Chapter 167: Wildfire (4)
Translator: bjgoofy
'No, this really doesn't match at all.'
The name dripped with cool sophistication, utterly at odds with the creature's pathetic appearance, so I turned my head, hair crackling and blazing, to look at Hwayang.
The dopey, vacant little face that came into view.
The moment our eyes met, the flames rising from the creature's back swelled and shrank, over and over.
For an instant, it struck me that a cute name like Orange Potato Toad would suit that blank little face far better than a slick, stylish name like Blue Flame Magma Toad.
The reason I'd thought up a name like that was the creature's potato-like appearance, because in my past life, "potato" in the Central Plains tongue was called maryeongseo.
It was such an unusual name that it even got used as material for fantasy novels, but the reason a potato ended up with the peculiar name maryeongseo was simply that it resembled the oval bells hung on horses, hence "horse-bell potato".
So Orange Potato Toad, orange horse-bell toad, was a genuinely adorable name.
It absolutely did not refer to any other (?) sort of bell.
'Now that's a cute and realistic name.'
Nodding along to myself, I asked Hwa-eun.
Why on earth was our pathetic little Hwayang's name so grand?
"Blue Flame Magma Toad?"
Since seomseo meant toad, it seemed the Central Plains classified Hwayang as a toad, but this Fabre here couldn't be certain of the creature's classification.
Classification was a matter to ponder later, so I set it aside for now.
But rather than answer my question, Hwa-eun stepped up to me and asked in an urgent voice.
"So, Soryong, how much Internal Energy do you have left?"
I was more curious about the origin of the name, but I answered Hwa-eun's question first.
The way she asked, so hurried, made it sound important.
And since I'd done something wrong, I had to read the room.
That way I'd surely take at least one fewer smack across the back later.
"Uh.... about half right now? Why do you ask about my Internal Energy?"
At that, Hwa-eun wiped the cold sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, then leaned in close, drew one or two deep breaths, and explained.
"Listen carefully, Soryong. Don't panic, and calm yourself as much as you can. You have to keep your mind at peace."
"Huh? O-okay."
I knew that when the mind grew anxious, Internal Energy was consumed faster, so I nodded, and the explanation continued.
An unbelievable truth spilled from Hwa-eun's lips.
"Hwayang is a Blue Flame Magma Toad. A Venomous Creature, and the sovereign of toads, holding one of the seats among the Ten Great Venomous Creatures."
"Haaah!? H-Hwayang is one of the Ten Great Venomous Creatures!? A s-sovereign!? R-really!?"
No way, that pathetic little thing was one of the Ten Great Venomous Creatures and the sovereign of toads.
When I asked back with a look of disbelief, Hwa-eun nodded.
"Yes, I'm certain. This is the first time I've seen one too, but 'Magma flows across its back, and blue flames leap upward.' That's what was written in The Compendium of Venomous Creatures Under Heaven, which I checked and committed to memory when you asked me to look into it before. So I'm sure of it."
"If you've never seen one before.... you could be mistaking it for something else...."
No matter how closely it matched the book, the idea that an orange potato was one of the Ten Great Venomous Creatures and the sovereign of toads was hard to believe.
When I floated the question of whether there might be some other, similar Venomous Creature, Hwa-eun pointed at the flames above my head.
"Blue Flame. It says that above a poisoned person or beast, Blue Flame blooms, and the Blue Flame burns away all of the poisoned person's or beast's energy. And once all the energy has burned away...."
"Once it burns away?"
When I echoed her last words at the way Hwa-eun suddenly trailed off, she cupped her hand slightly as if holding an egg, then spread it wide open and uttered a single sound.
"Poof."
"Eeeek!"
-Whoosh!
At Hwa-eun's word, the flames above my head shot up huge.
No matter how hard I tried to calm down, this was not a situation anyone could calm down about.
Going bald, which was what I'd been worried about, at least left the head intact, but this meant not just the head, everything would vanish.
