Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

Silence pressed down, filling the surroundings, when Hwa-eun spoke.

“R-right. Well, Zihwa is also a w-wife, after all.”

Yes, Zihwa was the being who had saved So-ryong’s life.

She might not be human, but So-ryong had had a child with her, so she was undeniably a wife.

If a wife said she would share his bed, on what grounds could they stop her?

Gun Hye-rin and Ji-ryeon felt the same.

She had saved So-ryong when he had nearly melted away and vanished; the grace of saving a life had to be honored.

Even if she wasn’t human.

Besides, in this Cultivation World, they said it wasn’t a problem even if the races were different, and hadn’t they even said that if she underwent transformation, she’d be no different from a human?

If she used a Magic Treasure to take on a human form, she would look human, so there was no reason to oppose it.

They had steeled themselves for this in the past, but it was still flustering now that the day had come so suddenly.

“Well, it would be stranger if a wife didn’t climb into his arms... It’s just a little flustering that it happened so suddenly.”

“R-right. But Zihwa, do you know the human, um... method?”

“Method? Ah, you mean that? Well, what difference could there be? You take the male’s thing and...”

At the explicit conversation passing back and forth between the wives, Soyeon felt all the scales over her body stand on end.

The joy she’d felt at having her life saved turned meaningless as her two cute little eyes went pitch-black as if soaked in ink.

Her vision went dark as though someone had dumped squid ink over her.

No wonder he had so readily taken her in as a disciple.

Only now did she understand.

That her decision to become his disciple had been a thousand-year mistake.

She had thought it a stroke of great fortune to become the disciple of a lofty cultivator who had even saved her life, but it wasn’t fortune—it was calamity.

Like lightning, that hellish conversation she had once heard from inside a cage flashed through her mind.

“P-please spare me. I’m not that strong, so even if you make pills out of me, I won’t help much in raising anyone’s abilities.”

She had realized she was being sold as Spirit Pill material and had clung to the bars of her cage, screaming and begging the one guarding the prison to save her.

The cultivator had spoken in a calm voice.

“You beings born as spirit creatures have inner cores, so you’re efficient, see. So you don’t need to worry.”

“P-please spare me.”

When she pleaded again, he had spoken with a lewd smile.

“Well, if you’re lucky, there is another path.”

“Another path?”

“Though maybe you can’t really call that very lucky? Heh heh.

Among the insane cultivators, there are some bastards who want to form dual cultivation with all sorts of different races. Sometimes those types come to buy playthings, and there’s a path where you get sold to them.”

“Dual cultivation?”

“Mating. Copulation. You get dragged off and repeat mating and giving birth until you die, while giving birth to strange hybrids.”

“Eeeek!”

“Don’t look so disgusted. At first it’s hard, but those guys are very skilled, as long as it’s a female, even if the race is different. You might not understand at first, but soon you’ll fall into pleasure and won’t be able to crawl back out. Heh heh heh.”

The fact that the hornet called this man “dad.”

The word “family.”

The many wives.

All the pieces fit together perfectly.

What had they called men like that again?

A pervert?

Strictly speaking, “metamorphosis” was originally a word for insects changing from larvae into adults.

But there was also that peculiar type said to be born among the human race from time to time, pronounced the same, and her master was clearly one of those.

Yes, Soyeon concluded that she had undoubtedly come to serve that “pervert” as her master.

’S-surely not me too? N-no, right?’

Surely he wouldn’t lay hands even on his disciples?

Soyeon clung to that single strand of hope.

***

We had been flying for quite some time.

On one sheer cliff face, I spotted the barely visible mouth of a cave, slightly open.

We could have kept moving for days without sleep, but we had lost our bearings.

Because we only had the one talisman.

So I decided we might as well stop and think about our direction a bit, and since that cave had just come into view, I chose to spend the night there and check how my first disciple, Soyeon, was adapting.

“Cho, let’s head over there.”

—Tsurur. 『Got it, Dad.』

As I pointed toward the cave and spoke, Cho quickly flew that way.

A little later, with big sister Jeokwol hanging on my back, we arrived at the cave in the cliff.

—Step. Step.

We landed at the entrance and looked inside; the ceiling was high, and the cave was a moderately deep one, about twenty to thirty meters in.

There were traces that people had once lived here, but it seemed quite a long time had passed since they had.

The remaining bamboo furniture and bedding had all rotted away.

On the off chance it was the home of some reclusive master, I searched it thoroughly to see if there might be some secret manual, but I couldn’t find anything.

Maybe it was a bit too greedy, considering I’d already gained a disciple.

Snorting a laugh, I spoke.

