Fabre in Sacheon's Tang

At Zihwa’s words, I froze on the spot.

Right up until I heard Ji-ryeon and Yo-hwa’s voices.

“What is it, So-ryong?”

“Kishishi. ‘Brother?’”

I came to my senses and answered.

“N-no, it’s nothing.”

I said it was nothing, but one thought flashed through my head.

Heaven-Mile Sight.

I had heard that high-realm immortals could sit in a room and look a thousand miles away.

Zihwa had originally been at a high realm too, so it seemed that as she recovered her realm, she had opened Heaven-Mile Sight again.

She still hadn’t fully gathered all her energy and hadn’t completely awakened, but when she had briefly woken just now, she had clearly watched everything that happened earlier in the Jet-Black Sea.

Most likely, what Zihwa meant by telling me to be careful of the dragon was that I needed to keep my {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} head on straight.

Not to lose my mind just because I saw a dragon-like spirit creature.

'S-sorry, Zihwa.'

I hurriedly apologized in my heart and stepped out of the cavern.

While promising myself that from now on I’d keep myself sharp.

***

We rested well for a full day inside Dokmul-hyang, and then, with our courage bolstered, we stood in the same place as yesterday.

“Then I’m off.”

“Be careful, So-ryong.”

“Yes, Ji-ryeon.”

I quickly descended into the deep sea.

This time, unlike yesterday, I had thickened my energy barrier and was protecting my body firmly.

When I arrived at the mouth of the familiar cave, the Venomous Water Crab opened its eyes with a flash.

When I made the same gesture as before, the Venomous Water Crab said with a delighted expression,

[Hm? A human cultivator? Is, is it you this time? Good.]

Thinking it was me instead of Yubing, the Venomous Water Crab rose after me.

Even today, the Venomous Water Crab reached the surface before I did, and once it got there, it was making a baffled face.

It seemed ridiculous to her that Yubing was standing there in front of her with a confident expression.

“Y-you weren’t the one fighting?”

“How could that be? Yubing still hasn’t given up.”

“Eeeek!”

The Venomous Water Crab clenched both fists and tried to look cute.

'It has to be several hundred years old, so what kind of disgraceful act is that?'

I was thinking that was a gesture fit for a teenager or someone in their twenties when Yubing shouted,

“All right, enough of that, and now accept my one strike!”

Instead of waiting for an answer, Yubing kicked off the water’s surface and started moving sideways.

A crab’s gait.

That peculiar sideways walk that was faster from the flank than from the front.

Drawing a circle around the Venomous Water Crab, Yubing made a wide rotation from right to left.

“Y-your breathing is steadier than yesterday. I-it doesn’t seem you came here for nothing.”

I had only raised defense, but had endurance gone up too?

I was thinking that when, almost the instant the Venomous Water Crab finished speaking, Yubing charged in.

-Shaaak!

The water’s surface split vertically in front of Yubing.

A powerful stream of water split into three branches and shot toward the Venomous Water Crab.

This time, the angle and timing were completely different from the day before.

One branch rose vertically.

One swept by horizontally.

And the last one shot forward short and fast, like a stab.

A perfect triple strike.

It blanketed the Venomous Water Crab’s front in a plane and even hid a finishing blow behind it.

'Ohhh, Yubing!'

I had only raised defense, but Yubing was completely different from yesterday.

Was it because confidence had gone up?

Yubing’s attacks had changed into something extremely sharp and clever too.

At the incoming water streams, the Venomous Water Crab twisted its body, trying to deflect all three.

But the third stream grazed her sleeve.

-Riiip.

With the sound of tearing, the end of her garment flew off.

“Th-this is interesting.”

For the first time, the Venomous Water Crab’s eyes changed as she looked down at the torn clothes, but Yubing did not stop.

Closing the distance just like that, Yubing swung a hand blade.

When the tip of that hand blade, now sharper than yesterday, sliced through empty air, even the sound was different.

-Shaaak.

The Venomous Water Crab tried to retreat and deflect it, but Yubing had already read that flow.

If the opponent slipped left, Yubing swung the hand blade to the right.

