Yeoncheon-senior and Soto cried out in startled voices at the light pouring out of the book.

[ What is that? ]

“L-li-light?”

The other children behind them must have been startled as well, because the oldest, Ranghyang, ducked back and hid.

– Kyu, kyukii?

But Ranghyang didn’t know what was going on, so he just looked around in confusion.

Since Ranghyang couldn’t see, he didn’t realize that five-colored light was streaming out of the book.

– Piyoyo. Piyo!

At the same time, Jayo, whom I’d set down on the floor, had somehow hidden herself behind Ranghyang and was squawking at me from behind his body.

Judging by the way she was hugging Ranghyang’s torso tightly, it seemed she’d darted back there with surprising speed.

Quicker on the uptake than I’d thought.

Seeing how fast she reacted in a dangerous situation, she really was my daughter.

Don’t I also have good judgment and quick wits in dangerous situations?

Given that she had good situational awareness and improvisation, Zihwa’s words that she resembled me clearly weren’t wrong.

'When I see her at times like this, she really does seem to be my daughter.'

But maybe because she was still young, it was an extremely cute sight: her head only half hidden behind Ranghyang’s body while the rest of her was totally out in the open.

'No, you’re supposed to hide your body... Ahem. This is something you don’t need to take after me...'

Come to think of it, that slight tendency to overdo it also seemed to resemble me.

Don’t I also have a bit of overflowing charm because I’m just too smart?

– Piyoyoyo!

In that state, she was flapping her wings at me and crying.

It sounded like, 'Daddy, hurry over here! It’s dangerous there!' or something along those lines.

Ah, so cute.

My fatherly heart ached at the sight of her crying so desperately.

Enduring the sting in my chest, I spoke to Jayo.

“Jayo, you got scared, huh. Daddy’s fine. This isn’t a big deal.”

– Piyo?

“Yeah. It’s just that it’s glowing, that’s all.”

When I answered the chick’s sobs that seemed to be asking if that was really true and told her not to worry, she quieted down.

I’d been a little startled too, but I’d experienced something similar once back when it was about Cheong-yu Sojeo.

Back then, after accepting Cheong-yu Sojeo, there’d already been a time when light had burst out of the book once.

I looked at the Secret Compendium of Venomous Creatures of the World.

'Let’s see here.'

Strangely enough, the book had not become some old, worn thing with the letters rubbed away, but had changed to look like a brand-new book.

Its thick paper cover was stiff without a single wrinkle, and five-colored light was pouring out from the characters that read Secret Compendium of Venomous Creatures of the World.

It was surely that person, Tang Hwa-seong, the youngest son of the Tang Clan’s third Clan Head, Tang Mun-ryong.

It seemed that person had left something behind again.

'Come to think of it, they’d only said he disappeared from the clan, so does that mean he attained some mysterious realm before disappearing?'

I definitely knew that person, Tang Hwa-seong, had fallen in love with a Gold-Crowned Lion King like Cheong-yu Sojeo and left home.

From the Tang Clan’s records, I’d confirmed that the clan members hadn’t been able to stand by and watch him fall in love with a spirit creature, so they’d abandoned the Gold-Crowned Lion King, and he’d left home saying he was going to find her.

But thinking back on it now, both that time and this time, it seemed his realm had been higher than I’d thought.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to leave behind such mysterious messages.

As I was thinking that and slowly opened the book—

– Paaat.

The five-colored light that had been pouring out of the book grew even stronger, my vision went white, and then slowly began to clear again.

A little later.

I found myself in a white space, and Jayo, who’d been yelling at me to hurry over, and the other children had all vanished.

A familiar sensation.

It seemed this was a mind-space.

That distinct feeling you could sense when you entered a mind-space was present here as well.

“How was this mind-space created?”

But I could tell this wasn’t my mind-space.

My mind-space had my wives and children inside it, and this place was just an empty space with nothing in it.

I was looking around for something when it happened.

The space in front of me rippled, and a man I’d never seen before appeared.

A kindly-looking face, lips curved in a smile.

A green martial robe like the Tang Clan people favored.

It was a face I was seeing for the first time, but the moment I saw him, it was obvious who he was.

He was probably that person, Tang Hwa-seong.

There was no one but him who could have left something in this book.

Even aside from that, I could tell the moment I laid eyes on him.

Because this man was the same kind as me.

That sense of kinship that only we maniacs could feel.

It was flowing out of him in his atmosphere, impossible to hide.

Not only that, anyone at all would probably have been able to tell he was my kind.

That was only natural, because his clothes were densely embroidered with pictures of countless venomous creatures.

Toads, frogs, snakes, moths, butterflies, scorpions, lizards—covering every inch of his outfit.

In terms of my previous life, it was like the sight of some hardcore Japanese anime geek wearing clothes plastered all over with female anime characters.

