The Outcast Writer of a Martial Arts Visual Novel-Chapter 161: Inevitability - 5
There was a time when all she could do was gaze endlessly at the setting sun.
A burning fever, pain like her whole body was being beaten with hammers. Skin so ravaged that strangers would think she was diseased. After surviving another day in that living hell, when the agony dulled for a moment, she could still hear the voices around her.
Bastard child. Diseased freak. Cursed wretch. Leper.
She couldn’t even crawl into her mother’s arms for comfort, afraid of the hatred and contempt in the woman’s eyes.
— If it weren’t for you—if only it weren’t for you! Get out of my sight, you little bitch!
She was used to dodging flying liquor bottles.
Why did Mom treat her that way? What had she done wrong? Maybe... if she kept trying, kept reaching out, maybe someday her mother would love her. Maybe she’d turn around and see her.
A child’s foolish hope.
A child born from rape. A ruined marriage proposal. A shattered life. Gossip that followed her mother everywhere, saying it was all because of that child.
She may have been her mother, but she had never been a decent human being. And so she had projected all her hatred onto her daughter.
She only learned the truth recently. Maybe it would have been better if she never had. If she had died today, never knowing, maybe she could have gone on just hating her forever.
Thoughts of her mother pressed heavily on her chest.
A childhood unloved even by her own mother. All she could do was watch the sun set in silence.
Waiting. Hoping. One day—
— Haha, were you waiting for me?
She never expected Mister Tang Geo-ho to be the one who arrived.
— I brought a toy from Sichuan. Something fun.
— What do you want to eat? I’ll get you anything.
From Sichuan, arriving with the sunset behind him, Tang Geo-ho was the one ray of light in her childhood.
He felt like a father. Maybe... maybe he really was her father? She entertained that foolish fantasy once. That’s how much he meant to her back then.
— I’ll come again next time. But you have to take your medicine every day, okay?
He always left with a gentle smile, promising to return. The martial arts he taught were difficult. The medicine he gave was bitter. But she took it every day. Because she thought if she didn’t, she wouldn’t get to see him again.
Not knowing... that medicine was the source of all her pain.
“Tang Hwa-rin...!”
The man who always promised to return stood before her now. At dawn, light breaking across the world, he was here again after more than ten years.
Not as the light that had helped her endure her trials—but as the man behind it all.
The filthy man tried to retreat into the deepest shadows, terrified of the light, but she blocked his path.
What was this feeling? Betrayal? Hatred? Fury? No one word could describe it. But one thing was certain—
Today, she would untangle the knot that bound them.
*********
“Spare me.”
Tang Geo-ho, arm scorched black, yanked out the throwing knife buried in it and pleaded with her.
“When I said that to you ten years ago, what do you think I was feeling?”
Please, help me, Mister. I’m in pain. Please save me.
Words she cried in agony as a child, begging Tang Geo-ho for help. Now, she recited them in a voice brimming with rage.
“I know. A hundred apologies wouldn’t be enough. I did a terrible thing to a child, all in the name of the greater good. But do you think my heart didn’t ache when I looked at you back then?”
He clutched his chest and lowered his head, playing the part of the remorseful man.
“......”
Tang Hwa-rin paused for a moment. Had the act worked? Tang Geo-ho put on the same soft smile he used to wear when looking at the little girl she once was.
“I thought of you as my daughter. Even if you were in pain, I always tried to keep you alive. I only gave you what you could endure. Isn’t that why you grew up so strong?”
Words that sounded kind. Twisted logic coated in honey.
“Bullshit. I guess the other bastards you experimented on weren’t ‘children’ to you?”
But Tang Hwa-rin wasn’t someone who could be swayed by sweet lies anymore.
“......Tch.”
With a single word, she tore away the mask he wore. All that was left was the glistening filth underneath.
“Idiot.”
Tang Hwa-rin stared at him with sheer disbelief. Maybe, ten years ago, when she was that girl who stared hopelessly at the setting sun, she would’ve believed him. But not now.
She hadn’t become a Poisoned One because of Tang Geo-ho.
She stood here now because she had met one man.
A man who reached out to her when she was spiraling into the deepest despair of her life.
If it weren’t for him, she’d be just another corpse lying on the ground.
With venom coalescing in her palm, Tang Hwa-rin stood before Tang Geo-ho, ready to unravel the knot once and for all.
Sensing death, Tang Geo-ho spoke frantically.
“You were different from the others! You were special! Don’t you remember how hard I tried to give you good memories? The dolls I brought you, the sweets I fed you! The way you looked at me like a father! Are you really going to kill me?!”
Her hand faltered for just a second.
Not because his words swayed her—but because it saddened her.
Each and every treasured childhood memory... was a lie orchestrated by a wretched man.
For a moment, she lost herself in that sorrow. But it changed nothing.
Tang Geo-ho didn’t miss that opening.
“Die!”
He pulled a small tube from his robe and thrust it toward her.
The cap burst off, launching three throwing needles. Tang Hwa-rin tried to leap away, but they were too close. All three buried into her forearm.
They weren’t strong enough to cause serious injury—but that wasn’t their purpose.
The poison within them raced into her bloodstream.
