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Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Damned Transmigration ◈

Chapter 102: Dang Family 5

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A transmigrator could not choose the body they transmigrated into.

The moment someone reached first place in the Hall of Fame, the game Seronis became a trap that devoured their soul. Before their soul crossed over from Earth to this world, they met a priest of the Goddess of Order in a waiting room and received an explanation about transmigration.

It had been well over thirty years since transmigrators first began appearing in this world.

Yuri remembered the chaos when the Hall of Fame first opened. In those early days, simply clearing a hidden boss could place someone near the top of the rankings, and with a little effort, they could quickly take first place.

That was why the top rank changed several times a day, and countless players were swallowed by the trap.

Haryeong's mother, Jeong Hee-so, was one of the transmigrators who crossed over during those early days.

When she became the Poison King's concubine, Jeong Hee-so had been younger than even the Poison King's children.

It was not unusual for an old master who had regained youth through rejuvenation to keep a young woman or man by their side. That alone was not a problem.

Having a child was another matter. Even if the children born to the legal wife were already grown, a young concubine becoming pregnant could only cause trouble. Especially when that family was the Dang Family, which ruled the Salmun. Especially when the Poison King was a Poison Human with more poison than blood flowing through his body.

The Poison King had conceived a child with his young concubine. It was a matter serious enough to shake the Dang Family from within.

“I don't know exactly when my mother transmigrated either.”

Even as she revealed the secret of her birth, Haryeong chewed on her skewer.

“But to me, Mother was always distant. Honestly, I can count on one hand the times I felt any motherly affection from her.”

Like everyone else, Haryeong could not know much about what happened before she was born.

Still, she had heard the general story while living in the Dang Family. The Poison King had grown overly fond of his concubine, so despite the whispers within the family, he built her a separate residence.

A child the family did not want. A child whose existence could only disrupt the family. The Poison King had acted on his own, but he understood what it meant for his late-born youngest daughter to exist.

“The Dang Family's martial arts require improving one's constitution through the combined use of spiritual medicines and poisons, so they begin training as young as possible.”

The Tang siblings were like that. From childhood, they had consumed spiritual medicines and poisons together, building poison within their bodies to improve their constitutions. Poison Humans, with blood, inner power, and Poison Qi coursing through their bodies, possessed a power only direct descendants of the Dang Family could enjoy. They were exceptional beings, fundamentally different from martial artists and mages of the same tier.

“But I didn't learn poison arts, let alone martial arts. That was the condition of my birth.”

The head of the Dang Family was also the leader of the Salmun. Legitimacy mattered, but anyone who sat at the head of a martial family and sect needed martial arts worthy of the position. If the sudden appearance of a youngest daughter on the family register could disrupt the succession, the simple solution was never to teach her martial arts.

“Ever since I was young, I was perceptive, clever, intelligent, and bright, so I could tell I had many enemies without anyone explaining it to me.”

Haryeong licked the seasoning from her lips and glanced at Yuri.

“So I acted accordingly. I knew many people hated me, so I almost never left the separate residence. I stayed inside by myself, pathetically playing with dolls.”

“...”

“When I turned eight, Mother moved from the separate residence to the Dang Family's Thunder Prison.”

She said it as naturally as if her mother had simply moved into the next room. Yuri blinked before he could react.

“...Was she... discovered?”

“I don't know whether she was discovered or confessed it herself. All I know is that the Dang Family learned my mother was a transmigrator, and that she killed herself only a few days after being imprisoned in the Thunder Prison.”

Neither Yuri nor Estor could say anything.

Haryeong looked quietly at the two of them, frozen stiff in place, then shrugged.

“The Dang Family didn't kill her.”

“Is that... really true?”

“There was no need to disguise it as suicide. At the time, hostility toward transmigrators had reached its peak. It was common for people to kill someone first just because they suspected them of being a transmigrator.”

“...”

“If a concubine who had infiltrated the heart of the Dang Family turned out to be a transmigrator, they could have simply executed her. But my mother's death was ruled a suicide, and I survived as well.”

Ignoring the two standing there blankly, Haryeong continued walking.

“There may have been some other scheme behind my mother's suicide. But that's not something I can know right now. So I don't intend to seek revenge against the Dang Family.”

“Judging by Tang Seo-woo's attitude, it sounds like she has done plenty to deserve revenge from you, Lady Haryeong.”

“That is true. She shoved centipedes into my fucking cute little mouth and kept pricking my arms with needles, calling them antidote needles.”

