Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

“Thanks to the influence of the heavenly vein and the earth vein, the cultivators of White Night City are, as expected, growing quickly, and the inn we built at the center of the Heavenly Source is finally fully booked.”

One morning, about a few months after taking Yubing in.

I was in the middle of receiving the once-every-fifteen-days report from Senior Sister.

It began with the news that the people of White Night City were growing very well, and that after we built an inn where the heavenly vein and earth vein passed through and made it usable by anyone who paid spirit stones, it had finally filled up with guests.

Originally, there had been an unspoken rule here in the First Heaven that anyone could use such places.

But that was only true on the surface.

If even a high-level cultivator settled down in an especially good spot like the Heavenly Source, where the heavenly vein and earth vein overlapped and flowed together, everyone else would get nervous and end up unable to use it.

The energy flowing through the Heavenly Source was vast, and many kinds of energy were mixed together there.

Cultivators usually only use one or two kinds of energy, and even though they could not possibly use all of that enormous energy alone, meaning dozens of people could use it together, they still ended up not using it for fear that they might get harmed.

There was an unspoken rule here from the First Heaven to the Eighth Heaven that cultivators could not attack one another, but since there was no actual law, there was no guarantee that rule would be kept.

After all, there was no way to completely rule out the possibility that some cultivator right on the verge of ascension might casually rip open someone’s belly and run.

But once our White Night City was established, we opened that place up for a set fee.

Anyone could use it as long as they paid spirit stones.

And we said White Night City itself would take responsibility for the safety too.

Of course, business had not gone well from the very start.

At first the reaction had been, how could anyone trust us, but Bulsiho’s Ten-Thousand Demon Forest, the Nine-Heaven Demon Tower, and the Ink Shadow Altar had each done a little viral promotion for us.

The people at the top had each dropped by once to cultivate there and then gone back.

Bulsiho could not make contact with an expelled disciple, so she dropped by under the excuse of looking at Yubing’s face from a distance, while the Nine-Heaven Demon Tower was practically family with us by now anyway.

And the Ink Shadow Altar came by in order to repay the debt they owed.

So in the end the rumor spread like this.

That our White Night City was a cultivation paradise where I guaranteed safety, a place people could use without worry.

Since last week, cultivators had come flooding in carrying armloads of spirit stones.

“There are even people asking about reservations now, so I think we need to put up a new building off to the side. Give me permission, Junior Brother.”

The business was going so well that spirit stones were piling up in the storehouses, and with that the children were thriving too, but what Senior Sister was saying was that we needed to build White Night Inn Number Two and she wanted my approval.

“You really can just handle that kind of thing yourself, Senior Sister.”

“No, still, things like this have to be approved by an outsider— no, by someone from outside the city. I mean, by an outsider.”

Senior Sister had grown quite comfortable with me.

Now she even spoke more casually too.

But even so, when it came to things like formal approval, she always kept a hard line, so this was her report asking permission for the new construction.

“All right. Then I approve it.”

“Got it, Junior Brother. Thanks.”

“No need to thank me. I should be the grateful one. Then is that the end of the report?”

I thought it was over by now, so I asked, but Chief Steward Mong-a spoke up.

“I have also organized the earnings from the past fifteen days separately. What would you like done with those?”

Account books. A headache.

I tossed that straight to Hwa-eun.

“Please show that to Hwa-eun.”

“Understood.”

“Then are we done?”

That was just as we were more or less wrapping things up.

Senior Sister’s office— no, was it my office now?

The door to the office swung open, and one young lady and two little girls ran inside.

“Dad, we finally did it!”

“Dad, we did it!”

“Fufu. Look, Dad. We did it!”

The young lady and the two girls were Cho, Hyang, and Bini.

Cho, Hyang, and Bini were all dressed up in silk clothes, spinning around and showing off.

Yubing was following behind them.

“Oh, you finally succeeded!?”

Delighted, I hugged the three who came clinging to me.

Because they had succeeded at Transformation Arts.

One of the weaknesses of our household had been that they were vulnerable to Dao Techniques and Law Arts, and while Ji-ryeon had learned some of that to a degree, the problem was that she could not teach it to anyone other than herself.

No, she could teach it, but the problem was that before learning the kind of foundational inner cultivation method needed to handle energy in the first place, dual cultivation had to come first.

So Ji-ryeon could teach me, and I could teach my wives, but I could not teach the children who could not dual cultivate, or the other spirit-creatures.

For that reason, we had needed a capable cultivator who could teach Dao Techniques and Law Arts, and Yubing had shown up at just the right time and become an excellent teacher.

