The Tyrant and the Genius

“Oh my, look at that! Little Young Master, can you see us?”

The maid smiled radiantly as she spoke. Tang Murin asked if he could try holding me, but he was rejected flatly. Upon being told that dropping me would lead to a disaster, he didn’t push further; instead, he simply gazed down at me with a face full of overwhelming emotion.

“Oh, my little brother…”

While Tang Murin was busy doting on me, a man stepped inside.

He was a man who could enter my quarters—the residence of a direct descendant of the Tang Clan—without a word of permission.

Watching him enter with a towering sense of intimidation and a disciplined, dignified gait, I felt my breath hitch for a moment. He was a young man of striking features, and his ornate robes billowed, creating a slight wind as he walked.

It felt as though anything caught in his gaze would be sliced apart by its sharp edge. It was only natural for anyone in his presence to shrink back.

Even Tang Murin was no exception.

“Greetings, My Lord Father.”

“Father.”

The maid, who had been chatting so lively until now, bowed deeply, and Tang Murin composed himself to offer a proper, mature greeting. From their reactions, I realized this was Tang Su-hyeok. Knowing exactly how terrifying this man was, my body began to tremble, but the Clan Leader simply let out a bright laugh and scooped me up into his arms.

Ugh, I feel like I’m going to get indigestion.

In that moment, I truly loathed the fact that I knew too much about the Clan Leader, Tang Su-hyeok.

But then again, he really was handsome. He possessed a rare, refined beauty and overflowed with confidence. Young, handsome, and the head of a prestigious Great Family—how much luck must one have to possess everything like this? His martial arts were at such a level that his poison techniques made the entire world tremble.

If the Eldest Son was four, the Clan Leader must be twenty-two right now. In other martial families, someone that age would barely be the Young Leader, but in the Tang Clan, the succession had passed to Tang Su-hyeok at an unusually early age.

“Murin, you are here every chance you get. When do you intend to practice? I can never seem to find you at the training grounds.”

His low, grounded voice carried a heavy weight of authority.

“I was practicing until just now and only just arrived,” Tang Murin offered a timid excuse.

“I sent someone to the training grounds three times. Each time, they reported you were absent. Are you suggesting my personal guards are lying to me?!”

Tang Murin couldn’t say a word and simply lowered his head.

“You little rascal. You think you’re old enough now to start lying to your father?”

He was barely four; how much “older” could he have possibly gotten? Watching the Clan Leader—the man rumored to be a nightmare—scolding Tang Murin made it hard for me to breathe. However, he clearly didn’t intend to stay angry for long. He turned his gaze back to me, his eyes curving into crescents.

“You’ve opened your eyes, Sarin. How can your eyes be so beautiful? They are as clear as the moon.”

His face, suddenly looming close, filled my vision. His eyes sparkled like obsidian, and his chiseled face looked more masculine and handsome the more I looked at it.

If I am this man’s son, will I grow up to have a face like that? Just imagining that future made my heart flutter.

Yes. This life is a success! As long as I stay on the good side of these two, my future will be a path of flowers. They both seem to like me, so let’s just make sure I don’t get on their bad side!

While I was thinking this, Tang Murin tried to find an opening to squeeze in and grab my foot. However, because the tall Clan Leader was holding me up high, the boy’s hands couldn’t reach, and he had to crane his neck back significantly just to see me.

Normally, seeing a child struggle like that, one would lower the baby so the brother could touch him, but the Clan Leader pointedly held me even higher.

Tang Murin’s face twisted with frustration and he bit his lip. He was already cute, but with his chubby baby cheeks, he looked incredibly adorable.

“Murin, you should leave now. Your lessons start soon.”

“Father, can’t I stay just a little longer? You don’t know how long I’ve waited for Sarin to open his eyes.”

“If that was your mindset, you should have finished your work diligently beforehand.”

It seemed he had no intention of granting permission. Instead, he cradled me, cooing and fussing over me as if he didn’t know what to do with his affection.

I had no choice but to keep staring at him. It was so overwhelming I wanted to turn my head away, but as a newborn, I couldn’t even support my own neck yet.

“You are like a gem. Truly cute. You take exactly after your father.”

Listening to such talk, I eventually burst into tears—simply because I was too hungry.

“It seems our Sarin is hungry. Go fetch the wet nurse at once.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

The maid brought the wet nurse, and I nursed vigorously. While doing so, I watched the wet nurse, and a thought about this body’s mother crossed my mind.

