Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

“Y-Yo-hwa. You can’t... nghk.”

The So-ryong Sword felt like it slid in with a soft thunk.

A useless breath got swallowed.

At the same time, I couldn’t say a single word.

“Huuuhk.”

Whenever I tried to speak, that useless breath got swallowed.

After a long while of swallowing useless breaths like that—

-Heeheehee. “O-Older Brother...”

Yo-hwa, who had been devouring me with her mouth, naturally kept moving and continued with both hands.

It really seemed like both hands were an instinctive domain for spirit-creatures.

How was she this skilled without ever learning it?

Yo-hwa’s body—no matter how human-shaped she made it—was still based on some kind of chitin shell, so even though it was soft, there was always this hard, plastic-like feeling you couldn’t erase, but the inside flesh wasn’t like that.

Insanely soft.

It wrapped around me.

“Gyaaaah!”

The moment I connected with Yo-hwa, inside that scream I was letting out in my head, my yang energy started draining out even faster than before.

In dual cultivation, your yang energy gets sucked out at the last moment, but with Yo-hwa, the second we started, my yang energy was being sucked out like it had gone crazy.

It looked like dual cultivation and eating were happening at the same time.

I had to pull in as much surrounding energy as I could and convert it into yang energy.

But even so, it wasn’t enough.

Like she was trying to dry Older Brother to death, my yang energy was draining into Yo-hwa at a crazy speed.

At this rate, it felt like I was going to end up as a dried corpse.

Up until now my head had been full of nothing but how I was supposed to explain this to my wives, but I realized that wasn’t what mattered right now.

You had to live first if you were going to apologize, didn’t you?

It was right when I realized I needed to figure out how to survive—

I felt a gigantic earth-vein flowing beneath my feet.

Come to think of it, hadn’t they said this Black Tree Forest was also a place where an earth-vein ran?

I decided to draw in as much of the earth-vein I felt beneath my feet as possible, convert it into yang energy, and pass it to Yo-hwa.

Otherwise, it felt like I was going to get dried out completely.

“E-earth-vein...”

I stretched my energy toward the earth-vein and took it into my body through the blood pathways in the soles of my feet, and thankfully, this energy was the energy of something hot flowing under the ground.

It was an energy packed full of yang, like magma.

With this, I could pull out efficient yang energy.

“I’m saved.”

Relieved, I sucked it in and sent it into Yo-hwa’s body.

Yo-hwa’s body shone brighter each time she accepted yang energy, and when I filled her whole body up with yang energy—

Yo-hwa arched her waist and let out a moan.

“Ah!”

A flash of light that wrapped around everything.

The light that burst from Yo-hwa’s body swallowed up the surroundings, and right then and there, Yo-hwa’s shell peeled off and fell backward.

Maybe because she’d ingested a huge amount of yang energy all at once, it looked like she’d evolved or broken through a realm.

With her shell shed, Yo-hwa’s body changed from that soft plastic-like body into skin that felt completely human—and I could even feel body heat.

Judging by the size of the energy I could feel, it seemed like she’d reached the Golden Core Stage.

On top of that, she looked like someone you could call perfectly human.

Maybe she was exhausted—she was panting, leaning into my body—but after a moment she slowly opened her eyes and looked utterly flustered.

-Heeheehee. “W-Why am I...?”

Her eyes had suddenly rolled back earlier, so it probably hadn’t been Yo-hwa’s will.

It was obvious: on a day she was just hungry enough and took Aunt-Master’s medicine, her reason had snapped.

That medicine had been weird.

It felt like it was feeding energy into the So-ryong Sword, but it didn’t seem like that was the only effect.

Yeah—if you thought about it, Yo-hwa liked platonic love more than physical love.

Like tying strings around each other’s ankles or wrists—fresh, innocent stuff like that.

Yo-hwa hurriedly apologized.

-Heeheehee. “Older Brother, s-sorry.”

“R-right. For now, could you move aside a bit?”

