A New Business Venture
Quite some time had passed since Sanwol tendered his resignation at the escort bureau and became a free man.
“Young Master, your morning meal is prepared.”
“Understood. I’ll be out shortly.”
Answering the servant from behind the door, Sanwol sat up in bed. A spacious, sunlit room washed in warmth filled his vision. One might easily mistake it for a suite in some luxurious inn, but it was classified as a private residence. Complete with a sprawling courtyard garden, dozens of chambers, and a proper bathhouse, it was nothing short of a manor.
“Money really is the best…”
Sanwol muttered the honest thought aloud, stretching with deep, heartfelt contentment. The owner of this lavish estate was none other than himself. After tiring of house hunting for days, he had simply bought what happened to be the smallest manor on the market. Even then, it was far too vast for one person to occupy alone, but fortunately, he had money to spare.
His reasoning was simple: if hands were short, hire more. The most vexing chores of solitary life—sweeping, scrubbing, cooking—were completely outsourced through the sheer power of capital. Nor was it an unreasonable expense; it fell comfortably within what he could afford. It was just that Sanwol’s coin purse was no ordinary purse, making his definition of "affordable" somewhat broader than most.
“This morning’s fare is spiced boiled pork, fine noodles in hot broth, and side dishes of fresh greens.”
“Sounds good. Appreciate it.”
The servant trailed behind Sanwol on the way to the dining hall, reciting the morning menu. Sanwol smacked his lips in anticipation, nodded, and dismissed the servant with a casual wave.
Once breakfast concluded, it was time for master and servants alike to attend to their duties. The staff tended to the upkeep of the estate, carrying out Sanwol’s instructions, while Sanwol trained his martial arts and drew comics in his spare moments. His daily routine amounted to that of a typical martial artist, with comic drawing tacked on. He felt he was indulging in unheralded luxury for once in his life, yet considering his income and fattened coffers, it was actually rather modest.
In the manor’s courtyard garden, as Sanwol manifested golden Sword Qi and polished his forms, a voice called out to him. It was the servant tasked with receiving guests.
“Young Master, Master Kang Seokho of Muho Bookstore has arrived.”
“Uncle Kang?”
“Yes, sir. He seemed to have urgent matters to discuss with you.”
Hearing of Kang Seokho’s visit, Sanwol paused his training. Following the servant to the reception parlor, he slid open the door and was greeted by a welcome, familiar face.
“What brings you here at this hour? I thought you’d be swamped managing the bookstore.”
Sanwol dismissed the servant with a wave, leaving only the two of them in the luxurious parlor. Glad to see him, Sanwol took a seat, but Kang Seokho let out a heavy sigh and glared daggers at him.
“You little punk, do you even have any idea what’s happening at my shop right now?”
“Huh? Did you get robbed or something?”
When Kang Seokho sounded as though catastrophe had struck, Sanwol offered the most plausible deduction with a bewildered look. But Kang Seokho shook his head, sighed again, and spat out his grievance.
“There’re too damn many people.”
“What do you mean, too many people?”
“There’re so many people mobbing the shop, I can’t control the crowd anymore!”
Only then did Sanwol let out an “Ah,” grasping the situation instantly.
“Everyone in Wuhan is dying to read Nangahyeopjeon, and my Muho Bookstore is the only shop carrying it!”
In short, supply was nowhere close to meeting demand. Almost the entire populace of Wuhan was clamoring for Nangahyeopjeon, yet it could only be obtained at Muho Bookstore. Naturally, the masses swarmed a single location, and with nearly all of Wuhan converging on one spot, crowd control became impossible.
“Now what to do…”
There was a saying: row when the tide comes in. It compared life-changing opportunities to incoming water, and the effort to seize them to pulling the oars. By that logic, the Nangahyeopjeon Sanwol had drawn was a rushing tidal surge—fiercer and more overflowing than any river. Anyone could see this was the golden highway to success. To stop rowing now would be kicking away a fortune with his own two feet.
Sanwol pondered deeply. Was there a way to solve this bottleneck? How could he easily manage the crowds while matching supply to skyrocketing demand?
“…Uncle Kang. I know this sounds a bit sudden, but how about you close the bookstore and go into business with me?”
