Fabre in Sacheon's Tang-Chapter 154: Absorption (2)

At my words, the bandit leader looked like he had just been smacked in the head with a palm strike.

Behind him, the other bandits stared at me in stunned silence, their faces a mixture of confusion and disbelief.

They were being accused of something they hadn’t even done—no wonder they looked so dumbfounded.

‘What? Why? Got a problem? What are you gonna do about it?’

But in moments like these, the best approach was sheer audacity.

I met their stares with a nonchalant expression.

The bandit leader, still flustered, waved his hands frantically.

“W-we... That’s absurd! We were just confirming the identity of a ship passing through the Three Gorges without a clan flag! We never even boarded! We only asked for a small—uh, maybe a little too much—”

I hated dealing with people who lacked situational awareness.

Not rude people. Not even shameless people.

But oblivious people.

Why?

Because they forced me to waste my breath.

Even during my past life as a streamer, I would forgive dumb jokes or inappropriate humor from viewers, but the ones who just didn’t get it? They were instantly banned.

I glanced at the bandit leader, then patted Cho on the head.

Since he had trouble remembering, I’d help refresh his memory.

Severe short-term memory loss, huh?

Well, the best cure for amnesia was shock therapy.

“Oh dear. The kids seem hungry. Cho, are you hungry? Want something to eat? There’s something fresh from the water, nice and plump...”

– Tssssr? 『Eat? What?』

‘No, sweetie, Daddy’s just joking.’

– Tss? 『Why?』

‘Uh... Because... I want to scare that guy?’

– Tss? 『Why scare him?』

‘...’

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

If only the bandit leader had taken the hint earlier, I wouldn’t have had to suffer through Cho's endless string of why?s.

While I was internally grappling with Cho’s growing curiosity, the bandit leader finally caught on.

He suddenly crawled forward like a desperate caterpillar, practically clinging to my feet.

**“N-now that I think about it! W-we did do that! Y-yes, it’s coming back to me! The sight of such a divine beast must have momentarily robbed me of my senses!

Yes! Greedy for riches, we tried to plunder the Tang Clan ship! Yes, yes! That’s exactly what happened!”**

See?

A little persuasion did wonders for memory recall.

Of course, these were completely fabricated memories, but a person on the verge of death would confess to crimes they hadn’t even committed.

Still, he had conveniently forgotten a few things.

I decided to help fill in the gaps.

“Oh? And what about the insult to the Tang Clan’s lady? Did you forget that part?”

“W-we insulted her, too! We are wretched scoundrels!”

“And breaking the Tang Clan’s banner to dodge the unspoken rule?”

“Y-yes, we broke the clan flag! Absolutely!”

At his words, the other bandits nodded along furiously.

Then, I turned to the group and asked,

“Alright, then. Who was it that broke the Tang Clan’s flag?”

“H-him! It was him! I saw it!”

“Y-yes! It was me, Young Master! I was the one who did it!”

“And where is the flag now?”

“Uh... O-oh! Right! It sank! It sank into the river!”

“Since when do flags tied to wood sink?”

“Guh—! R-right! We, uh, tied it to a rock before throwing it in! Yes! A rock!”

At this point, they were practically playing the roles of defendant, witness, and evidence all on their own.

Crossing my arms, I muttered in a grave tone,

“Hmmm... The more I think about this, the more it seems like a crime worthy of death.”

“Indeed,” Seol chimed in, delighted. “So-ryong, I’d say these guys deserve to be fed to the beasts.”

With me singing the accusations and Seol playing the drumbeat, our rhythm was perfect.

The bandits wailed, their voices cracking in sheer panic.

“P-please, have mercy!”

“Young Master, we beg for your forgiveness!”

Their soaking wet faces were a mess—whether it was tears or river water, I couldn’t tell.

Then Cho let out a playful growl.

– Tssssr!

A few bandits screamed and foamed at the mouth, passing out on the spot.

‘Alright, that should be enough.’

Now that their memory issues had been resolved, and their crimes fully confessed, they were ready for negotiations.

I leaned in slightly.

“So... leader of these bandits. What’s your name?”

“I-I am Blood-Wind Boatman Lee Tae, of the Three Gorges!”