Yuri, who had been following Haryeong a little behind, stopped walking again. His expression twisted viciously as he turned to glare behind them.

“I should've beaten that bitch too.”

“For me?”

“Thinking about it now, I just don't like her face.”

“I'll beat that fucking bitch myself later, so hurry up.”

After people learned that her mother was a transmigrator, Haryeong's life changed drastically.

Instead of the comfortable separate residence, she was given a small storage room in the main house.

“My father, the Poison King, locked himself in the underground training room after Mother's suicide and never came out.”

That was when the real contempt and bullying began. Even so, the children of collateral branches and the servants did not bully her, but the direct descendants around her age, led by Tang Seo-woo, subjected her to all kinds of harassment.

“I stayed in the Dang Family until I was fourteen. I didn't do chores like a servant. I was simply treated like a ghost people bullied.”

She had never sat at the dining table with her siblings of the same generation. Whenever she ran into them, they looked at her as though they had seen filthy waste. A child born to a transmigrator. That was reason enough for them to despise her.

“My life was already miserable and pitiful. If I kept living that way and grew older, it was obvious it would become even more miserable. So I learned martial arts.”

The Dang Family never taught Haryeong martial arts. She stole most of what she learned. She secretly listened as young Tang Seo-woo recited the verses of the Vast Righteous Return-to-Origin Art, which was how she first began learning inner cultivation. She learned footwork by placing her feet over the traces Tang Seo-jin left during practice. She learned concealed-weapon arts by reading the trajectories of the blunted concealed weapons thrown at her while she stood there like a scarecrow.

“I first filled my dantian with inner power and reached tier two when I was twelve. The Dark King discovered it immediately.”

When she faced the Dark King, whom she had never once called brother, and was questioned about her martial arts, young Haryeong trembled in fear. Unexpectedly, she was not scolded.

That did not mean the Dark King looked at her kindly.

He asked how she had learned martial arts. When Haryeong said she had stolen the knowledge, he fell silent for a while before nodding.

“I was sent to the Salhomun when I was fourteen.”

There had been no warning. One morning, the Faceless Killer, the leader of the Salhomun, threw open the storage-room door and took Haryeong away.

“I don't know what relationship the Salmun and Salhomun have. I don't know why I was sent to the Salhomun either. But for me, life there was much better than life in the Dang Family.”

Few people chose to become assassins. Most assassins were made by training orphans. They took orphans who were empty inside because they had no parents, who did not know how to live in the world and had yet to experience life's joys, taught them how to kill, and raised them into assassins.

Haryeong trained as an assassin under the Faceless Killer alongside other orphans. That life was far better than the one she had lived in the Dang Family.

“While I lived in the separate residence, Mother and I were almost always alone together. But looking back, I don't think I was happy or enjoyed myself. I think Mother didn't feel any special love for me.”

It seemed she had deliberately kept her distance. Memories of her patting Haryeong's head, hugging her, reading to her, or singing her lullabies could be counted on one hand.

“I resented her greatly at the time, but now I can roughly guess why. A transmigrator is, in the end, only a soul that entered someone else's body. Perhaps she couldn't truly think of the child that body conceived and gave birth to as her own flesh and blood.”

Wouldn't that be a strange feeling?

As a transmigrator himself, Yuri could not help sympathizing with Haryeong's words. When he had first transmigrated, he often felt confused whenever he looked in the mirror, wondering whether that was truly him.

“Perhaps my mother didn't love Father either. As I said earlier, I don't know exactly when Mother transmigrated. She may have transmigrated after she had already become a concubine... Or she may have transmigrated before then and deliberately approached the Poison King.”

It was not completely impossible for a young woman to sincerely fall in love with the head of the Dang Family, who had already lived to see his grandchildren, and become his concubine.

But if she was a transmigrator, Yuri could not help suspecting a deliberate approach instead. Especially at that time, nearly thirty years ago, which could be considered the dawn of transmigrators. He had heard that many transmigrators approached NPCs based on the knowledge they had gained in the game.

“What about the Poison King?”

“He cherished me much more like a daughter than Mother did.”

Like Haryeong, her mother never left the separate residence. The Poison King, on the other hand, visited occasionally. No, he visited quite often. Each time he came, he brought gifts a young daughter would like.

“I have memories of him and affection for him as a father. Even though that stopped around the time I turned eight, I still consider the Poison King my father. That's why I intend to kill him.”

“W-What?”

Yuri had heard that unfilial ambition back in Alderan, but Estor was hearing it for the first time. Estor, who had listened to Haryeong's past with a serious expression, choked on his breath and stared wide-eyed.