The world Yubing had ascended from was apparently one based on Dao Techniques and Law Arts, so Yubing’s fundamentals were solid, and since Yubing had once reached the Primordial Infant Stage, Yubing was perfect for teaching others.

And so the first thing Yubing started teaching was how to let the power of the inner cores inside the spirit-creature children’s bodies be used for Dao Techniques and Law Arts, and the second was that very Transformation Art.

“You worked hard, Yubing.”

“It was nothing, Oppa. My nieces are smart, so they were fun to teach.”

There was a slightly dangerous reason why Transformation Arts had become the first technique among the countless Law Arts.

It was back when I first introduced Yubing.

“All right, everyone, say hello. This is Yubing. From now on, Yubing is part of our family. I took Yubing in as a younger brother— no, a younger sister, so treat Yubing well.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Yubing.”

—Tsrurur. 『Nice to meet you, Sister. I’m Cho.』

—Sia. 『I’m Cheong-yu.』

—Krrr. 『I am Cheongwol.』

It was after everyone had finished greeting Yubing.

Once the greetings were over, Cheongwol tilted the head and asked,

—Krrr. 『But that one seems to be around the Golden Core Stage, so how is that a fully transformed body? Is it a magic treasure?』

Yubing was only at the Golden Core Stage, yet looked like a human in complete transformed form, so apparently Cheongwol had been curious about that.

“Ah, n-no. This is just Transformation Arts.”

—Krrng. 『Transformation Arts!? What is that? Is it something anyone can learn?』

—Chii. 『Tr-Transformation Arts!? What is that?』

The children’s intense reaction flustered Yubing.

“Yes, of course. Any cultivator above the Qi Refining Stage can learn it.”

—Shiia. 『Could we learn that too, maybe?』

—Krrrung. 『Yes, is there any chance we could learn it?』

“Of course. It is not even that difficult a Law Art.”

The moment Yubing said that carelessly, the children came swarming over.

The children surrounded Yubing and started pleading.

—Krrrung. 『Please teach us that.』

—Chii. 『Yes, please.』

Yubing, faced with the children’s passionate reaction, had looked at me.

I nodded.

Some of the children were so large that they had to stay underground, so I had thought it would not be a bad thing for them to learn.

Inside Dokmul-hyang it did not matter, but since the children were living inside White Night City for the sake of cultivation, there were inconvenient things because of their size.

“If you can teach them, I would appreciate it. We are people from the Zhongyuan martial world, the kind called monstrous strength users, so when it comes to Dao Techniques and Law Arts, we are complete outsiders.”

“Then I will teach you.”

And that was how the Transformation Arts lessons began, but when I tried learning the Law Arts Yubing taught along with everyone else, I got a headache and quit.

This was not something you could just casually learn.

Martial arts look like the realm of technique, but to be precise, they are the realm of sensation.

At the level of novices, exact forms and efficient control of energy decide who is better, but the higher your realm rises, the more important sensation becomes.

And on top of that, the cultivation methods that form the root of martial arts are about feeling energy and learning how to use it intuitively, so to become a master, you absolutely have to be naturally outstanding in that sense.

But the Dao Techniques Yubing taught were exactly the opposite.

Calculation.

No, if it were something like solving a math problem, it would have been more manageable.

I am the type who gave up on math, but if I kept at it, would I not get better somehow?

Usually the reason people give up on math is because they never built the fundamentals properly, or because they failed to master the middle steps while following the curriculum and could not move on to the next stage.

If I learned it properly from the beginning, there was no way I would not be able to get it.

But entry into these Dao Techniques was not about plugging values into formulas step by step and solving the problem.

It was more like, you put the problem in and the answer popped out.

Yeah, to be exact, it was like installing the programming language used in a calculator inside your head.

So that as long as you put the numbers in, the answer would pop right out.

Maybe it was because Yubing was teaching Law Arts made for spirit-creatures, but that was how it felt to me.

So I gave up, but the children studied hard.

At least until about a month passed and they found out that Transformation Arts had a fatal weakness.

“What’s this, why is everyone not practicing Transformation Arts?”

It was about a month after the children started learning Law Arts.

I went down underground, and the atmosphere was strange.

Normally Yubing would sit in the middle, watching over the others as they took their first steps into Law Arts, or guiding the children who had already passed that stage while they performed Transformation Arts.

But today, everyone was scattered around, drawing in energy, and only a few remained in front of Yubing.

