The Poison Human — 5
I could not let Dangga Pungun become the property of the Sichuan Tang Clan.
If the novel remained nothing more than a story written to save Hwarin, or a record of the Tang Clan's secrets, then my novel would belong to them.
At this point, Dangga Pungun had no further justification for serialization, and even if I wanted to continue it, the Tang Clan could block me. But the stories about it that had already spread beyond my reach could never be gathered back.
So what was I to do?
I had to separate fact from fiction, using the will of Hyang-ah, whom the Clan Head had loved, as my shield.
I first brought up Hyang-ah's story to land a blow on the Clan Head, then moved straight into the work at hand.
"The characters in Dangga Pungun are not real people."
Dang Jeong was not Tang Baek-ho, and Du Eung-hyang was not Hyang-ah.
To achieve my goal, I first had to get the Clan Head to acknowledge that the characters of Dangga Pungun were fictional. Only then could I move forward.
"You're telling me that Dang Jeong in Dangga Pungun is not me, and Du Eung-hyang is not Hyang-ah?"
"Dang Jeong, the Greatest Beauty of Sichuan, the Finest Courtesan of Hubei, the Poison Killing Domain, the Triple Poison. Most of what appears in Dangga Pungun is my own creation, not fact, is it not? I merely mixed in a few truths that only those involved could have noticed, some twenty years ago."
If I was to continue the serialization, the characters of Dangga Pungun could not be mistaken for real people.
If the novel contained the Tang Clan's secrets and its characters were real, the clan's influence over it would become far too strong. And I would suddenly become the man who wrote an erotic villain's exploits about his own parents.
All I had taken from reality was that a Tang Clan hero had loved a courtesan, and that the Erotic Fiend had existed.
For me to exercise legitimate rights over Dangga Pungun, it had to be acknowledged that the novel had borrowed only its concept from reality — that it was, at its heart, a work of fiction.
Once Dangga Pungun was recognized as a novel, I could keep writing it.
"Hm. I read the novel myself, since it was supposedly my story, and I found nothing in it that felt like my story at all."
What a relief. He isn't going around claiming he used the Poison Killing Domain in his youth. If he had, I nearly would have handed him a sword and asked if he could run at the same speed as it.
Of course it couldn't match reality. The Clan Head had pursued the Erotic Fiend twenty years ago, but not alone like Dang Jeong — he had pursued him with his men.
"That's right. Dang Jeong is not you, Clan Head. And Du Eung-hyang is most certainly not my mother. Dangga Pungun is simply the story of a hero I admired from childhood but could never find."
While making the characters of Dangga Pungun fictional, I cast a lure to the Clan Head.
"Admired, but never found?"
Wearing the face of a son recalling his beloved mother, I spoke to the Clan Head, who had taken the bait.
"When I came to the Central Plains, I hoped to meet the kind of hero my mother had told me about when I was young. But there was no hero who would extend a hand to a wretched black-haired barbarian in trouble."
"……"
Your son had a rough time out here in the Central Plains, didn't he? The Clan Head, watching me as I briefly imagined those hardships, found himself unable to speak.
"While struggling to survive, I met Hwarin. A child born a bastard like me, wounded in many ways, but warm at heart."
And generously endowed, at that.
"I heard you both suffered greatly."
"I wanted to become a hero for her. But far from being any kind of hero, I was on the verge of being thrown out into the streets. So I thought — what about the stories of heroes my mother told me? The stories of the heroes I longed to see. What if I wrote them as a novel?"
"It wasn't to bring news of the Poison Human to the Tang Clan?"
"I hoped for it, but I couldn't be certain. What I was certain of was my way with words, so I knew I would make money. In Joseon they say that with enough coin, even ghosts will do your bidding — so I figured that if all else failed, I would buy my way out of the crisis."
I had poured the hero I longed to see into Dangga Pungun. Reaching the Tang Clan had been an act of pure hope.
Without damaging the stated purpose — saving Hwarin — I shifted the original intent just a little.
"And if you had failed, what then?"
"Even if I hadn't made it here, I would have done my utmost for my woman at every moment, and whether that succeeded or failed, no one could say. But……"
I let the words trail off and simply stared at the Clan Head in silence.
He must be wondering why I was looking at him that way. Curious, isn't it?
"But what?"
"If even a fragment of my mother's stories was true — if the heroes I dreamed of truly existed — then I believed they would come to save Hwarin."
