Four hundred years ago, before the Nine Great Sects forged peace through power, the martial world was ruled by ambition and blood.
Wudang stood at the top, serene and supreme. Tang followed, fangs bared, its poisons spreading faster than its alliances.
Shaolin watched from the sidelines, silent but indestructible. It was a time when loyalty meant little, and betrayal meant everything.
And amid that storm, one man rose alone. Before the Heavenly Demon formed the Demonic Cult, he was already feared — a shadow that walked in daylight, slaughtering entire clans and vanishing without trace.
But this isn't his story.
This is the story of a girl born into power — but raised in poison.
The Tang Clan was said to be descended from one of the children of the Jeongcheon,First Martial God. Their reputation was unmatched in assassination and poison craft. But for all their power, their ambition burned hotter.
They wanted more.
They wanted to surpass Wudang.
Unable to do so through strength alone, the Tang Clan Lord sought another path: create the perfect heir.
He took two wives from powerful allied families. From one came a son — a prodigy. From the other, a daughter — sharp-eyed and silent.
Her name was Tang Hwang.
Tang Hwang was born into prestige — the second child of the Tang Clan Lord.
Her mother, the second wife, was known not for grace but for ambition sharpened into cruelty. She raised her daughter like a blade.
"Remember this, my daughter," she said, gripping the girl's arms, her long nails digging into skin, "You're more than any son. You must be. Do not fall behind. Do not disappoint me."
"Yes, Mother," Tang Hwang whispered.
"Good. Because if you fail… Mommy may just hang herself from shame. You wouldn't want that, would you?"
"No, Mother."
Her mother smiled then, warm as winter.
"You're my lovely daughter. Don't disappoint me. My life is in your hands."
That sentence followed Hwang like a curse.
She was expected to be the clan's future — to become the weapon her mother never could.
But how could she surpass Tang Cheondok, her half-brother?
Firstborn son of the first wife. A prodigy even among prodigies. A natural-born poison master. A martial genius. Loved by the elders. Whispers in the Alliance said he might be the next sect leader.
By age 8, Hwang was soaking her skin in toxins to build resistance, reading manuals until her eyes bled, and memorizing antidotes in her sleep.
She placed second in every competition.
Her name was listed second on every scroll.
And her father, while fair and disciplined, never praised her the way he praised him.
"Cheondok shows great promise," he once said at a clan banquet. "The future of Tang looks bright."
That night, Tang Hwang didn't eat. Her hands trembled beneath the table. Her mother's silence was colder than poison.
And in her chest, a seed began to sprout.
Not hate. Not envy.Something worse — the desperate need to win.
By the time Tang Hwang turned sixteen, she had exhausted herself chasing a shadow she couldn't catch.
No matter how hard she trained, how many poisons she memorized, how long she meditated — she was always second. Her brother, Tang Cheondok, was faster, sharper, and loved.
Even when she tried to be herself, he wouldn't leave her alone.
"Still reading those books, little sister?"
"Of course I am. Unlike you, I don't have talent."
"You don't have to try so hard, you know. To me, you're already strong."
That was the worst part.He meant it. And that made it unbearable.
"You don't know anything about me!" she screamed and stormed off.
She ran to her chambers, desperate for silence — for control. But something was wrong.
The hallway was crowded. Her mother's maids stood outside her room, crying. The head maid stepped forward, eyes wet, arms outstretched.
"Don't go in there, child. Spare yourself—"
But Tang Hwang pushed past her.
And saw it.
Her mother had hung herself.
A single note left behind, pinned with a hairpin Hwang had made her as a child:
"I shouldn't have birthed a daughter like you a son will be better."
Hwang didn't scream. She ran.
She ran to her father. To the Clan Lord. To the man who had built this empire of poison and ambition.
"Father—please—Mother—!"
He glanced up from his scrolls. Calm. Cold. Distant.
"Compose yourself, Tang Hwang. You're still a member of this clan."
That was all he said.
She walked back to the chamber, back to the room where her mother's body swung gently in the breeze.
And wept.
That night, under the moonlit outer gardens, Tang Hwang wandered aimlessly — and found a stranger meditating beneath the peach trees.
He wore Shaolin robes, but his eyes were sharp with bitterness.
A man once known as Baek Jingi — a monk exiled for questioning the hierarchy of his order.
They spoke.
Night after night.
Their conversations were venom and balm — quiet at first, then razor-edged.