She was still straddling me, so I asked her to move, but Yo-hwa suddenly burst into tears.

-Heeheeheehee. “S-sorry, Older Brother. Yo-hwa is a bad kid.”

When Yo-hwa cried with her body pressed against mine, the feeling transferred directly into my body.

“Yo-hwa, it’s fine, so c-calm down and just... a little...”

It was a weird feeling, her body trembling as she cried.

I was begging her to please move aside, but Yo-hwa just kept crying.

-Heehee. “Sniff... Yo-hwa... Yo-hwa...”

That was when it happened.

From inside the golden cocoon Yo-hwa had made, I heard Aunt-Master’s voice.

“Mother, I apologize. This happened because of my medicine.”

We looked over there and spoke in the exact same voice.

“Mother?”

“For some reason, you seem not to know about our species. If you release me, I will explain.”

When I nodded, Yo-hwa quickly pulled away from me and untied me from the chair.

I turned around and hurriedly got dressed, and Yo-hwa went over and slashed the cocoon with her nail.

The cocoon split open with a ripping sound.

Aunt-Master sprang out from inside, blood at the corner of his mouth.

Maybe he still hadn’t recovered from that shock earlier—he still couldn’t properly steady his body, but even so, he flattened himself on the floor and bowed to Yo-hwa.

“I greet you, Mother’s seventh child.”

An extremely polite posture.

Just like he’d called her Mother, it was a posture like he was facing a parent.

Before Yo-hwa’s human father died, I’d heard Yo-hwa had been found as a hatchling.

They’d brought her home and raised her—Yo-hwa.

So I didn’t think she could possibly be the mother of a spirit-creature like Aunt-Master from hundreds of years ago, but Aunt-Master began explaining.

“Originally, all human-faced spiders are female, but among them, only the one who can lay eggs is called Mother. She is like the empress of our species.

“There is only one Mother per generation. When Mother is nearing death, she gives birth to the next Mother, and even if the Mother who gave birth to us differs, all human-faced spiders are made to revere and follow Mother.”

So Yo-hwa—the one we called the Gold-Masked Spider King—was the queen of the human-faced spiders.

That was why Aunt-Master, also a human-faced spider, was acting that respectful.

But there was something I didn’t understand.

He said the others were made to revere and follow her, but Yo-hwa had been found alone by humans and raised by human hands.

If it were normal, shouldn’t other human-faced spiders have raised her?

Because a queen was something you protected.

Bees and ants usually protect their queen to an obsessive degree.

“But if she’s that important, how did Yo-hwa end up alone...”

“Alone?”

“Ah, I mean...”

When I explained Yo-hwa’s upbringing to Aunt-Master, Aunt-Master spoke with a shocked expression.

“If it was the previous generation, it was probably the Mother who gave birth to me, but it seems my siblings were all hunted by humans or something similar, so she couldn’t gather much energy.

“She’s supposed to gather energy and even give birth to the children who will protect the next Mother, but...”

“Ah...”

Come to think of it, hadn’t they said that what the Tang Clan hunted the most were human-faced spiders?

Thinking about it that way, it made sense.

Yo-hwa was raised by humans, but they said human-faced spiders other than Yo-hwa usually sucked yang energy until their partners became dried corpses.

Then naturally, the odds of being hunted by martial artists would be high.

I didn’t really have any other questions about Yo-hwa, so that was enough, and I decided to ask what I hadn’t been able to ask earlier.

That thing called “the greater cause.”

Because we’d been cut off mid-conversation.

“Anyway, what was that greater cause you mentioned earlier?”

“Ah, that?

“He caught the eye of Immortal Taiyi Haichan, and he seduced Tang Hwa-seong...”

I vaguely remembered hearing about it when I learned Immortal Haichan’s martial arts.

He wasn’t as high an immortal as Nine Heavens Hyeonnyeo, but Immortal °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° Haichan was a symbol of wealth.

He was revered as an immortal who brought riches and fortune.

