Chapter 1
[Some day, some month.
When I opened my eyes, I had become a maidservant of the Sichuan Tang Clan. Yes, that Sichuan Tang Clan—the clan of poison and hidden weapons from murim novels. “Stop reading novels and go to work,” you say? I wish this were a dream, too.
This is all the department manager’s fault. He gave me a murim novel to read, and now I’ve ended up transmigrating into murim. Damn it.
I’m spending all day doing household chores I wouldn’t even do at home. I want to go home.]
[Some day, some month.
I’m in charge of laundry here. Every single day, I’m given a mountain of clothes to wash. But there’s something bothering me. Colorful water comes out every time I rinse the laundry. Why is purple dye coming out of green fabric?
……This isn’t poison, is it?
[Some day, some month.
I learned the secret of my birth.
I am…….
I am……. ?
[Some day, some month.
The bastard who calls himself my father says I have to go to a matchmaking meeting. Apparently, it’s time for me to prove my worth, but he expects plenty despite having done nothing for me. Fucking bastard.
When I cursed, Grandfather tried to comfort me. He said that if I didn’t like the looks of the man who was to become my husband, Grandfather would go and replace him.
Grandfather, could you please stop talking about my future husband as if you’re picking potatoes at the market?
[Some day, some month.
Just as I was about to go to bed, a whole crowd of people came rushing in and dragged me away. Apparently, my matchmaking partner had died, and they said I was the culprit who poisoned him.
What the hell are you talking about? Why me?]
The Jianghu’s Code of Honor Has Fallen to the Ground
There is a saying commonly used whenever something beyond common sense happens in murim.
‘This is the law of the jianghu.’
The meaning of this expression, which had established itself as a kind of meme on the internet, was clear. Only the strong survive in this world.
I rather liked those words. Whenever the protagonist of a murim novel, unconcerned with the laws and order of modern society, talked about the law of the jianghu while smashing his enemies’ heads, I got a vicarious thrill from it.
I can’t be the only one. Everyone must have felt something similar. After all, who hasn’t experienced swallowing their anger because they couldn’t protest against the injustice right in front of them?
That’s what becoming an adult was like. Enduring things you didn’t want to do and getting them done anyway. Folding your pride up into tiny creases and putting on a smile.
So when the department manager handed me a murim novel and told me to read it on my way to and from work, I couldn’t even show that I disliked the idea and accepted the book.
“Young people these days don’t even know how to take a joke. Here, try reading this. Then we’ll have something to talk about.”
So because we couldn’t communicate, he wanted me to read the book he was reading. What kind of old-fashioned nonsense was that?
The words that the one who couldn’t communicate was the department manager, and that if he kept forcing his own interests on others without considering their tastes, eventually no one would remain by his side, rose all the way to the back of my throat, but I somehow swallowed them down.
My performance evaluation was in that old man’s hands, after all. Working life was really difficult.
And so, half a year had passed since I began reading murim novels in order to communicate with the department manager. I had even reached the point where I could laugh at the department manager’s jokes about creating Samadhi True Fire with the tops of his feet.
“See? You’re laughing well now. I told you, books are food for the soul.”
“I’m the only one laughing, sir. And if murim novels become food for the soul, that’s a serious problem. I’m going to start wanting to practice the law of the jianghu at work.”
Anyway, the murim novels I’d started reading as part of working life turned out to suit my tastes surprisingly well. Contrary to the prejudice that they were the exclusive domain of old men, they were actually quite fun.
Even those who acted as though they knew nothing but martial arts had lives, love, and romance.
People who risked their lives to protect their pride, to protect their comrades’ backs. Their stubbornness, almost to the point of foolishness, wasn’t enough to move your heart?
The lives of martial artists were so appealing that I even found myself thinking that I’d like to live like that at least once.
But that didn’t mean I wanted to become an extra in a murim novel.
“Look at you. You’re lost in thought again. Aren’t you going to do the laundry?”
“Yes. I’m going now.”
“They’re serving herbal medicine for lunch today. I’ve prepared something to cleanse your palate afterward.”
“Again?”
It certainly didn’t mean I wanted to become a maidservant of a sect that force-fed poison to its servants.
The World’s Greatest Poison Sect, Sichuan Tang Clan .
A clan of poison and hidden weapons, also known as the Tang Sect.
I had become a maidservant of this insane clan.
If fantasy had noble houses, murim had murim aristocratic clans. Of course, they weren’t exactly the same concept. It simply meant that both were powerful, prestigious families recognized by everyone.
These were bloodline-centered sects, closed-off groups made up entirely of relatives.
The Namgung Clan was a sect consisting of people with the Namgung family name, the Hebei Peng Clan consisted of people with the Peng family name, and the Sichuan Tang Clan was a sect made up of people with the Tang family name
Then, what exactly was the Sichuan Tang Clan?
They were the guys who arrogantly picked a fight with the protagonist, only to get thoroughly beaten and sent flying.
……At least, that’s how they had been in the murim novels I’d read. Since their weapons were poison and hidden weapons, they were perfect for use as villains.
When they appeared as allies, they were the kind of people who might have an unsettling side but still possessed loyalty. When they appeared as enemies, they were the sort who used vicious and despicable methods.
They crossed the boundary between the Orthodox Faction and the Unorthodox Faction , so to speak.
In some ways, they were similar to the mafias in movies. When they were protagonists, they were portrayed as incredibly cool, but when they appeared as villains, they made you want to throw them straight into prison.
Honestly, they deserved it. They used poison, for one thing. When someone came charging at you with a sword and you threw a poison-coated hidden weapon at them, it somehow looked cowardly.
That’s why I didn’t particularly like the Sichuan Tang Clan. I was the kind of reader who shouted, “If you’re a martial artist, fight fair and square with a sword!
