Chapter 2: . The Bird That Drinks Poison (2)

A gloomy, dark cave.

Stalactites hung from the ceiling, and droplets fell from their tips.

Drip— drip—

Immediately after opening his eyes, Dang Sobaek could not properly grasp his situation.

Wings in place of arms, thin and slender legs, soft down densely covering his body, and a small beak jutting out.

That was the truth.

Dang Sobaek had begun a new life not as a ‘human,’ but as a mere insignificant creature.

More precisely, he had been reborn with the memories of his previous life intact. And in the body of a bird, no less.

’It seems I must have committed a great many sins in my previous life.’

Was there not such a saying in the Buddhist teachings? That life and death repeated themselves across the Six Realms according to one’s karma.

To have been born as nothing more than a beast, it seemed he had accumulated a great deal of karma in his previous life. That was why he had been reborn with the memories of that life intact.

To live in the body of a beast while possessing the mind of a human was, in itself, a punishment little different from a sentence of torment.

Dang Sobaek spread his wings and moved his legs as well.

’Even moving this body is difficult.’

Every one of his senses was utterly different from when he had been human.

His field of vision was strangely broad, yet his ability to distinguish colors was dull. The noise pouring into his ears was all amplified, while the smell of damp earth and the rank odor of feathers mixed together and made his head swim.

It felt as though all four limbs had been shackled. Nothing obeyed him as he wished.

When he slowly turned his head, he saw the chicks that had awakened alongside him.

’Including myself, that made six in total?’

CHEEP— CHEEAK— CHEEP—!

Creatures no bigger than a man’s palm shrieked noisily for quite some time. He felt an urge to cover his ears, but—

’Haah... I have no hands.’

It was impossible.

He tried wrapping himself with his wings, but sound seeped through the gaps between them.

FLAP—!!

At that moment, from the mouth of the cave, a bird with deep green feathers flew inside. Clamped in its beak was a large centipede.

’The mother, perhaps?’

There was something strangely familiar about the sight.

The bird, which he assumed to be the mother, set the centipede down in front of Dang Sobaek and the chicks.

But,

’That is a venom centipede.’

It was not something that ought to have been eaten.

It resembled the venom centipedes that lived in the western regions of the Central Plains. Judging especially by the fact that it had three antennae, it was surely a creature with deadly venom.

Dang Sobaek might once have been the head of the Sacheon Dang Family, but in this body, he had no confidence at all in his ability to control poison.

For a moment, he hesitated. Should he stop them, or should he not?

Before he could come to a conclusion, however, all the chicks rushed the centipede at once. They tore it apart with their beaks and swallowed it down in pieces.

’Ten seconds.’

That was all it ought to have taken. Foam would boil from their mouths, their skin would turn purple, and their breathing would cease.

Yet no matter how much time passed, there was no reaction at all.

It was not merely a matter of resistance to poison. If that were all, there ought to have been some visible sign.

There were, at least, slight convulsions. But rather than poisoning, it resembled a tremor born of some strange ecstasy.

There were only two possible conclusions.

Either it merely resembled the venom centipede in appearance while lacking poison, or it possessed the ability to neutralize or filter poison.

’At the very least, I have confirmed that it is safe to eat.’

Dang Sobaek stared at the centipede and focused on his sense of smell. At once, a rich and fragrant scent drifted from it. It was almost impossible to endure.

’H-how can something as lowly as a mere centipede give off a fragrance this sublime?’

His body trembled. Instinct whipped at him, urging him to rush forward and devour the centipede at once.

And on top of that, he was in a state of extreme hunger.

In the end, Dang Sobaek could not bear it any longer and toddled toward the centipede with quick little steps.

But then,

CHEEP—!!!!

One of them glared at him and shoved him away. The absurdity of it left him speechless.

’How dare—’

Dang Sobaek was not patient enough to leave alone a creature that had dared to strike him.

He tried to raise a hand and teach the insolent thing a lesson, but—

“!!!!”

He had no hands. All that happened was that his wings spread awkwardly.

The price of defiance came swiftly and brutally.

Of the creatures that had finished eating, three approached Dang Sobaek and surrounded him. They began to punish him with ruthless pecks of their beaks.

’K, kuaaagh!!!’

Dang Sobaek screamed. Yet all that emerged from him was a pitiful series of cheeps.

’I will kill you.’

But unlike Dang Sobaek, who still could not properly control even his own body, their movements were dazzlingly fluid.

It was almost as though they had reached the realm of Oneness of Object and Self.

This was the difference between humans and beasts.

Moreover, compared to his siblings, Dang Sobaek was far smaller in build as well.

’S-stop this!!’

But no matter how much he shouted inwardly, there was no way they could understand him. In desperation, Dang Sobaek cast a pleading look toward the mother.

Yet at that moment, a shadow fell across him. It was one of the larger creatures in the brood.

Its beak clacked.

Dang Sobaek tried to let the force slide off him as much as possible, applying the subtle principle of Transposing Blossoms and Grafting Trees, but—

’As though that would work.’

Quite apart from the fact that he did not possess even a grain of inner qi,

he could not even properly command this body.

