The Forbidden Garden — The Blank Promissory Note
“Just how long are we supposed to keep waiting?!”
In a secluded guesthouse deep within the Sichuan Tang Clan's compound, the delegation from the Moyong Clan had been holed up for months, keeping out of sight and out of mind.
“The Poison Martial Empress is working with the Tang Clan to make the antidote, is she not? Then we wait.”
The Poison Martial Empress's fame, earned in the Righteous-Demonic War, was well known even in Liaodong. Moyong Seop did his best to soothe his fuming subordinates.
“It's already summer. Summer! Even if we left now, we wouldn't reach home until the new year. How much longer must we sit here?”
“A poison that the imperial physician himself declared untreatable. The Tang Clan is the only family in all the world that can craft its antidote. Patience, I say.”
“Ever since we left the clan, that damned de—!”
As words unfit for a Moyong warrior's mouth threatened to spill out, Moyong Seop cut him off with a furrowed brow.
“Mind your tongue. Did I not tell you we don't know whose ears might be listening?”
The Moyong Clan's connection to the Demonic Cult must never come to light.
“My apologies. Damn that wretched Young Clan Lord!”
“He isn't worth the title of Young Clan Lord. The seat should have belonged to our Lord in the first place.”
“The Female Mantis... every time I hear the world spit on our Lord's name, bloodlust boils up inside me.”
At the mention of the Female Mantis, every Moyong warrior gathered there let a faint murderous aura seep out.
The Female Mantis. however one dressed it up in elegant characters, it amounted to the same slander — the mantis that devoured her mate.
“Our Lord herself considers it a burden she must carry for the rest of her life. What can we do about that?”
“But surely it's a misunderstanding! We could step forward ourselves and—”
“Sometimes the truth means nothing to ordinary folk. They simply love the tale of a woman who killed her husband on her wedding night and became a clan matriarch overnight. Even if they knew the tangled truth buried inside that story, they would pretend not to.”
“It's infuriating. Truly infuriating!”
The Moyong warrior beat his chest and lamented bitterly.
“That is precisely why our Changbong Corps must become the pillar that shields our Lord.”
“Someone is approaching.”
Just as Moyong Seop had barely calmed his men, sounds of movement drifted in from outside.
“Are you certain about this?”
“I'll handle it. Stay put, Master.”
“If you ask the Clan Head, he'll see to it for you.”
“These things must be handled in person. Go back and I'll take care of it myself.”
“No. Let us go in together.”
The exact words were indistinct, but a young woman's voice and an older woman's voice carried all the way into the building.
“Send word to the Moyong Clan's people that they are to turn back and go home.”
Moyong Seop assumed they had simply lost their way and moved to turn them away — but against all expectation, they had come to exactly the right place.
“The Poison Martial Empress is here!”
“The Poison Martial Empress herself?!”
“Is this where the Moyong Clan's people are staying?”
Moyong Seop was himself a warrior of some renown in the northern provinces as the Moyong Clan's delegate — but he was not the Poison Martial Empress, whose name echoed through all of Murim.
At her sudden appearance, he rushed out to greet the honored guest.
“Poison Martial Empress! It is—it is an honor to meet you! I am called Moyong Seop. I never dreamed you would come in person. And this beside you is...?”
Moyong Seop welcomed her as though he were some greenhorn fresh out of the backwoods, and asked after her companion.
“My disciple.”
“I'm Tang Hwarin.”
“Your disciple is a staggeringly beautiful woman...”
The admiration that escaped Moyong Seop at the sight of Tang Hwarin was entirely sincere. She was among the very few beauties he had laid eyes on in all his years in Murim.
Violet hair and green eyes. Skin as fair as a child's. A figure no loose-fitting travel clothes could hide. Her fierce eyes gave her a formidable presence — though even that only lent her beauty its distinctive character.
Moyong Seop thought that were he not already accustomed to his own Lord's appearance — hailed as the finest beauty in all of Murim — he might have committed the rudeness of staring at her, dumbstruck, forgetting his own middle age entirely.
“Khm, khm.”
“Ohh...”
“Wow...”