My gaze at the Clan Head carried trust within it.
The woman he had abandoned had told her son stories of a hero modeled on him, and the son, grown to manhood, had written a novel about a hero who, unlike his father, dreamed for the sake of one woman.
The characters of Dangga Pungun were fiction.
The story of Dangga Pungun was fiction.
But one unchanging truth: if it was the Sichuan Tang Clan, they would come to save her.
My logic sounded like an absurd leap, but in reality the clan had come, and they had saved Hwarin. When the result is already in hand, all that's left is to wrap it up prettily.
What must the Clan Head be feeling right now?
Perhaps unable to sort out his own emotions either, he lowered his head for a while and closed his eyes.
"Of course, things didn't go quite as I'd hoped. I expected a hero to come — instead, a man arrived trying to cut off my head."
Having gathered my emotions, I said it with a laugh, in the tone of a light joke, to lift the Clan Head's spirits as he looked at me.
At the time I genuinely thought I was going to die, you know. But thinking of everything that came after, I'd say I got a cheap vaccination and gained an ally out of it.
"I heard the story from the Head of the Medical Pavilion. Dang Mugi was truly remorseful. He joined us on the way and did nothing but sing your praises the whole journey. I hope you won't hate the man too much."
Was it because Mugi was his closest confidant? The Clan Head defended him to me, wrapped in affection, like a man covering for an incorrigible friend.
"I hold no ill will. It's not as if I've only seen him once or twice despising a black-haired barbarian for no reason at all."
I'd had no small trouble with the Head of the Medical Pavilion, but in the end he had become a solid ally of mine, so no resentment remained.
"It isn't without reason, though."
An utterly unexpected sound slipped from the Clan Head's lips.
"What do you mean by that? You're saying there is a reason?"
"It is unseemly to speak of a friend and subordinate's family affairs, but leaving you with a misunderstanding about him would trouble me more, so I shall tell you. The Head of the Medical Pavilion's mother ran off in the night with a black-haired man when he was a child."
"Ah."
So that was it? If you experience your mother's infidelity as a child, such a misunderstanding could take root. Still, wasn't his hatred of black-haired men a bit extreme?
"On top of that, the childhood friend he had known since boyhood — his betrothed — was stolen by a black-haired man as well. Even now, her wailing from that day rings in his ears."
"Hahaha……"
Yeah, at that point hating us is fair game.
Truly, fiction can never beat reality.
So the Head of the Medical Pavilion wasn't discriminating against black-haired men just for the pleasure of it. In his eyes, I must have looked like a walking NTR story — a blond, tanned street thug.
Given his history, I'll grant him the prejudice. If anything, since he overcame that bias to support me, shouldn't he be recognized as a true orthodox hero?
After the earth-shattering revelation of the Medical Pavilion Head's tragic past — shocking enough that I could have tap-danced on top of Dangga Pungun — I could only wear a wry smile as I heard how he had overcome his wounds and found his way back to his own kind.
I took a long swallow of the bitter insam tea, trying to settle the awkward air within me.
"How did Hyang-ah live, back in Joseon?"
The Clan Head carefully asked after Hyang-ah's life.
I have no idea. One must be careful when speaking of Hyang-ah. The more detail I gave, the higher the chance the truth would slip out.
Wearing the expression of a son whose chest swells at the thought of his late mother, I set down my teacup.
"She was a kind mother. A wiser wife than any other. But when a plague swept through our village in my childhood, she could not escape its grasp. When she fell ill and sensed the end drawing near, she told me the truth she had long buried in her heart."
"She only told you the truth on her deathbed?"
"A mother knows best how to guide her child so he does not lose his way. Being here, I miss her. As I've grown older, I find I can no longer recall her voice. Her face, which once appeared the moment I closed my eyes, now takes some effort to summon. What about you?"
"……I can still see her face, but her voice will not come to me."
"That is why I wrote Dangga Pungun. The stories of heroes my mother told me still live in my heart. As her son, I wanted to bind the story of the heroes she and I both admired into a book."
And there it is — the grand Dangga Pungun gambit that would make even the Wudang Sect's Taiji Sword Technique weep.
When I glanced toward Dangga Pungun, the Clan Head gazed at it for a moment before speaking.
"Unlike Du Eung-hyang in this book, your mother was not the Finest Courtesan of Hubei. She was a promising apprentice still training at the gyobang. A courtesan who had never even debuted, never taken a single patron, nearly fell victim to the Erotic Fiend — and I saved her. And the two of us fell in love."
