“L-lie down here.”
“H-Hyang too...”
“I understand, Master. I will take care of Hyang. Princess, you move the Master—I’ll handle Hyang.”
“Alright.”
Startled, the Princess and Gun Hye-rin quickly scooped Hyang and me into their arms and laid us on the bedding.
The moment I lay down, I began circulating the energy of Five Poisons Returning to the Origin Art.
I suspected the creature had some kind of poison that slowed bodily functions, so I needed to push it out or resist it.
Poison arts had the ability to either expel toxins or increase resistance to them.
“Are you alright?”
“So-ryong, are you okay?”
Once I summoned the energy of the Five Poisons Returning to the Origin Art, I clearly felt the poisonous energy.
It was a toxin unfamiliar to me, spreading through my body.
First, I checked how potent it was.
While I could handle even strong poisons without issue, Hyang might suffer serious consequences—so I had to be sure.
As one of the higher-ranked creatures among the Twenty-Four Poison Branch, she should have decent poison resistance, and given that her body only slowed down, it didn’t seem that strong.
But even so, if mishandled, the effects could be unexpectedly severe.
Following Grandfather Mandok Shingun’s advice, I checked for the usual symptoms: burning meridians, a hot dantian—none were present.
Those were the basic signs of a strong poison—if the venom clashed with my poison arts, there would’ve been such reactions. But there were none.
So it’s not that potent after all...
With that confirmed, I turned my internal gaze inward.
To locate the origin of the poisoning.
Closing my eyes and focusing, I sensed the toxic flow.
It had started in the palm of my right hand.
That foreign energy had entered through my right hand and spread from there—most likely when I caught that crystal the creature spat out.
That cute little thing had definitely released a toxin that slowed people down.
I carefully circulated my internal energy and herded the foreign poison back toward my right hand.
Back in the past, I wouldn’t have been able to do this—but after dealing with far more vicious poisons and advancing to the Hwagyeong level (even if I technically cheated my way in), my internal energy was indeed of the Hwagyeong tier.
After a bit of time, as if rewinding a tape, the poison that had spread through my bloodstream began retreating back to my right hand.
When I released the energy gathered in my hand, a mist-like vapor rose from my palm, and the symptoms disappeared.
“Whew... that was a scare. Hyang, you get some good sleep now, alright? It doesn’t seem to be the kind of poison that causes any permanent damage.”
As much as I wanted to extract the toxin from Hyang as well, she was a venomous centipede spirit beast. I couldn’t.
To expel poison from someone, I had to know all their meridians.
Even if I was the Spicy Fabre, I couldn’t possibly know all of Hyang’s internal pathways—so I couldn’t detoxify her.
As I reassured her, she replied slowly.
—Tss...rrr... 『O...kay... Da...ddy.』
After gently lowering her from my stomach to the bedding, I sat up. Gun Hye-rin came closer to examine me.
“Let me take a look.”
She felt my pulse and looked relieved.
“Looks like you purged the poison well.”
“So-ryong, you scared me,” the Princess added beside her, sighing in relief.
I scratched my head and said,
“Hyang probably annoyed it, so it got mad. Thankfully, it looks like the poison just slows people down. Sorry for startling you.”
“No, don’t be sorry.”
Just as I apologized to the Princess—
Gun Hye-rin inspected one of the crystals and tilted her head.
She looked genuinely confused.
“But this is odd. I touched one earlier too—so why wasn’t I affected? I don’t feel any poison in it.”
I took the crystal from Gun Hye-rin to check it myself.
And just as she said—there was no trace of poison.
There should have been something. But I felt nothing.
“Seriously, this one’s clean. What about the others?”
I checked the ones scattered around as well, but they were also free of any poison.
Something wasn’t right.
Both Hyang and I were definitely poisoned by those.
I had confirmed, during internal observation, that the poison had entered through my right hand when I caught the crystal.
