In the martial world, when something completely unreasonable happens, there’s a saying people often use.

“This is the law of the martial world.”

The meaning of this phrase, which has taken root as a kind of meme on the internet, was clear. Only the strong survive in this world.

I was rather fond of that line. Every time a martial arts novel protagonist who didn’t care at all about modern law and order talked about the law of the martial world as they smashed in an enemy’s skull, I felt a vicarious thrill.

I doubt I was the only one. Everyone is probably the same. Anyone will have had the experience of swallowing their anger instead of protesting at the injustice right in front of them.

Becoming an adult means that sort of thing. Doing things you don’t want to do while gritting your teeth. Folding your pride up small and putting on a smiling face.

So when my manager held out a martial arts novel and told me to read it on my commute, I couldn’t even show that I didn’t like it and just took the book.

“Young people these days don’t even understand jokes. Here, read this. Then we’ll be able to talk.”

You say we can’t communicate, so I should read the books you read? How is that not the most old-man thing I’ve ever heard?

Words rose all the way to the back of my throat—that if he kept forcing his own interests on others without considering their tastes, he’d end up with no one left at his side—but I barely managed to swallow them.

My performance review was in that old man’s hands. Life in the company is really hard.

And so it’s already been half a year since I started reading martial arts novels for the sake of “communication” with my manager. I’d gotten to the point where I could even laugh at his joke about lighting Samadhi True Fire on the tops of his feet.

“See? You laugh well now. I told you, books are food for the mind.”

You’re the only one laughing, manager. And if martial arts novels become food for my mind, that’s a big problem. They make me want to carry out the law of the martial world at the office.

Anyway, the martial arts novel I started reading as part of my social survival actually suited my taste quite well. Contrary to the prejudice that they’re only for middle-aged men, they were really fun.

Even those who seemed to know nothing but martial arts had lives, and love, and a sense of romance.

To burn up their lives to protect their pride, to protect their comrades’ backs—weren’t they so stubbornly straightforward it shook your heart?

The lives of martial artists were so attractive that I even found myself thinking that I’d like to live like that at least once.

But that didn’t mean I wanted to become some extra in a martial arts novel.

“Look at this girl spacing out again. Aren’t you going to do the laundry?”

“Yes. I’m going now.”

“They say medicinal decoction is being served for lunch today. Make sure you’ve got something ready to get the taste out of your mouth.”

“Again?”

And I especially didn’t mean I wanted to become a maid of a sect that makes its servants drink poison.

The Number One Poison Sect Under Heaven, the Sichuan Tang Clan.

Also called the Tang Sect, the family of poison and hidden weapons.

I had become a maid of this insane family.

*****

If fantasy has noble houses, then martial arts stories have martial aristocratic clans. Of course, they’re not exactly the same thing. I only mean they’re similar in that they’re powerful, prestigious families everyone knows.

These are sects centered on blood relations, closed groups made up entirely of kin.

The Namgung Clan is made up of people of the Namgung line, the Hebei Peng Clan of those with the Peng surname, and the Sichuan Tang Clan is a sect of those with the Tang surname.

So then, what is the Sichuan Tang Clan?

They’re the ones who swagger up to the main character with a cocky attitude, pick a fight, then get utterly beaten down and sent flying.

...At least, that’s how it was in the martial arts novels I’d read so far. Because their weapons are poison and hidden weapons, they’re convenient to use as villains.

When they’re on the protagonist’s side, they appear as a place that has a somewhat chilly side but still has loyalty. When they’re enemies, they appear as a place that uses vicious and despicable tricks.

They go back and forth across the boundary between the righteous sects and the evil ones.

In a way, they’re similar to the mafia in movies. When they’re the protagonists, they’re drawn as unbelievably cool, but when they appear as villains, you want to throw them straight into prison.

Honestly, it made sense. I mean, they do use poison. When someone comes running at you with a sword and you respond by flinging poison-coated hidden weapons, it looks cowardly somehow.

So I didn’t like the Sichuan Tang Clan that much. I was the kind of reader who shouted, “If you’re a martial artist, fight fair and square with a sword!”

Maybe because of that narrow-mindedness, when I opened my eyes I was doing laundry in the Sichuan Tang Clan.

Laundry, out of nowhere?

That was exactly how I felt on the day I possessed this body. Laundry? Why laundry all of a sudden?

I stared blankly at the washboard in my hand. Not a dream where I press a button on a washing machine, but a dream where I’m hand-washing clothes at a well?

“What a strange dream.”

After I muttered that, I thought that when I woke up I should look up what it means when you dream about laundry. I just naturally assumed it was a dream.

But even after I’d beaten all those trailing garments until they were clean, even after I’d drawn water from the well and rinsed the laundry thoroughly, I didn’t wake up.

