Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang Novel - Chapter 308

Chapter 308
Approximately a quarter of an hour had slipped by.
My position at the clearing’s periphery offered a clear view, and the air was filled with the rich smell of roasting pork belly and the faint, acrid odor of scorching meat.
The source was the pig carcass, now ablaze from Hyang’s poison.
I lifted my gaze to the lantern, noting its unwavering light. The night was particularly still, without even a breeze.
‘It needs to last until morning. It would be disastrous if it died prematurely. That flame must persist until the creature has exhausted itself.’
Hyang’s venom had a unique property: it combusted through blood. In a living host, it would spread like wildfire and ignite instantly, but in a dead one, it smoldered slowly and steadily.
Based on my experiment with a mouse the previous day, the fire should continue until daybreak.
That small creature had burned for three or four *sijin*; a pig would undoubtedly last until morning.
It absolutely had to.
I hadn’t managed to test it on anything larger, but if the flame were to fail too soon, any hope of a real “dialogue” would be lost.

*Flap flap.*
The soft sound of the Blood-Blossom Dream Illusion Butterfly’s wings continued to hum faintly in my ears.
Even after thirty minutes, it was still orbiting the lantern.
Then, a development.
It finally came to rest upon the lantern.
‘Hm? Is it finally settling down?’
But the instant it landed, its wings slowly fanned open and shut, then abruptly began to quiver at a frantic pace.
As it vibrated, a cloud of glowing crimson powder, like a fine mist, drifted from its wings and settled around the lantern.
So it wasn’t resting at all—it hadn’t surrendered.
Insects are cold-blooded and cannot control their internal temperature. Their energy dwindles as the air grows cool.
Butterflies, however, are an exception among insects; they can remain active in colder conditions. They vibrate their wings to generate heat in their thoracic flight muscles, revving up their metabolism.
What the butterfly was doing now was akin to an engine idling before a high-speed sprint.

*Flap!*
The moment its wingbeats reached their maximum intensity, it catapulted from the lantern, streaking directly toward the village.
It was precisely like a runner pushing off the blocks.
‘It can’t be. Is it truly a spirit beast?’
The Blood-Blossom Dream Illusion Butterfly shot away from the lantern, making a desperate line for the village.
Its body surged forward—it seemed on the verge of breaking free from the trap.
For a heartbeat, I feared I had gravely underestimated a spirit beast’s resilience.
But then, just as escape seemed imminent, its flight path arced upward—then veered sharply back toward the lantern, carving a wide, looping circle in the air.
A classic aerial combat maneuver: the loop.
‘There. Just as planned.’
A wave of relief washed over me.
The butterfly finished its loop and returned to the lantern.
And then it repeated the action.
Three times in total, it flew away from the lantern only to circle back.
A creature with less resolve would have given up and remained clinging to the light by now.
But not this one—it halted between efforts, each time pausing to re-evaluate its environment.
It even landed on the lantern to scrutinize its surroundings before taking off again, sometimes attempting to fly straight up into the heavens instead of toward the village.
Yet… it was all futile.
Once, it appeared it might finally succeed—but inevitably, it always curved back.
It was clearly aware something was wrong with its flight, but trapped by its Dorsal Light Response, it was powerless to escape the lantern’s allure.

*Flutter.*
I was gently petting Hyang’s head as she slept when that soft fluttering sound reached me again.
I looked up to see the butterfly had once again settled on the lantern.
Had it finally worn itself out?
Its antennae quivered, and then its abdomen noticeably rose and fell with a deep exhalation—like a sigh of defeat.
‘Is it surrendering?’
It appeared to have accepted its fate.
I was on the verge of speaking, perhaps to offer some consolation… when suddenly it pushed off from the lantern and dropped to the earth.
‘What!?’
It crouched for a moment, shuddering—then shifted one trembling leg forward.
It had begun to crawl.
To crawl!
‘Unbelievable. It’s attempting to crawl its way out?’
This was a contingency I had not anticipated.
Dorsal Light Response only affects flight—crawling was a loophole. It could genuinely escape this way.