If the opponent slid right, Yubing stamped down with the left foot and drove the water surface upward with water pressure.

The surging water shook the Venomous Water Crab’s footing, and her body, which had been skimming over the surface, wavered for a moment.

'Yubing is doing great!'

Completely different from yesterday.

Yubing, momentum rising, lunged at the Venomous Water Crab.

Not with a simple charge, but by combining hand blades and water streams to create a flow all of Yubing’s own.

“Take this!”

Just as Yubing was about to land the hand blade on the Venomous Water Crab—

A tremendous blast erupted between the two at close range.

-Kwaaang!

Together with lightning energy, spray burst in all directions, and Yubing was shoved back with a long skid.

Maybe because the emotions had flared up, Yubing had reverted to crab form again.

What I felt in that instant was lightning energy and wind energy.

The power of lightning and wind was coming off it.

'Feels like whenever it’s about to get pushed back, it starts bringing out attacks with two or more attributes.'

At the same time, I heard not that familiar fawning voice, but a confident one.

“Couldn’t bear to give up on me, could you? Not bad, young master. But that won’t be enough to beat me.”

“Shut up.”

“Oh my, how scary. Hehe. Fine. Then shall we play?”

Yubing answered the mocking voice shortly.

With the Venomous Water Crab’s laughter, a sphere containing two kinds of energy flew in once again.

-Kwang.

The water where Yubing had been caved in in a perfect circle, and foam exploded outward in every direction.

-Shaaaaaaa.

After the explosion, rain poured down onto the water’s surface.

Yubing was nowhere to be seen.

Had Yubing been too close to dodge, gotten hit directly, and sunk beneath the water?

I was trying to feel the energy when Yubing burst back out above the water.

Spinning that newly sharpened body, Yubing shot at the Venomous Water Crab like a boomerang.

'Ohhh! Rolling attack!'

Yubing came flying in at the Venomous Water Crab like a sharp rotating saw blade.

Yesterday’s pincer attack had done little damage, but today was different.

If that hit, even the Venomous Water Crab would not come away unharmed.

A jellyfish’s body was fragile. Against something sharp like that, it would definitely be torn apart.

This was an attack that would work.

It was just when I thought that.

Suddenly, the Venomous Water Crab split in two.

'A cloning technique?'

At the sight of it dividing in two, Yubing’s flying body wavered for a moment.

It seemed Yubing had been wondering which of the two to hit.

It was only a moment of hesitation, but it was enough time for the bodies to evade.

The two figures slipped smoothly over the water’s surface, then overlapped again.

Yubing, whose body had been spinning like a skipping stone, circled around the Venomous Water Crab and then started spitting bubbles.

-Bugururu.

It looked like Yubing was trying to instantly cover the surroundings with crab bubbles blown from the mouth.

If thick white bubbles blocked the Venomous Water Crab’s vision, then surely the same kind of attack as yesterday could be delivered more quickly and efficiently this time.

But the opponent was no pushover either.

It kept moving, avoiding the bubbles piling up nearby.

If it stayed like this, the bubbles would not be much help.

I was thinking maybe I should send a hint through the chatroom telling Yubing to fight in a slightly different way than yesterday, when the Venomous Water Crab’s body split again.

The wavering Venomous Water Crab divided into two and moved as if encircling Yubing in the center.

“It’s one body anyway!”

At that sight, when Yubing hesitated again, Ji-ryeon shouted through the mind-space.

But both Ji-ryeon and I knew why Yubing was hesitating.

If that really were a clone, energy should only be felt from one.

But perfectly identical energy was coming from both of them.

And on top of that, one more clone appeared, making three as they surrounded Yubing.

Lightning fired at the same time!

-Kwajijik.

From one, lightning.

From one, water.

From one, wind.

Three different kinds of energy shot toward Yubing.

And it wasn’t just one shot.

The three of them kept firing small blasts in rapid succession.

Yubing, dodging frantically, finally curled up.

There was no way to avoid everything, so this was to reduce the damage.

-Hudududuk.

The energies slammed into Yubing’s back shell.

