Behind my shout, the horrified voices of Hwa-eun and Gun Hye-rin echoed through the group transmission channel.
『“What in the world... So-ryong, it’s h-horrifying!”』
『“Unbelievable. The cave floor is completely black with them! Just how many did those Five Venoms bastards create!?”』
At first, like me, they hadn’t fully grasped what they were seeing inside the cave. But after my outcry, they looked again—and were instantly horrified.
The image of the stickyworms swarming along the submerged cave floor like sprouts in a bean sprout vat... that wasn’t something you described with ordinary words.
It required the language of dread, revulsion, monstrosity—of every grotesque and negative emotion known to humanity.
Grotesque, repulsive, hideous—that kind of thing.
Anyone who saw it would react the same way.
Even I, someone who loved insects, amphibians, and venomous creatures, was shivering. So what must it be like for them?
Judging from their voices, they were even more shaken than I was.
Despite being Huagyeong-level martial artists, both of them instinctively tried to hide behind me.
I, who had recovered slightly faster from the shock, quickly decided to calm them down and pull back.
We need to retreat—now.
Our first objective was to determine how far the creatures had spread, and that goal was now complete.
We had found the cave where they were most likely born and raised.
And from the look of things, they had never left it.
Judging by how they clustered together as a colony, the one stickyworm we’d found earlier must’ve been accidentally separated—carried away by the current and discovered downstream.
That meant the situation hadn’t yet turned into a worst-case scenario.
They hadn’t spread.
So we had a chance. We could fall back to a safe location and observe them, and figure out how to deal with them before they dispersed.
『“Let’s withdraw for now.”』
『“Why? Can’t we have the kids sweep them all out at once? Or just collapse the cave entrance and trap them inside? Wouldn’t that be best if they’re all gathered here like this?”』
Gun Hye-rin immediately suggested either having the creatures wiped out by the kids or sealing the entrance.
But there was no guarantee our creatures could cleanly eliminate all of them—and if there was even one hidden tunnel, or if the entrance didn’t seal completely, they could scatter.
If even a handful of those larvae escaped, the Lanchang River—no, the entire Mekong—would become a river of death.
And there was another reason to retreat immediately.
『“There’s no guarantee any of that would work. And even a few escaping would be catastrophic. It’s better to keep observing them until we come up with a surefire plan.
Besides... their mother might return soon. We need to fall back fast.”』
Their mother could be coming back.
『“The mother? I thought you said earlier that stickyworms don’t care for their young. Didn’t you say the mother and offspring would be separate?”』
『“Right, before we left, you specifically said the mother lays the eggs and abandons them.”』
Both Hwa-eun and Gun Hye-rin asked with confusion, remembering what I had told them earlier.
Indeed, I’d said that since stickyworms didn’t care for their young, we’d need to find the mother and the offspring separately.
But something had changed.
『“That’s what I thought too. But based on what we’re seeing now, the mother is raising them.”』
I had a reason to believe the artificial stickyworm mothers were rearing their young.
And it had everything to do with where the young were located.
『“Why do you think that?”
“Yeah, So-ryong, what makes you say that?”
“Because they’re in a cave.”』
Normally, stickyworms hatch, drift as plankton, and eventually settle in mud or under rocks to begin their proper growth phase.
During the plankton stage, they eat smaller plankton. Once they settle, they start feeding on microorganisms from the substrate.
And in marine or freshwater environments, both phytoplankton like algae and zooplankton abound. There’s plenty to eat.
But a cave pool is different.
Algae and other phytoplankton need light for photosynthesis. Without light, they can’t grow or reproduce.
And without them, the zooplankton that feed on them also die off—meaning cave water contains /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ extremely limited plankton.
So if creatures that must eat plankton managed to grow this large inside the cave...
It meant someone had to be feeding them.
At that size, they’d need a massive amount of plankton—something the cave couldn’t provide.
So unless the mother was helping them, they wouldn’t have survived at all.
Furthermore, the scouts had reported seeing a mother dragging a deer into the water.
I’d assumed she was taking her time to consume it. But what if she was bringing it back to feed her young?
That made everything click.
『“There’s no food for them in that cave water. If they’ve grown this much, they had help.”
“Ah... I see now.”』
I had just finished explaining and was about to move when I heard Cho’s urgent voice.
『-Chrrr. (Dad, something’s coming!)
“What!?”』
Cho had sensed something approaching. As I scanned the current, her antennae gently nudged my head to face upstream.
There—floating toward us in the water—was a water buffalo.
A buffalo?
At first, I thought it was swimming—buffalo are fond of rivers and often cross them or wade in.
But then it tilted and rolled belly-up.
Wrapped tightly around its torso was a stickyworm.
Damn it!
The mother was clearly returning from a hunt, bringing prey back to the cave.
I frantically looked around.
We had to flee—or hide.
Retreating would get us spotted for sure. We needed cover.
That’s when I spotted it: a boulder submerged not far from the cave entrance.
『“Quick—over there!”
“Got it!”
“On it!”』
We scrambled for cover behind the rock—but as we got closer, we hit a problem.
It had looked fine from a distance, but up close, it was smaller than expected.
It could just barely conceal Hwa-eun and Gun Hye-rin.
But part of my body and Cho’s were still exposed.