I thought about intervening to block its path, but I held back.
Its shaking legs and quivering antennae communicated something far beyond exhaustion. It was pure rage.
My instincts, honed from experiences with Hwa-eun and Lady Seol, screamed that interference now would lead to a terrible outcome.
This wasn’t a warm-up or a panic.
It was fury.
Humiliation.
For a butterfly, a being born to fly, to resort to crawling on the ground—it must have felt like the ultimate degradation.
And, as fate would have it, it was crawling directly toward me.
It didn’t appear to notice me concealed in the bushes at the clearing’s edge.
My hand, which had been resting on Hyang’s head, went still.
As the distance closed, I felt a growing uncertainty—should I speak? If it came any closer, the situation would become unbearably tense.
Truthfully… I was apprehensive about what might occur if I remained silent.
So, I stepped out from the brush and addressed it.
“Uh, excuse me.”
It froze instantly at the sound of my voice, now barely five meters away.
And then—the world started to warp.
—Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch…
A peculiar noise resonated, and the scenery around us began to melt away.
First, a lake.
Centered on the butterfly, everything transformed into a expansive, dark lake, its surface rippling beneath my feet.
Even the solid ground I stood on became the epicenter of a watery void.
Had I not known this was an illusion, I might have thrashed about in panic.
‘Wow. This is incredible.’
The visual fidelity was like being immersed in a full-sensory simulation.
Though the illusory powder didn’t quite reach the grass where I stood, causing the effect to flicker slightly at the edges, it was so convincing I reached down to touch the soil for reassurance.
When I showed no reaction, the lake around me began to change again—morphing into a steep mountain gorge.
Then a dense bamboo forest, then a deep ravine… until finally, the entire area erupted into a forest consumed by wildfire.
Towers of flame roared upward, seeming to rush directly at me.
I could feel the searing heat on my skin.
But when I still didn’t flinch, the world gradually returned to its normal state.
This time, the butterfly itself started to blend into the environment—using camouflage.
But I knew it was still there. The grass beneath it was visibly depressed as it moved—not toward me now, but sideways.
“Hey. Can we talk for a moment?”
I took a step toward it and tried again.
The grass was crushed silently under its invisible weight.
“I said, wait. Just speak with me for a little while, please?”
The creature continued its silent retreat, so I pointed at the lantern and said,
“If you just talk to me for a minute, I’ll extinguish that. So please, just a moment…”
It was at that exact moment.
The creature’s form became visible again, and its gaze darted between me and the lantern.
It likely hadn’t known I was responsible for the lantern, but my words made the connection clear.
Its trembling antennae twitched.
—Poo-hwak!
A dense cloud of fine powder exploded into the air like a mist.
The shimmering particles thickly enveloped the immediate area.
So it could control the powder directly, not just for illusions? I hadn’t accounted for that ability.
However, the powder itself held no physical force; it couldn’t rend flesh or was particularly poisonous.
Nonetheless, the sky around the creature darkened into a storm, and silent bolts of lightning lashed down.
There was no sound, yet my body instinctively recoiled.
It was a spectacle that unmistakably conveyed, “I am furious now.”
In that moment, a single thought crossed my mind—
‘Have I made a mistake?’
And then, just as anticipated.
The creature launched itself at me and collided with my body.
***
The creature jumped and landed directly on me.
The instant its antenna made contact with my forehead, I was somewhere else—a peculiar forest.
‘Is this a mental plane?’
My first assumption was a psychic realm.
But if it were, Hwa-eun or the others would be present—and they were not.
Even my attempts to reach them telepathically failed.
There was a vague, nebulous quality to it—it didn’t feel entirely like a mindscape.
‘Wait… is this a dream? Could this be the legendary Butterfly Dream!?’
Now that I considered it, the Tang Clan’s Heavenly Venom Compendium did note that the Bloodfire Dream Butterfly could manifest dreams.
I had initially dismissed it as a mistaken entry—perhaps a confusion with its illusion powers—but maybe it truly could project actual dreams.
I was still reeling from this realization when…
The view shimmered, and a woman materialized.
