Chapter 4: . The Bird That Drinks Poison (4)

Staring at the ground rushing closer with every passing instant, Dang Sobaek flailed his wings in desperate panic.

It was futile.

His fall slowed a little, but that was all.

‘Damn it.’

A rush of memories flashed before his eyes, though not even in his previous life had he ever experienced such a thing.

And yet, oddly enough, Dang Sobaek felt that a situation like this was rather familiar.

His father, whose face had long since grown blurred in his memory.

In other words, the previous head of the Dang Family had once subjected Dang Sobaek to a trial much like this one.

‘Even now, the memory is horrific.’

The former patriarch had forced Dang Sobaek to swallow Qi-Scattering Poison and thrown him into a snake pit. It had been a cavern crawling with dozens of serpents steeped in lethal venom.

The Qi-Scattering Poison was a venom that dispersed the inner power within one’s body. It rendered the use of martial arts impossible.

All he had been able to rely upon was his knowledge of venomous serpents, the body he had honed with desperate effort, and his resistance to poison.

That was all.

There had been no water, no food, and nothing but poisonous creatures that threatened his life from every direction.

Fearing that he might lose his life the moment he fell asleep, he had endured for days on end without closing his eyes.

As time passed, his lips split, and his skin turned dry and cracked. His thirst had reached its limit, and hunger had left his mind reeling.

To survive in that snake pit, Dang Sobaek had done everything imaginable.

He had torn raw snakes apart and swallowed them, and endured by drinking blood in place of water.

‘Poison’ ran through a serpent’s blood.

Yet even knowing that, he had drunk it, trusting that at the very least, his resistance would allow him to endure that much.

The longer he remained in the snake pit, the stronger his body had gradually become.

Iron grows stronger the more it is tempered.

Like steel that hardens each time it is hammered.

Only after enduring for nine full days had he managed to leave that cave behind.

Even now, the memory of that time made his skin crawl.

‘Parents truly are all the same—’

Whether it was a Jim Bird or the father from his previous life, there was no real difference. They had all been the same sort. Merciless to a maddening degree.

It was a method fraught with danger.

If one failed to overcome it, then death would follow.

Even as he hurled curses inwardly, Dang Sobaek desperately moved his wings.

Compared to the day he had been thrown into the snake pit, this was still manageable.

After all, a Jim Bird was at least a creature born to the skies.

Instead of flapping blindly, Dang Sobaek calculated the flow of the air.

‘The wind is blowing from behind.’

Maintaining a steady rhythm with his wings, he pushed the air down and to the rear.

At once, the speed of his fall lessened, and his body began to float in the air and move forward.

It was a strange sensation.

Rather than trying to resist the wind head-on, he felt its flow and adjusted the angle of his wings to match it.

WHIIIIISH—!!!

His body shot forward at tremendous speed, and the vegetation around him blurred past.

As he gradually got the hang of it, he found that he could even push against the wind itself.

The other chicks had already succeeded in flight as well, circling through the heavens.

‘It would not have been particularly difficult for those creatures.’

Flight had already been carved into their instincts.

The mother bird had not demanded the impossible. It had only been dangerous because Dang Sobaek alone was a reincarnated soul.

Flying in formation beside the mother bird, they roamed the skies for a long time.

When he looked down from that dizzying height, he finally saw the terrain below.

The cave where they had lived all this time had been set high upon a mountain.

Below it stretched a forest.

It was a beautiful scene.

Sunlight broke apart through the leaves and scattered in glittering fragments.

Flowers of every hue bloomed below, and birdsong drifted through the air.

At the heart of the forest lay a great lake. Its waters were not clear and crystalline, yet the lotus blossoms floating atop it possessed a tranquil elegance of their own.

‘It is nothing less than a Peach Blossom Spring.’

To Dang Sobaek’s senses, this place was filled with qi far more richly than the Central Plains.

‘Spirit herbs could well grow here.’

For instance, there were things like Red Pine Ginseng, which only grew in lands dense with qi.

Looking more closely, he spotted several red pines.

Since Red Pine Ginseng only grew beneath such trees, it might not be a bad idea to examine the area when an opportunity arose.

The mother bird led Dang Sobaek and the chicks in wide circles, from the point where the forest began to the place where it ended.

Dang Sobaek carefully observed the entire range. It seemed as though the mother bird was showing them the bounds of her territory.

‘Hah... all of this is the Jim Bird’s territory?’