“Then shall we stay here for tonight? Big sister, you’ve worked hard.”

—Chiii. 『No. I was happy to fly together again after so long.』

“Then please go inside and rest.”

—Chii. 『Is it okay if I don’t stand guard at the entrance?』

“Well, we’re not at a height that’s easy to spot, so I think it’s fine. I’m suppressing my qi as much as I can too. And I’ve put up a qi veil as well.”

—Chiiit. 『All right. Then tell me anytime you need help.』

“Got it, big sister.”

Big sister turned into smoke and vanished, and I decided to get things ready for the night first.

I cleared out all the dusty furniture and traces inside and was about to cut some grass nearby to spread out when, just as I had nearly finished clearing the furniture, smoke billowed out from my nose and Hwa-eun appeared.

“My lord.”

“Ah, Hwa-eun, is Soyeon adapting well?”

I had asked how Soyeon was doing, thinking the timing was perfect, and what I heard was startling.

“She... she’s a bit of an unusual disciple, so I was taken aback, but the girl herself seems fine. No, she’s not a girl, really.”

“?”

“You didn’t ask Soyeon her age?”

“No, I didn’t?”

“S-she says she’s two hundred years old...”

“Huuuh?!”

My disciple was older than I was.

Listening to Hwa-eun, I learned that there were those who were born as spirit creatures from the start and those among ordinary beasts who later became spirit creatures, and Soyeon was the latter.

An ordinary beast ages and eventually reaches what’s called Opened Wisdom, when intelligence emerges, and among those, if one awakens what’s called Spiritual Awakening, a spiritual sense, they become a spirit creature.

In a flustered voice, I asked,

“I-is that all right? I got excited because she was my first disciple and just accepted her.”

I’d been thrilled at the fact that she was my first disciple and accepted her, but now that I knew she was older than me, I couldn’t help wondering if this was okay.

“In the Cultivation World, skill matters more than age, so I don’t think it’s an issue. Zihwa said the same.”

“Phew, in that case that’s a relief. By the way, Hwa-eun, why did you come out? Did you have something to talk about?”

“Ah, I just came out to, t-to get your sleeping arrangements ready.”

“Aha. I was just going to cut some grass and lie on that.”

I’d thought she had something to say, but Hwa-eun had come out just to prepare my bed.

After looking around for a moment, Hwa-eun told me to wait a bit and went back into Dokmul-hyang.

“Just a moment.”

A little later, Hwa-eun reappeared together with Gun Hye-rin—and a bed.

“A bed?”

“It felt a bit wrong for you to keep cutting grass and sleeping on top of it every time.”

“That’s right, Master.”

What the two of them had taken out was the bed from my room.

I was thrown off by a bed suddenly being set out in a cave, but thinking about it, they were right.

Dokmul-hyang was both the Peach Garden Map and the Falling-Things Map.

It was a Magic Treasure that could store whatever items we needed and take them back out.

So even if I couldn’t go inside, there was no need for me to live like a vagrant.

We could just take a bed out like this and then put it back in.

Not just a bed; we could put in and take out anything, so I could even have them cut grass for me inside, and it was the same with everything else.

I decided that from now on, this was how we should do it.

“You’re right. Why didn’t I think of this?”

After that, once we set up the bed and the two of them disappeared, I followed after them to check whether Soyeon was doing well, and found her in the center of the village, surrounded by children.

—Tsurur. 『Soyeon big sis, tell us a story about the Dragon Palace.』

“Ah, the Dragon Palace?”

—Tsur. 『Yeah, is the Dragon King really a dragon?』

“No, that’s actually a bit of a misunderstanding. Among the spirit creatures who awaken Spiritual Awakening in the sea, the strongest spirit creature becomes the Dragon King.

I’ve never seen a dragon myself. I heard that in the old days, dragons were also Dragon Kings...”

—Tsurururut! 『Then were you a Dragon King too, big sis!?』

“No, I’m really interested in the human world, so I went to the human world. Being a Dragon King isn’t my style.”

Being from the Dragon Palace must have seemed fascinating; she was completely surrounded by the children, being bombarded with questions.

Bini and Hyang were taking turns asking questions, and the other children were listening intently from behind with faces full of curiosity.

’Should I just leave her like that for a while?’

Rather than immediately registering Soyeon and raising her realm and all that, I decided to let her adapt a bit more first and stepped back outside.

For now, she seemed to be adjusting well.

It was when I came back out to the cave.

Right in front of me, there was steaming bathwater sending up warm vapor, and Ji-ryeon was smiling beside it.

“So-ryong.”

“Ji-ryeon, did you prepare bathwater?”

“Yes.”