And yet, now there was no poison left in them.
As I was trying to make sense of it, Gun Hye-rin poked the creature inside the cage with her finger.
The creature twitched, half-asleep, then blinked its eyes open.
It blinked groggily a few times, and then—almost like it had stored up its earlier emotion—perked up and let out a cry.
—Kkiee!
An adorably cute sound.
At the same time, a crystal popped out of its mouth and flew toward Gun Hye-rin.
She calmly raised her left hand to catch it.
“Gun Hye-rin?”
I was about to yell at her to be careful—it could cause poisoning—but the flying crystal hovered midair, floating above her palm.
She had used Vacuum Capture to stop it.
Staring at the floating crystal above her hand, Gun Hye-rin said,
“This... I think the poison is what's clinging to the surface of the crystal.”
Could it be its saliva? Or maybe the poison is secreted together with the crystal?
Just as I moved closer to inspect the crystal, placing my hand on her wrist—
“Huh?”
Gun Hye-rin let out a strange noise and dropped the crystal.
I saw something on the crystal get instantly absorbed into her palm.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but the absorption was terrifyingly fast.
Gun Hye-rin stared at her palm in shock, then looked at me blankly and said,
“M... aster...”
She was clearly poisoned.
“You can’t let your guard down like that! Why’d you suddenly drop your energy shield like that?”
You’ve gotta keep your mind focused—why would you suddenly drop your guard like that?
I scolded her, and she stammered her apology slowly.
“M... my... bad...”
What good is an apology now?
She was already poisoned.
I asked her whether she could detoxify herself.
“Jeez... Can you detox it?”
“I... can slow... it down... but that’s... probably all I can do...”
Even if she had reached the Hwagyeong realm, it seemed Gun Hye-rin hadn’t trained in poison arts—so detoxification was out of the question.
Just as I had done with Hyang earlier, I picked up Gun Hye-rin in the Princess’s embrace and laid her down next to Hyang.
“Just stay lying down until the poison wears off. To detoxify someone, I’d have to place my hand on either your lower belly or your chest, and, well, that’s a bit much, isn’t it?
I didn’t study meridians that extensively. I only know how to detox through those two areas.”
Unlike Hyang, who was a spirit beast, Gun Hye-rin was human—so I could purge her poison. But there was a problem.
If I had fully mastered meridian theory, I’d be able to place my hand anywhere and draw out the poison, but my understanding of meridians and martial arts still lagged behind that of others at my level.
The only detox method I knew involved placing my hand on the lower abdomen or chest—but come on, I couldn’t just touch a woman’s chest or stomach like that.
Back in my previous life, if it was for medical purposes, touching the lower ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) belly might have passed.
But here? I might end up having to take responsibility for Gun Hye-rin.
A horrifying thought.
At my words, Gun Hye-rin’s face, moving at half speed, flushed red as she slowly nodded.
I sighed, thinking once again what a high-maintenance person she was, and turned to the Princess.
“We need to be careful from now on. Maybe it’s still just a baby, or maybe it’s because it’s sleepy—but we can’t communicate with it at all.”
“You’re right.”
Just as I said we’d have to be more cautious, the Princess, who had been relocating Gun Hye-rin, picked up the crystal she had dropped earlier and brought it to me.
“So-ryong, here you go.”
“Thanks. I should probably keep these stored safely.”
The moment I took the crystal from the Princess—
That burnt smell wafted into my nose again.
Like singed fur, the same smell as burning hair from elementary school science class began to spread.
“This is strange... Did the poisoning not fully clear yet?”
It was definitely the same scent I’d noticed when poisoned by that creature—presumably Bakwon.
It had to be connected to the poison.
Tilting my head at the strangeness of it, I spoke—and the Princess asked with concern,
“What is it? Do you still feel traces of the poison?”
I answered with a serious expression.
“Yes, back when I was poisoned, I caught a whiff of something burning through my nose. That same smell is back.”