The best he could do was curl himself up as tightly as possible and minimize the impact.

“Cheep?”

Perhaps they sensed something strange even so, for the others tilted their heads in confusion. Then they redoubled the force with which they tormented Dang Sobaek.

’I will never forget this humiliation.’

Enduring the pain, Dang Sobaek made a vow. One day, he would make these creatures pay.

***

That night, a grave problem arose.

One of the chicks began to show signs of poisoning. White foam boiled from its mouth, and its body convulsed.

A pitiful cry burst forth.

The mother bird merely watched in silence, while the other chicks stared at it with faintly frightened expressions.

If Dang Sobaek still possessed the body he had in his previous life, he might have been able to administer some form of emergency treatment. But now, that was impossible.

When he cautiously approached and touched the chick’s body with his wing, it was as hot as a burning ember.

’Tonight will decide everything.’

There was no antidote. The chick could do nothing but endure through its own natural resistance.

Dang Sobaek turned his gaze aside as he watched its feathers fall away in clumps.

This was the ‘wild.’

A place where ‘death’ lurked everywhere.

There were no medicines as humans had. Even a tiny wound from a branch could fester and kill. One could simply fall ill for no reason at all and die on the spot.

Watching the chick as it lay dying, Dang Sobaek at last realized what sort of situation he had truly fallen into.

The night was agonizingly long.

Dang Sobaek stayed awake the entire time, watching from just beside it as a life slowly crumbled away.

Its breathing gradually weakened.

The trembling of its body lessened, and even its cries faded into silence.

Then dawn rose beyond the mouth of the cave.

In the end, the chick that had been poisoned stopped breathing.

The other chicks rushed toward the corpse, trying to tear into it and eat it, but the mother stopped them.

She took the dead chick in her beak and carried it out of the cave.

Even then, the mother bird’s eyes still looked utterly devoid of emotion.

***

A month passed.

During that time, Dang Sobaek devoted himself to a period of patient endurance and training.

He had not done anything particularly remarkable.

He had merely reached the point where he could spread his wings freely and move his legs and beak as he wished.

That meant he had finally adapted to the body of a bird.

And there was one more thing he had learned.

He had suspected it from the beginning. It was rare for a beast to possess such astonishing resistance to poison.

’And yet, to think it was a Jim Bird of all things.’

The hanging scroll in the office of the head of the Sacheon Dang Family.

Not only did it look almost identical to the Jim Bird painted there, it matched the characteristics passed down in the ancient texts as well.

There existed no bird other than the Jim Bird that consumed poison and then refined and blended it.

Living in the cave, he had learned several other things as well.

First, there was a hierarchy among him and his siblings. The mother bird never intervened in it.

They followed the law of the strong devouring the weak.

And he had also come to understand the traits of each of his siblings.

At the top of the order was the one with silver feathers. For the sake of distinguishing them, Dang Sobaek personally gave it the name Jim-Il.

It was fairly large, greedy, and yet careful never to make that greed obvious.

’A jackal of a creature.’

He had seen plenty of such men before. The leader of the Murim Alliance had possessed precisely that sort of temperament.

The second in rank was a female. Her feathers were purple. This one was Jim-I.

She was always the most enthusiastic when it came to tormenting Dang Sobaek. Even when it was not feeding time, she pecked at him whenever the chance arose and snapped at him constantly.

She truly had the nature of the unorthodox sects.

There was also one that had no interest in the struggle for rank whatsoever, and always carried itself as though detached from all worldly affairs.

This was the one Dang Sobaek disliked the most.

That ever-relaxed, detached bearing kept reminding him of his old friend.

It resembled Namgung Danu.

It was larger even than the leader, and from time to time, it even looked after Dang Sobaek when he was left out. This one was Jim-Sam.

When Dang Sobaek stared at it in silence, it tilted its head and looked back at him with pure, innocent eyes.

“Cheep? Cheeak—”

Then it split its portion in half and pushed it over. Dang Sobaek frowned, but accepted it in silence and ate it.

His pride was not worth preserving when he was this hungry. If not for this fellow, he might well have starved to death already.

’It is irritating, but one day, I shall repay this debt.’

Swallowing a venom-filled centipede, Dang Sobaek tasted a flavor beyond compare.

That sharp, tingling freshness, and that numbing sensation.

It almost felt as though he were tasting the very essence of Sichuan cuisine.

Dang Sobaek guided the poison contained within the centipede according to the formula of the Myriad Poisons Ghost Art.

Unlike ordinary beasts, the Jim Bird possessed one additional organ.

It was the fourth organ of the body, known as the Poison Sac.

The others seemed to store poison recklessly according to instinct, but Dang Sobaek was different.

By the nature of the Jim Bird, poison would be refined to some degree even if left alone, but Dang Sobaek added to it the subtle principles of the Myriad Poisons Ghost Art.

Cold sweat trickled down his brow. Since the form of this body was different, the extraordinary meridians were different as well.

In truth, there had been several times when he had nearly fallen into qi deviation after attempting it.

’It was dreadful.’

His body had convulsed, and he had coughed up blood. Even so, by now he had grown somewhat accustomed to it.