Instead, all the sensations in my body became vividly clear. My hands, plunged into the cold water, were aching and stinging. I blew on my frozen hands. Warm breath brushed across the back of my hand.

...Why can I feel this?

A sudden thought came to me—that this might not be a dream. I jumped up and shoved my head straight into the well.

What wavered on the surface of the water was an unfamiliar face. I slowly blinked my eyes.

But the face in the well didn’t change. A girl I had never seen before was staring at me with an absent-minded look.

Something was wrong. I wiped off the wetness at my waist and touched my face. The girl in the well touched her face too.

Even dressed in shabby clothes, her pretty features couldn’t be hidden. I thought, She’ll be a great beauty when she grows up. The kind of child actress who would appear in a film that surpasses ten million viewers and become the nation’s little sister.

This wasn’t what was important. I shook my head and looked around.

My eyes took in a classic estate that looked like it had come straight out of a live-action Hong Kong martial arts film.

The great manor was so large I couldn’t see the end of it, and magnificent pavilions stood everywhere.

Judging by my appearance, I seemed to be a maid working in this manor.

In this unrealistic situation, a hypothesis I didn’t want to admit quietly rose up.

Possession.

I slapped both cheeks and took a deep breath. I’d hit myself with all my strength, so it hurt enough to bring tears to my eyes. This wasn’t a dream.

No way, this can’t be real. It can’t be. Calm down. Getting worked up won’t solve this situation.

Calmly figure out where I am, then make a plan—like that was going to happen.

What surged up instead was resentment.

Isn’t it an unspoken rule that possession stories start with, “When I opened my eyes, I saw an unfamiliar ceiling”? Why was mine, “When I opened my eyes, I was doing laundry”?

It was bad enough living like a company slave, and now I’m supposed to live as an actual servant in someone else’s house?

What the hell. Send me home.

*****

It took a full three days before I accepted reality.

I just couldn’t believe that someone who had lived in a world where you press one button and the washing and drying are done was now banging clothes on a washboard.

Eat the food I’m given, do the work I’m told to do, then collapse and sleep like I’ve passed out—repeating that, three days went by.

“Haa...”

I looked at the laundry basket in my arms and let out a sigh so deep it felt like it might cave the ground in. The basket was bigger than my torso, piled high with clothes soaked in lye water.

If I’ve worked for three days straight, shouldn’t they at least give me one day off? What a world with no compassion, no loyalty.

“The code of the martial world has fallen to the ground.”

When I muttered that, someone laughed as if they found it amusing and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Hey. What are you doing looking for the code of the martial world when you’re just someone who does laundry?”

I quickly turned around. A woman with freckles scattered across her cheeks was looking at me with a smile.

Her face felt familiar, and after blinking at her for a moment I realized she was the maid who shared a room with me. We’d ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) been sleeping in the same room for days, but I still kept getting her name mixed up. Was it Songji?

“Big Sis Songji.”

She didn’t say otherwise, so it seemed I’d gotten it right. I put on a meek expression and looked at Songji. She said,

“Quit spacing out and hurry up. You have to be back before lunch. The head steward said to gather at the servants’ courtyard at noon. You know how sensitive the Tang elders are, don’t you?”

“Got it.”

At Songji’s urging, I stuck my lip out and headed toward the washing place.

It hadn’t been that hard to realize this was the Sichuan Tang Clan. Everyone ended their sentences with, “In the Tang Clan,” “Our Tang Clan,” “The Tang Sect,” constantly singing its praises, so it would have been strange not to know.

The green robes that the Tang Clan people wore also played a role. Their trademark was hiding poison and hidden weapons inside sleeves so long they covered the backs of their hands.

Those damned Sichuan Tang Clan people were so obsessed with their stylish image that, while they looked empty-handed on the outside, if you stripped their sleeves off, they were the type to carry an entire armory of weapons in the pockets sewn inside.

Because the dragging sleeve ends and those inner pockets kept getting dirty, the people who did the laundry were the ones who suffered.

That would be me. Yes. Me.

I lifted my eyes to the sky with a gloomy face. My future seemed completely blocked. Where even was this? Was I really going to spend the rest of my life scrubbing other people’s sleeve grime?

Just the clue that this was the Tang Clan wasn’t enough to know which novel I was in. It would be harder to find a martial arts novel that didn’t have the Tang Clan in it.

To summarize my situation so far, it went like this:

I have been possessed into a martial arts novel.

I am a maid of the Sichuan Tang Clan in a body that doesn’t know any martial arts. (Judging from the fact that I’m still alive after doing hand-washing all day, I seem to be pretty strong, though.)

I don’t know which novel this is. I have no information.

I have no money.

Putting it in order only made it more hopeless. No money, no strength, no backing. I didn’t have a single thing needed to survive in the martial world.

...Can I really survive like this?