The Tang of the Tang Clan Stands for Sugar #1
"So you're telling me you actually won the whole thing?"
We stood at a brand-new airport in Shanghai.
My mom tossed a few words my way.
"Whatever it was, good for you! Ever since you were little, if there was a competition, you'd never rest until you entered and won the thing."
It was time for my family to head back to Korea, and judging by their bags, stuffed to bursting with souvenirs of every shape and size, they'd clearly enjoyed the trip to the fullest.
"Bonbon Calinoi? That is the cutest nickname ever! Way better than my brother going around calling himself a living legend! Bonbon, come back to Korea with me! I'll take such good care of you!"
My little sister had, as always, set her sights on Calinoi.
Calinoi, naturally, pitter-pattered away into the far distance, and Keongkeongi, Angangi, and Kwangkwangi all darted out of sight as well to escape the gaze of Ha Irae.
Watching them flee, Irae pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead and scowled.
"What is it about you that makes animals obey you, huh? All you do is make them fight every single day. If they came to me, I'd treat them way better! Take them on nice long walks daily!"
Making them fight every day. So she apparently thought of me as some back-alley dogfighting thug... Which, if I was being strictly honest, wasn't entirely wrong.
But there was one thing Irae misunderstood.
"They actually like fighting more than you'd think."
Keongkeongi, Angangi, and Kwangkwangi. Every one of them had what you could only call a fighting spirit blazing in their hearts like a fire. Just as most dogs love going out for walks, my friends loved fighting—it was simply necessary to give that energy somewhere to go.
Kwangkwangi and Keongkeongi got along relatively well these days, but back when they first met, they brawled every single day.
"Ildo."
Then my dad called for me.
Dad was a man of few words, so whenever he did open his mouth, everyone's attention naturally gathered.
Swipe, swipe—
Wiping his glasses lenses roughly with a handkerchief, Dad spoke.
"I don't know what you're caught up in, but finish it well and come home safe. These days your old man lives for bragging about you to his friends."
So that's how it was. He was cheering me on.
Looks like I, Ha Ildo, had gone from a useless son sulking in the corner of the house back to being a source of pride.
Swoosh—
Mom then pulled me into a hug and whispered something in my ear.
"Ildo, it's perfectly fine with me if you bring home a foreign daughter-in-law. We live in a global era now, you know? And from what I hear, Korean male hunters are quite popular overseas, so maybe you could—"
Okay, that's a little embarrassing.
Anyway.
And with that, my family boarded their flight home to Korea.
Now only we remained.
"Let's go too. To Sichuan."
Sichuan Province. A place that sounded like the name of the one Chinese restaurant in any given neighborhood—and I boarded a plane headed for it.
It was no ordinary plane, but the Tang Clan's private jet. What kind of family even owns a private jet? I was genuinely astonished.
"To float so weightlessly through the sky it is...! Every time this Oinoi rides one of these airplane things, she always finds it wondrous it is...!"
Oinoi adored flying.
For nymphs, the act of soaring through the sky seemed to be something like a lifelong achievement or a cherished dream.
"Oh ho, Kore Sohae is rich it is...? Truly worthy of the covetous eyes of that Illinoi's sister it is...! That Illinoi's sister does love the wealthy it does...!"
Illinoi loved riding private jets.
She was clearly smitten with the feeling of luxury.
Except—
Seo Yerim, the one woman alive who suited a private jet better than anyone, had been wearing a sour expression for a while now.
"Illinoi had a sister? If they're expecting me to take her in, my annual maintenance costs are going to double. And double what Illinoi already spends these days means..."
I couldn't pretend to understand, but she seemed to be wrestling with a very serious dilemma.
As an S-rank hunter and a member of a chaebol dynasty, Seo Yerim surely carried burdens far deeper and heavier than an ordinary citizen like me, Ha Ildo, could ever imagine.
Clap—
I clapped my hands.
"Let me outline the operation. It's simple. We discipline that Wicked Woman who may be controlling the Tang Clan of Sichuan, and we liberate the clan."
Liberation of the oppressed Tang Clan. Which also meant that Madam Dang Yeong-yeong and her daughter So So-hee would be freed as well.
That was why I'd come to China, and Oinoi added her own opinion: "Oinoi wishes to find the Typhoon Flower in the Rimbu Forest of Sichuan it does...!"
I thought it was an excellent point.
And so we arrived in Sichuan Province.
China was enormous, but planes certainly did make short work of the distance.
"A far more splendid place than expected it is...! The smell of money wafts from every corner it does...!"
Ever since arriving in China, Illinoi had been busy throwing punches at one person after another, but she fussed excitedly over the Sichuan region, apparently quite taken with it.
