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Chapter 1
I Thought the Youngest Daughter of the Sichuan Tang Family Was Hated
What a truly beautiful day.
Flowers were blooming, birds were singing…
And the Sichuan Tang Family had fallen to ruin!
“I never thought I’d live to see the Sichuan Tang Family colluding with the Demonic Cult!”
Sluuurp.
As I tilted my cup of alcohol, the furious voices of middle-aged men erupted from the table beside me.
“The family head must’ve gone insane. Even after losing his wife to the Demonic Cult!”
The Sichuan Tang Family had long terrorized weaker sects, committing every kind of atrocity.
And not long ago, it was revealed that they had joined hands with the remnants of the Demonic Cult.
Half a century ago, during the Heavenly Demon War, the Central Plains had paid a terrible price for victory.
Countless villages and sects were annihilated, secret arts were lost, and with the deaths of many martial masters, the entire martial world regressed.
There was no way those people didn’t know that.
Yet they still did it.
In the end, the Murim Alliance mobilized all its strength to exterminate them, and after a long battle, news of the final victory arrived today.
“Serves those bastards right!”
Bang!
The paper he slammed onto the table fluttered loudly.
The Sichuan Tang Family Destroyed. Entire Clan Exterminated.
“Just thinking about my younger brother who died at their hands…!”
“Even killing them twice wouldn’t be enough!”
Right. Exactly.
They were a crazy family.
I understand those feelings better than anyone.
Sluuurp.
I silently agreed while drinking alongside the gossip from the next table.
And just as the bottle finally ran dry—
“……”
Why did it suddenly get so quiet?
When I glanced around, the men who had been shouting moments ago were now staring at me suspiciously.
Ah.
I’d been so absorbed in listening to them curse the Tang Family that I failed to notice their gazes.
Trying to hide my panic, I casually stood up from my seat.
Then someone muttered behind me.
“That person… could she be…?”
“Hey! You there, wait!”
I pulled my veiled hat down tightly and quickened my pace.
I couldn’t get caught. Because I was—
“It’s Tang Huiyeon! Catch her!”
—the sole survivor of the destroyed Tang Family!
As the crowd surged after me, I shouted in frustration while running.
“I cut ties with that family ages ago! I’m a proper Alliance member now!”
If I’d actually enjoyed the family’s wealth and privileges, maybe I wouldn’t feel so wronged!
“My dantian was destroyed and I got abandoned forever ago! Can’t you tell? I can’t even use lightness arts!”
“Who cares?! Just catch her!”
Thankfully, they seemed drunk and reckless, so they couldn’t catch up easily.
But if the commotion grew larger, more people would join the chase.
“Huff… huff…!”
After weaving desperately through the crowd, I finally rounded the corner of an alley.
There, hidden away, stood a small tent draped in red cloth.
It was decorated with flashy banners and ornaments like a fortune teller’s stall.
“……!”
Acting on instinct, I rushed inside and collapsed into a chair.
“Haaah… huff…!”
I pounded my chest while trying to steady my breathing.
“Where did she—?! …Over there…!”
Tap tap tap.
Keeping my head lowered, I swallowed dryly and waited.
Soon, the sounds of running footsteps faded farther away.
“Ugh… I thought I was dead…”
Or so I was about to say.
But the moment I lifted my head, the words died in my throat.
A man sat across from me.
His face was hidden behind the dark veil hanging from a black bamboo hat.
He was so tall and broad-shouldered that the cramped tent felt completely full.
Though I could only vaguely make out the outline of his face and lips through the thin veil, he radiated overwhelming handsomeness.
Without realizing it, I stared at those lips in a daze when—
“What a miserable life.”
“…Excuse me?”
“Were you abandoned by your family?”
“Sir?”
“Just by looking at you, it’s obvious you’ve never had anywhere to belong. No matter where you go, you remain an outsider. Your life has held no blessings—only suffering. Truly pitiful.”
“Um… don’t you think that’s a little too harsh to say directly to someone’s face?”
My ears rang from the sudden barrage of curses.
Was this some new kind of scam?
You know the type.
Those wandering fortune tellers who say nothing but terrible things, hoping something sticks!
Though, coincidentally, everything he said was true…
Still, in times like these, who didn’t have a tragic life story?
Even I could say things like that.
Now that I looked around, the inside of the tent was suspiciously shabby too.
Wasn’t this guy just a con artist?
To begin with, a fortune teller’s stall randomly sitting in an alleyway was already suspicious.
I should leave before he demands money.
“Excuse me, I didn’t actually come here for a reading—”
Then the man suddenly spoke.