The story was that the flames above my head would keep burning, using the energy inside my body as fuel, and once all the energy was gone, it would burst with a poof.
She'd said that ordinary people and beasts had energy too, but since their amount was surely less than a martial artist's, they'd burst in an instant, while for a martial artist it granted a life on borrowed time.
Poison this potent absolutely earned its place among the Ten Great Venomous Creatures.
As the flames shot up, my Internal Energy was draining fast, so I asked in a frantic voice.
"Wh-what do we do!?"
"Hwa-eun, what happens to our Ryong then!?"
At my and Seol noona's frantic questions, Hwa-eun rolled up her sleeves and said.
"There's no other way. It worries me a little that Grandfather and Father aren't here, but Seol noona and I are here, so if anything should happen, we'll do everything we can to handle it. Take in Hwayang's poison."
At Hwa-eun's words, my head cleared like a sky breaking sunny.
"Ah! There was that method!?"
"Ah, r-right!"
Both Seol noona and I had been too flustered to think of it, but now that I did, of course.
With the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Technique, or rather its source, the Beast Heart Technique, if I took in Hwayang's poison as one of the Five Poisons, the poisoning would be resolved.
Because a Poison Technique, in order to raise the level of the Poison Technique, granted absolute resistance to any poison it took in.
Hwayang looked so pathetic that I'd dismissed the idea, but if the creature was one of the Ten Great Venomous Creatures, then that one fact would solve everything.
'Wait, then why the hell did I bust my ass so hard last time?'
And the moment I realized that fact.
The memory of how I'd busted my ass when the upstream flood sent trees crashing into the boat surfaced, and my mind went blank.
I should have just listened to Hwa-eun back then.
If I'd taken in Hwayang's poison back then, there would have been no reason to bust my ass like that.
I'd thought I'd been screwed over and screwed over and screwed over, but that had probably been a sign from heaven trying to stop me, a fool who chose the path of hardship like an idiot when an easy road lay right there.
'Listen to me, you're gonna bust your ass, I'm telling you.'
Heaven had kept giving me signs, and yet I'd chosen the most dangerous route all on my own and felt reassured about it.
'There was a reason the sages of my past life said you should listen to the navigation, your mother, and your wife.... Kuhhh....'
Feeling tears pouring down inside like a waterfall, I said to Hwa-eun.
"O-okay. Got it, Hwa-eun."
"Cho, keep watch around us and don't let anyone come near. Noona, watch over Soryong and me, and if anything happens, help handle it with me."
"Got it! Hwa-eun!"
-Tssrit!
As Cho rose into the air at Hwa-eun's request and began circling around us, I lifted Hwayang and cradled it in my arms.
It had reached its Adult Form, but that only meant it had gone from tadpole to frog, and Hwayang was still small in size.
Sitting in the Cross-legged Posture, I set Hwayang, a bit bigger than a human head, on my knees and called up the Oral Formula of the Beast Heart Technique in my mind.
At that, the flames rising from Hwayang's back merged with the flames burning on my head, and a great blue blaze rose up around Hwayang and me.
-Whoosh!
My eyes closed, and my consciousness slowly sank.
***
I chanted the Oral Formula of the Beast Heart Technique, and when I closed my eyes and opened them again, what spread out before me was a great pond.
The one thing that set it apart from an ordinary pond was that it was brimming with boiling, seething lava.
-Bubble bubble.
It was a bizarre sight, but I'd already been through it twice with Cho and Bin, so this time I didn't panic.
This place was surely some kind of Mental Image or something of the sort.
'Now I've got to find Hwayang here, right?'
And recalling how it had gone with Cho and Bin, the thought came that the next step now was to find Hwayang here, so I decided to look for it.
When Cho had come to, she'd been holding me, but with Bin, maybe because we'd been apart, I'd had to go find her myself.
I had no idea why, when I'd been holding Hwayang, it wasn't nearby.
'Hwayang's a toad, so it'll be in the pond, right?'
Hwayang was, first of all, a toad.
The odds were high it'd be inside the pond, so I decided to search the pond first.
