How to Set the Family Straight 1
“I’ve explained a good deal about the various poisons. Is there anything you’re still curious about?”
“Hmm. So you don’t just casually use the deadly ones that kill outright? After seeing that Golden Poison, I assumed you used it all the time.”
“Haha. That one’s reserved for mortal enemies or people who absolutely must die. You think I’d splash something that vicious around on ordinary days?”
“Fair enough. For now, I don’t have any particular questions.”
The Tang Clan’s poisons had clear standards.
Against fellow martial artists of the Orthodox Path, the strongest toxin they would use was a paralytic. But if a member of the Tang family was injured, the allowed grade rose. If a Tang martial artist died, they could unleash extreme poison on as many as a hundred people.
One punishment to warn a hundred? No—a hundred punishments to warn a hundred.
If the old saying meant punishing one man severely to warn a hundred, the Tang Clan simply punished a hundred men severely so the survivors would never forget the lesson.
A merciless yardstick.
What a troublesome family in every possible way…
While I was turning over what I’d just learned, a new question came.
“Well then… if you have no questions of your own, shall I ask one? You claimed to know a fair amount about venomous creatures, after all.”
“Pardon? Ah—yes, of course.”
Next period is venomous creatures? That’s right in my wheelhouse.
“The Tang Clan barely uses the toxins of venomous beasts. Do you know why those toxins never became our mainstay?”
Clan schooling ran martial practice in the mornings and theory—either martial arts or poison lore—in the afternoons. That morning I had been initiated into the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Art, the foundational heart method that let a Tang disciple accept five basic toxins. Afternoon theory had followed.
And now Grandfather, while teaching the clan’s poison arts, had asked why the toxins of insects and beasts were never counted among the Tang Clan’s primary poisons.
I more or less know the answer, but I have to phrase it the way an assassin clan would think.
“Venomous creatures” was the blanket term for anything that carried poison—snakes, insects, the lot. I knew their venom characteristics inside out, yet reciting them like a textbook would not be the right answer here.
Humans are animals of adaptation, aren’t they?
If I ran and got caught I’d be slaughtered—no, Golden-Killed—so I decided to adapt to the Sichuan Tang Clan with everything I had.
My elder sister was beautiful, for one thing…
And I’d already blurted out that idiotic proposal…
Every venomous insect and serpent I’d ever wanted in my past life had just been knocked off the top of my wishlist by her.
I am an assassin. I am an assassin who uses poison. I am a psychopath.
I started the self-hypnosis before my sanity could bolt.
I had to do it because I needed to answer the way this Central Plains assassin clan would think about the very traits of venom I knew so well.
In my previous life, being a venomous-creature YouTuber had never required me to weaponize that knowledge. I simply possessed specialized information. The people of the Sichuan Tang Clan, however, spent every waking moment figuring out how to kill someone with it.
Before, I had taught people how to survive snakebites and spider stings. Now I had to reverse the polarity.
It was like receiving an apple and being asked not for its variety, flavor, or harvest season, but for every dish you could make with it—apple pie, apple jam, apple tart.
Of course, in this case the pie, jam, and tart were all methods of murder.
So I wore a thoughtful face and kept the self-hypnosis running. Only when I felt I was thinking enough like them did I answer carefully.
“Well… there are several reasons, but I suspect the main one is that they’re simply too troublesome to use.”
“Troublesome? Explain.”
Grandfather—Lord of Myriad Poisons—leaned forward with open curiosity. I laid out everything I’d been turning over.
“Take snake venom as an example. Whether you powder it or keep it liquid, there’s really only one practical way to deliver it.”
Snake venom is known as the most complex natural toxin. It contains more than a hundred proteins and enzymes—including non-toxic ones—plus non-enzymatic polypeptide toxins, nucleic acids, amines, free amino acids, and countless other compounds. It’s remarkably stable, too; it barely spoils. Researchers once found eighty-year-old venom stored at room temperature in Australia that still retained full potency.