While noble women often hired wet nurses instead of breastfeeding themselves, my mother wasn’t just avoiding feeding me. From the moment I woke up in Tang Sarin’s body until now, I had never once seen the Lady of the house.

There was no way a baby this young could have done anything wrong, so I couldn’t understand the reason. Perhaps because the Mother didn’t visit, the Clan Leader and Tang Murin seemed to regard me with even deeper affection.

After nursing, I was handed back to the Clan Leader. Even then, Tang Murin was stubbornly holding his ground. The Clan Leader tried to scold him again, but he kept failing because he would break into a wide grin every time he looked at me.

“Father, now that Sarin has opened his eyes, how about I move my room here so I can stay with him? Sarin might be sad if he wakes up and I’m not there.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. Sarin is not the kind of child to be saddened by something so trivial.”

“I will teach Sarin many things.”

“Just stay still so you don’t end up teaching him something wrong.”

With that, he finally dragged Tang Murin out of my room.

“Sleep well, Sarin. Your father will return tomorrow, so rest well until then.”

As he was being pulled away, Tang Murin waved at me with a pitiful expression.

“Even if you miss your big brother, you have to endure it, Sarin! We’ll see each other again soon!”

It seemed they only spoke to each other when they were in front of me; as they walked out, the two of them moved quite a distance apart from one another.

They were a truly strange father and son.

From the next day on, Tang Murin would chatter to me about everything he had learned. Sometimes he misunderstood things, but for his age, his memory was excellent and he was quite bright.

“Today, I learned about the Ten Poisons of the Tang Clan from Elder Dok-su. But I think Bone-Melting Powder is much cooler. They said I’m too young to see it in person right now, but they’ll show it to me later. They say if it touches a bone, it melts right away. Isn’t that amazing? They said the main house has tons of poisons like that. But they said it’s still not enough. If we make more and stronger poisons, no sect in the Jianghu will ever dare to look down on us.”

Even though I knew I was born into the Sichuan Tang Clan, I never imagined I’d be hearing stories like that as a baby. The door opened quietly and the Clan Leader walked in, but Tang Murin continued to chatter, unaware.

“Do you want to see the Bone-Melting Powder? Should your big brother sneak a little bit out? Should we catch a fly and melt it together?”

Since the Clan Leader had heard everything Tang Murin said, I expected the boy to be in huge trouble. However, the Clan Leader merely snorted. After chasing Tang Murin out again with a command to go practice, he sat before me and began laying out all sorts of grand plans.

“Sarin. First, it is Sichuan. How many sects can there be in such a small piece of land? Grow up quickly so you can conquer Sichuan with your father. After that, we shall send challenge letters to the Great Families and the Nine Sects One Union. We will crush their dojos. It would be quite nice to break all their sect plaques and use them as firewood for our house, wouldn’t it?”

He was saying these things while holding a baby. Both the father and the son were like natural-born killers, yet I couldn’t understand why they became so gentle in front of me.

The Mother still didn’t come. Not when I started to walk, nor when I began to speak. Even when the entire Tang Clan celebrated my milestones, she never sought me out.

I did see her from a distance once. I saw her walking with Tang Murin and doting on him. This made me wonder if she wasn’t my biological mother. If I were the child of a concubine, her coldness would make sense.

In any case, since she wasn’t “my” mother in my heart, I didn’t feel particularly slighted by her dislike. If anything, her coldness made Tang Murin and the Clan Leader even more protective of me, so it felt like a gain.

Time flew by, and I grew rapidly under the care of the maids.

When I toddled around with my soft, chubby body, everyone who saw me looked like they were about to collapse from the cuteness. Life is quite easy when your face is this adorable.

A life where most people become defenseless and can’t stop smiling just by looking at me—reincarnation was definitely worth it.

“Sariiiiiin!”

Tang Murin, nearing his ninth birthday, came running toward me.

He had been handsome as a child, but as the years passed, his features became more refined and his limbs grew long and slender. Thanks to his dedicated training, he was perfectly balanced; it was as if he had taken only the best traits from the Clan Leader.

He was the Grand Young Master, destined to inherit the position of Clan Leader. Even the servants couldn’t dare to act casually around him, and Murin carried himself with dignity in their presence.

This applied to both his speech and his actions. However, the moment he stood before me, his eyes would curve into those crescents, and he simply didn’t know what to do with his affection for me.