I Thought the Youngest Daughter of the Sichuan Tang Family Was Hated - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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What a truly beautiful day.
Flowers bloom, birds sing….
The Sacheon Tang Clan falls to ruin!
“In all my years, I never thought I’d see the day the Sacheon Tang Clan would collude with the Demonic Cult!”
Glug.
As I tilted my cup, angry voices erupted from the men beside me.
“The clan leader must have lost his mind. He even lost his wife to the Demonic Cult!”
The Sacheon Tang Clan had long oppressed weaker martial sects and committed countless atrocities.
Their collusion with remnants of the Demonic Cult had been exposed not long ago.
The Central Plains had paid a terrible price to achieve victory in the Heavenly Demon War fifty years prior.
Countless villages and sects were annihilated, secret techniques were lost, and the deaths of masters who once dominated the martial world left the entire realm diminished.
These fools must have known all this, yet they dared commit such treachery.
In the end, the Martial Arts Alliance mobilized its full strength for the subjugation campaign, and after a prolonged struggle, news of final victory arrived today.
“Serves them right, the bastards!”
Slam!
The paper he struck against the table fluttered in the air.
【The Sacheon Tang Clan exterminated. All family members eliminated.】
“When I think of my brother, who died by their hands…!”
“Killing them twice wouldn’t be enough!”
Right, absolutely right.
They were a mad clan.
‘I understand completely. Truly, I do.’
Glug.
I drank in silence, using their conversation as accompaniment to my wine, nodding inwardly in agreement.
As the wine bottle emptied completely.
“….”
‘Why did it suddenly get so quiet?’
I glanced around and noticed the men who’d been loudly gossiping were now staring at me with suspicious eyes.
‘Oh no.’
I’d been so absorbed in disparaging the Sacheon Tang Clan that I hadn’t noticed their gazes.
Concealing my alarm, I casually stood and turned to leave when someone behind me whispered.
“That person, could it be….”
“Hey, you there. Wait!”
I pulled my wide-brimmed hat down firmly and quickened my pace.
I couldn’t be caught. Because I was….
“It’s Dang Hee-yeon! Seize her!”
The sole survivor of the exterminated Tang Clan!
I cried out in indignation as people rushed after me.
“I severed ties with that family long ago! I’m a legitimate member of the Martial Arts Alliance!”
If I’d actually benefited from the clan’s wealth and status, I wouldn’t feel so wronged!
“My dantian is shattered and ruined—how long has it been? Don’t you understand? I can’t even use lightfoot technique anymore!”
“Ugh, what does it matter! Just chase them!”
Fortunately, these people had rushed at me recklessly on alcohol-fueled impulse, so they couldn’t keep up easily. But if the commotion grew, others would surely come running.
“Huff, huff…!”
Pursued through the crowd, I barely managed to turn a corner into an alley.
A small tent draped in crimson cloth came into view, decorated with the ornate flags and embellishments of a fortune-teller’s stall.
“…!”
Acting on pure instinct, I bolted inside and collapsed into a chair.
“Gasp, huff, hah…!”
I pressed my heaving chest repeatedly, struggling to catch my breath.
“Where did they go…! …That way…!”
Tap, tap, tap.
Keeping my head bowed, I swallowed hard and waited. Soon I heard the sound of running feet—then it faded into the distance.
“Phew. I thought I was done for….”
So that was it….
Or so I was about to say.
When I lifted my head, the shadow looming before me cut my words short.
A man sat across from me, his face concealed behind the dark gauze attached to a black silk hat.
His frame was so imposing and tall that he seemed to fill the cramped tent entirely. Even though only his facial contours and lips were faintly visible through the gossamer veil, an aura of handsome elegance emanated from him.
Without thinking, I found myself captivated, gazing at those lips….
“What a tragic fate you carry.”
“…Pardon?”
“Abandoned by your family?”
“Excuse me?”
“At a glance, you have nowhere to belong, standing apart wherever you go. Your life holds no fortune, only suffering. Truly, misfortune follows you relentlessly.”
“Isn’t it rather rude to hurl such insults directly at someone’s face?”
The sudden barrage of curses made my ears burn.
Was this some new con scheme?
You know the type.
Those wandering charlatans who spout only misfortune, hoping something will stick—a fortune-telling scam!
‘Though, by coincidence, everything he said was true….’
In this chaotic age, wasn’t everyone cursed with a tragic fate? I could say the same things he did.
Now that I looked around, the interior was so sparse—wasn’t this clearly a scammer’s setup?
The very fact that a fortune-teller’s stall appeared so abruptly in an alley was suspicious from the start.
‘I should leave before he asks for money.’
“Listen, I didn’t come here for a reading….”
