Tang Soran

Tang Soran is the eldest daughter of the Sichuan Tang Clan, a master of poisons and hidden weapons whom the world knows by the proud name «Poison Phoenix» and, after her victory at the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering, as the «Heavenly Phoenix». Spoiled by everyone's love, she grew up with a hollow in her soul: her inner demon is an unquenchable hunger to possess what belongs to others, for she feels truly alive only when she takes away what is dear to someone else.

Having lost to Cheongwol and uncovered her secret, Tang Soran herself begs Han Seojin to «cure» her inner demon too — and becomes his second masochist. His games bring color back to her grey world; she falls into obsessive love, keeping him from slipping away with blackmail and cunning. In the finale she agrees to be the public face of the Hidden Dragon Society, secretly holding in reserve the «one wish» her father promised her, with which she means to make the shopkeeper her husband.

Tang Soran is a dazzling beauty with smooth, milk-white skin she is proud of and short glossy hair with a faint greenish sheen that sways in the wind. Her eyes are narrow and elongated, and when she smiles dimples show in both cheeks. She is shorter than both Cheongwol and Han Seojin.

She dresses in the green silk of the Tang Clan with long sleeves in which she hides needles and daggers. On the road, stripped of luxury, she turns into a grubby, disheveled figure barely distinguishable from a beggar-girl — and, to her own surprise, finds joy in it.

In public Tang Soran is a dignified, modest and caring eldest daughter, everyone's darling; alone with Han Seojin she is a capricious, mischievous, lewdness-loving girl who teases and torments him just to seize his attention. In maturity, Han Seojin jokes, she is not far from a young novice.

Her inner demon is a bottomless emptiness: raised in a world where everything simply came to her, she never learned to cherish anything and only comes alive by taking away what is dear to others. Hence her possessive obsession: she wanted Han Seojin precisely because Cheongwol wanted him. At the same time she is a natural masochist who provokes in order to be put in her place, and secretly torments herself over her «ugly, thieving» nature.

Tang Soran is the eldest, cherished daughter of the Poison King Tang Chokkhon, the «precious pearl» of the clan, never once scolded in her life and given everything she ever asked for. It was precisely this absence of refusal that raised a person who knows no satisfaction.

After her defeat by Cheongwol at an earlier Dragon and Phoenix Gathering, her inner demon grew so large that for nearly a year she sat locked in her chambers, refusing training and food and weeping at dawn — until Han Seojin's games secretly «cured» her. In the original «Bloody Path» she is fated to die at the hands of the demoness Cheongwol, and her father to fall avenging her; Han Seojin averts this fate.

Spotting Han Seojin beside the disguised Cheongwol, Tang Soran unravels their secret and resolves: «I'll take him». She lures him into the Tang Clan, provokes him into a spanking — and, breaking down under his tenderness and praise, weeps for the first time in years and comes back to herself. Thus she becomes his second masochist.

She shares a month-long journey with him after the stolen Immortal Root, learns poverty and finds it sweet; she wrecks her own betrothal to stay with him, and hears her marriage proposals refused again and again. At the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering she breaks through to Peak level, defeats Cheongwol and wins the title of Heavenly Phoenix — yet feels the loser, for Han Seojin chose not her.

Saving him from the Demonic Cult, she hides him inside the Tang Clan itself and wins intimacy with cunning and potions. When he founds the Hidden Dragon Society, she agrees to be its public leader — but only in exchange for the promised «one wish», with which she means to bind the shopkeeper in marriage.

Tang Soran is a first-rank warrior, a Peak-level master and a virtuoso of the Sichuan Tang Clan's poison arts. She wields poisoned needles of every kind — each carrying its own death — hides blades in her long sleeves, and is nearly immune to poisons, for she has tasted them on herself.

She fights brilliantly against many at once, downing a dozen bandits in mere moments, and her Sichuan sleight of hand surpasses even the Kaebang's thieving craft. She can open meridians, channel energy and teach cultivation, and the Tang Clan's resources let her turn all of Chengdu into a fortress guarding Han Seojin.