Poison. Against a Poisoned One.
Tang Hwa-rin yanked the needles out and stared at Tang Geo-ho with disbelief.
“You really thought that’d work? Poison, against a Poisoned O—huh?”
Her body wavered.
“Hahaha!”
“W-What did you do?!”
“Sure, regular poison wouldn’t affect you! But this—this is Thousand-Year Centipede Venom! Even if you’ve stabilized your poison pellet, you can’t possibly endure twice the dose you were trained on!”
He had injected the full dose of Thousand-Year Centipede Venom—the same poison from which no martial artist could survive. Tang Geo-ho was certain of his victory.
“Ugh...!”
As he predicted, Tang Hwa-rin clutched her chest and dropped to one knee.
“I’ll take your corpse if I must! I’ll dissect every organ, extract every drop of blood—I'll use it all to create a new generation of Poisoned Ones!”
Even if she had become one, the venom she could withstand had its limits. Soon she’d collapse. Burn with fever. If she fought through it, she’d still fail.
Tang Geo-ho waited, breath held, savoring his anticipated triumph.
“Ahh...”
Tang Hwa-rin collapsed, eyes closed.
In the end, the one who remained standing was the victor. Tang Geo-ho approached with a victorious grin.
“Guh!”
She sprang up and grabbed him «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» by the collar in one swift motion.
“Did you enjoy that?”
Staring at his dumbfounded face, she smiled with true satisfaction.
“N-No way?!”
“Tang Geo-ho. You really are garbage to the bitter end.”
“H-How?! Your body shouldn’t be able to endure that!”
His eyes shook. The body he’d designed could never withstand that venom. Becoming a Poisoned One had been a fluke. This time—it should’ve been impossible.
“I managed it thanks to the most important person in my life.”
“What... what are you talking about?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Aaaaaaaaaagh!”
The same poison Tang Geo-ho had injected into Tang Hwa-rin—now reversed and surged into him.
Fever, suffocation, rashes, unbearable itching, muscle spasms, bone-deep pain—the torment Tang Hwa-rin had endured her whole life struck him all at once.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? That’s what I lived through every single day.”
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
“P-Please... spare me... I could still... be of use to the Tang Clan...”
If Tang Geo-ho lived, he might be of use to the Tang Clan. He could restore the lost martial arts, or even continue producing Poisoned Ones.
“So what.”
Tang Hwa-rin scoffed.
The experiment had to end with her. No more victims. Like excising rot from flesh, like squeezing out a festering wound, the source of all her suffering had to be erased.
“I... created you...”
Staring down at Tang Geo-ho’s broken body, Hwa-rin’s face twisted with fury as she answered him.
“Then get the hell out of my life already.”
And with all the hatred and rage she carried, she poured her most vicious poison into the hand gripping his throat.
“G-Guh...”
It didn’t take much to finish him.
Just a drop of the Thousand-Year Centipede Venom he once fed her—and with a choked scream, his life ended.
Tang Hwa-rin slowly released the hand she had waited over ten years to clench.
Was the resentment too deep? The fury too consuming?
She stood still, staring down at the source of her lifelong agony—now lifeless.
He had been the worst human being she had ever known.
But if there was one thing he had ever done right—
“Yun-ho.”
It was that, by pure coincidence, he had led her to the best man in her life.
Tang Hwa-rin turned her gaze to the place where Kang Yun-ho had fallen.
“Yun... ho?”
She stared.
Where Yun-ho had been lying just moments ago—there was nothing left but blood-stained clothing.
-------------
“Yun-ho!”
Panic surged through her as she dashed to the stable where she last saw him.
Where had he gone? How did he disappear?
He’d told her to run if she got the chance. Tang Hwa-rin looked at the horses nearby—none were missing.
“Yun-ho!”
Had he fled secretly? Or worse... had the cult taken him?
“KANG YUN-HO!!!”
Under the dark night sky, still air pressing against her chest like a ship adrift without starlight, Tang Hwa-rin shouted his name in desperation.
Where was he?
Where the hell was he?
Hadn’t he seen her victory? Could he have... abandoned her?
No. No way.
Even with the venom rampaging through her body, even when blades flashed before her eyes, she hadn’t fallen—because she believed.
Her knees were about to give out, her heart buckling under fear—until a voice broke through like sunlight at dawn.
“I’m right here, so quit shouting and come help me already!”
“...What?”
She turned her head toward the voice—toward the light.
“Stop spacing out if it’s over and get your ass over here!”
Far in the distance, Kang Yun-ho was calmly untying the captured Vice Pavilion members, one by one.
“Are you serious?! You scared the hell out of me!”
He hadn’t vanished. He was simply doing what he always did—finding something useful to do.
Tang Hwa-rin let out a long breath of relief, watching him go about helping others like nothing had happened.
“Hwa-rin! This guy’s really injured!”
“Hold on! I’m coming!”
But before running to him, she paused—just for a moment—and looked back at her past.
The child who used to gaze westward in helpless longing was no longer there.
That girl had become a woman who now ran—smiling—toward the man who reached out his hand for her.
Tang Hwa-rin turned her back on the past—and ran to him.