'This person is the real deal—pure, genuine hardcore.'

I was about to bow and greet him first, but he looked at me, tilted his head, and spoke first.

“Hm? You’re not a descendant of the Tang Clan. How strange. The Secret Compendium of Venomous Creatures of the World should not be something anyone without Tang blood can lay hands on. Don’t tell me the clan was destroyed and the book leaked out into the outside world? Haa... what a disaster.”

It seemed he had some other special knack, because Ancestor Tang Hwa-seong had seen through the fact that I was not of Tang blood.

I cupped my fists toward the flustered elder and spoke respectfully.

“No, Ancestor. I am the Tang Clan’s son-in-law, Wei So-ryong, paying respects to the clan’s ancestor.”

“Ah, so you’re the Tang Clan’s live-in son-in-law. Oh, here I was thinking... In that case, you are a Tang person after all. A pleasure to meet you, I am Tang Hwa-seong.”

“I know of you, Ancestor.”

“Oh-ho, you know me? Ah, well, since this is a strange event taking place in a book I wrote.”

He looked at me with eyes that said he found me praiseworthy, then asked me,

“Well then, how much time has passed since my era?”

“Let’s see. It seems at least two or three hundred years have passed.”

The Five Venoms Sect had been founded two hundred years ago, and Ancestor Tang Hwa-seong was from the era before that, so I guessed that at least two hundred years must have passed, though I didn’t know exactly how much time had gone by.

To calculate that properly, I’d have had to break things down by eras and measure it, and I hadn’t done that.

So I just said two or three hundred years as a rough estimate, though in reality it could have been more.

At my answer, Senior Tang Hwa-seong nodded and said,

“So the clan has produced another expert of the Life-and-Death Realm after some three hundred years. I’m glad the clan’s lineage seems to be continuing well.”

I asked carefully,

“Ancestor, then... what is this place?”

“Ah, I created this to leave the path beyond the Life-and-Death Realm and some advice for the clan’s later generations. The ‘me’ before your eyes right now is like a fragment of the Primordial Infant I left behind. Put that way, it may sound difficult. Just think of it as something like a clone.

This space as well—I created it with my arts. I will likely leave my ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) advice to you and then disappear.”

“Ahh.”

It seemed to be something like a fragment of memory that he had left behind for his clan’s descendants.

I was nodding when Ancestor Tang Hwa-seong spoke.

“First, have a seat. It seems we will have to talk for a bit. Don’t worry about outside. When you wake, no time will have passed at all.”

I’d been wondering what I would do if time in this mind-space flowed in a rush, but fortunately, it didn’t seem to be that way.

That was a relief, but his words telling me to sit left me a bit at a loss.

Naturally so, because there was nothing at all in this space.

“To sit, where...?”

Just as I was about to ask where on earth he meant for me to sit—

Ancestor Tang Hwa-seong smacked his forehead and said,

“Listen to me losing my mind. Wait just a moment.”

And then a table and chairs appeared.

Right in front of us appeared the sort of table and chairs you could commonly see in a cheap inn made of bamboo.

Once we sat down, he first offered his congratulations and then began peppering me with questions.

“Well then, if you’ve come in here, that means you’ve reached the Life-and-Death Realm, and you must have happened to touch the Secret Compendium of Venomous Creatures of the World after reaching the Life-and-Death Realm. First of all, my congratulations on entering the Life-and-Death Realm.”

“Thank you, Ancestor.”

“Still, even if you’ve undergone a complete transformation, you don’t look all that old. You must be an extraordinarily outstanding talent. So then, with which Tang Clan martial art did you reach the Life-and-Death Realm?”

At the last question of which martial art it was, his expression turned slightly bitter.

I answered carefully.

Because I had not attained it with the Tang Clan’s martial arts.

“Ah, I reached the Life-and-Death Realm not with the Tang Clan’s martial arts, but with martial arts from a place called the Five Venoms Sect. Or to be precise, perhaps I should say the Beast Palace?”

“Five Venoms Sect? Beast Palace?”

Ancestor Tang Hwa-seong tilted his head, repeating, “Five Venoms Sect? Beast Palace?”

In his era, the Five Venoms Sect of course didn’t exist, and neither did the Beast Palace.

At the same time, at my saying it wasn’t Tang Clan martial arts, he first looked doubtful, then at the words “Five Venoms Sect,” his eyes lit up.

We venom-maniacs simply couldn’t help reacting when we heard a name like Five Venoms Sect.

'If only those guys hadn’t gone dark-side, that would have been nice...'

“The Five Venoms Sect is a sect founded two hundred years ago when a child of the Tang Clan met the daughter of the Beast Palace... Ah, the Beast Palace is a sect that exists in the jungles of Yunnan. One of the greatest powers in the outer regions, a sect that treats beasts like family.”

To explain what kind of place the Five Venoms Sect was, I had to start with the story of the Beast Palace.

