I had endlessly stared towards the setting sun.
The pain was like someone hammering my whole body with a red-hot iron. Skin that others might mistake for a contagious disease. After a hellish day, when the pain finally subsided a bit, I could hear sounds around me.
Bitch who doesn’t know her father, plague-ridden bitch, filthy bitch, leper bitch. I couldn’t count how I was called.
My body felt numb from pain, and I couldn’t even cling to my mother to avoid the looks of disgust and contempt.
“If only it was just four years! Damn it!”
I was used to dodging flying liquor bottles.
Why was mom acting like that? What had I done wrong? Wouldn’t she love me if I just kept approaching her? Wouldn’t she look back?
It was a futile hope from my childhood.
A child born from rape. It barricaded my path to marriage. A ruined life. Rumors spreading behind my back because of that child.
She was my mother, but since she wasn’t a decent person, she must have directed all her resentments toward me.
I learned the reason not long ago, but maybe not knowing the reason would have been better. If I had lived without knowing, if I hadn’t died because of her today, I would have just hated her for a lifetime.
Thoughts of my mother weighed heavily on my chest.
A childhood where even my mother didn’t love me. In the end, I could only stare hopelessly towards the setting sun.
When. At what time. On which day.
“Haha. Were you waiting for me?”
I didn’t expect Uncle Tang Geoh to come.
“I brought an interesting toy from Sichuan.”
“What do you want to eat? I’ll get you anything.”
Uncle Tang Geoh, who had come from Sichuan with the sunset at his back, was the only ray of light in my childhood.
Like a father. I thought maybe he really was my true dad. His existence was the support of my childhood.
“I’ll come again next time. But you have to take the medicine every day.”
Tang Geoh always promised to return with a gentle smile while patting my head.
The martial arts he taught me was tough, and the medicine he made me take was bitter. But I took it every day because I felt I couldn’t see him again if I didn’t.
Not knowing that this medicine might be the source of all my pain.
“Lady Tang…!”
The man who always promised to reunite was right in front of me now. The dawn had just arrived. He stood before me, surpassing a decade.
Not as the light that helped me endure unbearable trials, but as the mastermind behind everything.
The ugly man seemed scared of the light and tried to escape into the darkest shadows, but I stopped him.
What is this feeling? Betrayal, resentment, anger—it’s hard to express this complicated emotion with just one word. Yet one thing is certain.
Today, we will untie the knots that bind us.
*
“Save me.”
Tang Geoh begged for his life while pulling out the hidden knife embedded in his burning arm.
“What were you thinking when you said those words over a decade ago?”
“Please save me! Heal me! I’m in so much pain!” Words I had spoken in childhood agony mixed with rage were thrown back at him. Lady Tang said these to Tang Geoh with a voice full of resentment.
“I know a hundred apologies aren’t enough. I did such a terrible experiment on a child in the name of the greater good. But do you think it didn’t hurt me to see you?”
Tang Geoh hung his head, clutching his chest, pretending that his heart wasn’t troubled either.
“….”
For a moment, Lady Tang paused at his response. Did he feel it? Looking at the young Lady Tang from a decade ago, he wore a kind expression and spoke.
“I considered you like my own daughter. I always tried not to let you die, even when you were suffering. I only gave you trials you could endure. That’s why you’ve grown up so splendidly now.”
The man spoke words that, at first glance, might seem right to Lady Tang.
“Shut up. Did you not consider the other bastards you killed as your children?”
However, Lady Tang wasn’t easy to fool with sweet talk.
“…Tch.”
With a single word, the façade was shattered, leaving only the man’s ugly desires gleaming.
“Dumbass.”
Lady Tang looked at Tang Geoh with disbelief. If she were that child staring endlessly at the setting sun ten years ago, she might have been fooled. But not now.
She had become who she was not because of Tang Geoh.
She was standing here because she met a man.
Because a man reached out his hand to her, who had fallen into despair’s abyss at the darkest time of her life.
Without him, she could have become one of the corpses lying around.
With poison in hand, Lady Tang stood before Tang Geoh to untie the knots he had tied.
Tang Geoh, sensing his impending doom, suddenly spoke with urgency.
“You were different from those kids! You were special! Don’t you remember how much I tried to leave memories in your life? I bought you dolls as a child and fed you from the Tang Family! You considered me like your father! You’re going to kill me?”
For a brief moment, her hand halted at his plea.
Lady Tang wasn’t swayed by his words. She simply felt sad that all the precious memories of her childhood were part of that ugly man’s scheme.
She was just momentarily lost in thought; she had no intention of changing the outcome.
Tang Geoh, however, did not miss that slight opening.
“Die!”
Tang Geoh pulled a tube from his clothing and presented it to Lady Tang.
The lid burst open, releasing three poisoned darts. Lady Tang attempted to back away to avoid them, but they were too close. All three darts pierced her forearm.
The darts weren’t powerful enough to penetrate deeply but served their purpose.
The poison inside the darts raced through Lady Tang’s arm instantly.
To use poison against a poison user. Lady Tang removed the darts nonchalantly, staring incredulously at Tang Geoh.