At my question, Cheongwol and older sister Jeokwol answered.

—Krrng. 『It has a huge weakness, so we decided not to learn it.』

—Chii. 『Yeah, So-ryong. They said it has a weakness.』

“A weakness?”

What weakness could Transformation Arts possibly have?

It just changed the body, that was all.

Just as I was making a baffled face.

Yubing quietly spoke to me through Voice Transmission, which I had taught in place of Dao Techniques.

[When I said Transformation Arts immediately break if your emotions shift too sharply or something like that...]

Right, now that I thought about it, even the spirit-creature cultivators standing guard back when I went to the Ten-Thousand Demon Forest had been startled, pissed themselves, and had their transformations come undone.

But that should not be too much of a problem for daily life.

More importantly, was this really something that needed to be discussed through Voice Transmission?

[That is the weakness?]

When I tilted my head, Yubing fidgeted and said,

[Yes. Once I told the older sisters that transformations break under sharp emotional changes, they asked whether it also breaks during du-dual cultivation. Naturally, I said yes, and then...]

[Dual cultivation?]

[They said they had been planning to do du-dual cultivation with you using this...]

No wonder their reaction had been so passionate.

To think that was the reason.

[S-so that is how it is...?]

It felt like, just as my wives had said, I really needed to prepare myself mentally.

As for who my next dual cultivation partner should be.

Whether it would be a butterfly, a snake, a scorpion, a toad, a frog, a millipede, or a wasp.

If you cannot avoid it, enjoy it.

That was the kind of thought I had.

After all, it was not as though I could keep hiding my relationship with Yo-hwa forever, was it?

The others were bound to feel hurt.

No, they might even feel betrayed.

That Yo-hwa, another spirit-creature just like them, was allowed, while they were not.

My wives had said that if I gave permission, they were willing to accept all of them.

Ji-ryeon had said something about an emperor or whatever, probably thinking that if a few more were added, it was all the same anyway, and maybe she had been influenced by that.

Hoo... the sky is as dark as that universe.

Anyway, after most of them gave up, the ones left were Cho, Hyang, Bini, Hongdan, and Seol, Bing, and Dong.

And among the ones who remained, Cho, Hyang, and Bini had succeeded first.

“By the way, when you use Transformation Arts, you can speak properly in human language instead of making crying sounds.”

“Looks like it.”

“It’s amazing.”

“Then to congratulate the three of you, what should we eat in the market?”

“Sounds good, Dad.”

“Good!”

To celebrate the children, I came out to the market to eat food made of spiritual energy that the children could eat too.

In the cultivation world, they made and sold food using spiritual herbs infused with spiritual energy, grains, and even spiritual energy itself, so the children could eat it as well.

The four of us were crossing the market together.

“Dad, buy me that. That one’s tasty.”

“Ah, candied fruit. Shopkeeper, could I get three candied fruits?”

“Oh my. Lord So-ryong, welcome. Ah, you came out with the young ladies. Here you are. Candied fruit. I will not take any spirit stones.”

“Oh, that simply will not do.”

Hyang had asked me to buy some candied fruit made with spiritual energy, and while I was buying it, I heard a familiar voice.

“Elder, it has been a long time.”

When I turned my head, the Ink Shadow Ghost Galma was floating nearby.

That resentful spirit from the Ink Shadow Altar, the greatest information network from the First Heaven to the Eighth Heaven in the lower river.

“Ah, it has been a while. What brings you here?”

When I greeted Galma warmly, Galma bowed the head.

“We finally found it.”

“Oh, finally?”

“Yes, Elder.”

Whatever Galma said had been found, it felt like it had to be that Fierce Poison Water Louse, and sure enough, that was the answer I got.

“We found that Fierce Poison Water Louse you asked us to locate.”

“Ohhh. Finally! So, where is it?”

“It is in the Dark Sea of the Sixth Heaven, which is managed by the Jet-Black Sea.”

The Dark Sea meant the deep sea.

Apparently the fierce poisonous jellyfish we were looking for was in the deep sea, and Galma scratched the head and said,

“But it is a rather combative one. We went there and said there was a sick person and asked whether we could obtain some poison, and it said it would help us if we defeated it.”

Apparently the Ink Shadow Altar had tried negotiating in advance, and it seemed that had failed.

Thinking I would finally get to loosen up my body a bit after a long time, I said,

“That sounds fun.”

And then I got a rather awkward reply.

“But the thing is, it is a martial contest for marriage...”

A martial contest for marriage.

Win against it, and it would become my wife and help me.

“Uh...”