Yet it has one enormous drawback: it was designed to be injected through fangs. Most of its toxicity never appears unless it is administered subcutaneously—straight under the skin.
In my last life that was a blessing, not a curse…
But the man I was answering headed an assassin clan and bore the title Lord of Myriad Poisons for a reason. So I framed it as a flaw.
“Therefore, to poison an enemy you have to coat a blade or a needle and then actually stab them with it.”
That was why the old folk remedy of cutting a snakebite open and sucking out the blood had ever worked: snake venom is largely protein-based, so oral ingestion almost never causes systemic poisoning. The stories of someone dying after drinking snake venom mixed into wine are almost always nonsense—unless there were open wounds in the mouth or esophagus. Even the rare cases of people poisoning themselves while sucking venom usually involved cuts inside their own mouths.
“And if you do coat a blade or needle, the amount is so small it becomes hard to kill anyone. Snake venom doesn’t dry cleanly either, so storing the weapon is a nightmare.”
In my previous life the standard measure of acute toxicity was called the median lethal dose—LD50. Literally the dose that kills half the subjects: two eat, one dies. It’s usually expressed as milligrams of toxin per kilogram of body weight in lab rats or rabbits. A snake delivers far more with a bite than you can smear on a sword, and drying venom in its natural state is no simple task. Keeping a coated blade ready would be a constant headache.
When I finished, Grandfather nodded with a smile.
“Oh-ho. You really are the venom specialist you claimed to be. You know snake venom well. Exactly right—snake venom only works when driven into the body. That’s why it’s rarely used: it simply isn’t versatile. Unless your dagger arts or assassination techniques have reached a certain height, you’ll never get results.”
I swallowed hard.
I… I actually got it right.
Being praised for the correct answer didn’t feel good. It felt like he was saying I had the makings of a psychopathic assassin. Talent for mass murder—was that even a talent worth having?
An awkward smile crawled onto my face; even the corners of my mouth twitched. Grandfather tilted his head.
“I just praised you. Why the strange look?”
“Ah—nothing. Haha. I’m pleased, of course, but a man doesn’t show it so easily.”
“In front of me you may look as pleased as you like.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
I could only smile more awkwardly. The difficulty, however, was mine alone. Satisfied with my answer, he moved on.
“Then what of the venom of a venomous spider?”
I put myself under self-hypnosis again and answered.
“Spider venom is usually weak, and spiders themselves are small. Harvesting enough would take far too much labor, wouldn’t it?”
People think venomous spiders are terribly dangerous, yet while the pain can be intense, few species actually threaten a human life. It isn’t that the venom is mild—it’s that the spider’s body is too small to deliver a lethal dose. This world might have different species, but the truly deadly ones usually came from South America or Australia. I answered with that in mind, and again Grandfather nodded.
“Correct once more. You can make a man suffer, but if your goal is to kill him, spider venom is poorly suited. And if you only want to capture someone, a simple paralysis powder works better. Use spider venom and the victim might thrash and scream from the pain—hardly convenient.”
We were still deep in theory when my elder sister’s voice floated in from outside.
“Grandfather, I need you to come out for a moment.”
Hearing her after all that assassin self-hypnosis felt like a reward.
“Look at this boy light up the instant Hwa-eun arrives.”
“Ahem…”
I hadn’t realized my face had given me away so thoroughly. I hurried to the door and opened it.
There she stood in radiant red robes. They called her the Moon Rose, and she truly was a rose even now.
Because I now lived in the same quadrangle courtyard reserved for the direct line, I saw her at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yet I never grew tired of her face.
In my last life they said good looks are temporary—unless you marry them and plan to live off that face forever, better compromise. But looking at Elder Sister is like being a miser who gets full just from staring at gold…
She hesitated a second under my gaze, so I greeted her promptly.
“You’ve come, Young Lady.”
“Y-yes. So-ryong, have you been diligent with your martial arts and studies?”