“Do you think something like this will work? Poison against a poison user? You idiot… um?”
Lady Tang’s body wavered.
“Hahaha!”
“What—what are you doing?”
“You wouldn’t be affected by normal poison! But the Thousand-Year Five-Pattern Poison is different! Even if you’ve barely stabilized the poison in your body, you won’t be able to handle double the amount of my Thousand-Year Five-Pattern Poison!”
He poured all of his Thousand-Year Five-Pattern Poison into her. Anyone from the Martial Arts World would drop dead from such a dose. Tang Geoh was certain of his victory.
“Ugh!”
As Tang Geoh expected, Lady Tang grabbed her chest and knelt on one knee.
“I will take your corpse! I’ll dissect you piece by piece and study every inch of your insides, every drop of your blood! I will create a new poison user!”
No matter how much she had become a poison user, there would be a limit to the poison she could control. Soon, she would lose consciousness and suffer from high fever. It would be great if she hung in there, but she wouldn’t be able to.
Tang Geoh suppressed his excitement, waiting for her to collapse.
“Ah…”
Lady Tang closed her eyes and fell.
No matter how it happened, the one standing at the end is the victor. Tang Geoh grinned at the fallen Lady Tang and approached her.
“Cough!”
In an instant, Lady Tang had risen and grabbed his neck.
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
Seeing the surprised man who had fallen for her trap, Lady Tang wore a victorious smile.
“No?!”
“Tang Geoh. You truly are a piece of trash until the very end.”
“How—how? Your body shouldn’t be able to endure it!”
Tang Geoh stared at Lady Tang with wide eyes. The body he designed shouldn’t withstand that poison. Though she became a poison user by chance, this was impossible.
“Thanks to the most precious person in my life, it is possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
All the poison Tang Geoh had accumulated for over a decade inside her body, poured into his own.
Fever, difficulty breathing, skin rashes, itching, muscle pain, the agonizing pain of nerves being crushed—the countless pains Lady Tang had expressed but could not describe crashed upon him in an instant.
“Does it hurt? That’s the pain I suffered.”
“Save… me… for the Tang Family…”
If Tang Geoh lived, it would benefit the Tang Family. He could return the lost martial arts to them or cultivate a new poison user.
“What’s it to me?”
Lady Tang scoffed. The poison experiments should end with her. She couldn’t let another victim arise. Like a cutting operation, like squeezing pus from a wound, she had to eradicate the root of all her pain.
“I made you….”
With fierce anger, Lady Tang stared down at the pitiful Tang Geoh who looked at her with great difficulty.
“Get out of my life once and for all.”
Lady Tang gripped Tang Geoh’s neck and injected the most vicious poison filled with her resentment and anger.
“Cough, cough.”
It was too easy to deliver his final blow.
She injected just a little bit of Thousand-Year Five-Pattern Poison, and with a scream, his life was extinguished.
Lady Tang released the hand that had grabbed the person she had waited for ten years. Was the grudge too deep? Was her anger too intense?
Lady Tang gazed calmly at the origin of her painful life, her emotions now reduced to ashes.
He was the worst human being in her life.
If there was only one thing he had done right,
“Yoon-ho.”
It was bringing the best man into her life.
Lady Tang turned her gaze to where Kang Yoon-ho had collapsed.
“Yoon… ho?”
Where she looked, only blood-stained clothes lay alone where Kang Yoon-ho had been.
————————–
“Yoon-ho!”
Lady Tang rushed to the spot where Kang Yoon-ho was lying.
Where had he gone? Where had he disappeared to? He clearly told her to escape when there was a chance. Lady Tang looked at the horses beside her, yet none had vanished.
“Yoon-ho!”
Had he sneaked away? Or had he been kidnapped by the Demonic Cult?
“Kang Yoon-ho!!!”
Under the dark night sky, without a hint of wind, like a crew member losing the starlight on a shaky boat, Lady Tang called out for Kang Yoon-ho, her face filled with confusion.
Where could he have gone?
Where on earth could he have gone?
Could he not see that they were winning? Could it be that he had abandoned her and fled?
No. That couldn’t be true.
Even as the poison invaded her body, her heart, unwilling to kneel before the glimmering blade, felt like it would collapse.
As her legs, which had held out until now, began to give way, a brilliant sunrise shone down upon her.
“I’m right here, so don’t waste time looking. Come this way and help me!”
“ huh?”
Lady Tang turned her head towards the light.
“Don’t just stand there being dazed! Help me out already!”
Kang Yoon-ho was over there, untying each and every one of the bound guards.
“What the hell! Seriously! Stop scaring people for no reason!”
He hadn’t vanished. He was just looking for something he could do, just like always.
As Lady Tang watched Kang Yoon-ho helping the guards as if nothing had happened, she let out a sigh of relief.
“Huarrin! The injuries here are too severe!”
“Wait! I’ll be there!”
Before heading to Yoon-ho, Lady Tang glanced back at her deceased past.
There was no longer a powerless child who gazed helplessly at the west.
The child had turned into a woman who willingly smiles and rushes to help the man who extends his hand for her.
Lady Tang turned away from her past and ran toward the man.