“Burning smell?”
“Yeah, like singed hair. And I’m smelling it again now. But the poison doesn’t seem to be lingering in my body...”
I turned my gaze inward again, but no poisonous energy could be sensed.
As I puzzled over it, I looked at the Princess—her face was completely flushed bright red.
***
About an hour later, both Hyang and Gun Hye-rin returned to normal.
“Maybe the poison was weak because it’s still a baby? It detoxified faster than expected.”
Gun Hye-rin, now conscious, offered her thoughts.
But that showed she didn’t understand spirit beast venom very well.
Whether adult or infant, the concentration of the venom isn’t necessarily weaker.
In fact, it can sometimes be stronger.
It all depends on the composition of the venom.
Take rattlesnakes, for instance. They possess neurotoxins, but also secrete tissue-destroying enzymes as a major component of their venom.
So when you’re bitten, you suffer both from the neurotoxin and the enzymatic tissue damage—and this varies between juveniles and adults.
Young rattlesnakes have more neurotoxins; adults have more tissue-destroying enzymes.
Scientists speculate that this is because younger snakes need to kill prey quickly, so their neurotoxins are stronger, while adults need to digest prey faster, so they produce more enzymes.
It hasn’t been definitively proven, but still—
“They're not always weaker just because they’re young. Some spirit beasts actually have stronger venom in their infancy.”
“Really?”
Gun Hye-rin stretched and moved her body, then walked over to the table and took a seat in the empty chair.
Looking at the scattered crystal pellets, she said,
“But Master, these crystals... don’t they look kind of like hail pellets?”
“You’re right. They do look more like hail than crystal.”
Indeed—crystals were supposed to be hexagonal and sharply faceted.
But what the creature spat out, while technically hexagonal, had rounded edges—making them resemble hailstones.
And at that moment, a passage from the Compendium of All Poisonous Creatures flashed into my mind.
“When approached, Bakwon pelts hail.”
Because the book used the word hail, I had assumed it meant actual hail falling from the sky—but what if it meant these crystal-like hail-shaped pellets?
If Bakwon wasn’t literally summoning hail but rather spitting out hail-shaped projectiles like this...
Is this little guy really Bakwon?
That possibility was starting to seem more and more likely—when a strong scent of water blew in through the cabin window.
—Shhhhhh.
Rain began to pour down outside.
A sudden shower, most likely.
As expected, it passed quickly after a short while.
Since this was a ship provided by the imperial palace, I wasn’t too worried—until I noticed droplets falling from the ceiling in a few spots over my quarters.
“What the hell? A ship from the imperial family has leaks?”
Even our own boat doesn’t leak, yet this official vessel has water dripping through the ceiling? I was about to frown in disbelief when—
—Kkii! Kkii!
The baby spirit beast let out a high-pitched cry.
I turned to look and saw it wide-eyed, having just been struck by a drop of rain from the ceiling.
“Oh no! It got hit by the leak?”
I quickly moved the cage out of the way of the dripping water, fetched a clean cloth, and looked into the cage.
“I’m just going to dry you off, so don’t go shooting anything weird, alright?”
—Kki?
It had already attacked us once, and still looked skittish—but I couldn’t leave it in that cage forever.
I figured this was a good opportunity to build some trust.
I opened the cage door.
Then slowly reached in with the cloth toward the creature’s head.
Its eyes went wide in alarm.
Sure enough, without the bars in place, and with my hand directly reaching inside, the creature froze—unlike earlier, when it had boldly launched crystals from behind the safety of the bars.
“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just drying you off.”
Speaking softly, I gently patted its head dry.
Just as I finished wiping off the moisture—
I pulled my hand back and peeked inside the cage.
The creature had turned a deep navy blue.
Exactly like the image I’d seen in the Compendium of All Poisonous Creatures.
It was identical to Bakwon.
“Gyaaaaaah!”
