Chapter 1: I Became the Protagonist.
Chapter 1: I Became the Protagonist.
The movements of my hands and feet felt strange.
I kept clenching and unclenching them, but they still wouldn't feel familiar. I'd thought it was just my imagination, but this wasn't a dream. It was reality, and these really were my hands and feet.
It was only the unfamiliar, handsome young boy reflected in the bronze mirror before me who wasn't me.
"What on earth happened?"
It wasn't that I didn't recognize the face.
The problem was that this was the protagonist of the smutty martial arts novel Wind and Cloud Harem Record I'd been reading.
Namgung Gang-o, the protagonist, was the one-in-a-generation prodigy of the Namgung Clan, born with extraordinary talent.
His talent was so exceptional that eventually, he would take not only heroines from the righteous faction but also heroines from the unorthodox faction, and even the Heavenly Demon, as his wives.
"I'm Namgung Gang-o?"
All I'd done was finish reading the novel.
The story was fun, and the heroine illustrations and sex scenes were hot, so I liked it. There was nothing I could complain about.
In fact, I'd even left a 5,700-character review saying I was looking forward to the remake.
It was a review that had even made it to number one in likes.
'Ah. So that's why?'
These days, novels had all kinds of trends when it came to reincarnation into a story. It was a cliché by now, wasn't it? Leave a 5,700-character scathing review and, of course, you get reincarnated—but if you support the story too much, the author thanks you by reincarnating you, too.
I figured this was probably what had happened.
I'd left such a glowing review that the author had made me the protagonist of the remake.
I'd been snatched away from my perfectly peaceful life and reincarnated without my consent...but objectively speaking, the situation itself wasn't bad.
I'd been nothing but a shut-in who acted tough from the safety of his room, and now I'd become the protagonist of a smutty martial arts novel, with talent few could match. There was no way I'd dislike that.
The problem was Namgung Gang-o's—and now my—background. Namgung Gang-o had enough talent to devour the Purple Micro Star, the Heavenly Killing Star, and anyone else, but because he was an illegitimate child, he was subjected to severe discrimination.
So until he became an overpowered master, he faced all sorts of interference and obstruction from the Namgung Clan.
Of course, after he became clan head, he swallowed up everything belonging to the clan and made it his own.
'There's only one thing I need to do right now.'
A little while later, a fire broke out in the archives where the martial arts manuals were stored.
***
Running away from the Namgung Clan had been an excellent choice.
Escaping the Namgung Clan, one of the leaders of the Five Great Clans, wasn't usually easy. The security was tight, and as you'd expect of the Sword King's Domain, even the martial arts handed out to ordinary warriors were on a completely different level from something like the basic Three Talents Sword Art.
But no one paid any attention to a five-year-old illegitimate son who hadn't even been taught martial arts.
Besides, the archives I'd set alight were the Third-Class Archives, where any ordinary warrior could read to their heart's content. Thanks to that, they were guarded by third-rate warriors with no motivation, so getting out wasn't all that difficult.
"Easy."
I was even more pleased to find the money pouch tied at my waist nice and full.
Even though I was an illegitimate child, I was still blood, and there had been quite a few money pouches in my room. Thanks to that, I could make it all the way to Ganluo in Sichuan Province without much trouble.
'First, I'll learn this Thunder Heaven Divine Art I took from the archives as I travel. After that, I'll go claim the Fortuitous Encounter waiting there.'
In Wind and Cloud Harem Record, Namgung Gang-o wasn't allowed to enter the Third-Class Archives until he was twenty.
The martial art he learned there was the Thunder Heaven Divine Art.
As you'd expect of a divine art, the Thunder Heaven Divine Art was an outstanding martial art. In terms of power, it was peerless—there was no comparison for it except the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. But there was a simple reason it was kept in the Namgung Clan's Third-Class Archives.
Anyone whose constitution wasn't suited to it would suffer a side effect: their blood vessels couldn't withstand the Lightning Qi and would burst.
To learn it, you had to either possess a Thunder God Body, which was compatible with Lightning Qi, or have blood vessels thick and sturdy enough to endure it.
Even if you could handle that, there was another problem: your hair turned golden, and your skin turned brown after being seared by the electricity. As it happened, the second issue wasn't a big deal for me, so I decided not to worry about it.
And the first issue wasn't much of a problem, either. Having become Namgung Gang-o, I'd been born with two exceptional constitutions: the Thunder God Body and the Heavenly Martial Body.
'The Thunder God Body can't be confirmed unless you try learning a martial art that uses Lightning Qi, so the Namgung bloodline must've decided not to put it in some other archive where their precious family members could learn it.'
Since I had no attachment to the Namgung name, I could only be grateful to the Namgung Clan, as someone with no blood ties to them.
Thanks to them, I could learn a divine art like this, and I'd even secured travel money for a long journey in search of a Fortuitous Encounter—all at the Namgung Clan's expense.
As a sort of repayment, though I wasn't sure it really counted as one, I decided not to sleep with women from the Namgung side from now on.
Sure, I'd gotten the protagonist's body, but I didn't have to live like a hero just because he did. That was why I'd change my name and sever ties with the Namgung Clan, wasn't it?
I wasn't going to be some hero. I was going to be a Lust Demon, letting my lower half run wild to its heart's content.
A Lust Demon!