As I circled the pond a moment to find Hwayang, there, beyond the rising flames of lava, in the center of the pond, was a small island.
Focusing my Eye Power between the flames to examine the island, I caught sight of the figure of a person lying in the island's center, wavering between the flames.
'That must be Hwayang.'
Judging from Cho's and Bin's cases, if a person appeared within this Mental Image, that was likely Hwayang itself.
Finding the spot nearest the island, I shouted toward it.
"Hwayang! Hwayang!"
But Hwayang lay on the island without the slightest movement.
It seemed I'd have to go over there myself.
"Anyway, how do I cross this?"
I needed to get across, but what spread out before me was a pond of boiling lava.
As I puzzled over just how in the world to cross it, boulders that rose up here and there across the pond like stepping stones caught my eye.
That was the only way.
I figured I'd have to unleash my Qinggong to the fullest, stepping on those to make my way over to Hwayang.
'Phew. Well, it's inside a Mental Image, so let's give it a shot.'
A moment later, I calculated the route across the stepping stones, drew up the optimal course, fixed it in my head, took a running start from a distance, and leapt into the pond.
-Tat!
As I flew over the lava toward a jutting boulder, I felt the heat rising off the seething lava.
It was only because the boulders jutted up amid the lava, but it wasn't so much that I couldn't cross with my Qinggong, so I made it to the island at the center of the pond with ease.
And when I reached the island at the pond's center, what came into view was a woman with an orange bob, lying asleep on her side.
'So Hwayang was female!? Nice!'
The moment I saw Hwayang's form, the one word that burst out of me was, precisely, nice.
Because if a woman appeared here, that meant Hwayang was female.
Judging from Cho's and Bin's cases, if a woman appeared within this Mental Image, it meant the Venomous Creature in question was female, so admiration escaped me on its own.
Of course, this wasn't to say I was glad Hwayang was female, but rather that among amphibians, the female is bigger and grander than the male.
Amphibian females, which lay huge numbers of eggs, are usually far larger than males, so they can be raised big and grand, which makes a female preferable to a male.
One of the Ten Great Venomous Creatures, and female to boot, aside from her pathetic looks, she was a creature truly to my liking.
"Hwayang?"
As I approached the creature sleeping on her side with a cheerful heart and called her name, only then did she flinch.
"Hwayang, wake up. It's me."
When I kept calling her and crouched down beside her, she raised herself upright, sat, and gazed at me with bleary, half-lidded eyes.
The same vacant expression she wore in her true form.
From the look in her eyes, she was indeed Hwayang.
'Well, I've found Hwayang, and the next step is....'
I'd woken Hwayang, but I couldn't recall what came after this, so when I thought back on how it had gone with Cho and Bin, what came to mind was an embrace.
Looking at her, I felt a bit awkward.
Because it was a little strange to just up and ask for an embrace out of nowhere.
Cho and Bin I'd picked up and raised from eggs, so the sense of them as my daughters was strong, and it wasn't awkward even in their woman forms, but Hwayang had the form of a grown woman, so it was awkward after all.
And since she'd only ever been inside her water jar, I'd built up little intimacy with her.
'What should I do?'
While I puzzled over how to embrace her without it being awkward, I decided I should first exchange a proper greeting.
Since it was a Mental Image connected through martial arts, I thought I'd share some simple reflection or the like.
"Hwayang, uh, we're about to have our minds connected through martial arts, and once that happens, we'll......."
But no sooner had I begun speaking than the creature started nodding off, dozing.
'Wait, is this thing serious?'
To wake her, I decided to bring out the word she loved most.
"Food!"
The instant the word "food" was thrown out.
Hwayang's body suddenly shot upward, and in a flash she lunged at me as I looked down at her.
"Guhk!"
And she landed right on top of me where I'd fallen.
My vision slowly darkened.
It seemed this much physical contact was enough even without an embrace, and as my vision faded to black, the thought came to me that Hwayang really was one consistent creature.
*****
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