Courtesans were trained and debuted at an academy for courtesans called the gyobang.
If your marks at the gyobang were good enough to earn an S-grade courtesan rating, you became a cheonggi, specializing in music and dance; an F-grade rating made you a honggi, whose trade was prostitution.
Cheonggi did not necessarily abstain from selling their favors, but a cheonggi treated like a celebrity commanded a debut price that could make even a great minister's knees buckle.
In my novel, Du Eung-hyang was a cheonggi and Hyang-ah an apprentice. The Clan Head's words meant she had never come anywhere near being a courtesan — in other words, don't get the wrong idea about my mother.
"I know. That's precisely why Dangga Pungun is a novel."
"This novel is, without question, a story you invented entirely."
The Clan Head nodded at my words.
There it is. With Hyang-ah as my hostage, I had secured firm acknowledgment that Dangga Pungun was fiction.
"That's all I needed to hear."
"But……"
Why? Does he have an objection?
I forced down my surprise as I looked at the Clan Head. He met my eyes directly and continued, his voice carrying resolve.
"I loved her as this novel depicts — no, more than any novel could say. More than anyone."
Well, that's a blow to me. The ultimate romantic has awakened.
"I suppose your clan mattered more to you than love, then."
Had anyone else said that, they would have taken slaps back and forth across the face from the Clan Head — but I am the only person in this world permitted to say it.
I exaggerated my recovery from the shock and answered him with a touch of mockery — the way a son, deeply moved by his father, might offer a clumsy bit of rebellion.
Overdoing the "moved son" act would be a problem. I had to keep my distance from him if I wanted to walk out of the Sichuan Tang Clan alive.
"When your mother came to me, she had already been attacked by the Erotic Fiend and lay unconscious. My excessively loyal retainers, claiming to act for my sake, drove her away."
"If you intend to claim it wasn't your fault, why don't you get up and try saying that to my face."
"No. It was my fault. During my travels, my heart wavered at my retainers' persuasion, and in the end I could not decide until the final battle with the Erotic Fiend. My men took my silence as consent — that was not their failing. If I had truly chosen her, I would have used every means — no, I would have cast aside everything to find her. Even if she had cursed and hated me for the rest of her life, that would have been no more than I deserved."
"She did not curse you."
"Is that true?"
"Would she have told me stories of heroes if she had cursed and hated you? If anything, before she passed, even though she longed to see my father, she only told me to endure."
This was a truth I could speak to the Clan Head with my head held high. I calmly laid bare Hyang-ah's heart to him.
"Hyang-ah…… she said that……"
The Clan Head could not hold back the grief that washed over him.
He rose from his seat and, for a long while, with his back to me, gazed out the window.
Having composed himself, the Clan Head returned to his seat.
"What are your parents doing these days?"
My parents? Sneaking in a claim that he's my real father, is he.
"They have passed on. That is why I came to the Central Plains, in search of a way to feed myself."
Perhaps he had held some degree of conviction all along, for the Clan Head showed no surprise at my words. He studied me for a moment before continuing.
"……The reason I never took a new wife after losing mine was, perhaps, that I kept a place in my heart in case Hyang-ah might ever come back to me."
So that was why a man of the Clan Head's standing kept no second or third wife — the seat stayed empty for that reason?
"I did hear that my grandmother was absent."
"If it is acceptable to you, I wish to declare you to the elders of the clan and at the ancestral shrine — not as my bastard, but as my son."
"I'm sorry — what did you just say?"
"I said I wish to formally take you in as my son."
This man is about to cause a catastrophe.
Uncle Clan Head. Our acquaintance has to end with this one meeting.
Where is my mother's grave? Who is my father? Which Kang clan? What was Hyang-ah like? One slip of the tongue, one flicker of doubt, and my head would leave my shoulders — what son? I'd be dead.
And if I formally became his son, I wouldn't merely be an ordinary son.
I would become the eldest son.
Even if I renounced my right of succession, even if the young clan leader recovered, the position of eldest son could drive countless people of the Tang Clan into mortal peril.
"I could never be your so—"
"Clan Head!"
How was I supposed to answer? While I was still searching for words, the Chief Steward I had seen earlier hurried into the room.
"What is it?"
"Young Lady Tang Hwa-rin has awakened! You must go to her at once!"