The second lesson, poison arts.
It began ordinarily.
"Poison can be used just as it is, but when it is properly blended its effect doubles."
When the poison arts Instructor, Poison Trickster Wolf Tang San-ho, gestured, the scholars of the Myriad Poison Hall who had come with her laid long sheets of paper before the students.
"Make the poison exactly as written there. If there is anything you do not know, ask as much as you like. Raise a hand and the scholars of the Poison Herb Pavilion will help you, so do not worry."
"Yes! Understood."
"Whichever bastard makes the best one gets a poison insect as a special prize. Now, begin!"
Tang Yu-hyeon skimmed the paper and dropped the ingredients into the medicine pot.
'How many years have I handled poison? I could make this much with my eyes closed.'
Plop. Plop.
Stirring so it would not scorch on the bottom, he glanced around him.
'What? Why is mine the only one that's different?'
His poison was noticeably darker in color than everyone else's.
There was no chance the recipe he remembered was wrong, so the problem must lie in that paper.
'Surely they did not lose the recipes along with the secret arts?'
Tang Yu-hyeon's eyes wavered.
Seeing it, Tang San-ho tapped the scholar beside her.
"Hey. Go look after that one."
"Senior. Even so, calling a member of the direct line 'that one'......."
"What of it? 'Within the Joint Study Pavilion, all who learn are equal.' Are those not the words of the heaven-like first Clan Head himself?"
"That is true, but......."
"Why so much talk about the clan's rules? Go and see to him quickly. The color on that thing looks vicious."
"Yes, yes. Understood."
Under Tang San-ho's nagging, the young scholar trudged over to Tang Yu-hyeon's side.
"Is there some problem?"
"Ah. Would you take a look at this?"
Tang Yu-hyeon opened his hand toward the deep purple liquid.
'The color on this looks vicious.'
The young scholar left the same impression his senior had, ladled out some of the poison, and smelled it.
It was the method commonly used by Tang Clan martial artists with some knowledge of poison when testing one.
'Yes. Look at it and recognize that you are the problem. And then learn.'
His attitude said there was absolutely no chance that he himself was the problem.
"Hmmmm. ......What?!"
'What? What is it? Why the reaction? What did you read wrong?'
The violent reaction left him flustered instead.
Concerned, Tang Yu-hyeon leaned down and studied the young scholar's face.
The scholar looked back and forth between the poison and Tang San-ho, then scrambled off.
"One moment, just one moment!"
He carried the bowl he had ladled the poison into with both hands, as though enshrining a treasure, and showed it to Tang San-ho.
When the two exchanged a few words, the other scholars waiting nearby crowded around them.
Feigning bewilderment, Tang Yu-hyeon spread his energy and listened in.
"Senior. This is Bowel-Severing Tears. Not the degraded version, the same as the real thing."
"Does that make any sense? Did he not simply fail to control the amounts by chance?"
"He put the ingredients in far too confidently for that."
"Well, did he see the blending formula somewhere? There are plenty of books in the library. There is the one in the Clan Head's hall too."
"It is not even a secret manual. What are you talking about?"
"Besides, it has never been taken outside the Myriad Poison Hall. And today is the first time it is being taught."
'Aha.'
Tang Yu-hyeon nodded.
Any accident of a student dying while making poison had to be avoided, so they had been taught the degraded version.
It was a relief that the secret methods for making poison had not been lost as well.
The relief loosened everything inside him.
'And of all things, I went and made the original, did I?'
At that thought his insides clenched up uncomfortably again.
The more of the conversation he heard, the more he felt he had stirred up something unnecessary.
'This time I really meant to help quietly. Haha!'
It had been so long since he made poison calmly that he had failed to gauge his own strength.
Hahaha!
Tang Yu-hyeon thrust his belly out as far as it would go.
'Descendants, praise me! I am the master of all poisons, the Poison Lord! Hahahaha!'
While Tang Yu-hyeon laughed in a grotesque pose, drunk on his own pride, the Instructors' voices grew louder.
"You do not believe it? Then I will just drink it."
"You will die!"
"I will not die, you bastards."
"You said you could not believe it, so I am verifying it for you!"
Tang San-ho snapped in irritation and dipped a finger deep into the poison.
"Aaaah! Senior, why would you eat that!"
"Have you lost your mind? Spit it out, quickly!"
"The antidote. Where is the antidote?!"
"Shut it. Do you want to frighten the children?"
Tang San-ho frowned and knocked aside the arm of the scholar rummaging through his sleeve.
For a moment her fingertips stained black, but soon returned to their original color.
'Right. If poison of only this much killed you, you could hardly call yourself Myriad Poison Hall.'
Having grumbled a moment before, Tang Yu-hyeon now smiled with satisfaction.
While he was steeped in sentiment for that moment, Tang San-ho came charging right up in front of him.
She stepped straight up to Tang Yu-hyeon and thrust the paper at him.
Wag.
Tang San-ho shook the paper.