The domain was immense.

Beyond the Jim Bird’s territory, a desert stretched to the north, while to the west lay a high plateau.

All of it gave the impression of being rich in qi, but aside from that, there was nothing particularly remarkable.

Even so, though he could not judge it with certainty, he sensed a strange force emanating from the central region.

It resembled the qi Dang Sobaek knew, yet was somehow different. It felt almost like a formation, and at the same time, similar to a barrier.

When Dang Sobaek headed toward the center to investigate, ‘Kuh.’

A chill ran through his entire body, and his flesh itself recoiled in rejection. It was as though his body were telling him that he must not draw any closer.

His limbs trembled violently against his will.

The mother bird hurried after him, moved directly in front of him to block his path, and shook her head.

‘What in the world could possibly be there...?’

That only made him more curious, but for now, he withdrew. It was something he could consider again after he had grown stronger.

Quite apart from that, an openly hostile force flowed from the southern region.

It did not feel like the presence of a natural predator, but something closer to killing intent. He could feel a gaze fixed upon them from there.

The terrain resembled a marshland. Bubbles rose and burst from the mire, and the soil was black-red.

Dang Sobaek climbed higher.

The full landscape came into view at once.

‘So it was an island.’

All four sides were surrounded by the sea.

This was certainly not the Central Plains.

In his previous life, Dang Sobaek had wandered through every kind of place. He had even visited Dongyi and the strongholds of the wokou.

Yet he had never seen nor heard of a place like this.

A plateau and a marshland, a forest and a desert, all gathered upon a single island—such a thing made no sense.

It felt profoundly artificial.

This was an unknown land, one Dang Sobaek had never visited before. Perhaps it lay somewhere in the Western Regions, beyond Cheonchuk.

Thinking that, Dang Sobaek lowered his altitude. He was not yet fully accustomed to it, but roaming the sky was an exhilarating experience.

At the same time, land-bound creatures began to seem strangely insignificant.

When he turned his gaze aside for a moment, he saw that the others were already spinning through the air, diving steeply, and showing off all manner of aerial feats.

But that was still beyond Dang Sobaek.

He had only just managed to fly at all. For now, all he could do was remain quietly beside the mother bird and glide.

***

‘Whew... how pathetic.’

Back in the cave, Dang Sobaek muttered in bitter self-mockery.

After the flight training, the mother bird had taught them one more thing.

It was the hunting method of the Jim Bird.

They could seize prey with their beaks or talons if needed, but they usually relied on another method instead.

A Jim Bird was like a perfectly trained assassin. It infused poison into its feathers and used them like concealed weapons.

‘Poison Feather Dart...’

There was, however, a problem. Dang Sobaek had no idea at all how to launch a feather from his body.

“Cheep!! Chee-hah-hah—”

The so-called leader snickered and mocked him. Every last one of the others had succeeded. Dang Sobaek alone had failed.

‘Then again, for them, this is nothing but instinct.’

Dang Sobaek shot the leader an irritated glare. Cowed by that pressure, the creature took a step back.

‘I do not understand why a fool who gains nothing from it keeps provoking me.’

Dang Sobaek shut the leader completely out of his mind and quietly turned his awareness inward.

He had spent days searching for a method, yet had produced no real results.

At that moment, someone nudged Dang Sobaek a few times.

It was Jim-I.

“What is it?”

“Cheep, cheep-cheep!”

Jim-I slashed her wing diagonally toward the cave wall.

WHIIISH—

A single feather flew out, only to bounce off without piercing the wall. Its power was still too weak.

‘Are you telling me to watch?’

“Cheeeak!”

That certainly seemed to be the case.

Jim-I demonstrated several more times. She had not forgotten the favor he had shown her and was trying to help him.

After giving a few demonstrations, Jim-I sank to the ground and panted heavily. It seemed that launching feathers consumed a great deal of stamina.

Perhaps finding that amusing, Jim-Sam also approached and fired a feather toward the wall.

KRAAASH—!!!

It pierced straight through the cave wall and embedded itself deep within. Jim-I’s eyes widened.

‘Annoying bastard.’

He was overflowing with talent in every sense of the word.

After trying it a few more times, he soon lost interest, returned to the nest, and began nodding off.

Even so, by watching the actions of the other chicks, Dang Sobaek managed to grasp the principle to some extent.

One had to adjust the muscles in the wing with exquisite precision, push the feather out from within the body, then swing the wing to launch it.

