Chapter 160: Mountain Stronghold (1)
Translator: bjgoofy
In a typical amphibian, the hind legs emerge first and the forelegs come later; the hind legs begin as small buds between the tail and the body, slowly taking shape as they grow, while the forelegs develop inside the body behind the gills and, once they've grown enough, burst out by tearing through the flanks.
But for a while after the forelegs break out through the flanks, they're extremely short, and the creature can't even use them to swim.
All they do is dangle against the body like ornaments, swaying as it swims along.
But the forelegs that had sprouted on Hwayang's body were clearly functioning as proper limbs.
The sight of them clutching the water bucket tightly had caught my eye.
'Gyaaaaaah!'
I'd known it grew by eating fire, but who'd have thought that gorging on a huge amount of fire would suddenly trigger such explosive growth.
Seeing Hwayang's forelegs gripping the rim of the water bucket, I reached out toward them before I knew what I was doing.
I wanted to get a clearer look at the creature's feet.
After all, when it comes to amphibians, the forefeet alone can tell you a great deal.
For one thing, suction pads on the forefeet would mean it could climb up somewhere; webbing would mean it could swim; and if instead it had nothing but hook-like claws, then I could conclude it was built for digging into the earth.
Even if I couldn't tell right away whether it was a frog or a toad, I could at least determine whether it was a clawed, land-dwelling amphibian, a tree-frog type that climbed well, or an aquatic type that was a strong swimmer.
"Soryong! You'll be poisoned!"
"Ah, oops, oops."
But my attempt failed; Hwa-eun and Seol noona held me back, and with great reluctance I had to withdraw my hand.
After all, one wrong move and I could have been poisoned all over again.
It hadn't been long since I'd gotten poisoned, been put through the wringer, and unfairly raked over the coals on top of it.
"Soryong, did you forget what happened just a little while ago?"
"Right. Soryong, you've got to be careful. How could you forget already?"
"N-no way. What do you take me for, a goldfish?"
I told Hwa-eun and Seol noona that there was no way I'd forget something like that, I wasn't a goldfish, after all, but the truth was, the moment I'd laid eyes on Hwayang's forefeet, I had completely forgotten.
'How is anyone supposed to keep a level head looking at that.'
Even if words like "disrobing" or "pervert" had been applied to Hwa-eun, I could have kept my composure, but the moment my little ones started molting or going through metamorphosis, there was simply no staying sane. [TL Note: A pun. In Korean, 변태 means both "pervert" and "metamorphosis", and 탈의 "disrobing" sounds nearly identical to 탈피 "molting."]
Hwa-eun and Seol noona must have sensed that my excuse wasn't true, because they wore the look of people who'd given up trying to stop me.
"I, I just couldn't help myself...."
I gave the two of them an apologetic look and turned back to gaze at Hwayang.
Regretting all the while that, had I known it would grow this fast, I never would have rationed its meals.
'I should have just fed it plenty. Rationing was pointless.'
Some amphibians are quite gluttonous, so I'd controlled how much it ate for fear its belly might burst and kill it, but it seemed I'd had it all wrong.
Because it was clear that Hwayang simply grew in proportion to whatever it ate.
With ordinary food, it gets stored first in the stomach, so I'd worried the stomach might tear if it overate, but to Hwayang, fire was probably a form of Yang energy.
And there was no way eating a lot of energy would make its belly burst, was there?
Cho, Bin, and Hyang absorbed the energy of nature, while Ice, Snow, and Dong-i fed on the chill air, laden with Cold Energy, that seeped out of the Ice Jade.
And Yohwa fed on my Yang energy.
Of course, there were also ones like the Golden-Furred King Bee that ate honey, but setting those aside, Spiritual Creatures were for the most part beings that grew by consuming energy, so it seemed eating a lot wouldn't be a problem at all.
If anything, perhaps a large quantity would let it metamorphose or evolve.
Most of the Venomous Creatures I'd raised so far had behaved exactly that way, so it was a fairly well-founded guess.
'In that case, I should feed it well and get it to adulthood quickly, right?'
Once I knew it grew in proportion to what it ate, what was the next thing to do?
Feeding it to the gills and bringing it to adulthood, that was exactly a guardian's job.
Kneeling down, I lowered my head to Hwayang's eye level and asked it,
"Hwayang, want to eat a little more?"
At that, the creature happily bubbled in the water.
-Bloop.
It seemed the creature could now breathe with its lungs too, not just its gills.