The three clones spun round and round Yubing’s body, then in one instant overlapped and drove a huge sphere of three mixed energies straight into Yubing.

-Kwaaaang!

There was a huge explosion, but defense upgrade was still defense upgrade.

Yubing was relatively fine.

“Urgh.”

It wasn’t that there had been no damage, but Yubing wasn’t dropping either.

“Ooh, you’ve become manlier.”

“Y-you’re tougher than I thought.”

“But only for a little while.”

At that sight, Ji-ryeon shouted urgently.

“Yubing’s going to lose again!”

The main body and two clones spun round and round, blocking movement with the spheres they fired, and every so often drove in combined attacks of the three energies.

Just as Ji-ryeon said, if Yubing only kept taking hits like this, even with defense upgraded twice, it looked hard to win.

I had raised defense so Yubing could endure with toughness and then counterattack, not so Yubing could get beaten one-sidedly like this.

At this rate, it really looked like Yubing would lose.

But something felt strange.

Even though it was a cloning technique, the energy of all three bodies was too consistent, and every single attack they fired was real.

It wasn’t at the Primordial Infant Stage, so it couldn’t have split a Primordial Infant either.

'What the hell is this?'

-Kwang! Kwa-jak!

It felt like I was missing something.

So I decided to think about it from another angle.

I had heard different voices coming from the three bodies, and I had assumed that was madness.

Because sometimes cultivators who had trained for hundreds of years went insane and developed madness.

But what if this wasn’t madness, and all of them were real bodies?

'Among deep-sea venomous jellyfish, something like that...'

A list of jellyfish flashed through my head.

But among venomous deep-sea jellyfish, there was nothing like that.

'What is it? There has to be a hint somewhere.'

Electric jellyfish.

The way it moved by skimming over the surface.

Several of them. A colony?

'A colony!?'

The instant the word colony came to mind,

I felt like I knew what that jellyfish really was.

'Don’t tell me that’s Physalia physalis!?'

Physalia physalis.

A small siphonophore.

In English, it goes by the nickname Bluebottle.

In Korea, it’s called the cone jellyfish, and because it looks like a Portuguese warship, it’s also called the Portuguese jellyfish.

The defining trait of these things is that they form a colony.

They look like a single jellyfish, but in reality, one handles only tentacles, one handles only reproduction, one handles only nutrition, and one handles only movement, all attached together as one.

So the arms, legs, head, torso, and genitals are all different jellyfish.

Which meant Yubing wasn’t fighting one opponent.

That was at minimum a four-on-one.

'You cheating bastard. No wonder it was so eager to fight!'

Rage flared up at that bastard’s underhanded trickery.

At the same time, though, I also thought I absolutely had to catch that thing.

Because one of Senior’s main foods had been the blue sea slug.

If Senior ate that, it would be no different from an elixir.

I was just thinking that for today we should admit defeat, withdraw, and find another method—

when I heard the jeering voice coming from it.

“If you lose again today, I won’t accept another challenge.”

At those words, maybe because Yubing got angry, Yubing suddenly made a pillar of water to cover the body, then charged toward one of the Venomous Water Crab’s bodies.

“I! Haven’t lost yet!”

-Shaak!

Yubing spun that body and sliced off one of the Venomous Water Crab’s forearms.

In that instant, all three bodies grabbed at their forearms and let out groans.

“Ugh.”

“Kyaak.”

“Kh.”

And then a good idea came to me.

I quickly asked Ji-ryeon,

“Ji-ryeon, that method that excites a woman’s body. Can Yubing be taught that?”

One of the techniques related to foreplay from the dual cultivation arts of Hyeonnyeo, Chaenyeo, and Sonyeo.

I was asking whether it would be all right to teach Yubing that technique that sends energy into a woman’s body and arouses it.

Those bodies seemed to share sensations, so what would happen if the one handling reproduction got aroused?

This So-ryong was very angry right now.

I was planning to hand that bastard the most humiliating defeat possible.

'You—I’m going to give you the most embarrassing defeat of your life, you cheating bastard!'

Tears were not the only thing the defeated could shed.