“You must be hurt.”
“……”
I blinked at his calm words.
Normally, I could’ve laughed them off.
After all, they came from a suspicious fortune teller—no, a fraud.
“…Not really.”
But maybe it was because of the day.
Or perhaps the churning in my stomach that had started while listening to the people at the next table wasn’t caused by alcohol after all.
Before I realized it, the words slipped out.
“It’s true I was abandoned, but I was the one who left that family first.”
For some reason, my chest felt hot.
“It’s karma. They abandoned a child, after all. That’s why they were wiped out.”
I tried to sneer mockingly, but the corners of my mouth wouldn’t rise properly.
I should’ve been happy my family—the ones who abandoned me—were dead.
And yet…
“Colluding with the Demonic Cult…”
I muttered while tearing at the edge of my fingernail, then abruptly raised my head.
Wait.
I’d just casually brought up the Demonic Cult.
Doesn’t that basically scream “I’m from the Tang Family”?!
“So that’s what you wish to believe.”
Instead of reporting me, however, the man merely added another useless comment.
“Hah. What, are you saying the Murim Alliance fabricated everything?”
I let out an incredulous laugh.
At that moment—
Whoooosh—
A violent gust of wind blew into the tent.
Through the fluttering veil, the man’s eyes gleamed sharply.
Eyes red as pigeon blood.
There was only one person in the world with eyes like that.
Paehwa Alliance Leader, Jinhwa!
The man said to have united the entire unorthodox faction with nothing but his fists.
Why is the Alliance Leader here?
The moment I gasped in shock, he suddenly seized my wrist with terrifying strength.
“Ah!”
Burning energy surged through our joined hands.
It traveled through my wrist, shoulder, crown, and deep into my dantian.
My entire body felt as if molten iron were being poured into it.
“Don’t forget, Tang Huiyeon.”
He grabbed my chin and pulled my face close.
“When you return…”
His blood-red eyes looked as though they might swallow me whole.
“There is a silent guest.”
“……!”
The heat gradually transformed into pain.
I couldn’t even scream.
As my vision flashed white again and again, I thought I saw the corners of Jinhwa’s lips curl upward.
Blood burst from my mouth.
“Cough! W-what is…!”
“Drive it out. Immediately.”
His voice brushed past me, as though he were speaking to someone else.
Then my body suddenly sagged downward, as though being dragged somewhere far away.
That was the last thing I remembered.
***
“Ugh…”
Clutching my splitting head, I slowly sat up.
The room was completely dark, with black curtains covering the walls and windows so thoroughly that not even a ray of sunlight entered.
It was a familiar sort of eerie darkness.
“No way…”
I hurried toward the mirror.
A golden earring worn only on my right ear.
Round cheeks flushed pink.
A faint tear mole and hair soft as dandelion fluff.
It was unmistakably me at six years old.
“Gasp!”
I nearly fainted from shock.
Is this real?
“Ow!”
I pinched my cheek, and it hurt enough to bring tears to my eyes.
“This doesn’t feel like a dream…”
The residence I’d lived in as a child, the sensation in my cheeks—everything felt far too vivid.
Then does that mean…?!
My hand instinctively moved to my stomach.
More precisely, below my navel, where my dantian should’ve been.
“……”
But soon, I could only lower my hand weakly.
“I can’t feel it…”
My qi felt hollow, like water leaking endlessly from a broken jar.
I had already lost my dantian.
Then what’s the point of coming back? My family will just try to kill me again…
Thinking of my father and older brothers made my stomach churn once more.
Why had I been sent here?
At the moment, the most believable explanation was that Jinhwa had sent me back to the past.
I didn’t know much about him, but—
They say there’s no dark art he doesn’t know.
Suddenly, his final words resurfaced in my mind.
“Don’t forget, Tang Huiyeon.”
“There is a silent guest.”
Putting aside the fact that he knew my name—
Silent guest.
Normally, it referred to a nighttime intruder like a thief.
But unlike martial artists who focused on martial arts, I had devoted myself deeply to poison and medicine.
So I knew another meaning behind those words.
“A code word for Hallucination Grass…”
A rare poisonous herb whose smoke caused hallucinations and auditory delusions, eventually driving its victims insane once addicted.
It looked nearly identical to incense, making poisoning almost impossible to notice.
“But something only used in palace power struggles—why would it be here…?”
I muttered to myself.
Then suddenly, something caught my eye.
“Huh?”
A faint trail of white smoke drifted upward.
When I lowered my gaze, I saw an incense burner sitting beside the bedside table.
An incense burner I had never seen before.