“Wow, now that I think about it, we can take baths too.”

To be honest, the concept of a subspace pouch like this was something that came up often in the novels and comics of the world I came from.

So I should have been the one who knew better how to use it, but my wives were using it far better than I was.

As I marveled at my wives’ resourcefulness and stood up, thinking I should soak myself thoroughly in warm water for the first time in a while, Ji-ryeon spoke to Cho.

“Cho, you get in too. Mommy will be right beside you today.”

—Tsurur. 『Got it, Mom Ji-ryeon.』

In that moment.

I understood why my wives’ “service” was so good today.

If we were going to be living like this for quite a while anyway, wouldn’t it become difficult to maintain and deepen our hearts as husband and wives?

I meant our marital relations.

So it seemed they’d come up with a strategy.

As Ji-ryeon helped me undress and I stepped into the bath, I whispered quietly in her ear.

“Ji-ryeon, should we get in together?”

Ji-ryeon loved things like this, so I figured if I invited her in, she’d jump right in at once.

Ji-ryeon spoke with a regretful expression.

“I’d like that too, but it’s not my turn today. Let’s do it together next time.”

“Is that so?”

Oh right, there was an order.

I didn’t try to hit on Ji-ryeon any further.

For a man with many wives to maintain a happy household, the way was not to meddle lightly with the order his wives had set.

Even if it didn’t feel very fair from the men’s point of view, that didn’t matter.

If the wives thought it was fair, then it was fair.

So after taking a bath in warm water for the first time in a while and lying down on the bed, I began wondering who it would be tonight.

’Ji-ryeon said it isn’t her, so maybe Hye-rin or Hwa-eun? I should check the qi veil I put up again first.’

I had wrapped a qi veil around us so sound wouldn’t leak outside, and a little later, the one who appeared was Hye-rin.

She was holding a meal in her hands.

’So it’s Hye-rin today?’

The meal in Gun Hye-rin’s hands was for two.

I figured she meant to eat together and then sleep here with me, and the two of us ate.

When the meal ended and I was tickling the back of Hye-rin’s neck,

Hye-rin rose to her feet with a regretful expression.

“Master, it’s not my turn today.”

“R-really?”

“It’s a pity, but I’ll be next time.”

Gun Hye-rin turned to smoke again and vanished.

It seemed Hwa-eun was the one who would be coming out.

Right, Hwa-eun was my first wife, wasn’t she?

So she should be the first even here in the Cultivation World.

I was nodding to myself that this was only natural when it happened.

Smoke began billowing faintly from my nose again.

“Hwa-eun!”

The moment I happily called out her name, assuming it was Hwa-eun, the smoke began to take shape.

The form that slowly solidified was—

Purple wings. Red eyes.

It was Zihwa.

“Z-Zihwa?”

Startled, I jumped up from the bed, and Zihwa strode toward me in big steps.

Zihwa’s voice, tinged with laughter, reached me.

“Are you disappointed I’m not Hwa-eun? But today is my turn.”

Without realizing it, I backed away on the bed and spoke.

“N-no, isn’t it that you still can’t take a transformed form?”

I had been preparing myself mentally too.

I had even said we could do it once Zihwa could take on a human form.

But not in this form, right?

As I retreated with a flustered expression, Zihwa kept following me in big strides.

In the end, my back hit the cave wall.

Zihwa pressed her body against my chest and whispered in my ear.

“Do you hate it?”

“N-no, it’s not that I hate it. It’s just... the sword and the scabbard have to match, right? In this form, wouldn’t it be, h-hard?”

A severe size mismatch between bolt and nut.

In this state, it was going to be difficult.

It was then.

Light shone from Zihwa’s wrist as she gave a little laugh, and her body seemed to grow all at once, turning into the form of a woman clad in purple clothing.

It was the form I had seen when I entered her heart.

“Huh?!”

I had been told that taking on a transformed form would take quite a while, so as I stared in surprise, Zihwa turned around and started walking toward the bed.

With her first step, her outer robe slipped to her feet with a rustling sound.

With her second step, her skirt slid down and caught at her ankles.

By the third step, her back was bare and naked.

When Zihwa put her hands on the bed and leaned forward slightly, her snow-white buttocks seared themselves into my eyes, grabbing my gaze.

Zihwa turned to look back at me and spoke with a bewitching expression.

“Beloved, come.”

’Wait, why that position...’

Thinking about why she’d taken that position, I remembered that even if she had taken on a human form, Zihwa’s fundamental nature was that of a bird.

It was a bird’s mating posture.

I moved toward Zihwa faster than I had retreated before.

How could anyone endure that posture?