Boom!

Crash!

“Well, this is a complete mess…”

Earth-shattering sounds woke me in the middle of the night.

Four nights after my guests had departed for their search.

From far off in the rocky mountains came the sound of rocks smashing and breaking, along with various thunderous noises.

“I told them to search carefully, but they’re just throwing rocks around? Don’t these people know anything about environmental protection? You need to preserve habitats for future collectors too!”

Collection means borrowing briefly from nature, and habitats must absolutely be protected.

No matter how urgent their daughter’s situation, these thirty-some people seemed intent on completely destroying the habitat.

“But wait, did they have explosives or dynamite or something?”

Since awakening in this body of an orphan in this small village on Hainan Island.

I knew nothing about this era, having just lived here in this abandoned temple catching and selling snakes to survive.

I’d just assumed it was sometime during the Song, Yuan, Ming, or Qing dynasties.

That’s why the current sounds were somewhat surprising.

These sounds of things breaking and exploding were definitely not natural sounds.

The sounds I was hearing now seemed like ones that could only be made with gunpowder.

When was gunpowder developed in the Central Plains?

So I was starting to think this might not be too far back from my previous life.

Though if there really were centipedes bigger than humans as the men said, this must be another world.

Amid these thoughts, I decided I should visit the habitat once dawn broke.

I needed to see just how badly they’d destroyed the habitat.

Someone who knows about habitats needs to protect them, since habitat preservation might be a foreign concept to people of this era.

And if I found even a small one, I could take it home…

Centipedes are such fascinating creatures.

They said it was big enough to eat me, but I’d gone looking for Black Mambas before – I couldn’t be scared off by something like this.

About an hour passed like that.

Whoosh.

Suddenly a downpour began.

With the falling rain, the distant sounds of explosions and breaking rocks gradually died down.

With the rain, they probably couldn’t use any more gunpowder, so things seemed to have quieted down.

Now I could finally try to sleep with the sound of rainfall as my lullaby.

“Is it over?”

Chirp chirp.

The crickets in my breeding jar started chirping, and I decided to head back to bed for some deep sleep.

Soon drowsiness washed over me, and another quiet mountain night began, no different from yesterday.

***

Huff huff.

The Tang clan warriors lay collapsed from exhaustion.

The surviving warriors sprawled across the rocks, drinking in the falling rain, while the Heaven’s Poison Scholar, Tang Cheolsan, was securing his broken arm with a split bamboo.

“How’s your arm?”

The voice belonged to Tang Cheolsan’s father, the Ten Thousand Poisons Divine Sovereign.

Tang Cheolsan smiled through the rain as he answered.

Though his arm was broken, he smiled with hope that they could now save his daughter, having caught the Blue-spotted Centipede.

“Yes, it’s just broken.”

“To think a supposedly low-level Blue-spotted Centipede would be this formidable. If the rain hadn’t fallen and slowed its movements, we might all have lost our lives.”

His smile faded at his father’s words.

His father was right.

Incredible speed and massive strength.

The ability to precisely sense warriors’ positions even in darkness.

And terrifying poison that melted anything it touched.

Though recorded as low-level in the Compendium of Heavenly Venomous Creatures, the Blue-spotted Centipede was a formidable venomous creature that belied that classification.

Despite warnings to be careful, two of their own clan warriors had crossed to the netherworld, unable to adapt to its speed, and three more were poisoned.

Fortunately, the three poisoned warriors could be saved with realgar and his father’s poison arts, but if the fight had dragged on, those three – no, everyone else might have met an unknown fate.

When he threw himself to save a warrior caught in an ambush, his arm was instantly broken despite his protective qi.

The manor’s flying daggers and hidden weapons couldn’t penetrate its hard shell at all, and they only managed to kill it when his father crushed its head while it was slowed down.

“Still, we caught it. Now let’s see how substantial an inner core[1] we have to save our Hwa-eun.”

Beyond the collapsed clan warriors.

The Ten Thousand Poisons Divine Sovereign approached with a smile toward the giant centipede lying upside down on the rocks, its legs still twitching.

***

Whoosh.

The rain hadn’t stopped even when I woke in the morning.

From what I’d observed over the past few years, this was the rainy season when heavy rains were common.

Sometimes there were sudden downpours, sometimes it rained for days – and this rain that started last night seemed like it would last a while.

The sky was thick with dark clouds, and the raindrops were quite heavy.

It seemed I’d have to postpone my plans to check the habitat.

I’d planned to examine the habitat they’d destroyed after breakfast, but with rain like this, I should avoid going out wandering around.

Living alone, if I caught a cold I’d have to suffer through it alone for days, and who would feed my darlings then?

Proper breeders must always take meticulous care of their health.

After all, breeders are people responsible for the creatures they raise.

Two more days passed, and on that morning.

Tok. Tok.

