cautious voice calling me came from beside us.
"Um, Master Soryong?"
When I turned my head, Lee Tae, who had approached at some point, was watching me with a wary look.
"Ah, did you have something to say?"
"Um, that is.... I didn't mean to overhear, but...."
Lee Tae, who had broached the matter yet couldn't bring himself to come out with it.
Seol noona, evidently exasperated, snapped at him.
"Ugh! Just spit it out already! You're killing me here!"
At that, the startled Lee Tae stammered out a reply.
"A-actually, w-we did say we belong to the Yangtze River Water Route Stronghold, didn't we?"
"Ah, yes, we heard that, didn't we?"
"Yes, well, the truth is, the heroes of the Central Plains...."
"Heroes, my foot. You're bandits...."
Seol noona, snapping at his calling them heroes.
His face twisting as though he'd bitten into something rotten, Lee Tae pursed his lips and went on.
"Yes, well.... The bandits can be divided broadly into three. One is the Eighteen Strongholds of Dongting, who operate out of Lake Dongting; then there's us, the Yangtze River Water Route Stronghold; and there's also the Seventy-Two Strongholds of Greenwood."
'Good grief, how are there this many bandits? Is it just that the land's so vast there are bandits to match?'
The notion that, even leaving out the Yangtze River Water Route Stronghold, there were ninety bandit chiefs left me thoroughly flustered.
The state of law and order in the Central Plains was beyond words.
"A-and so?"
"You see that mountain over there, past the one behind us here? Haa.... My sense of loyalty.... is this really alright?"
Lee Tae, pointing to the large mountain beyond the small one the Bed Bugs had come down from.
When I nodded, Lee Tae muttered something about loyalty that ill suited him, and at his words, Seol noona's glare blazed once again.
"Tsk!"
At Seol noona's clicking tongue, Lee Tae picked up again.
"Yes, that place is called Stone Sulfur Mountain. There's a, a Mountain Stronghold of the Seventy-Two Strongholds of Greenwood there! Cross one more mountain and a narrow river, and you reach a highway. That's where they operate.
It's a fairly large Mountain Stronghold, some three hundred bandits, and since you were looking for a settlement nearby a moment ago...."
Judging by the sheer number of Bed Bugs that had swarmed in yesterday, three hundred wouldn't even come close, but in any case, it meant there was at least somewhere people lived nearby after all.
"Looks like we'll have to investigate it, one way or another...."
When I muttered that it seemed we'd have to look into the place, Seol noona spoke with a gloomy expression.
"Go where? We've got to deal with the swarm coming tonight first.... Haa.... I don't want to."
She seemed worried about the swarm coming that night, but today, as it happened, we were going to have it fairly easy.
"You don't need to worry too much about tonight, Seol noona."
"Why!? You've got some good idea?"
Seol noona, brightening at my words.
I answered with a smile.
"They're not even Spiritual Creatures, just Bed Bugs, and Bed Bugs can't swim, so they can't cross water."
The land we stood on jutted out sharply.
Once Bin returned, I planned to have her cut a waterway clean across the neck of land where it jutted out from the mountain.
And come to think of it, we had a natural insecticide on hand.
And if we doused these Bed Bugs in the water Hwayang went splashing about in... just what would become of them?
*****
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