‘So the key lies in delicately controlling each strand of muscle fiber.’

Launching dozens of feathers at once might have been one thing, but firing a single feather in that way was exceedingly difficult. It demanded concentration at the absolute limit.

‘I can do it.’

Relying on his inhuman memory and concentration, Dang Sobaek began to examine, one by one, every strand of muscle fiber in his wings.

That process alone took no fewer than seven days and nights.

***

The hunting training began again.

This time, the mother bird did not bring prey back to them as before.

Instead, she led them outside.

Keeping to a lower altitude, she guided the chicks across the land.

THUD THUD THUD THUD—!!!

Sensing the presence of the Jim Birds, beasts fled in groups.

The ground shook. Among them were wild boars and many fierce creatures such as bears.

Yet among those fleeing in noisy panic, not one emitted the aura of a demon beast.

Dang Sobaek understood that now.

Devouring creatures like those might fill the belly, but it did nothing at all to further one’s growth.

At best, it merely prolonged one’s life.

There were, broadly speaking, two ways for a Jim Bird to grow stronger.

Either it consumed poisonous creatures, or it consumed demon beasts that possessed qi.

Naturally, the best prey of all was one that fulfilled both conditions.

But the presence of qi meant that spiritual sentience had awakened within it.

Such creatures did not flee in loud disorder. Instead, they concealed their presence.

They buried themselves within their own lairs, gathered in their energy, and held their breath.

But the Jim Bird was a born hunter.

The mother bird beat her wings and hovered in midair for a moment.

Then suddenly,

WHIIIIISH—!!!!!

She fired a feather through the leaves of a red pine. Though there had seemed to be nothing there at all,

SKREEEECH—!!!!!!

A scream tore through the air. A half-transparent veil vanished, and a massive spider fell to the ground. Its body was red, marked with tiger-like stripes, and a horn jutted from its head.

It was a demon beast.

The spider twisted its body and scraped furiously at the ground with all eight legs.

Dang Sobaek could not read its expression, but one thing was clear. It was in terrible agony.

The mother bird looked at the chicks. The meaning was obvious. They were to imitate her. By now, after living alongside them for so long, Dang Sobaek could understand that much without difficulty.

The leader was the first to launch a feather.

But,

TING—!!

It bounced away without piercing the spider’s carapace. The others launched feathers in turn, but the results were scarcely different. Only Jim-Sam’s feather managed to sink in, and even then, only shallowly.

‘Hm...’

The difference between the chicks and the mother bird lay in whether they had properly infused their poison.

As yet, neither their feathers nor their venom were powerful enough to pierce the demon spider’s carapace.

At last, the mother bird turned her gaze to Dang Sobaek. It was a silent urging.

By watching the demonstrations, he had already understood how to launch the feather itself.

The question was whether he could pierce the carapace.

Dang Sobaek calmly circulated the Myriad Poisons Ghost Art.

First, he transformed the poison within his body into the Dang Family’s Bloodsea Powder.

Bloodsea Powder was a kind of corrosive poison.

Its effects were exceptionally vicious.

It rotted the blood and melted the organs within the body.

TSSS—

He infused every bit of it into a single feather.

‘But this alone is not enough.’

For Bloodsea Powder to display its full effect, the feather first had to lodge itself in the carapace.

And so, Dang Sobaek added to it the profound principles of the Flying Dagger Art.

Dang Sobaek’s feather shot forth at a terrifying speed, utterly incomparable to those of the other chicks.

KRRRRAK—!!!

Before the eye could even follow it, the feather punched through the armored shell and buried itself deep inside. The spider, which had already been weakened, thrashed violently once more.

By now, its internal organs were surely melting away.

It was a cruel method, but this was the wild. There was no helping it if one wished to hunt.

Unable to endure the agony, the spider slammed its own head into a tree. It rampaged like that for some time. The sight naturally made him frown.

Earth sprayed in every direction, and a great tree snapped with a CRACK and collapsed atop the spider, crushing its body beneath it.

Only then did the light vanish from the spider’s eyes. Its breath had finally been cut off.

Jim-Il stared at Dang Sobaek with stricken eyes.

Jim-Sam remained indifferent, while Jim-I chirped in delight as though the triumph were her own.

Warmth returned as well to the mother bird’s gaze, which had grown cold over the matter of the feathers.

Only now had Dang Sobaek finally become capable of fulfilling his role as a true Jim Bird.