An unidentified tropical bird was singing beautifully on the temple roof, and water drops fell from the broken eaves all around.

The sun had finally appeared between the clouds, making both birds and insects noisy this morning.

I’d been itching to visit the habitat, so this seemed perfect.

A new species!

An adventure to find the centipede they called Blue-spotted Centipede, said to have blue spots on its body.

Today seemed possible.

I hadn’t just been idle these past two days.

I’d made thorough preparations.

First, I’d prepared a relatively intact small jar in a straw rope pouch that could be carried on my back, along with twisted straw ropes, a flint, and two torches made from branches.

We might need to enter caves or similar places, after all.

The Amazonian giant centipede or Peruvian giant centipede, called Scolopendra gigantea, was one of the largest centipede species in my previous world.

I’d prepared these ropes and torches because this gigantea species was known for climbing cave ceilings to catch birds and bats.

I thought this large centipede might have similar habits.

“Preparations are done. Shall we head out?”

I strapped the jar to my back and quickly headed toward the western rocky mountains.

After crossing several streams swollen with rain, I arrived at the not-too-tall rocky mountain.

Though the rain had washed away many traces, I could immediately tell what havoc they’d wreaked on the habitat when I reached the base of the mountain.

One section halfway up the mountain looked like it had been hit by a bomb, even from a distance.

Rocks had tumbled down from midway to the bottom of the mountain, and a depression had been gouged out halfway up, with muddy water still flowing down from it.

“My goodness! They really did some major construction here!”

I climbed carefully to avoid slipping on the still-wet rocks.

I needed to see how badly they’d destroyed the habitat, even if finding the new species would have to wait.

After about thirty minutes climbing to the middle of the mountain.

I couldn’t help but shudder.

When I reached the middle of the mountain and pulled out something bright red wedged between the rocks…

It looked like a centipede leg.

A bright red leg about 40 centimeters long.

A massive leg about as thick as a 100-won coin.

I-it was real!?

Honestly, I’d been skeptical about claims it was big enough to eat someone.

It’s common knowledge that insects and arthropods need high oxygen concentrations to grow large.

That’s why creatures like sparrow-sized mayflies, cat-sized cockroaches, and eagle-sized dragonflies could only exist in high-oxygen periods like the Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic era.

The oxygen concentration in this era didn’t seem particularly high.

Even fires burned similarly to my previous life.

But seeing the leg made it all make sense.

With legs this size, it would definitely be big enough to eat me and have room for more.

The leg’s size overwhelmed me, sending chills down my spine.

I wondered just how enormous a creature with legs this size must be.

Gulp.

Should I go back?

The size was enough to give me chills and make me consider turning back, new species or not.

But after a brief deliberation, I decided I should at least check if there were any smaller ones since I’d come this far.

Though raising one would definitely be impossible, even if I couldn’t catch one, I wanted to see it moving alive at least once.

Today would probably be the best chance to see it alive.

Centipedes have weak water resistance on their exoskeletons, so when it rains their body surface gets easily wet, making it difficult for rain-soaked centipedes to breathe.

So centipedes are most docile right now, just after the rain has stopped.

Now would be the safest time to look for centipedes.

So I searched carefully around where I found the leg, near the excavated area.

After some searching, I found a hole big enough for one person to crawl through beyond a collapsed pile of dirt inside the excavated area.

“This must be it…”

I had to contemplate for a while in front of the burrow.

Centipedes usually live solitary lives.

They’re territorial and typically fight when they meet each other.

But not all species are like that.

The Korean giant centipede is unique.

They rarely fight even when kept together.

So if the owner of this leg I found came from this burrow, there might be other centipedes inside.

Or it might be completely empty.

If it’s empty, there’s no problem.

Though it would be a bit disappointing, I did find a leg at least.

But if there are other centipedes inside…

That would be a bit – no, very dangerous.

However, my deliberation didn’t last long.

Huff huff.

Soon I found myself taking out the flint and lighting the torch.

Even in my past life I died looking for the top ten venomous snakes, and it seemed I still hadn’t learned my lesson.

This damned curiosity. No, this dead man’s curiosity.

Whoosh.

I carefully crawled into the hole with the torch held out in front.

Hoping it would be fine since I had fire held out in front.

Crawling through the damp earthen tunnel wet from the rain, about 5 meters?

The tunnel widened.

As the tunnel started to widen, a cavity appeared along with a musty, moldy smell.

I stood up straight and checked the ceiling first.

Worried a centipede might jump down.

Honestly, my legs were shaking.

After checking the ceiling, I held the torch forward to illuminate the inside of the cavity.

Then in the center of the cavity in the distance, something yellow about the size of a handball was piled up in heaps.

“Holy fuck!”

An exclamation of amazement burst out involuntarily.

Shiny and glossy with a round shape.

Those handball-sized objects were clearly eggs of the giant Blue-spotted Centipede.