She was clad in a dramatic red robe—a deeper, more profound shade than Hwa-eun’s preferred red. It was the color of fresh blood.
Her hair and eyebrows were black, but with a distinct reddish hue.
Her attire resembled the flowing, translucent gown of an empress from a historical epic.
Her features were sharp and possessed a dangerously captivating allure.
‘Well, now…’
But her dark crimson eyebrows were knitted together in anger.
“Ah… greetings?”
The aura she emitted was so formidable that I instinctively used formal language. At that moment, a flickering image of the lantern appeared beside her.
She kicked her foot toward it.
The gesture seemed to ask, “Was this your doing?”
I nodded.
“Yes, that was me.”
The woman stormed over with a wrathful expression and pointed aggressively at the lantern.
Clenching her fists, she gestured repeatedly from me to the lantern.
She was almost certainly threatening me to put it out immediately, or else. But since this was a dream, she couldn’t act directly.
Trying to soothe the Bloodfire Dream Butterfly, I spoke.
“Let’s both please calm down first. My intentions weren’t malicious. I was concerned.”
“?”
She halted, puzzled by the word ‘concerned.’
So I launched into a thorough explanation.
“The situation is this: you’ve been putting everyone to sleep and drinking their blood, correct? If this continues, many people will arrive, believing you to be a threat… and then, well, they may attempt to harm you.”
At this, a pair of butterfly wings manifested behind her back.
The woman now resembled a winged fae.
She fluttered them, as if to say, *I can fly away; I’ll be fine.*
I shook my head.
“The Murim contains archers of exceptional skill, and masters capable of soaring through the skies. It won’t be that simple.”
Hearing my words, she tilted her head and reached out to touch my forehead.
Then, beside her, projections of some of my memories began to ripple into view.
Scenes of Gungbong shooting arrows at deer from a great distance, and martial artists executing aerial movement using light footwork.
After observing a few of these, the Bloodfire Dream Butterfly’s eyes widened in clear surprise.
Then she let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping, and she pointed off to the side.
The memory projections vanished, replaced by an image of a mountain valley.
It seemed she was indicating her understanding and willingness to return there.
The image of the lantern faded away.
She was saying she would go back to the mountains if I doused the light.
Just as the Bloodfire Dream Butterfly began to fade away, I quickly called out,
“Um… if you ever feel lonely, would you consider coming with me, noona?”
She was nearly transparent, but my question made her pause.
As she turned back, I explained that I had other creatures at my home, and that if she wished, I could also provide her with blood.
The Bloodfire Dream Butterfly drew nearer and touched my forehead again.
As images of my other ‘kids’ appeared, her expression showed astonishment.
Then she projected an image of a muscular man… and a much younger, smaller version of myself.
Followed by a vivid image of red blood.
She seemed to be asking, *But aren’t you too young and small to provide blood?*
Recalling then, the men she had fed from were always robust adults.
She must have been meticulously selecting donors from whom she could feed without causing fatal harm.
“We have many strong individuals where I live.”
When I said this, she looked intrigued.
Indeed—nothing wins a creature over like the promise of a good meal.
In nature, food is survival.
Life revolves around the procurement of sustenance.
Sifting through my memories, I found an image of Peng Clan’s Gwiseong-hyung, and the Bloodfire Dream Butterfly looked thrilled—until I clarified that he wasn’t part of my household.
She seemed a bit let down.
But when she understood that the Tang Clan housed numerous sturdy men, she nodded in agreement.
In the distance, the Nine-Tiered Gate of the Tang Clan shimmered into view.
She was communicating her decision to accompany me.
I smiled and responded.
“Welcome, noona. Now… what shall we name you? Ah, that’s right—we already have a Cheongwol, so we’ll call you Jeokwol.”
At my words, the Bloodfire Dream Butterfly nodded with enthusiasm, and my vision began to blur.
When my eyes opened again, the first rays of dawn were lightening the sky, and the crow of a rooster sounded through the village.
It appeared everyone was finally rousing from the Bloodfire Dream Butterfly’s deep slumber.