The Poisoned Name
The Tangmen Sect is remembered not in songs of praise or prayers of the people, but in whispers of dread and awe. Where Shaolin is called the “First Temple under Heaven” and Emei the “Blades of Mercy,” Tangmen’s epithet is darker: “The Poisoned Name.” Their legacy is one of inevitability — a reputation as shadows who never miss, poisons that never fail, and contracts that never break.
Their name carries weight in Murim politics, imperial courts, and common taverns alike. To utter it aloud is to invite silence in conversation, for no one knows if a Tangmen ear is listening.
Among peasants and pilgrims, Tangmen inspires more fear than love. Mothers warn their children not to wander into Sichuan valleys, lest the Tangmen take them for experiments. Traders speak of caravans wiped out without a sound, their guards found stiff with poisoned darts lodged in throats. Yet some peasants quietly revere Tangmen for selling antidotes at fair price, or for punishing corrupt tax collectors with sudden, mysterious deaths.
To the common folk, Tangmen is both curse and shield — unpredictable as venom itself.
Other sects define Tangmen by opposition:
Shaolin: Remember them as corrupters of martial virtue, their poisons the mark of dishonor.
Emei: Recall them as eternal enemies, the clash of mercy and cruelty written in blood across Sichuan passes.
Wudang: Speak of them as shadows without balance — cunning, but forever chained to death’s path.
Wanderer’s Valley: Remember them as rivals in chaos, shadows competing for dominance in the dark.
Yet even rivals cannot deny their skill. Many sects have secretly purchased Tangmen antidotes, or studied fragments of their techniques in envy.
Dynasties recorded Tangmen with equal parts condemnation and reliance. Some emperors branded them demons, issuing edicts of extermination. Others hired them in secret, using Tangmen hands to remove rivals or silence traitors.
Imperial archives hold chilling entries: ministers dying mid-speech, generals collapsing in locked chambers, enemies found lifeless with no wound but a pinprick. Though no emperor ever publicly allied with Tangmen, many thrones would not have stood without their shadowed hand.
The annals of Murim whisper of Tangmen’s infamous strikes:
The Night of Silent Bells: A Tang dynasty palace awoke to find an entire eunuch faction dead, each with a needle lodged in the throat, none having cried out.
The Poisoned Banquet: During the Yuan, a Mongol governor and fifty retainers died mid-feast, their wine poisoned by Tangmen hands unseen.
The Betrayal of Scarlet Viper: A branch clan rebelled, attempting to seize the patriarch’s seat. The rebellion ended with an entire valley flooded with poison mist — no body was ever buried.
The King of Hell’s Invitation: Rarely seen, but once unleashed in the Ming, where an entire warlord’s army was cut down in minutes by a storm of poisoned steel. Survivors spoke of rain that burned the flesh.
Such deeds etched Tangmen into history not as defenders, but as inevitable forces of death.
In the present Murim world, Tangmen remains both feared and sought after. Their contracts shape wars in silence, their poisons alter the outcomes of battles before they begin. Some clans within the sect push to legitimize Tangmen as “artisans of inevitability,” offering antidotes and weapons openly. Others cling to shadows, keeping the sect’s identity rooted in fear.
To Murim as a whole, Tangmen is a necessary evil: despised, yet indispensable. Their name is a shadow over every throne, a whisper in every court, a warning to every sect. For in a world of swords and sutras, Tangmen reminds all that death does not always arrive in battle cries — sometimes, it comes as a silent needle in the night.
Summary:
The legacy of the Tangmen Sect is shadow, poison, and inevitability. Feared by the people, reviled by rivals, and both hunted and hired by emperors, they are remembered through assassinations that shaped dynasties and feuds that scarred Murim. In the current age, they remain both curse and necessity — the silent blade, the poisoned breath, the sect whose very name is a death sentence whispered in the dark.