At that moment, the man spoke up.
“Your heart is wounded.”
“….”
I blinked at the man’s calm words.
It was something I could have laughed off.
The words of a suspicious fortune teller—no, a con artist.
“…Not really.”
But perhaps it was the circumstances of the day.
Or perhaps the nausea churning in my stomach since I’d overheard that prattle wasn’t from the alcohol at all.
The words burst out impulsively.
“I was abandoned, yes—but I left that household on my own two feet.”
My chest burned strangely.
“Karmic retribution. They abandoned a child, so their entire clan was annihilated.”
I tried to laugh mockingly, but my lips wouldn’t cooperate.
My family who abandoned me were dead—I should have been pleased. And yet…
“Conspiring with the Demonic Cult, no less…”
I muttered while picking at my blunt nails, then suddenly lifted my head.
Why had I mentioned the Demonic Cult?
‘I’m completely severing ties with the Sacheon Tang Clan!’
“That’s what you want to believe, then.”
But instead of seizing me and turning me in, the man added something equally pointless.
“So you think the Martial Arts Alliance fabricated it all as a lie?”
I was releasing a hollow laugh at the absurdity when it happened.
Whoosh—a violent gust of wind swept inside.
Between the trembling curtains, the man’s eyes gleamed with an eerie brilliance.
Eyes red as pigeon’s blood.
In all the realm, only one person possessed such eyes.
‘The Crimson Flame Alliance Master—Jin Hwa!’
The man who had unified the heterodox sects, where vicious martial artists once ran rampant, with nothing but his fists.
‘Why is the Alliance Master here?’
In the moment I gasped in shock, the man seized my hand with a crushing grip.
“Ah!”
Scorching energy coursed through our clasped hands—through my wrist, my shoulder, the crown of my head, and deep into my core. My entire body burned as if molten metal were being poured into it.
“Don’t forget, Dang Hee-yeon.”
He twisted my head and brought his face close to mine.
“When you return…”
His crimson eyes burned as if they would devour me whole.
“A silent guest awaits.”
“…!”
The heat transformed into searing pain. I couldn’t even cry out.
As my vision flickered white, I saw Jin Hwa’s lips curve upward.
Blood spilled from my mouth.
“Cough! What… what is this…?”
“Cast her out. Now.”
His voice, as if entrusting something to someone, brushed past me.
My body sagged downward as though being sucked into some void—that was my last memory.
***
“Ugh….”
I clutched my throbbing head and pushed myself upright.
Not a single ray of sunlight penetrated this room. Black curtains sealed the walls and windows, leaving only darkness.
It was a familiar dread.
“Surely not….”
I hurried toward the mirror.
A gold earring adorning only my right ear, my cheeks flushed with rosy fullness.
Faint tear marks and hair like dandelion seeds.
Unmistakably, I was six years old again.
“Gasp!”
I nearly fainted from the shock.
‘Is this real?’
“Ow!”
When I pinched my cheek, it hurt enough to draw tears.
“This doesn’t feel like a dream….”
The chambers of the Sacheon Tang Clan where I’d spent my childhood, the sensation in my cheek—everything was far too vivid.
‘Then could it be…?!’
Without thinking, my hand rose to my abdomen. Precisely below my navel, where my dantian should have been.
“….”
But I could only let my hand fall limply.
“I can’t feel anything….”
My vital energy was depleted, draining away like water through a bottomless vessel.
I had already lost my dantian.
‘Then what’s the point of coming back? And my family will try to kill me again….’
Thinking of my father and older brothers made my stomach churn once more.
Why had I fallen here in the first place?
For now, the most plausible explanation was that the Crimson Flame Alliance leader had sent me to the past.
I didn’t know much about him, but….
‘They say there’s no forbidden art he doesn’t know.’
Suddenly, his final words echoed in my mind.
“Don’t forget. Dang Hee-yeon.”
“There is a silent guest.”
Setting aside that he knew my name.
‘A silent guest.’
Ordinarily it was slang for nocturnal visitors like thieves, but I—who had delved deeply into toxins and pharmacology instead of martial arts—knew another meaning to these words.
“A euphemism for the Phantom Flower….”
A rare toxic plant that induces hallucinations and auditory illusions when its smoke is inhaled, driving one to madness upon addiction.
Its defining characteristic was that it was difficult to distinguish from regular incense, so victims often didn’t realize they had been poisoned.
“But this is something used only in palace intrigues… where could it have come from?”
As I muttered to myself, my gaze was suddenly captured by something.
“Huh?”
A faint wisp of white smoke rising into the air.
Lowering my eyes, I spotted an incense burner beside the low table.
An incense burner I had never seen before in my entire life.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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