Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

—Rustle.

With every step I took, my clothes slipped off on their own, as if flowing down of their own accord.

My fingers had already betrayed my will, obeying nothing but the desire to touch her.

No—perhaps this was an action that fully reflected my own desire.

As I drew close like that, and carefully embraced Zihwa from behind—

The instant bare skin met bare skin, what wrapped around my entire body was a mad, blazing heat.

So intense it made human body temperature laughable, flames that burned endlessly.

It was as though I were holding living fire in my arms.

Which made sense—birds’ body temperatures were originally around forty degrees, and that seemed to apply even after transformation.

Forty degrees was the heat of a hot bath.

It felt like sinking my body into a scalding tub.

With every breath I exhaled, hot steam seemed to seep all the way into my lungs.

Holding her burning body from behind, I aimed my lips toward the nape of her neck.

“Ah...”

As I parted her purple hair and reached her fair, graceful neckline, a short, sweet moan leaked out.

Each time I gently stroked the nape of her neck, a sweet fragrance brushed past the tip of my nose.

Neither bird nor beast—only her own purple scent.

Purple fragrance.

Color was not supposed to have a scent, yet I was clearly smelling it.

—Chu.

My lips began to slide little by little over the white, soft nape of her neck.

Her skin was so smooth and supple that my lips felt like a drop of water gliding over silk.

They slid gently along.

Like a bird’s beak, I had to purse my lips and carefully control the pace, little by little—and as the area I grazed grew wider, the lingering moans stretched longer.

“Ah... ahh... aaah...”

After lingering at the left and right of her nape for a long while, my lips slid along her neckline and traced down her back.

Like a spider spinning a long thread, my lips slipped down from her neck to her spine.

As I crossed her shoulder blades, the moan that had briefly stopped stretched out long, like unwinding thread.

“Haaang...”

She was lofty and proud, yet her moans were delicate and plaintive.

Zihwa turned her head, tangled my hair sliding down her spine with one hand, and spoke.

“T-this is human pleasure... Th-this ticklish feeling, it’s my first time experiencing it.”

She sounded as if she were making an observation, trying to act a little composed.

Meanwhile, my lips had passed her shoulder blades and reached the center of her spine.

Licking down each vertebra in her neck, I headed for her waist.

The moment the tips of my lips touched the shallow hollow of her waist—

Zihwa’s whole body shuddered, like a bird struck by an arrow.

The composure she had forced herself to show until just then instantly collapsed into confusion and trembling.

She breathed out as if pleading.

“Hah... haa... haa... You may do as you wish until your sense of responsibility is satisfied, b-but slowly...”

It seemed to be a particularly sensitive spot.

I lightly kissed the two pale mounds that had been catching my eye for a while, then rose as I gently swept up her waist with my fingertips.

That thin layer of skin caught at my fingertips seemed to haul her entire body straight up to the sky’s edge.

Her heels lifted, rising.

When I embraced her again from behind, she pulled my head closer and whispered at my ear.

“That’s enough now. Come. It’s sufficient.”

Her tone was still proud, but her voice was soaked with longing.

I quietly kissed her and gently layered our bodies together.

When the two of us became one, thin, steam-like heat began to rise from our bodies.

***

It was when the dim light of dawn was breaking.

Zihwa lay with her head resting on my arm, her breathing still ragged.

She soon steadied her breath and, playing with my hair, spoke.

“Haa... haa... You...”

“Yeah?”

“You really don’t ask anything at all, do you?”

“About what?”

“My... past.”

Why didn’t I ask about her past?

But that was already a settled matter.

Hadn’t she said there were circumstances that made it hard to speak, but she would tell me when the time came?

She herself had promised that.

“Wasn’t that settled last time? You said you still couldn’t talk about it yet.”

“That’s true, but I thought you’d at least ask when. Wasn’t it a promise with no set date?”

Worried I might have seemed too indifferent, I asked carefully.

“Did I seem like I didn’t care enough?”

It was strange.

That bit about responsibility had been said half as a joke, but now that we truly had become one, even her smallest expressions drew my attention.

Because the thought had rooted itself deep in my chest now—she was completely my person, my wife.

Zihwa brushed her hair against my chest.

She was shaking her head.

“No. I’m grateful that you trust me.”

When I stroked her hair in silence at that answer, she gently closed her eyes and received my touch.

“It’s warm. This is the first time I’ve felt someone’s embrace besides my mother’s. Everything around me eventually disappears.”

A brief silence passed.

Then she opened her mouth again.

“...I come from a noble race in the upper heaven. But it’s also hard to say that I myself am of a noble race.”

She was telling me about her past, even though I hadn’t asked—perhaps she had decided it was time to speak.

It wasn’t detailed, as if there were constraints, but now that she had borne a child and become my wife in body and heart, she seemed to think she couldn’t leave secrets behind.

Through the Beast-Heart Technique, I could feel those feelings from Zihwa.

I asked carefully.

“You’re from a noble race, but with low status among them?”

“No. It was because among that noble race, I alone was born differently from the royal line—or from the others.”

“Differently?”

“Poison. I alone—only I—had this form and these abilities. From birth, melting everything around me. Completely different from my kind.”

“Ah... so Zihwa’s race isn’t like this in general, and you alone were unique?”

“Yes. That’s why I asked you to let me bear children. Joining our energies makes it faster, but also... I wanted to prove I wasn’t a wrong existence, and to form a race of my own and take revenge on them.”

Revenge.

The hand Zihwa had placed on my chest was trembling.

Covering it with my own, I asked,

“Revenge?”