There was a reason for that—his divine object was cash coins, and a three-legged toad, the Three-Legged Toad.

That was why he was revered as an immortal who symbolized wealth.

In the Central Plains, toads were originally a symbol that brought blessings, and if it was holding cash coins too, wasn’t it obviously a symbol of wealth?

He’d picked his divine object well, so he was an immortal people liked.

Aunt-Master continued.

“...He said, how long are we going to let spirit-creatures have their blood and flesh and inner cores taken by humans? He said we should create a place where spirit-creatures can live happily, and create the world.”

“Create the world?”

“He said we should expand the Heavenly Heart Abyss Poison Peach Blossom Realm and make a new world, and create a world there where spirit-creatures can live happily—something like that.”

Creating the world meant making a world.

I didn’t know if that was really possible, but an immortal wouldn’t say something that couldn’t be done.

‘Is he some kind of animal lover because he raises toads?’

I didn’t know the details, but since a toad was his divine object, it seemed like he was very interested in the welfare of spirit-creatures and the like.

I nodded along, then asked.

“It sounds like a good story, so why did it become a problem?”

“There’s a reason. In this cultivation world, there’s a story called Investiture of the Gods, and it says that if you seal 365 immortals, you can create the world.

“Immortal Haichan ordered Tang Hwa-seong to gather one hundred and eight spirit-creatures like that. Whether those spirit-creatures wanted it or not. For the sake of making a new world.”

I knew Investiture of the Gods too.

An apprentice immortal named Taigong Wang seals 365 immortals on his master’s orders, all to establish a new divine realm.

So the meaning of one hundred and eight I’d heard from the Ink Shadow Altar must have been this.

Meaning Aunt-Master must have split away because he didn’t like kidnapping spirit-creatures who didn’t want it.

And the master’s stance was probably that it was unavoidable for the greater cause.

I nodded and continued.

“Now I finally understand what you mean. But lately, energy started leaking out of my master’s True Body Dharma Treasure that I left in the Nine Heavens, so I’m suspicious that something might have happened to Master...”

Aunt-Master, like he’d known it, erupted in anger.

“T-True Body Dharma Treasure!? I knew it. He either got tricked by that bastard Immortal Haichan, or he definitely ran into trouble while kidnapping other spirit-creatures. That toad bastard!”

It was right as Aunt-Master was venting his fury—

Aunt-Master suddenly coughed and spat blood.

“Cough...”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. It’s just that I’m holding on with Dao arts while dying because I couldn’t raise my realm, so my recovery isn’t good.”

I’d heard something like that earlier too.

Probably his lifespan had run out because he couldn’t raise his realm.

It looked like he’d frozen that state with Dao arts, so I looked at Yo-hwa and said.

“Yo-hwa. That ability you have—where you make spiders grow. Can you use that on Aunt-Master too?”

She needed to be scolded for trying to violate me earlier, but wasn’t she a dying spirit-creature who’d also been starving for over a hundred years, half out of her mind?

And Aunt-Master was even my junior sister’s acquaintance.

We had to save him first.

If I supplied the energy of the Heavenly Heart Abyss Poison Peach Blossom Realm, and with Yo-hwa’s technique on top of it, I thought we might be able to raise Aunt-Master’s realm.

At my words, Yo-hwa glared at Aunt-Master once, but then she nodded.

-Heehee. “Okay, Older Brother.”

When Yo-hwa and I approached, Aunt-Master, who had been prostrated, trembled as if overwhelmed.

“Th-thank you. Mother. And Father.”

“Father?”

My eyes went wide when he suddenly called me Father.

Come to think of it, Aunt-Master had been using polite speech with me this whole time.

At my question, Aunt-Master answered in an extremely respectful manner.

“Originally, we human-faced spiders cannot reproduce alone. Mother forms a pair with a human and gives birth to children.

“Mother has formed a pair, so now you are our Father.”

“......”

My words caught in my throat.

I had no idea how I was supposed to explain this to my wives.