Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang Novel - Chapter 95

Chapter 95

The sight of the O-gong raised by So-ryong consuming the incredible Neidan of the Bi-cheon Shin-sa rendered everyone utterly silent.
As So-ryong abruptly lost consciousness, the onlookers broke from their stunned state and began to shout.
“So-ryong!”
“So-ryong!”
“Ryong!”
Initially, they assumed he had passed out from the sheer shock of witnessing his O-gong devour such a priceless Neidan, which held two Gapja of internal energy.
However, his state was clearly not that of a simple faint.
He had fallen across the table, completely unresponsive.
Hwa-eun, who was standing next to him, caught him quickly, but his body was utterly limp, like a dying stalk of grass, and he slipped down onto the table surface.
His eyes had rolled back into his head, and his entire frame was shaking violently.
As his hands jerked spasmodically, the two O-gong he had been holding—Hyang and Bin—cried out in alarm and scrambled onto Hwa-eun, frantically climbing her clothing.
They gripped the hem of her robe with their mouths, pulling at it insistently, as if desperately urging her to help So-ryong.
—Ssshh!
—Ssshh!
“Alright, alright, I understand!”
Their behavior was a complete reversal from their fierce aggression of just moments before.
Grasping the seriousness of the situation, Hwa-eun reached out to place a hand on So-ryong.
—Fwoosh!
But without warning, a violent burst of light erupted.
The Neidan of the Bi-cheon Shin-sa had unquestionably been swallowed by the O-gong.
Yet now, from beneath So-ryong’s collapsed body, the same brilliant azure light that had emanated from the Neidan flared up again.
This radiance was even more intense than before—so blindingly bright it threatened to overwhelm the vision of anyone nearby.
Startled by the sudden flash, Hwa-eun instinctively released her hold on him.
As she collected herself and moved to pull him back, a powerful voice thundered through the hall.
“Stop! Do not touch him, daughter-in-law! You must not lay a hand on him now!”
It was the Beast Palace Lord.
His tone was sharp and authoritative as he commanded Hwa-eun to keep her distance.
His words were so forceful that Hwa-eun immediately withdrew.
Even Seol, who had been rushing forward in distress, halted abruptly.
“Father, why?! Why can’t we touch him?! He looks like he is dying!”
Seol shielded her eyes from the dazzling light, her face contorted with bewilderment and anger.
She could not comprehend why her father was stopping them from aiding So-ryong.
Stamping her foot in agitation, she shouted again, demanding an explanation.
The Beast Palace Lord, his own expression one of profound disbelief, answered her.
“Feel it! That energy—it is the Beast Heart Technique! His body is currently radiating the aura of the Beast Heart Technique! Something… something beyond our understanding is occurring within him!”
His voice quivered with a mixture of awe and apprehension.
“If we interfere recklessly, he could suffer a deviation!”
“The Beast Heart Technique?”
Hearing her father’s words, Seol frowned, then shut her eyes tightly, focusing her senses on the energy filling the room.
She could detect something.
But because her mastery was not as advanced as her father’s, she had to concentrate deeply to truly perceive it.
And when she finally did—
She felt it.
The potent energy swirling through the hall.
The powerful aura erupting from beneath So-ryong’s head, flooding into his body, only to cycle out again—repeating in a continuous loop.
It was unmistakably the energy of the Beast Heart Technique.
“But… why?! Why would the Beast Heart Technique be active…?”
It was true that So-ryong had been practicing the Beast Heart Technique.
But for it to activate spontaneously while he was unconscious?
She had never heard of such a phenomenon.
And more perplexing still—
She could sense the identical energy radiating from the O-gong he had raised.
It was as though they were linked, sharing a single circulating flow of energy.
The Beast Heart Technique enabled its practitioners to form bonds with their beasts, empowering both through their connection.
But its power was never meant to exceed that principle.
Seol turned to her father, her face a mask of confusion.
The Beast Palace Lord, still gazing fixedly at So-ryong, muttered as if in a daze.
“What is this…? How can both the O-gong and So-ryong be…”
“Beast Palace Lord, what is going on?! What must we do?!”
Unable to remain a passive observer any longer, Mandok Shingun spoke with urgency.
But the Beast Palace Lord had no answers.
Everyone stood frozen, incapable of action, unable to comprehend the events unfolding before them.
And then—
Something even more astonishing happened.
—Creak… Crack…
Beneath So-ryong’s body, something began to expand.