“Y-You intend to kill the Poison King? Your father?”

“Yes.”

Haryeong had said then that her reason for needing to kill her father had nothing to do with revenge. She had said it was not driven by such feelings.

She would kill him because he needed to be killed. That was what Haryeong had said.

“After Mother's suicide, Father shut himself in his room and could not overcome his Inner Demon. The poison consumed him.”

No one knew exactly when the poison had consumed him. The Poison King never left his room, even when the Sword Emperor, his old friend, came to visit.

Learning that the concubine he had cherished enough to father a daughter with in his old age was actually a transmigrator brought a tremendous Inner Demon upon the Poison King, who had cultivated martial arts all his life and even achieved rejuvenation. That Inner Demon led to Qi Deviation.

Yuri knew well what happened to martial artists who suffered Qi Deviation. Yet compared to the Poison King, the Blood Fiend's Qi Deviation had been remarkably human.

“I think I was ten. The Dark King summoned me to the underground training room where Father was in seclusion.”

The sight she saw then was deeply etched into Haryeong's memory. The training-room door was plastered with talismans densely inscribed with spells. After a complicated procedure, the door was opened just a crack. Through the gap came the horrible taste of the air.

‘Call your father.’

Beyond that narrow opening was a mass of Poison Qi that could not possibly be considered human. Young Haryeong was terrified, but she repeatedly called for her father as ordered.

No reply came.

Until she was sent to the Salhomun, the Dark King summoned her several times to go down to the underground training room.

“I don't know whether Father is still in that underground training room. But if he remains as I saw him when I was young, if he is alive in a state where death would be better, wouldn't it be kinder to kill him?”

Yuri understood now why Haryeong had barely spoken of herself, why she always changed the subject with pointless jokes whenever he asked.

He could not help understanding. A past like that was not something one could easily reveal.

“Lady Haryeong.”

Yuri looked around.

The streets were crowded, and he could feel quite a few gazes watching them. Beggars sat on mats spread across the ground. They were members of the Beggars' Sect, famous as an information sect of the Righteous Sect.

“If you say you want to go to the Dang Family, I'll go with you.”

The sudden appearance of the Poison King's youngest daughter was enough to draw attention. The fact that the Dang Family had tried to take her by force meant there had to be some other reason behind it. The Beggars' Sect, which gathered information from every corner, would certainly take an interest.

“If you say you want to go to the Dang Family and kill the Poison King...”

“...”

“To be honest, I don't think I can do that right now.”

After hearing Haryeong's past, Yuri thought it all over again from the beginning.

His conclusion did not change. Killing Haryeong's father meant preparing for an all-out war against the Dang Family.

“The Dark King, as the family head, isn't going to say, ‘Yes, welcome. Please come kill our father for us.’ That means we'd have to kill the Poison King by force, but I'm not strong enough yet to force the issue against the Dang Family's full strength.”

“Are you saying...”

Haryeong turned to Yuri with round eyes.

“If I ask you to help me kill Father, you'll help me?”

“I can't do it right now. But once I think it's possible, then yes.”

“I was planning to become closer to you, give you all sorts of help, then ask once I'd put indecisive Yuri in a position where you couldn't refuse.”

“We've survived two life-threatening crises together. No, three if we count Panteleon. We're close enough by now. And I'm not indecisive.”

At that answer, Haryeong blinked several times before looking at Estor.

“This is a secret and private promise between Yuri and me, so Estor, you don't have to join us.”

“What if I want to?”

Estor asked with a broad grin.

“I was very surprised when I first heard it, but after hearing about your circumstances, Lady Haryeong, I want to help as well.”

“We may end up opposing the Dang Family.”

“That isn't happening right away. Having a clear enemy is better for training.”

Haryeong could only blink at that answer too. She hesitated briefly, then looked back and forth between Yuri and Estor.

“Does anyone want to part ways and act separately while you still can?”

“Stop talking nonsense and run, Aunt Haryeong.”

A palm slapped Haryeong's back, scolding her for slowing down. They had decided to run to the nearest city gate to avoid getting caught up in more troublesome matters, but the city was enormous, and they were not using their full movement techniques. The gate was still far away.

“Wait, are we really going to keep running all the way to Jeokwon?”

“Aren't we faster running than riding horses or carriages?”

Estor's eyes wavered slightly at that answer. Estor, the young master of the Orsia Family, could not possibly have experience running such a long distance until his feet blistered.

“I can do it.”

Estor muttered with a determined expression.

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