He taught her truths the Tang Clan never spoke aloud:
"The sects reward obedience, not merit."
"Tradition worships bloodlines. But true strength? True strength is stolen."
"Why bow to a brother born before you, when you were born to rule?"
In Baek Jingi's words, Tang Hwang found what she always longed for — permission to rise.
And one night, under the stars, he asked:
"What's stopping you, child?
If you can't surpass your brother…
Why not steal everything that was meant to be his?"
And something inside her finally answered back.
But it was never just talk.
For years, Tang Hwang buried the thought of killing her brother. Even if she hated him, could she really do it? A part of her still clung to shame, to the voice of her mother whispering, "Don't disappoint me." Maybe if she had been born a son, things would have been different.
Maybe then she wouldn't have had to choose.
At age twenty, the Tang Clan made it official: Tang Cheondok would be the heir. The courtyards were filled with red lanterns, lotus incense, and celebration. Their "poison prince" had finally ascended.
And Tang Hwang?
She stood in the shadow of the celebration. Years of blood, venom, and self-destruction — and he still took everything.
If the clan was going to steal everything from her, then she would steal what they treasured most.
"Brother," she said sweetly, approaching him in the garden pavilion, "Congratulations on becoming the successor. Truly… I'm proud of you."
Cheondok blinked, flustered by her sudden kindness.
"Hwang… thank you. That means a lot."
"You know," he continued, rubbing the back of his neck with a shy smile, "Maybe it's time we rule together. You've always been incredible with poisons. You could be my first wife. We'd raise the Tang Clan to the top."
Her smile twitched.
First wife.
That's what it came down to, in the end — to be the brilliant wife of a man history would remember.
"I'd love that," she lied, pouring his tea.
He drank it with trust in his eyes.
He bled through his lips with a smile on his face.
He died thanking her.
"Tch. What a weirdo," she muttered, swallowing the bile rising in her throat.
There was no turning back now.
With her brother dead, chaos erupted in the clan. Her father demanded an investigation. The Elders whispered suspicions.
That's when she made her move.
She aligned with Baek Jingi. Together, they ignited rebellion from within. She burned the Venom Scripture Vault, assassinated three Elders in a single night, and poisoned her own father while he slept in his meditation hall.
But the Tang Clan was vast. Too many cousins. Too many loyalists.
Before they could kill her, she and Baek Jingi escaped into the mountains — hunted, hated, and reborn.
They had nowhere left to run.
The Tang Clan had declared them traitors. Bounties covered the walls of every major region. Tang Hwang and the monk Baek Jingi fled into the northern mountain ranges — forbidden peaks cloaked in endless mist, where the very air pulsed with corrupted Qi.
Even Hwang, who had mastered hundreds of poisons, felt sick inhaling it. Her skin crawled.
"Where… are we?" she asked, gripping her robes tight.
Baek Jingi's expression was calm, almost reverent.
"The Seven Mountains of Hell," he whispered. "This is where He resides."
They descended in silence. As if led by fate.
At the heart of the cursed mountains, beneath a blackened sky, they knelt — not because they were forced to, but because something greater demanded it. A presence that crushed their souls to the floor.
The Heavenly Demon appeared.
And he did not kill them.
Instead, he welcomed them. Fed by their hatred, their betrayal, their talent. He named them among his first disciples. And together, they built something the world would fear for centuries.
The Demonic Cult.
Baek Jingi shed his old name and became the Bone Flame Monk, commander of internal arts and soul devourers.
Tang Hwang shed her shame — and embraced her vengeance. She renamed herself mockingly, cruelly:
Cheondok Hwang.
She took her brother's name.
As one last insult to her past.
In time, she created the Silent Garden, cultivated poisons from extinct beasts, weaponized rare parasites, and taught her assassins the stolen secrets of the Tang Clan.
And from her bitterness bloomed something monstrous:
The Thousand Venoms Empress was born.
Back to the Present.
Time hadn't stopped.
But it felt like it.
She was still lying on the forest floor, her ribs shattered from Gunju's punch, staring at a flicker of her brother's ghost — standing beside her in the haze of memory.
Her heart raced. Her skin crawled. The ghost stepped closer.
"Stay back… stay back!" she screamed, hurling handfuls of dirt and broken leaves at the phantom.
But to Gunju — watching from a few steps away — she just looked like a woman screaming at nothing, flinging sand at the air.
"…Has she gone insane?" he muttered, unimpressed.