So I began with the Beast Palace, and at my story, he brightened and asked,

“Wait. In the Yunnan jungle, they treat beasts like family? Don’t tell me they use some kind of inner art that controls beasts?”

“Oh! You know of it? That’s right, Ancestor. It’s called the Beast-Heart Technique.”

“Oh-ho, so that’s how it is! Baekrang (White Wolf) founded a clan and built it up into a sect! Yes, that’s it!”

“Baekrang...?”

“She is my disciple, and like a daughter to me. So that means...”

From Senior Tang Hwa-seong’s story, it seemed that after running away from the Tang Clan and finally finding the Gold-Crowned Lion King, he had settled in the jungles of Yunnan.

Back then, there had only been small tribes sparsely living in the vast jungle, making it a good place to set up a newlywed home.

But every time people discovered them, they’d had to move their place of residence, and in the course of that, they’d met Baekrang, the founder of the Beast Palace.

He explained that she was a woman who’d lost her parents and grown up like a wolf cub among a pack of wolves.

“My wife and I discovered that beast-like child living among a wolf pack.”

An ordinary person would likely have thought they should rescue the child because she was pitiful, but who had found her if not the Ancestor?

At the time, the Ancestor had been able to befriend the wolf pack using the Beast-Heart Technique he had devised, and using that, he had taught that woman, Baekrang, the forebear of the Beast Palace, speech, writing, and martial arts.

Though now it was treated like a cultish thing, back then there had been many traces of ancient arts left behind from antiquity, and based on those, he had been able to create the Beast-Heart Technique.

And since he himself had made a home with the Gold-Crowned Lion King, he couldn’t bring himself to break apart the family of a woman who’d become family with wolves.

“So after teaching Baekrang for a dozen years or so, I decided to ascend and parted ways with her.

The clan didn’t know it, but after gathering all the venomous creatures, I had already reached the Life-and-Death Realm.”

“Ah, in that case...”

After hearing his explanation, something suddenly came to mind, and I quickly rose from my seat and offered him a deep formal bow.

“So-ryong respectfully offers a grand bow to the patriarch of my sect.”

“Hm?”

As he tilted his head, I explained the situation.

“The first martial art I learned was a martial art created at the Five Venoms Sect by combining the Beast-Heart Technique with the Tang Clan’s poison arts, and afterward I became an adopted son of the Beast Palace and learned the complete Beast-Heart Technique. So, Ancestor, you are my sect’s patriarch.”

“What!?”

I gave him a long explanation of what the Five Venoms Sect was, what had happened, and everything else up to now.

“So that is how it all went... and that is how I have come this far.”

His eyes had been growing wider and wider throughout my story.

When my explanation finally ended, there was a brief silence, and then he shed a single hot tear, came over to me, and grasped both my hands.

“How mysterious life is.

Before my ascension, I secretly snuck into the clan and left a fragment of my Primordial Infant in this Secret Compendium of Venomous Creatures of the World, not to say that there was some poison art that, even if one worked oneself to death, could not produce a Life-and-Death Realm in hundreds of years, but to leave behind for later generations that there was a faster path that could be reached with the help of venomous creatures.

You may not understand. You might think that if I was going to leave something, I could have left it in a way that could be checked at something like the Transformation Realm.

But I had my reasons. At that time, because of me as well, the clan would go into an uproar at even the mere spirit character in ‘spirit creature.’ I thought that if someone who had reached the Life-and-Death Realm through long years of hardship discovered what I left behind, they could compare the path they had walked with mine and recommend the better path to the younger generation.

But truly, life is fascinating. That what I left would flow back into the Tang Clan, and that the son-in-law would completely inherit my line and follow after me... It means this Tang Hwa-seong’s life in the secular world was not in vain. Thank you. Thank you.”

I could more or less guess how he felt.

I’d discovered various new species and named them my own Ten Great Venoms; how happy would I be if someone appeared having gathered them all and said, 'I followed in your footsteps and made it here?'

For us maniacs, there might be nothing that made your heart pound more than that.

And just as it filled him with wonder, it filled me with wonder at the same time.

It felt like there was no such thing as coincidence in the world.

Hadn’t I just learned that all of my deeds in the martial world were woven together like a net by his appearance?

'Holy—It was like everything had been slotted together.'

After he calmed down a bit, we talked some more, and the purpose of what he’d left was to pass the Beast-Heart Technique down to the Tang Clan and to tell them of the Ascension Platform where one could ascend.

At the end of the conversation, he showed me the location of the Ascension Platform, and when I confirmed it, I couldn’t help being even more shocked.

Because it was a place I knew well.

“It’s really here?”

“You know the place?” 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

“Of course... this is...”

“This is?”

“It’s where I used to live.”

The Ascension Platform was the abandoned Taoist temple I had lived in.