“Yes, Young Lady.”
Grandfather watched our exchange with a warm smile. Once the greetings wound down, he stepped past me and asked,
“So, Hwa-eun, what brings you?”
“Father seems to be in a difficult spot. I think you should go to Xuanwu Hall for a while, Grandfather.”
“Xuanwu Hall?”
I already knew it was the family head’s office, where he handled daily affairs. Grandfather cocked his head; Elder Sister’s expression darkened slightly.
“The clan elders…”
Clan elders? The ones she mentioned a few days ago—the ones who made her life so hard?
From her tone and face, those very men had come calling. Grandfather’s brow furrowed as he confirmed it.
“What are those bastards complaining about this time?”
“Well… two matters. First, the medicine we sent the Lord of Sichuan Province isn’t working properly, so he’s written a letter full of grievances…”
She trailed off and glanced at me. When our eyes met she continued.
“The other is about the Hall of Myriad Poisons.”
“The Hall of Myriad Poisons? What about it?”
Something about the name made my instincts prickle. Her eyes held a bad omen—something that somehow involved me.
“When Father said he would entrust the venomous creatures of the Hall of Myriad Poisons to So-ryong, the elders objected.”
Are these people trying to make an enemy of me?!
I had finally secured unlimited patronage for my hobby, and now the collateral branch was throwing a wrench into it. I couldn’t just sit still. A big-money sponsor had already signed on, no reactions required, and they wanted to block my leisure activities? That was a declaration of war.
“Let’s go, Young Lady!”
“What?”
I strode out at once. Elder Sister looked startled, but Grandfather followed without hesitation. We made straight for Xuanwu Hall, the family head’s office.
By the time we reached the entrance, the interior was already chaos.
“Good heavens! Family Head, how could you make such a momentous decision alone!”
“Indeed! How dare you act without consulting any of us!”
“Exactly! First you pick up some orphan of unknown origin and declare him our precious Hwa-eun’s match!”
—Bang!
“An orphan of unknown origin?! How dare you insult my son-in-law!”
“Family Head, insult? We’re merely stating facts!”
Shouts poured out, and my name was already in the mix. Grandfather could take no more. He flung the doors of Xuanwu Hall wide and stormed in.
“I told him to do it! Does that displease you?!”
“T-Tai Shang Family Head!”
“Elder, you’ve arrived.”
The men who had been plastered against the family head’s desk scrambled back. Elder Sister and I slipped inside and took positions behind the family head. The voices continued, quieter now but still thick with resentment.
“Elder, is this any way to handle such a matter? Do you know what the Hall of Myriad Poisons is? The most vital place in the entire Tang Clan. The venomous creatures themselves are clan treasures—how can you hand them to an outsider who hasn’t even completed the wedding rites?”
“Precisely, Elder. Even we dare not enter freely. It is still improper for an outsider. And while he claims knowledge of venomous creatures, he has shown no ability capable of convincing the clan members.”
In short, they meant to use me as a pretext to torment the family head and Elder Sister. In my previous life I had been the eldest grandson of a clan house; every ancestral rite brought strangers who felt entitled to lecture me. Seeing the same scene again made my blood boil.
I’m not normally the type to step forward… but my hobby is on the line. I can’t just stand here.
I walked out from behind the family head, clasped my fists, and spoke.
“Forgive the interruption while you discuss important matters. It seems this entire fuss has arisen because of my meager abilities. If I demonstrate skill sufficient to satisfy the clan elders, I believe that should settle it. What do the rest of you think?”
Every eye turned toward me.
[So-ryong, what on earth are you planning?]
Elder Sister’s startled sound transmission brushed my ear, but I only smiled and picked up the letter lying on the family head’s desk.
“If I handle this matter myself, will you trust my ability?”
“So-ryong, do you even know what that is?”
The family head stared up at me in pure shock.
I was fairly certain it was the complaint letter from the Lord of Sichuan.