Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

Even though the Golden-Furred Bee King’s house seemed unusually noisy, I decided to deal with Hwayang first.

I carried him back to my quarters and set him down in the corner.

Since the Golden-Furred Bee King was extremely sensitive to intrusions, I needed to leave Hwayang behind before visiting.

Besides, I had to give him a stern warning.

With his bottomless appetite, if I didn’t put a stop to this now, he’d probably sneak into the kitchen at every meal to steal fire.

“Hwayang, you can’t just go to the kitchen and steal fire, okay? If you do that, other people won’t be able to eat. And eating toad flames every day isn’t good for your health.”

• Bii!

The moment I scolded him, his big, round eyes widened in disbelief, as if to say, What nonsense are you talking about?

I sighed, exasperated at how alert he was only when it came to food.

“I’m not saying this because I don’t want to feed you. I’m saying it because I care. If you keep eating too much, you might get sick. If this keeps up, I’ll only feed you every two days.”

• Biiiii!? Biiiii…

His whole body flinched in horror at first.

Then, at the mention of having meals every other day, he drooped in utter despair.

I felt a little bad, but I had no choice.

Even though Hwayang was a spiritual beast, his feeding habits were still based on amphibian biology.

Toads and frogs don’t eat every day.

Amphibians generally only eat once every two days because of their unique digestive system.

Unlike mammals, amphibians don’t have teeth, so they rely entirely on their stomach and intestines to digest food.

Even a normal meal takes a full day to digest.

If they eat something large, digestion takes even longer.

If Hwayang kept eating every meal, it was only a matter of time before something went wrong.

Sure, as a spiritual beast, he might be fine, but logically speaking—

Fire was one of the hardest food sources to find in nature.

For a fire-eating spiritual beast to sustain itself, it would normally have to wait for natural wildfires or volcanic activity.

Considering where I had found him, he was definitely not from a volcanic region.

That meant his natural feeding cycle was far less frequent.

So, I had to set some rules.

“Just bear with it a little, okay?”

“…”

Instead of answering, he closed his eyes and pretended not to hear me.

I chuckled and let it slide, then turned my attention to waking up the others before heading to the Golden-Furred Bee King’s house.

If I was leaving, I needed to make sure they were all awake first.

“Alright, Bini, time to get up. Hyang, you too.”

• Tsrrr…

Bini, still half-asleep, crawled sluggishly toward me and pressed his head against my leg.

He was still too drowsy to function properly.

• Tsutsu…

• Tak.

• Buuuung. Buuuung.

• Buuuuung!

1. The hive becomes too crowded and there’s no space for egg-laying.
2. The Queen Bee grows old and a successor is needed.
3. The hive gets too large for the Queen’s pheromones to reach every bee.

• A sudden increase in worker bees.
• The appearance of multiple royal cells.
• Bees gathering in large numbers at the hive entrance.

• Buuuuung!

• Buuuuung!

• Different fur density and length
• Slight variations in leg shape
• Head and body proportions