Dang Sobaek removed as many impurities as possible from the centipede venom, blended it with qi drawn in from the outside, and stored it within the Poison Sac.

Only then would the repulsive reaction be reduced when the time came to blend poisons later.

’Whew...’

Once he safely completed the entire process, he lifted a wing and wiped his brow.

“Cheeak?”

Perhaps the gesture itself looked somewhat strange, because Jim-Sam tilted his head.

Then, immediately after, he copied Dang Sobaek’s movement. Seeing that, a faint laugh escaped him.

He still did not fully understand their language, but he could roughly make sense of it by now.

So, in other words, this fellow was asking, ‘What was that?’

Dang Sobaek did not bother to answer. He still could not properly express himself to them anyway.

And lastly, there was Jim-O.

This one had no remarkable traits whatsoever. Its feathers were light green, and it simply drifted along with the tide of the group.

It did not exert itself to torment Dang Sobaek the way the leader and Jim-I did, but it still occupied its place among them.

If he had to put it one way, it had the face of something that would live the longest.

As he was thinking that, the one with purple feathers came hurrying toward Dang Sobaek. It was Jim-I.

Her eyes were fierce.

It seemed there was, once again, something she did not like.

’But this time will be different.’

Through training harsh enough to scrape the bone, he had studied their movements, and though it was no more than a speck, he had even refined poison.

Without the slightest hesitation, Dang Sobaek charged straight toward her.

“CHEEEAAAK—!!!”

Faced with this unexpected turn of events, she seemed startled and instinctively took a step back.

’In any martial contest, seven-tenths of victory lies in the struggle of momentum.’

Dang Sobaek’s left wing flew at her head like a hand blade.

’Let your skull crack for once!’

He brought it down in a perfect right angle, pouring into that simple flap the principle of one-strike certain-kill.

THOK—!!

Tears welled at the corners of her eyes.

“CHEEEAAA— CHEEP—!!!”

She let out a wail, too dazed even to recover herself properly. Only then did the leader finally move.

’Hmph, come at me if you dare!’

But Dang Sobaek’s bravado did not last long.

As the saying went, no one could stand alone before sheer numbers. No matter how skillfully he applied martial principles, facing several at once was difficult.

He was soon overwhelmed. In desperation, he cast a plea for aid toward Jim-Sam. Yet that one merely watched in indifference.

’Kuhk—!!!’

In the end, today’s revolution failed as well.

Even so, Dang Sobaek laughed wildly.

At that, the others wore dubious expressions.

But only for a moment.

Soon, the kicks of their feet and the assault of their beaks grew even harsher.

Yet that was all right.

It stung, and it hurt, but the day when he would seize the leader’s position was no longer far away.

After all, had he not even managed to land a blow on the leader?

It was tremendous progress.

Just then, the mother bird came flying back with prey once more in her beak.

This time, she held a large frog.

“!!!!”

Its vivid red body was strewn with black spots like constellations scattered across the night sky.

Grrk— gurrk—

It was no ordinary creature.

It was surely a frog steeped in poison.

And it was still alive.

It was quite large as well.

It was bigger even than the leader. The creature flicked its tongue and glanced up at the mother bird.

’I see. She means for us to hunt this one ourselves.’

Just as people said lions raised their cubs by throwing them from cliffs, it seemed the Jim Bird was much the same.

The strong survived.

That was the law it followed faithfully.

For a moment, we exchanged glances.

And then, for the first time, we entered into something called cooperation in order to face the poison frog.

***

A manor stood at the easternmost end of the continent. Within it, in a meeting chamber located at its deepest point, an old man with a long white beard sipped his tea and spoke.

“Should it not soon be time to make a ‘harvest’ from Gwisudo?”

The one who answered the old man was a young man dressed in blue robes. He possessed the bearing of a single drawn sword.

“Mm... I do not believe the time is right yet. It has not even been a full hundred years since the last harvest.”

It was a sense of time so vast it nearly spanned the course of an entire human life.

As though troubled, the old man tapped the table.

Tak— tak—

But the young man continued speaking without concern.

“Even if we went now, we would likely fail to acquire any proper Inner Cores. We harvested them clean last time.”

“Even so, we must at least make the attempt. The order came down from the Alliance.”

“The island’s master may grow enraged.”

“Hmph, it is only some beast. Would it not be better to dispose of that creature as well?”

“Rejected. That would be like burning down an entire thatched house just to catch a bedbug. Besides, it is a Demon Beast that has reached the Core Formation Realm. It is by no means something to be taken lightly. For now, go and conduct a reconnaissance at least. If there are no promising ones, then nothing can be done. I shall personally report the results myself.”

“I understand.”

With that, the meeting came to an end.

The young man left the meeting hall and walked through the manor with a sigh.

’They too are living beings... These people truly are without warmth.’

But the young man had no choice in the matter. After all, it was an order from the Alliance.

’I should at least assemble the scouting party from those with milder temperaments. If nothing else, it will lessen needless sacrifice.’

Murmuring that to himself, the young man lifted his eyes and gazed up at the blue heavens.