The Poison Master - Chapter 1

When the marquis sent people to fetch me, I was down in the poison cellar, making a venomous snake fight a scorpion.

Whichever won, I would eat, to temper my body against every poison.

Whichever lost, I would save, to demonstrate my skill at curing them.

I had spent ten years mastering poisons. None could harm me now, and a single drop of blood from my fingertip could kill a giant of a man.

Yet my master insisted I was no great poison master.

He said there were three levels of mastery: knowing poisons, refining poisons, and transforming poisons.

Though I could cure a hundred poisons, I had never tasted the cruelest poison in the world. That meant I could not be the best.

Then the marquis’s men came for me.

Master clasped his withered hands behind his back. Poison had steeped them black and twisted. He stroked his beard and turned his ruined, milky eyes meaningfully toward me.

“The most vicious poison in the world is the human heart. A thousand poisons in your flesh cannot compare with the treachery of a heart.”

“Jingzhe, I have nothing more to teach you. The rest you must learn yourself. That den of poison, the marquis’s estate, will be your testing ground.”

I tucked the little snake farther up my sleeve and asked, puzzled, “The marquis’s family has held high office for three generations. They have servants everywhere. Surely there aren’t any poisonous creatures there. How am I supposed to improve?”

“I still have to earn silver to support you and those completely blind eyes of yours. Can’t I stay away from the marquis’s estate?”

Apparently I could not.

Master shoved me bodily into a carriage bound for the capital after confiscating every venomous creature I had on me.

Before I left, he threatened to burn my entire cellar of deadly scorpions if I breathed so much as a word about him in the capital.

Every indignant protest in my belly turned at once into meek agreement.

“Whatever you say, Master.”

“Those scorpions were hard to come by. I raised the king on my own poisonous blood. It’s the unrivaled king of poisons, the only one of its kind. Please show them mercy!”

The carriage rolled farther and farther away. Master shrank to a sesame seed blown along by the wind.

The wind howled, tearing my voice to pieces beneath the galloping hooves.

I never knew whether he heard me.

On my seventh day home, I was still being left to rot in a side courtyard.

Bored out of my mind, I caught a full-grown many-banded krait under my bed and prepared to slip it into the courtyard of Wen Tingxue, the false daughter.

I had reason to resent her.

On the day I returned, she had offered me tea. Wearing that harmless little face, she said that sisters ought to love and help each other.

Then, in a voice only the two of us could hear, she threatened me.

“A country bumpkin like you thinks she deserves Mengding Shihua tea? Today I’ll teach you to keep your tail tucked between your legs.”

Her hand went limp. Tea spilled all over me, but she cradled her fingertips and cried out in pain.

It happened so quickly that before I could react, the back of my hand was scalded red.

Having spent my life among venomous creatures, I believed in one simple rule.

If something was venomous, you had to be more venomous to make it submit.

So when the entire household turned on me, accusing me of cruelty and calling me vicious, I rose calmly, picked up the hot tea from the table, and flung it straight into Wen Tingxue’s face.

This time, she really did leap and scream in pain.

“My face! A doctor! Fetch a doctor! I’ll be disfigured!”

The household gasped. I held out my hand, displaying the red scald across its back, and sneered.

“There. That’s vicious. That’s cruel.”

“Not whatever you think I did that left her fingertips perfectly fine and my whole hand burned. Who hurts herself a hundred thousand times worse just to hurt someone else once?”

They fell silent.

Only Wen Qingxu, the marquis’s heir, rebuked me in displeasure.

“Even if Tingxue was being mischievous and playing a little joke, you could have told us. We’re family. Do you think we wouldn’t have believed you?”

“That tea was scalding! If you’d ruined her face, how could you answer for it?”

The marchioness frowned and scolded me too.

“Your little sister is a bit mischievous, that’s all. She means no harm. Your father and I will settle things for you. Don’t act so rashly again.”

A moment later, Wen Tingxue grabbed my hand and used it to shove herself to the ground, crying out to ask why I would treat her that way.

I protested my innocence in helpless disbelief.

But the brother who had sworn he would believe me and the parents who had promised to stand up for me drove me into a deserted courtyard and confined me there.

Wen Tingxue must have been made of snow. One touch and she shattered.

After that, she was either coughing blood and fainting or clutching her chest in terror.

She even threw herself into the Wen family’s arms and sobbed that she wanted to go back to Yunzhou.

My so-called brother bought her new ornaments, dresses, and pastries every day, trying one thing after another for a single smile.

My parents sat in her courtyard day after day. With their constant presence, they assured her that even with me back, I could never come before the darling they had raised for so many years.

Meanwhile, I was confined to the side courtyard to reflect on my faults.

The servants fawned on the favored and trampled the unwanted. They would not even give me a bowl of hot tea.

Luckily, after years sleeping rough with Master, I did not care whether my water was hot or cold.

I soaked rock-hard steamed buns in well water, filled my stomach, and passed another day.

But those days were like the well water: cold to the core.

And like the crumbling buns in my hand: utterly rotten.