***
I had the river bandits cut more reeds and built an enormous fire in the village clearing.
Now that even the forelegs had come in, I found myself hoping I might get to see the end of Hwayang's tech tree this very day.
With the forelegs in, all that remained was for the tail to shorten and the whole process would be complete, so it didn't seem out of reach.
'Hwayang, on to that final tech, let's gooo.'
I felt a little bad about putting the river bandits to work on my own private business, but if Hwayang ate its fill and produced plenty of venom, all of it would help defend the village and control the Bed Bugs, so it wasn't as if I were the only one to benefit.
So I gathered as much firewood and dry timber from the surroundings as I could and fed it to Hwayang; it was able to produce plenty of venom, but disappointingly, Hwayang's tail did not shorten right away.
It felt like the growth came in stages, as though I had to feed it up to a certain threshold.
If I'd had the time, I would have stayed up all night feeding it, but that wasn't possible.
Because once the sun went down, the things came swarming.
The Bed Bugs, that is.
As the sun set and deep night began to fall, the Bed Bugs came pouring out from every direction.
The Bed Bugs that had gotten into the village had already been cleared out once during the day, when Hwa-eun went around tracking them by scent, so only a few crawled out; but beyond the water channel we'd dug, sure enough, they swarmed in a pitch-black mass.
We tend to think of cockroaches as breeding without limit, but honestly, roaches don't even come close to Bed Bugs.
A single Bed Bug lays around five hundred eggs in its lifetime, and indoors they hide in corners and breed endlessly, multiplying exponentially.
"Ryong, just like you said, they're swarming in pitch-black hordes!"
"Soryong, will it really be all right?"
"They probably won't be able to cross the water."
At my words, the people watched the channel with tense faces, and when the wave of Bed Bugs reached the water's edge, the creatures could do nothing but halt right there at the bank.
The reason they feared water was that their bodies were so light, and so vulnerable to its surface tension, that the moment they got near it they'd stick fast to the surface.
"They stopped! They stopped!"
"The Bed Bugs stopped!"
"W-we're saved!"
As the wave of Bed Bugs halted at the water's edge, the people rejoiced with relief on their faces.
From the opposite side, I threw stones at the Bed Bugs to taunt them.
"Want a bite? Want a bite? You little things!"
And then, in the predawn hours while that standoff dragged on.
I was dozing by the campfire when Lee Tae and a few of the river bandits, who'd been keeping watch, came over and reported the situation.
"Master Soryong, just as you said, the Bed Bugs have grown more active!"
"Slurp. Th-then, get the water ready."
"Understood!"
As I wiped the drool dribbling down the corner of my mouth and rubbed my eyes, Yohwa came over and set me on her back.
It rather felt like she was telling me not to get up and to sleep some more.
My eyes drifted shut again against Yohwa's soft fur, but I quickly pulled myself together and said,
"Yohwa, no. I've got something I need to do."
-Kishi.
She seemed to be telling me to sleep more, but I still had work to do.
If I missed this moment now, I'd have to wait until tomorrow, so I gathered my wits, got to my feet, and rubbed my eyes.
People think Bed Bugs bite at night, but to be precise, they're most active in the predawn hours.
So the time for us to act, too, was that predawn stretch right before sunrise.
As I changed the water in the bucket Hwayang sat in, I scraped out every last bit, carried it over to the channel, and got straight to work spraying it as pesticide.
"Master Soryong, everything's ready. Let's begin."
"Ah, and the bamboo water canisters?"
"Right here."
I pulled mittens woven from Yohwa's silk onto both hands and drew the water up into a bamboo squirt gun.
Then I sprayed the water laced with Hwayang's venom in a satisfying gush at the Bed Bugs massed on the far side of the bank.
-Hissss.
A jet of water burst from the tip of the bamboo squirt gun and rained down over the Bed Bugs' heads.
As I moved along the channel, meticulously dousing them with pesticide, day began to break before I knew it, and just like the day before, the Bed Bugs began scattering in every direction.
"They're swarming off!"
"They're scattering!"
And then, a few hours after the creatures had scattered, we were all gathered in the village clearing, where the morning mist rose thick off the water, eating breakfast.
"Ryong! Look over there!"
Seol noona, who had suddenly stopped eating and shot to her feet, pointed at the mountain.
When I turned my head to look where Seol noona was pointing, all across the mountain, which lay shrouded in snow-white mist like a snow-dusted Christmas tree, blue flames flickered up and died down again and again, like sparkling blue light bulbs.