Was it because Sichuan itself was a land of rugged mountains and dense forests?
Forests, mountains, rivers—nature in abundance. Truly inseparable from nymphs, I supposed.
Soon, Oinoi spoke up too.
"The roads are clean and the buildings tower high it is...! With no nymph-phobic nature to be found, it is a splendid environment for nymphs to live in it is...!"
Nymph-phobic nature?
I decided to revise my understanding of nymphs a little.
Nymphs who had settled into the 21st century apparently preferred developed city centers over natural environments.
Come to think of it, when Director Bang Saenghyeon told the nymphs to return to nature, they beat him black and blue while shouting "You go back to nature YOURSELF it is...!"
The director, duly pummeled, became a nature-dwelling hermit living in an apple orchard.
Anyway.
Nymphs who had tasted the fruits of civilization had apparently become fairies of the city instead of the wild.
I honestly couldn't decide whether to be glad that they'd adapted so well to the 21st century rather than homesick, or to find it a little sad.
Soon, Dang So-hae looked around and said:
"Sichuan is one of the few places in China where rifts appear, so it benefited from the Fifth Industry. It used to be considered an ill-fated land because of all the earthquake damage, but now that's become a blessing instead."
She said the reason the Tang Clan of Sichuan became the most famous of all the Murim families was simply that so many rifts opened in the Sichuan region—even within China.
Apparently a T-rank rift opened there about once a year.
"I know that might sound like a joke to Koreans, where T-rank rifts open more than fifty times a year. But even that single opening matters enormously here."
The economic yield from a single T-rank rift opening was nothing short of astronomical. To put it in perspective, she said the energy consumed by this entire Sichuan region could be fully covered, with plenty to spare, by the energy harvested from that once-a-year T-rank rift.
Soon, Seo Yerim—knowledgeable as ever—added a few words.
"That's why countries around the world are researching technology to open and close rifts at will. If you could control a T-rank rift like a tap, it would be the same as having unlimited energy."
An uplifting thought.
But I felt a flicker of unease all the same.
Rifts were certainly places packed with the unknown, with adventure, romance, and treasure—but by that same measure, they were dangerous. Could humanity truly keep this situation completely under control?
Just as that thought crossed my mind, a line of black vehicles pulled up in front of us.
"Young Mistress. We have been waiting."
Men in black Zhongshan suits approached and bowed their heads before Dang So-hae.
The great mansion of the Tang Clan, where Dang So-hae lived, stood at the very heart of downtown Chengdu.
To be precise, the mansion sat on the rooftop of a fifty-story skyscraper—and there was even an artificially built pond up there, along with a bamboo grove, which struck me as rather marvelous.
I wondered how much money it had cost to build a mansion like this. Certainly a sum I couldn't even begin to imagine!
"Every inch of this place is under surveillance. The only safe place for our conversation is that warehouse over there. My father is waiting for you in there, so come quickly!"
We entered a run-down-looking warehouse—of all things—even within this grand estate.
It was a location that fit not at all with the lavish mansion atop a gleaming skyscraper.
"Paying respects to the Head of the Tang Clan."
Swoosh—
Dang So-hae bowed respectfully before a man in a black suit. The man was Dang So-hae's father, Mr. Dang Huru, the current head of the Tang Clan.
Oinoi spoke up.
"Dang Huru... For some reason, that is an exceedingly nymph-friendly name it is...!"
I thought so too. It sounded like fruit skewered on a stick and hardened in sugar.
"Sohae, welcome. And you must be Ha Ildo? I've heard the general story from Sohae. You say you'll help us...?"
Dang Huru spoke as though voicing something that should never be spoken aloud.
I placed my hand on his chest.
"Come on out!"
"Kghk!"
Splat—
Mr. Dang Huru vomited out a Shade Centipede.
Oinoi snatched it up at once and stuffed it neatly into a glass jar, and watching this, Mr. Dang Huru gaped in astonishment and admiration.
"You truly made me vomit forth the Gu, just as my daughter described...! Good heavens...!"
Apparently this Shade Centipede was a Gu sorcery specially crafted by the Wicked Woman of the Tang Clan. The Tang Clan members had been made to swallow such things inside their bodies, and every move they made was being watched.
"She tricked people into swallowing a tiny pill, telling them it would make them healthy. The centipedes grew inside those pills, and they're what control the person.... That Wicked Woman is more ruthless than the Communist Party."
Dang Huru looked utterly heartbroken, and I felt cold sweat running down my back. Centipedes growing inside a person's body! How horrifying!
"Was everyone deceived by this Wicked Woman?"
"To be honest, while I carried that Gu inside me, I was healthier than usual. Look here. This is a photo of me from back then. I was twenty."