Blink.
With nothing else said, Tang Yu-hyeon only blinked.
"Write it down."
"Write what?"
"The blending formula."
"Excuse me?"
Tang Yu-hyeon asked back with a blank face.
But his hand had dutifully taken the brush and was already moving.
At the sight, Tang San-ho tugged one corner of her mouth up crookedly and spoke playfully.
"Have you heard of Bowel-Severing Tears?"
Of course he had.
Exactly as the characters say, it is a poison that makes one feel the bowels being severed.
He had taken it in place of rice at every meal and poured it into open wounds, so there was no way he would not know it.
But in this world there are times when a man must say he does not know what he knows, and knows what he does not.
Just like now.
"No."
"That is exactly what you made. A poison no one outside the Myriad Poison Hall could know, made by you, who has never once seen it."
"I did?"
"Yes. Is that not remarkable?"
"It is remarkable."
Answering as though it were nothing, Tang Yu-hyeon wrote out the blending formula in detail from memory and handed it over.
Tang San-ho took it with a spreading grin.
"Listen here, Young Master."
"Is such a form of address permitted in the Joint Study Pavilion?"
"Oho. That is a fearsome reaction."
"Hardly fearsome. It is the normal reaction of a student facing an Instructor."
"Hmm."
At the stiff reply, delivered as though read from a book, Tang San-ho's eyes curved like half-moons.
Once again glances gathered from all around.
Far off, Tang Jong-cheon could be seen approaching with a sigh.
Yes. Please, do stop her.
"If you have no intention of becoming Clan Head, how about the Myriad Poison Hall? You have talent."
'Not the Myriad Poison Hall!'
Tang Yu-hyeon shrieked inwardly.
What sort of place was the Myriad Poison Hall?
The place every poison of the Tang Clan came out of.
Put another way, a place where people mad for the study of poison would do anything at all for the sake of poison.
Even experiments on people.
'They said the ones who show talent get taken first. Ugh. I don't want to go!'
Recalling the experiments he had suffered at the Myriad Poison Hall in the past, Tang Yu-hyeon shuddered.
Being seized and dosed with poison was out of the question, and so was a daily life spent studying poison all day without ever seeing the light.
"That is enough."
While he was sunk in memory and delaying his answer, Tang Jong-cheon clasped his hands behind his back and glared at Tang San-ho.
At the house-sized shadow that swallowed her whole, Tang San-ho blinked, then smiled impishly.
"Does the Thirteenth Elder covet him as well?"
She spoke at ease, unbowed by the difference in build or in rank.
"But please observe the order of things. I invited him first."
"Whether you invited him or not is of no concern to me. I do not covet a rebel who will not follow the rules, not in the slightest."
"If one only follows rules, when does one grow strong? True strength comes out of irregularity. The one who steps outside the mold and looks from an angle unlike anyone else's becomes the strongest of all."
"That does not make an insincere attitude permissible."
'I was a bit insincere, admittedly.'
Tang Yu-hyeon thought indifferently.
Imagine having to learn material you already learned all over again.
Boring or not boring?
Boring enough to drive you mad.
Of course, with the situation tangling worse by the moment, there was no room for boredom now.
'How much more tangled can it get? Ha ha ha.'
As he laughed hollowly to himself, Tang San-ho pulled him in as though shielding him.
"Why are you crushing our child's spirit?"
"Since when is he our child?"
'That is what I would like to ask.'
Like Tang Yu-hyeon, Tang Jong-cheon wore an incredulous expression.
But Tang San-ho's shamelessness would not be outdone.
"He brought back a secret art, so he is our child!"
If teaching them secret arts was going to get him dragged into the Myriad Poison Hall, from now on he would send them through his siblings' hands.
If it were at all possible, he sincerely wanted to.
'Father. Why is it that everyone in the Myriad Poison Hall, then and now, is out of their mind without exception?'
A whole hundred years have passed. Should something not have changed?
Passing down good poisons is all well and good, but if you pass down the temperament with it, what are soft-hearted (?) children like me supposed to do!
Trapped in Tang San-ho's arm and swaying with every move she made, Tang Yu-hyeon squeezed his eyes shut.
It must have looked pitiful indeed, for Tang Jong-cheon, who had poured out criticism the whole time, quietly pulled at Tang Yu-hyeon's arm.
At that Tang San-ho seized the remaining arm and pulled him back her way.
One side shouted that the Myriad Poison Hall would take him for certain; the other growled that it did not matter where he was taken, his attitude had to be corrected.
With both arms held, Tang Yu-hyeon had no hand left to cover his ears, so he wore the face of a man who had given up and moved like a doll wherever he was pulled.
'Both of you, that is enough. My head is ringing.'
He could not understand why his modest plan to teach his descendants kept tangling like this.
Struck by a sudden wave of exhaustion, Tang Yu-hyeon sighed.
'Please let the next lesson pass quietly.'
And the heavens did not raise Tang Yu-hyeon's hand.