Behind Moyong Seop, the sound of the Moyong warriors sighing in admiration at Tang Hwarin's smile could be heard quite clearly.
“I'd prefer to talk somewhere quiet.”
Sensing the Poison Martial Empress's displeasure, Moyong Seop promptly ushered them into the inner chamber.
“Please, be seated. Might I guess the reason for your visit?”
“The thing you've been waiting for is finished.”
The moment the Poison Martial Empress took her seat, she delivered the news the entire Moyong delegation had been praying for.
“Could it be—?!”
“The antidote for Clan Head Moyong Cheon is complete. A medicine that will let him rise from his bed without any trouble, so long as he takes it regularly.”
“Is it true?! How could we ever repay such a debt!”
“Direct your thanks to my disciple.”
When Moyong Seop looked ready to drop to his knees on the spot, the Poison Martial Empress pointed at the woman beside her.
“Your... disciple?”
“My disciple's contributions to the antidote's creation were considerable. In truth, the Medicine Pavilion Head and I did little more than assist.”
That couldn't be right. Moyong Seop stared at the Poison Martial Empress in disbelief — but her expression held not a trace of a lie.
Could it truly be? His disciple, leading the effort to craft an antidote that no physician in the world had managed?
“Your disciple must possess extraordinary talent, then.”
Moyong Seop gazed at Tang Hwarin in genuine admiration.
“Khm khm. I do my best.”
Tang Hwarin replied with breezy confidence. On the surface it might have looked like arrogance, but Moyong Seop could only accept it as the justified self-assurance of someone even the Poison Martial Empress acknowledged.
“Lady Tang Hwarin. On behalf of my Lord, Lady Moyong Sang-ah, and the entire Moyong Clan, I thank you.”
“Don't thank me. Pay me instead.”
The moment Moyong Seop bent his knee to offer his gratitude, Tang Hwarin stopped him at once.
“Hm?”
Pay instead of thank? As Moyong Seop looked up at her in bewilderment, she held out an open palm toward him.
“Show me your sincerity.”
Tang Hwarin's outstretched palm made it blatantly clear what she wanted instead.
“What on earth do you mean by that?”
Tang Hwarin regarded the Moyong Clan's delegate, who stared back at her with a thoroughly hapless expression.
Her master had told her she would praise her contributions adequately, so there was no need to seek them out herself — but Tang Hwarin saw things differently.
She had grown up being slighted and shortchanged. Not once in her life had she seen someone who promised to take care of things actually follow through. If you wanted something done, you did it yourself.
And there was no reason to feel awkward about it, either.
I made the antidote for them. And that woman is filthy rich — rakes in money beyond imagining. Even if I bleed her a little for my own satisfaction, no one would ever notice. So what's the harm?
She had toiled away for months to make it. Would a rich woman whose wealth defied imagination really wail over losing a bit of coin?
Whatever. Let's have this Moyong Sang-ah woman pay the wedding gift money for my marriage to Yunho.
She had no intention of returning empty-handed to Yunho's side just because her training was done.
Yunho would have no father-in-law to lean on if he married her — all the more reason she ought to work hard and build up her own fortune. The more Tang Hwarin turned it over, the better the idea seemed.
To be sure, she remembered her master's warning that she must not demand money so brazenly.
Then I'll do it like Yunho would. Put what I've learned to use.
Her fiancé was a man of exceptional talent not only with the pen and the tongue, but in the art of the deal as well. And Tang Hwarin, at his side, had witnessed countless outrageous schemes.
Among all the tricks her fiancé had ever deployed, one in particular surfaced in her memory — a way of making the other party part with their money willingly.
“The poison used against Clan Head Moyong Cheon was never formulated with an antidote in mind. That means countless experiments had to be run to craft one.”
Tang Hwarin mentally summoned Kang Yunho as she opened her gambit. Yunho would have opened by describing just how terrifying the poison was — but as far as Tang Hwarin was concerned, that opening was good enough.
“I had guessed as much. But what do you mean by experiments?”
She was the Poison Martial Empress's disciple and the savior of the Moyong Clan. Moyong Seop asked politely, with due courtesy.