It felt like Hwayang's venom was definitely doing its work.
The flames carried on in the forest near the village as well, and Seol noona and Hwa-eun, gazing at the light, spoke with dazed expressions.
"It's beautiful."
"It really is."
It was a brilliant, beautiful death, far too lovely for the likes of Bed Bugs.
***
After we repeated the same routine for about two days, the Bed Bugs noticeably dwindled.
By now the ones swarming toward the village amounted to no more than a handful.
And as I examined the ones still coming and the ones that had died, I came to notice something strange as well.
"Something's definitely off."
"What now?"
Thinking it might be more bad news, Seol noona furrowed her brow and asked what else was so strange.
I gave Seol noona a smile and answered.
"It's the Bed Bugs. The ones that swarmed the village, strangely enough, there's not a single female among them."
"Not even one?"
"Right. Not a single one."
The Bed Bug is one of those insects whose males and females are hard to tell apart.
The reason being that they look almost identical, which makes distinguishing them difficult.
After all, they're similar in size and have no clear distinguishing features.
The only telltale trait is that the males look a touch more slender, while the females look a bit rounder.
But unless you set them side by side, there's hardly any difference to speak of.
"That is strange, isn't it?"
"Well, if someone's had a hand in it, it might make perfect sense. There's no telling how much these things would multiply if they bred out in the wild."
It seemed that, since the Bed Bugs would be hard to control if they bred in the wild, someone had deliberately left the females out.
I gazed toward the larger mountain beyond the hill behind the village and said,
"I think I'm going to have to go up there."
The village was gradually getting back in order, and the boat's repairs would be finished before long, so I figured it was about time I paid a visit to this so-called Mountain Stronghold of the bandits.
***
Since there was no telling how many Bed Bugs still lurked in the forest around the bandits' Mountain Stronghold, Hwa-eun and I decided to ride Cho there together and take care.
"You be careful, Ryong."
"I will, Seol noona."
Seen off by Seol noona, who urged me over and over to be careful, I was coiled up in Cho's body and rose buoyantly into the sky, and Seol noona grew smaller and smaller until she was just a tiny dot.
"Cho, fly us over that mountain, would you?"
-Tssrit!
Once we'd climbed to a decent altitude and I asked Cho to fly toward the mountain said to hold the Mountain Stronghold, Cho began to wriggle her way up over the peak.
Perhaps because of the dazzling blue fireworks of the past several days, the mountain lay utterly still.
The trees were so dense that I couldn't see a thing, but after circling around a little, a clearing that looked like the Mountain Stronghold came into view far below.
The place had been well concealed on all sides with grass and trees to hide the stronghold, but whoever built it hadn't imagined anyone looking down from the sky, and so the clearing lay plainly exposed.
I asked Cho to take us closer and spent a good while circling and surveying, but the Mountain Stronghold was silent as the grave.
"Looks like it's safe to go down, don't you think?"
"Yes. There isn't a soul down there."
We set down boldly in the center of the Mountain Stronghold, where there was no sign of life whatsoever, but not one of the Green Forest bandits appeared to greet us.
We checked several of the wooden cabins, but all we found were a few corpses already so decayed their bones showed through.
It was when we stepped into the largest of the log cabins.
The inside of the log cabin was filled with medicinal herbs, and Medicinal Pills.
A single corpse, sprawled facedown on the floor and decayed to the bone, greeted Hwa-eun and the rest of us.
"This looks like where the boss lived, doesn't it?"
"Is this guy the boss?"
"I'll take a look at the medicine first."
"Understood. Hwa-eun, I'll search for anything else out of the ordinary."
-Tssrit!
"You want to help too? W-well, all right then. Cho, if you find anything strange, find it and bring it to Daddy."
-Tsurur!
While Hwa-eun examined the Medicinal Pills and the medicine, Cho and I set about inspecting the other things in the log cabin separately.
Cho, who had insisted on helping and been frantically poking around, came crawling out from under the dining table in front of the fallen corpse with a book clamped in her mouth, hauled up out of the dust.
-Tssrit!
"Oh-ho, well done, my girl."
It wasn't as if Cho could read, so she surely hadn't found anything remarkable; but the moment I patted her on the head and took the book from her,
a familiar emblem caught my eye.
There on the cover of the book, I saw, was a drawing of the five Venomous Creatures I had seen in the underground Secret Cave of the Five Poisons Sect.
*****
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