The creature was already within striking distance.
We were about to be spotted.
Then, in that critical moment—
Heukjeom spread his body out wide and flattened himself over Cho and me.
Huh? Oh! Of course!
At first, it didn’t seem like much. But then I remembered:
Stingrays camouflage themselves using protective coloration.
Everyone knows octopuses can blend in with their surroundings. But stingrays are masters of it too—often even more subtle.
Heukjeom must’ve shifted his coloring to match the rock, shielding us from view.
『“But just covering us with his body won’t—”
“It’ll work. Rays like Heukjeom have the ability to change color. He’s probably mimicking the boulder right now.”
“Change color?”』
As Gun Hye-rin and Hwa-eun gawked—
The buffalo floated directly above us.
Heukjeom’s camouflage must have been perfect, because the creature passed us by and slipped straight into the cave.
Whew. Thank goodness.
Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief—
A heavy ripple surged outward from inside the cave.
At the same time, we all looked at each other.
It was clear we were thinking the same thing.
We could imagine what kind of scene might be unfolding inside, and without anyone needing to say it, we all began swimming back toward the cave entrance.
And what awaited us there was exactly what we expected.
The stickyworm hatchlings were swarming the water buffalo the mother had dragged in.
The buffalo rocked in the water, and the hatchlings clung to it like bristling quills on a porcupine.
『“As expected...”』
『“Dear god...”』
The hatchlings that couldn’t find space on the buffalo shoved their bodies ruthlessly between their siblings, trying to muscle in.
And since they’d all left the cave floor to feed, something that hadn’t been visible earlier now came into view—
Bones. Countless white bones littering the cave floor.
The calcified remains of many, many animals. They must’ve hunted a huge number of creatures to feed those young.
Raising that many larvae would have required an extraordinary supply of prey.
As we stared in shock at the feeding swarm and the carpet of bones beneath them—
Hwa-eun’s voice trembled.
『“So-ryong... there are human bones too.”』
I turned to where she pointed—and sure enough, human skulls were scattered throughout the cave.
This area was deep jungle; no civilians lived here. And since the conflicts between the Murim Alliance, the Five Venoms, and the Blood Cult had flared up, border crossings had been shut down.
Could they be Five Venoms casualties?
It made sense.
After all, they had completely withdrawn from this area.
They wouldn’t have pulled out unless they’d suffered severe losses—or feared a major infiltration from the Murim Alliance.
Idiots. There’s nothing more reckless than humans tampering with nature. This was just the natural consequence.
***
“Puhah.”
“Haaa... haa...”
We clung to our creatures and returned downstream, finally gasping for breath.
Martial artists at the Huagyeong level can regulate their breath for long periods—even holding it for thirty minutes was no big deal.
“Just to confirm... they’re all in that cave, right?”
Hwa-eun quickly caught her breath and asked.
At first, we hadn’t noticed. But when the feeding frenzy started, we clearly saw both mothers were inside the cave.
“Yes, Hwa-eun.”
“Then all of them—including both mothers—are in there.”
“So what now? Do we investigate further, as you said earlier?”
At first, I’d planned to observe them a little longer—hoping to find some clue as to how we might capture or kill them.
But now we knew: the mothers were actively feeding their young.
That alone was enough.
That detail—that they received food—meant they wouldn’t disperse for a while.
And that gave us the perfect opportunity to wipe them out.
“No. I think we’ve gathered enough information.
The reason we were observing them in the first place was to gain intel that would help us eliminate them—and knowing that the mothers are bringing food to them is more than enough.
Still, since we don’t know how long they’ll stay in the cave, we need to come up with a plan to wipe them out as soon as possible.”
That was the point—we had to strike while they were gathered in one place.
After thinking it over for a moment, Hwa-eun offered a suggestion that sounded very much like something a Tang Clan member would say.
“What if we use poison? The location makes it difficult to bring in a large force or deploy the children.”
Even though the Five Venoms had retreated, this was still Daewol Nation territory. We couldn’t deploy the children, the Murim Alliance, or the Beast Palace in large numbers here.
So her suggestion was to poison the cave and wipe them out in one go.
But there was a problem.
“We can’t use poison. We don’t know what kind of effect it would have downstream. From what I know, the Lanchang River is as long as the Yangtze—and countless people live along its banks.”
The river was vast, with a huge volume of water, so it would dilute the poison—but we couldn’t take that risk.
Who knew what kind of damage it would do to the ecosystem?
And besides, pesticides always led to resistance. To even test whether they’d work on these things, we’d need to capture a few specimens and experiment—but with the mothers guarding them, snatching even one was impossible.
“Then what do we do?”
“I do have an idea... but I’ll need to return to the Tang Clan to get it. That’s the problem.”
“To the Tang Clan? You said you weren’t using poison—so why go there?”
Hwa-eun asked, clearly confused.
But I had a very, very good idea.
The Tang Clan just so happened to possess a certain ‘natural enemy’—something that could eliminate them in one blow.
Illegal? Absolutely.
Effective? Incredibly.
What am I talking about?
Electric fishing. Using Ho-ye—“Tiger Lightning”—to electrocute the whole area.
This thing could end it all in one go.
It was the very definition of destructive overfishing—so effective it was banned outright.
But it just might be the perfect weapon for this job.