A self-proclaimed warrior of the martial world, huh?

In the martial arts world, people usually received their epithets from others as a sign of respect for their skills or character.

For example, Hwa-eun’s Poisonous Moon Rose nickname signified both her deadly skills and her beauty.

But no one would bother giving a bandit an honorary title.

Meaning, he had clearly named himself.

I smirked.

“Ah, I see. So, I was speaking to the esteemed ‘Blood-Wind Boatman’ all along.”

“N-not at all, Young Master! You flatter me!”

“Well, whatever the case. Blood-Wind Boatman, your crimes are great, but I am not a fan of unnecessary bloodshed. So, I propose a settlement. What do you say?”

Hope flickered in their previously lifeless eyes.

Moments ago, they thought they were going to die in a giant centipede’s stomach, but now? A way out had appeared.

The bandit leader frantically nodded.

“T-thank you, Young Master! Thank you! W-what are you all doing?! Hurry and apologize!”

His men scrambled to bow and grovel.

“W-we’re sorry, Young Master!”

“Forgive us!”

“We were wrong!”

Oh?

So they thought they could just apologize with words?

That wasn’t going to work.

See, I came from a capitalist society.

And in capitalism, apologies had no meaning unless they carried weight.

People always said that a genuine apology came from the heart, but the heart wasn’t something you could see.

If an apology was based on emotions, there was no way to measure sincerity.

But in capitalism?

Sincerity was measured in money.

A one-hundred-tael apology was worth exactly that.

A thousand-tael apology was worth more.

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This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

‘I don’t even need the money. But hey, rules are rules.’

I let their desperate pleas continue for a moment before dropping my next move.

“Oh, by the way. According to Hwa-eun, the unspoken rule states that the guilty party must offer a gift of apology...”

Lee Tae flinched visibly.

His eyes darted around as he stammered,

**“Y-young Master, w-we are but humble river folk! People assume we are rich because we are bandits, but that is far from the truth!

Avoiding patrol boats means we can only work on foggy nights or when the guards are absent! And during the monsoons, we can’t even set sail!

And that’s not all—!”**

Oh?

“The number of ships under the protection of the Nine Great Sects and the Five Great Clans is increasing, making it harder and harder to survive as river bandits,” Lee Tae continued, his voice thick with desperation.

“Recently, the river swelled unexpectedly, preventing us from sailing for over ten days.

Today... after ten days of eating nothing but raw fish, we saw a ship without a clan flag and rushed over, hoping for something more...”

Behind him, the other bandits nodded solemnly, tears glistening in their eyes.

“We... we just wanted to eat some rice...”

“Sniff... We’re not such bad people...”

‘Oh, these bastards are really pulling the sob story now, huh?’

Just as they were about to get away with nothing more than a verbal apology, a voice called out urgently.

“S-So-ryong!”

“Сaptain (Dosa-gong)?”

One of the boatmen, along with the ship’s captain, came running back from the cabin, panting heavily.

“M-my Lord! The girl went on a rampage! She threw people at the ship, and now it’s leaking again!”

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

We had been carefully navigating the turbulent waters of the Three Gorges, worried that the makeshift repairs wouldn’t hold.

And then Cho, in her excitement, had gone and worsened the damage.

“How bad is it?”

“We need to stop somewhere and fix it immediately!”

Сaptain’s face was grave as he emphasized the urgency.

I frowned at the situation, but before I could respond, Lee Tae, the bandit leader, suddenly spoke up from where he was kneeling.

“M-my Lord! W-we can fix the ship!”

I turned to him with a skeptical look.

“You? Fix a ship?”

Seeing my doubt, Lee Tae hastily explained,

“We... we have an excellent shipwright at our base!”

“Shipwright?”

I furrowed my brows at the unfamiliar term, but Сaptain quickly clarified.

“A master craftsman who builds ships.”

Lee Tae eagerly nodded.

**“Yes! That’s it! A shipbuilding master!

How else do you think we’ve managed to sink so many ships over the years? We know everything about them!”**

He was way too proud of that.

But then he added,

“He’s from Fujian Province!”

At that, Сaptain’s eyes widened.

“Fujian!?”

“O-of course! Why would I lie about something like that?”