At last, Sanwol came up with an idea—a scheme that could break through the current impasse in one fell swoop and prevent such headaches in the future. And that plan required Kang Seokho’s help. More accurately, it required the veteran experience he had gathered from years of running a bookstore.
“Let’s build a tea house where people can read comic books.”
A space where customers could enjoy tea and light snacks while reading comics. No such establishment existed anywhere in the Central Plains, but to Sanwol, armed with the sensibilities of a modern person, it was intimately familiar.
A Comic Tea House.
In his former life, it was known as a manga café.
The root of Nangahyeopjeon’s dilemma lay in the imbalance between supply and demand. Naturally, there were only two solutions: increase supply to meet demand, or choke demand down to meet supply. Choosing the latter would be cultural suicide, effectively strangling his own work, which left increasing supply as the only viable option.
Ordinary mortals would have despaired and given up right here, given that printing technology in the Central Plains was severely underdeveloped. But Sanwol was superhuman. He possessed a power beyond even the realm of the World’s Greatest Martial Artist. As long as his Secret Manual Duplication remained operational, Sanwol could churn out enough stock to satisfy any level of demand.
The real problem is coming up with an excuse.
Comics demanded vastly more labor than novels. The sole reason the circulating copies of Nangahyeopjeon had been capped at ten was due to this very issue of manpower. In reality, Sanwol had simply freeloaded off his Secret Manual Duplication. But that ability was his alone, and under no circumstances could the world learn of it. Replicating any martial manual or tome with a mere touch carried terrifying implications. If the secret got out, there was no telling what grim fate awaited him; at the very least, it would not end well. Thus, he needed a plausible cover story—something that concealed his duplication power while convincing the public that mass production was somehow legitimate.
The answer was surprisingly simple.
The success of Nangahyeopjeon had stemmed from modern knowledge. Then where did its current problem originate? In his past life, Sanwol had completed South Korea’s entire standard curriculum and earned a university bachelor’s degree. He had even worked as a comic artist back then. It didn’t take him long to diagnose the issue facing his comic and its root cause. His brilliant comprehension flared fiercely, flexing its intellectual might, until his brain arrived at a single conclusion:
The obstacle confronting Nangahyeopjeon was none other than modern common sense.
Knowledge and common sense might appear similar at a glance, but they harbored a massive difference: knowledge was absolute, whereas common sense was relative. Common sense varied wildly depending on the era and the land one lived in, just as the norms of ancient Uruk, medieval Europe, and modern Korea were worlds apart.
Foolishly, Sanwol had clung to modern common sense all this time. His soul had not merely crossed time and space; it had leaped over the boundary of life and death, transmigrating into an entirely different universe. If the world was different, the baseline of human reason ought to differ as well. Why had he shackled himself to petty common sense and remained blind until now?
Heavens, only now do I understand.
Thus, Sanwol attained an epiphany. Had his cultivation realm been at the late Peak Realm, this great enlightenment might have vaulted him straight into the Super-Peak Realm:
In this Central Plains, one must never be bound by common sense!
Though whether such an epiphany could be considered sane was a question only time could answer.
Having cast aside all common sense and hyper-evolved into the “Neo-Sanwol,” he began duplicating Nangahyeopjeon with reckless abandon.
Ten copies, twenty copies, thirty copies…
The stacks of volumes one and two mounted endlessly, multiplying until they hit one hundred copies each—two hundred volumes in total.
Sanwol had concocted the perfect excuse. This was a world where starlight clung to blades and martial arts functioned as supernatural superpowers. People wielded whatever they could get their hands on as weapons, and failing that, turned their very flesh into lethal tools. In such a Central Plains, who was to say there couldn’t be a martial art performed with a writing brush?
An art that accelerated manual dexterity and sharpened precision, enabling the practitioner to produce drawings at blinding speed.
If he had to give it a name, it would be something like the Fast Hands Pure Brush Technique.
Naturally, Sanwol had never learned any such thing. It didn’t exist in the first place.
But as the old proverb went, three men spreading a rumor could conjure a tiger in the market square. Sanwol intended to leverage his greatest weapon: his fame. To put it bluntly, he was simply going to thicken his hide and brazen it out. Some might cry foul and brand it absurd nonsense, but what difference could the shouts of a few ordinary men make? If they had a problem with it, they would have to beat Sanwol in the arena of public opinion.
Truly, a most honorable and upright approach.