Maybe it was because of my narrow-mindedness. When I opened my eyes, I was doing laundry at the Sichuan Tang Clan.
Why laundry all of a sudden?
That was exactly how I had felt on the day I transmigrated. Why was I suddenly doing laundry?
I stared blankly at the laundry paddle in my hand. It wasn’t even a dream where I was running a washing machine. I was dreaming of washing clothes by hand beside a well.
“What a strange dream.”
After muttering that, I thought I should look up what dreaming about doing laundry meant. Naturally, I thought it was a dream.
But even after I had beaten every last one of the long, trailing garments clean, and even after I had drawn water from the well and thoroughly rinsed the laundry, I still didn’t wake up.
Instead, the sensations throughout my entire body became vividly clear. My hands, which had been touching the cold water, were numb and aching. I blew warm breath over my frozen hands. Then I felt hot breath against the backs of my hands.
……Why can I feel things?
Suddenly, I wondered if this might not be a dream. I sprang to my feet and stuck my head straight into the well.
Reflected on the rippling surface of the well was an unfamiliar face. I slowly blinked.
But the face reflected in the well didn’t change. A girl I’d never seen before was staring back at me with a dazed expression.
Something was wrong. I wiped the water from my waist and touched my face. The girl in the well touched her face, too.
Even in those shabby clothes, her pretty features couldn’t be hidden. Looking at her, I thought she’d become an incredible beauty when she grew up. She had the kind of face that would have made her a child actress in a movie that surpassed ten million viewers and turned her into the nation’s little sister.
That wasn’t important right now. I shook my head and looked around.
A classical manor, the sort of place that could have appeared in a Hong Kong movie adaptation of a murim novel, came into view.
The enormous manor was so vast that its end was nowhere in sight, and magnificent halls stood throughout the grounds.
Judging from my appearance, I seemed to be a maidservant working at the manor.
In this unreal situation, a hypothesis I didn’t want to acknowledge slowly began to surface.
I slapped both my cheeks and took a deep breath. I’d hit myself with all my strength, and it hurt enough to bring tears to my eyes. This wasn’t a dream.
No way. Surely not. It couldn’t be. Calm down. Getting excited wasn’t going to solve this situation.
Calmly figure out where I was and come up with a plan—
Like hell I could.
A sense of injustice welled up inside me.
Wasn’t there an unspoken rule that transmigration was supposed to begin with, ‘When I opened my eyes, there was an unfamiliar ceiling’?
Why was mine, ‘When I opened my eyes, I was doing laundry’?
It was already miserable enough living like a slave to my company, and now I was supposed to live as an actual slave in someone else’s household?
What the hell. Send me home.
It took a full three days for me to accept reality.
I’d been living in a world where pressing a single button finished everything from washing to drying, so I couldn’t believe my fate had come to this—to beating clothes with a laundry paddle.
I ate the food they gave me, did whatever work I was told to do, and collapsed into bed as if I’d been knocked unconscious. By the time I repeated that cycle enough times, three days had passed.
“Haa……”
I looked at the laundry basket hanging from my arm and let out a deep, earth-shaking sigh. The basket, larger than my torso, was piled high with clothes soaked in lye water.
If I’d worked for three days straight, shouldn’t they at least let me rest for a day? What an unfeeling, disloyal world.
“The jianghu’s code of honor has fallen to the ground.”
As I muttered that, someone laughed merrily and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey. You’re only a laundry maid. What do you know about the jianghu’s code of honor?”
I hurriedly turned around. A woman with freckles covering her cheeks was smiling at me.
I simply blinked at the familiar face before realizing that she was the maidservant who shared a room with me. We’d slept together for several days, yet I still couldn’t remember her name. Was it Songji?
“Songji, sis.”
Judging by the lack of any reaction, I must have gotten her name right. I put on a meek expression and looked at Songji. Then Songji said,
“Stop pretending to be distracted and hurry up. You need to be back before lunch. The steward said everyone has to gather at Gwan-ga Garden at Wu Hour . Don’t you know how sensitive the Tang Clan elders are?”
“Okay.”
Urged on by Songji, I pouted and headed toward the laundry area.
It wasn’t difficult to realize that the place I was in was the Sichuan Tang Clan. Everyone kept singing the praises of the Tang Clan this and the Tang Clan that, mentioning the Tang Clan and the Tang Sect at the end of every other sentence. It would have been strange not to figure it out.
The green robes worn by the Tang Clan members also played a part. Their distinguishing feature was hiding poison and hidden weapons inside the long sleeves that reached down to cover the backs of their hands.
Those damn Sichuan Tang Clan bastards were obsessed with appearances. From the outside, they looked as though they had nothing in their hands, but once you stripped them down, they were apparently going for a fashion style where the pockets inside their sleeves could hold an entire household’s worth of belongings.
With the trailing edges of their sleeves dragging along the ground and the pockets inside their sleeves getting stained, it was the person doing the laundry who suffered.
Me, I mean. Yes. Me.
I looked up at the sky with a dejected expression. My future looked bleak. Where was I? Was I really going to spend the rest of my life washing the grime out of other people’s sleeves?
Having only the clue that I was a member of the Tang Clan wasn’t enough to tell me which novel I’d transmigrated into. What murim novel didn’t have the Tang Clan in it?
To summarize my current situation:
I had transmigrated into a murim novel.
I was a maidservant of the Sichuan Tang Clan, and this body knew no martial arts. (Considering I could survive washing clothes by hand every day, I seemed to have decent strength.)
I didn’t know what novel this was. I had no information.
I had no money, either.
Putting it all together made the situation even more hopeless. I had no money, no strength, and no connections. I was the very person who possessed none of the things needed to survive in the jianghu.
……Can I survive?