“In cases like this, crafting an antidote requires endless animal trials — and trials on the human body.”
“Human trials?!”
Moyong Seop's eyes went wide in an instant.
“For the past several months, we've had to run human experiments beyond counting. All to save Clan Head Moyong Cheon.”
“Th-that can't be! Then what happened to the people conscripted for these experiments? Don't tell me—!”
Was it true, then — the ominous rumors about the Sichuan Tang Clan? Moyong Seop could barely contain his shock.
“The Tang Clan is a prestigious orthodox family. With a nearly finished antidote in hand, we ran only the safest possible trials on willing volunteers. Naturally, no one died.”
“Th-that is a relief.”
Watching Moyong Seop exhale in relief, Tang Hwarin smiled inwardly. It was exactly the reaction she wanted.
Behold: the Hopil-and-Yunho operation!
How would Yunho have extracted the money?
After much deliberation, Tang Hwarin remembered how her fiancé had once split himself into Hopil and Kang Yunho, casting Hopil as the innocent victim so the scheme could play out.
The trials were only ever run on my own body, but hey — a deed's a deed, right?
Her stratagem was to describe herself and the test subjects separately, just as Kang Yunho and Hopil had been split apart.
“There is a problem, though.”
“What sort of problem?”
“The poison was so virulent that those who were afflicted are now suffering lingering aftereffects.”
Tang Hwarin summoned memories of the past months and put on a troubled expression. I need to see Yunho. Why should I waste precious time like this? It was agony.
“Couldn't you simply keep distributing the antidote to the test subjects? Unless there's some flaw in the antidote itself?”
Nope. The ginseng in it works wonders — I'm practically bursting with energy these days. Tang Hwarin barely swallowed the words rising to her throat and put on a look of pity instead.
“That's exactly why your sincerity is needed.”
“I'm afraid I don't follow.”
“However safe the trials were, we ran them countless times over the past months. Can you imagine how many test subjects there were?”
One.
“I... I could hardly begin to count.”
Gulp. Moyong Seop swallowed dryly. Safe experiments or not, surely a great many people must have been called upon for Clan Head Moyong Cheon's sake.
Moyong Seop, picturing a sea of test subjects too numerous to count on ten fingers, put on an expression of profound remorse.
When in fact they could have been counted on a single finger.
Naturally, Tang Hwarin had no intention of correcting his misunderstanding.
If I neither confirm nor deny, it isn't a lie. He misunderstood all on his own.
It was the sort of absurd remark her fiancé had once made while working a scheme — and right now, it was proving immeasurably useful.
“The test subjects are orphans with no parents, and in such dire straits that they begged to have their own bodies used for the experiments. The antidote's ingredients, on the other hand, are costly enough that only someone on the level of Clan Head Moyong Cheon could afford them. Treating the aftereffects they're left with is well beyond their means.”
Tang Hwarin's parents were dead, hence the orphan part, and everything she owned had been handed over to Kang Yunho — so on paper, she was indeed destitute.
“So the Tang Clan has fulfilled its duty, yet your disciple wishes to treat even the lingering aftereffects. I see it now.”
Only then did Moyong Seop grasp what she had meant by sincerity.
“If we leave things be, the elders will do nothing but save face. The test subjects will get a pat on the back, a few coins, and that will be the end of it.”
At the worried tone in Tang Hwarin's voice, a fond smile spread across Moyong Seop's face, and he turned to the Poison Martial Empress.
“...Poison Martial Empress. You truly have a wonderful disciple.”
“Ahem...”
To Moyong Seop, the Empress's embarrassed chuckle looked like nothing so much as a teacher openly, helplessly proud of her student.
“How much should we provide?”
Watching Moyong Seop nod without the slightest hesitation, Tang Hwarin cheered exultantly inside.
How should I put this? I made nearly the whole antidote myself. Even if it looks a little rude, say it boldly.
With a confident smile, Tang Hwarin decided to aim high.
“Pay me with a blank promissory note.”
When it came to a wedding dowry for her beloved fiancé, the more, the better.