Twenty-year-old Dang Huru had an M-shaped receding hairline. It made him look terribly old—older, even, than he did now.
"But after swallowing the medicine that woman gave me, my hair grew back and I woke up refreshed every morning, and it was wonderful.... And yet what is all of that compared to freedom? Worse still, every month she squanders our fortune, and the money our Tang family has gathered over generations keeps dwindling...! How could I face my ancestors in the afterlife like this!"
Tears streamed down Mr. Dang Huru's face.
Apparently the Wicked Woman was burning through the Tang family fortune at roughly one billion won a year.
One billion. 1,000,000,000.
That was serious money. With that much, you could do so many things! So many things that I couldn't even properly imagine them all!
Seo Yerim furrowed her brow too, as though this tale had plunged her into deep contemplation.
"Hold on. A billion a year is... actually less than Illinoi spends, isn't it..."
Heh heh heh—
Then Illinoi let out a sinister giggle, clenched her fist, and shouted.
"Now I understand completely it does...! A wicked nymph who squanders other people's money as if it were her own shall receive a stinging punishment from this Illinoi it shall...!"
Swoosh—!
Illinoi bolted out of the warehouse.
And then she hollered at the top of her lungs.
"Is the Poison Nymph here it is...? Come out here right now it will...! Your sister Illinoi has arrived, so show yourself at once it must...!"
A frontal assault, pure and simple.
I doubted anyone would actually show up just because she yelled like that—but sure enough, someone soon appeared beneath the gracefully curved eaves of an Eastern-style roof.
It was a nymph wearing a purple qipao.
"That annoying voice is familiar to this one it is...! But no one is permitted to summon the Great Elder so brazenly it is not...! Hand over all the sugar you possess to this Great Elder quietly it will...! All the sugar in the world belongs to this Great Elder it does...!"
Her purple hair tied up in two buns like dumplings was striking, but her speech pattern was rather bizarre too.
Had her translation magic broken, just like Illinoi's?
"That silhouette is unmistakably Tyrenol it is...! Tyrenol...! Have you forgotten the face of your sister Illinoi you have...? We used to frolic through the forests together we did...!"
"Tyrenol..."
The purple-haired nymph murmured the name quietly. To her, Illinoi added an explanation that sounded more like dredging up old memories for ammunition.
"Have you forgotten all those precious memories of this Illinoi stuffing Shade Centipedes into your pockets, sister Tyrenol, or shoving you over into the mud she has...? A nymph-phobic betrayal it is...!"
Grrk—
The purple nymph's face twisted.
"Tyrenol... This one does not remember any such name it does not...!"
"My sister has become a no-name nymph who lost her memories she has...! Very shocking it is...! In that case, a stinging punishment shall be administered to remove the forgotten memories it shall...! If you take this Illinoi's Beat-Down, the memories will surely return they will...! Let's do it...!"
Illinoi clenched her fist and charged at the purple nymph.
At the same instant, the purple-haired China nymph also clenched her fist and charged at Illinoi.
Dududududududududu—
Dudududududududududu—
The clash of two nymphs. Their punches were the very definition of a dead-even match!
I was stunned that anyone could throw fists on par with Illinoi's Beat-Down. Among the nymphs, Illinoi was the best at beating things down! Even Oinoi, who dreamed of becoming the Chief Nymph, acknowledged it.
"Those two are unmistakably sister nymphs it is...! To be so perfectly matched, they must be sisters they must...! This Oinoi can tell it can...!"
Oinoi marveled.
And Dang Huru, head of the Tang Clan, watching this spectacle from a distance, broke out in a cold sweat of pure panic!
"S-such sublime heights of Nymph-fu martial arts! Our Tang Clan shall be destroyed in the crossfire of those two bizarre Rimbu creatures...! Hiii...!"
Pssshh—
The hair on Mr. Dang Huru's forehead rapidly fell out.
And it was right at that moment.
Illinoi shouted.
"Sister Oinoi shall help this Illinoi she shall...! A Double Punch is clearly the most effective it is...!"
"Understood it is...!"
Swoosh—!
Oinoi piled into the fight, as if joining Illinoi's battle.
Dudududududududu—
Suddenly facing two nymphs at once, the purple-haired nymph cried, "Ngh, cowardice it is...!"—and finally whooshed away in retreat.
"Th-this isn't over it is...!"
"Heh heh heh, this Illinoi has chased off a wicked nymph who did nothing but squander a billion a year it has...! In return, you shall now donate 1.5 billion every year as a token of gratitude to this Illinoi you shall...!"
Pssshh—
Every last hair on the head of Dang Huru, head of the Tang Clan, fell out, leaving his scalp smooth as a candy.