No—it was emerging.
Slowly, it coiled itself around his form.
“What—what is that?!”
“The O-gong?! So-ryong’s O-gong—why is it behaving this way?!”
It was the O-gong.
The very same small O-gong that So-ryong had raised.
Its yellow body, marked with blue spots, was growing larger.
It wound itself around So-ryong, its size increasing at a terrifying rate.
The blue-spotted, yellow carapace began to molt—
Its color, its very structure, was changing.
It was no longer small.
No longer the cute, tiny creature it once was.
Its body had deepened to a profound, rich blue.
Its legs had taken on a jade-like hue.
And its once-modest frame had expanded into something massive, flat, and broad.
Witnessing this, Mandok Shingun gasped in absolute disbelief.
“A blue body… jade legs… No… This cannot be!”
His voice shook.
“That’s… that is a Flying Centipede!”
The name hit everyone like a lightning strike.
Even Hwa-eun, though her knowledge was limited in some areas, recognized that name.
It was documented in the final chapter of The Compendium of the World’s Most Venomous Creatures.
The undisputed King of All Centipedes—
“The Flying Centipede!?”
Hwa-eun whispered, stunned.
She looked to Mandok Shingun, who was still staring wide-eyed at the transformation.
“The Flying Centipede… It is one of the Ten Deadly Venoms! A calamity that flies across the heavens, delivering death wherever it goes! An unstoppable force that unleashes a poisonous mist!”
“A blue-spotted O-gong consuming the Neidan of the Bi-cheon Shin-sa—and transforming into the Flying Centipede! This… this defies belief!”
No historical record had ever mentioned such an occurrence.
Even The Compendium of the World’s Most Venomous Creatures, the Tang Clan’s great repository of knowledge, held no accounts of this phenomenon.
Yet it was happening right before them.
“Cho… Cho is becoming a Flying Centipede?”
As Mandok Shingun and Hwa-eun stood in awe, another pair of voices rose in shock.
The Beast Palace Lord and Seol.
“Can it be… Does this mean…?”
“That saying, ‘a martial art that grows alongside its beast’… it was meant literally all along?!”
A line from the teachings of the Beast Heart Technique.
A sentence that had always been passed over.
“The Beast Heart Technique allows one to grow alongside their beast. As one advances, so does the other.”
Understanding its true meaning now, the Beast Palace Lord and Seol shuddered with reverence.
Meanwhile, beside them, Mandok Shingun and Hwa-eun remained equally shaken by the fact that a blue-spotted O-gong had just evolved into the mythic Flying Centipede.
And throughout it all, at the very center of the room—
So-ryong, now completely engulfed within the coils of the luminous centipede, lay still, fully enclosed within a sphere of radiant blue light.
***
My head—I felt like my skull was about to shatter.
The instant Cho swallowed the Neidan of the Bi-cheon Shin-sa, something within my mind swelled as if ready to burst.
I expected to black out immediately, but I did not.
The agony simply continued.
I wanted to tear my own head off to end the suffering.
Clutching my skull, I groaned in torment.
“Urgh… s-someone, please…”
Each time a deep, pulsing throb echoed inside my mind, a new wave of unbearable pressure crashed over me.
It was peculiar. Normally, pain of this magnitude would have rendered me unconscious.
Yet my awareness remained perfectly clear.
No, it was more severe than that—because I was fully conscious, the pain felt even more acute. It was as if every minute detail of the suffering was being meticulously recorded in my thoughts.
At first, the pain was just an indescribable agony.
But now, it seemed I could catalog every aspect of it in unbearable specificity—the precise nature of the pain, the exact regions of my brain it was affecting, the rhythm of its pulse through my body—as though I were compelled to author a comprehensive dissertation on anguish.
Why was no one coming to my aid?
Grandfather Mandok Shingun, the Beast Palace Lord, Seol, Hwa-eun—they were all right here.
I continued to groan, my voice a broken whisper, pleading for a response.
“S-someone… help me…”
—Shhh…
A soft touch swept through my hair.
Delicate fingers brushed gently over my scalp.
The sensation was so distinct, I could perceive exactly how tender and cautious the touch was.
‘H-Hwa-eun? Seol?’
The touch was unmistakably feminine.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered whose hand it was—but that question was irrelevant now.
What mattered was that with every pass of those fingers through my hair, the burning agony in my skull began to dissolve.