Сaptain turned to me, his expression full of hope.

**“My Lord, if this man truly hails from Fujian, then he is one of the best shipbuilders alive.

Our ship was also built in Fujian. If his claim is true, he’ll be able to repair it better than anyone else.”**

I raised an eyebrow.

“That so?”

Sensing my interest, Lee Tae grinned eagerly.

“Y-yes! If we fix your ship, could that count as our offering of atonement...?”

He wanted to replace the tribute with the ship repairs.

I responded before he could even finish his sentence.

“Alright. I’ll accept your shipwright as your apology gift.”

A 10:0 accident deserved a 10:0 settlement.

***

While making our way to the bandit stronghold, another issue came up: naming the creatures.

Specifically, the baby between Seol and Bini.

“It saved So-ryong’s life. It’s absurd that it doesn’t even have a name yet. We need to decide now.”

“True. We can’t keep calling it ‘baby’ forever.”

Both women were determined to settle the matter.

“So, should it be ‘Dong’?”

“No, ‘Naeng’ sounds better.”

They were evenly split on the name choice.

Tired of the debate, I offered a solution.

“Why don’t we let the baby decide?”

Both Seol and Hwa-eun blinked.

“The baby?”

“Yes. Instead of choosing a name we like, let’s pick the name it prefers.”

Of course, as its owner, I could just decide, but doing that would earn me Seol’s and Hwa-eun’s eternal resentment.

After everything that had happened with Wolyeong’s poison, making another unilateral decision would just put another mark against me.

So, if I let the baby decide, neither of them could complain.

I gently placed the baby on the table and asked,

“Do you like ‘Naeng’? Or do you prefer ‘Dong’?”

The little creature tilted its head, chirped a few times, and scurried up onto Hwa-eun’s shoulder.

Then, it chirped happily again.

“‘Dong’?”

– 『Kyu~!』

It was decided.

“Ugh! ‘Naeng’ isn’t a bad name either!”

Seol pouted in disappointment, but there was nothing to be done.

The baby had chosen.

And so, it was officially named Dong.

Renaming Wolyeong

Then came the next topic of discussion.

The issue with Wolyeong’s name.

A creature filled with the fiery yang energy of its venom... was named after the moon and shadows, symbols of yin.

Hwa-eun pointed it out first.

“Wolyeong needs a new /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ name. The name ‘Wol’ (moon) and ‘Yeong’ (shadow) both represent yin energy. It doesn’t suit a creature filled with yang.”

“Right. So-ryong, to it, the name Wolyeong is basically an insult.”

They weren’t wrong.

I had always named my creatures based on their traits, and giving a fiery, venomous creature a name associated with darkness and cold didn’t fit at all.

‘Cho, can you ask Wolyeong how it feels about changing its name?’

– 『Tssssr!』

The response came back almost instantly.

A resounding yes.

Apparently, Wolyeong had been named by a bunch of ascetic monks who had starved it for ten years.

No wonder it didn’t like the name.

Deciding to make it up to Seol for not letting her name the baby, I turned to her.

“Seol, you should name it.”

Her eyes widened in surprise.

“Really!?”

She had been sulking over Naeng losing, but now she beamed with excitement.

After thinking for a moment, she suggested,

“How about ‘Hwayang’?”

“Hwayang?”

**“Yeah. ‘Wolyeong’ meant ‘moon shadow,’ right? Then reversing it would mean ‘sunlight.’

But calling it ‘Il-yang’ sounds too masculine.

‘Hwayang’ would work better, since ‘Hwa’  means fire.”**

“Hwayang...”

A name that literally meant blazing sun.

A perfect fit for a fiery little monster that breathed fire.

“What do you think of your new name, Hwayang?”

The creature wiggled its hind legs in apparent approval.

And with that, Wolyeong officially became Hwayang.

“It looks happy with it. Seol, I think that’s a great name.”

“Awesome!”

Seol beamed with pride.

Just as I was about to relax, though, something felt off.

I frowned, trying to figure out what was nagging at me.

And then, it hit me.

‘Wait... Hold on... Its legs!’

I rubbed my eyes and looked again.

During the two days I had been suffering from Hwayang’s poison...

Its hind legs had grown.

The little thing had changed.