“When they said I had to be erased from the race to preserve noble blood, my mother sacrificed herself in my place.

On the condition that I be spared and confined. Bearing the disgrace of having tainted noble blood.”

From what I could tell, Zihwa alone had been a mutant among her race, and after she was born, her life had been under constant threat.

In this era’s lower world, don’t they say that even twins are an ill omen and kill one?

I didn’t know exactly what race Zihwa belonged to, but imagine a holy race filled with sacred energy—except for Zihwa alone, who emitted poison.

There was no way the elders of her race would sit still.

They would have raged that she was an ill omen and had to be killed at once.

Even Hwa-eun had been harassed endlessly for not being a man—this was like the ugly duckling being born in a chicken coop.

So it seemed her mother had died under the disgrace of having committed adultery.

Rather than accept the shocking fact that a mutation could occur within the race, it was more convenient to claim she was an illegitimate child born of someone’s affair, to preserve the race’s legitimacy and future.

In fantasy terms, imagine elves giving birth, with a small chance that a dark elf is born.

Would young elves dare to have children?

They’d be terrified and avoid childbirth.

Then the race itself would be endangered.

And if they were spirit creatures of the upper heaven, they probably didn’t give birth often to begin with.

If the birthrate dropped even further, it would mean extinction.

Because birthrate determines a race’s future.

So they must have pushed the narrative—That elf committed adultery!

Zihwa continued.

“After my mother was executed, I was confined in a corner tower of the palace where even light couldn’t reach.

A birdcage. There, I burned with thoughts of revenge.

Then one day, when the palace was attacked by a cultivator’s assault, I escaped amidst the chaos.

But though I tried to build my realm and bear children to take revenge on them, I was eventually caught by those who pursued me. Because of my mother’s promise I wasn’t killed, but for escaping, I had to endure a punishment equal to death. That was my fall.”

She spoke in a voice steeped in anger.

“Those bastards—how dare they do that to mother-in-law and to you! I’ll train hard and punish every last one of them.”

When I pulled Zihwa tightly into my arms and said that, she wore a satisfied expression.

“Heh heh. You should just stay beside me and not get hurt. Once I recover my realm, I can take revenge by myself.”

Perhaps because she was a high being of the upper heaven, she was brimming with confidence.

She smiled faintly.

“Is that so?”

“Yes. You saved someone like me, who might never ascend from the lower world and would eventually fade away as my energy waned, and brought me to reach the Nine Heavens. I will repay this grace—for as long as this body lives.”

Zihwa had said that in the lower world, she often spent more energy than she could gather, struggling just to survive.

But upon reaching the Nine Heavens, she said she was slowly but steadily recovering her realm.

So I was her benefactor.

Pulling her into my arms, I whispered,

“Then shall we try to restore your realm more quickly?”

At my words, Zihwa tilted her head and looked up at me.

“More quickly?”

“Yeah. Before we get a dual cultivation art, let’s get more practice in. So we can use it skillfully as soon as we do.”

When I gave her a playful wink, Zihwa clicked her tongue at my suggestion.

“Again? I—I underestimated you. No... have I underestimated humans? I never imagined it would go on until dawn broke. At this rate, it might even go further.”

That wasn’t a refusal.

Hadn’t she just said we’d do it again?

As I hugged Zihwa close, I whispered softly into her ear.

“Did you hate it? Did you?”

“N-no, that’s not it, but... are all humans like this?”

I didn’t think the answer to Zihwa’s question would be simply yes.

But in our household, this was average.

Because we had Hwa-eun and Ji-ryeon.

Gun Hye-rin wasn’t like that, but those two were truly something else.

Hwa-eun, born bearing my mother-in-law’s energy, and Ji-ryeon, who embodied the saying that once a monk tastes meat, not even bedbugs are spared in the temple.

Those two had raised our household’s average considerably.

So while it wasn’t true in general, limiting it to just our household made it hard to say no, and I gave an ambiguous answer.

“Maybe?”

At my answer, Zihwa wore a confused expression.

“So it’s something only humans who live in groups can do? In the wild, doing something like this would invite being attacked midway—it could never happen.”

What she said made sense.

Mating was a moment of complete vulnerability in the wild.

Most beasts finished mating quickly, and insects dealt with the danger by hiding somewhere secluded or clinging together while watching all directions.

If you went at it like this until dawn, exhausted, and were attacked, you’d just become someone’s meal.

With a soft chuckle, I kissed her forehead.

“We’re not in the wild.”

Zihwa laughed along with me.

The dawn light settled in her eyes, as if flames were flickering within them.

When our lips met again, and Zihwa’s scorching body heat washed over me once more—

—BOOM!

Along with the sensation of the qi veil breaking, a sudden violent explosion boomed from the direction of the cave entrance, and stone dust poured down from the ceiling.

Then a voice rang out.

“Come out at once, you bastard! How dare you think you could steal this city lord’s Spirit Pill material and escape!”

From the sound of it, it seemed the city lord who had purchased Soyeon had finally come looking.

Just as I was thinking this was getting serious, Zihwa calmly stroked my face and spoke.

“Beloved, there seem to be a few Qi Refining ones and one at late Foundation Establishment. Capture them and bring them inside. Since you used quite a bit of strength, I’ll carve out some Spirit Stones so you can recuperate your body.”

Zihwa had said that if she revealed her abilities before fully recovering her realm, she might catch the attention of her race.

So she couldn’t act directly and was telling me to capture them instead.

Her gaze was sharp.

Probably because they had ruined the mood.