It wasn’t like swallowing something cool—it was like having that coolness applied directly to the source of the pain.
With each stroke, my head felt clearer, lighter.
The pain started to fade, like mist vanishing under the morning sun.
I still could not open my eyes, but I gave myself over completely to that soothing contact.
It was the only way to endure.
Soon, after no more than ten strokes of that hand, the pain had almost entirely disappeared.
Only a faint echo of it remained, like a spectral memory.
Gradually, I opened my eyes, struggling to regain my bearings.
But I saw nothing.
Darkness.
Was it night?
No… as my thoughts grew clearer, I realized—
I was cradled in someone’s arms.
Yet, unlike the warmth of that gentle hand, the embrace itself was cool.
‘What…?’
It was soft, but cold.
Slowly, I lifted my head to see who was holding me.
‘…Blue?’
The first thing I saw was hair of a deep cobalt shade.
Not black, like Hwa-eun’s or Seol’s.
And, now that I thought of it, no woman in this world possessed blue hair.
That realization shocked me.
Alarmed, I tried to pull away from the embrace—but my body refused to obey.
I was still sluggish, weakened by the residual pain.
With great effort, I tilted my head back to look at the person holding me.
A woman.
A woman I had never seen before.
Her deep blue eyes locked with mine.
She appeared to be at the cusp between youth and womanhood, precisely on the border of maturity.
And when our eyes met—she smiled.
“W-who…?”
As I stammered the question, she offered no reply.
Instead, she leaned closer.
Her lips pressed against my forehead.
—Chuup.
The moment her kiss landed, my vision went dark again.
***
‘Right. That was absurd.’
The memory had seemed so vivid, I nearly accepted it as real.
But it must have been a dream.
When I awoke, an overpowering sensation washed over me.
“Urgh…”
—Lick. Chuup.
Something damp was pressing against my forehead.
As my eyes opened, I found myself staring into a huge pair of blue eyes.
Unlike the ones from my dream, these were not human.
Instead of irises, they were simple dots—four of them.
“Wh-what… O-gong?”
They were unmistakable.
I had seen them countless times in various manuals and drawings.
The distinct compound eyes of a centipede.
Blinking, I fought to make sense of my situation.
Then, it dawned on me—
A giant centipede was licking my forehead with its venomous fangs.
“GAAAHHH!!!”
I screamed in pure terror.
Even though I was called Spicy Fabre, I was not immune to panic when a enormous centipede was licking my forehead!
At my scream, the massive centipede jerked back.
And from nearby, the voices of Hwa-eun and Seol cried out in concern.
“So-ryong! You’re awake?!”
“So-ryong! Are you alright?!”
“S-save me…! O-O-gong…”
I tried to scramble away, but my body was still too weak to respond.
Frantically, I called for help.
Hwa-eun’s voice, soft yet steady, calmed me.
“It is alright, So-ryong. This is Cho.”
“Cho…?”
Cho?
Our eldest daughter?
I paused, then slowly turned my gaze back to the enormous centipede.
It was watching me.
And when our eyes met—it nodded.
Then, the pressure holding me down vanished, and I was free to move.
—Ssshhh…
“You… you are Cho? What in the world…?”
—Ssshh!
Her voice was more resonant than before.
Cho had always been small and endearing.
But this being before me was at least six meters long.
Its body was now a vibrant, deep blue.
Its legs shimmered with a jade-like quality.
And something about its new form sparked a realization in my mind.
Stumbling away from the table, I muttered in disbelief.
“This… this isn’t Cho anymore. It is more like a Bi-cheon Shin-sa…”
Hearing this, both Seol and Hwa-eun smiled.
“That is correct, So-ryong. After consuming the Neidan of the Bi-cheon Shin-sa, Cho evolved into a Flying Centipede—one of the Ten Deadly Venoms.”
“Cho has become a Flying Centipede, So-ryong.”
“A Flying Centipede…?! One of the Ten Deadly Venoms!?”
The significance of those words struck me with the force of a thunderclap.
I turned back to look at Cho.
Hovering in the air, she let out a happy chirp.
—Sssshhh!
‘Incredible…!’
My daughter—my firstborn—had literally become a legendary flying monster.
I had no comprehension of how this had occurred.
But as the reality settled in, my lips parted—and a scream erupted.
Not from fear.
Not from shock.
But from pure, unadulterated exhilaration.
“GYAAAAAHHHH! YES!!! MY FIRSTBORN!!!”