Legend of the Wandering Wolf Knight
"What did you say?! The Grand Artist Dokgo visited the Muban Inn?!"
Morning had barely broken, and while Sanwol was still happily wandering through the land of dreams, an uproar erupted in the quarters reserved for the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering—specifically within the Namgung Clan's courtyard. The source of the commotion was none other than the Tyrant Sword Divine Genius himself, Namgung Mugyeol.
He was, in a sense, the pioneer reader who had plucked Nangahyeopjeon from the obscure shelves of a bookstore and unleashed it upon the city of Wuhan. At the same time, he was the peerless arsonist who had set all of Wuhan ablaze with the Nangahyeopjeon craze, reducing the leadership of the Murim Alliance to utter shambles.
"This is no time to idle about. Don't bother with breakfast for me; I must leave for the Muban Inn at once!"
A beaming smile spread across Mugyeol's face as he threw on his martial robes. At his hip, he strapped on a hefty coin pouch befitting his noble standing alongside the famous sword permitted solely to the Young Patriarch of the Namgung Clan. Unleashing his lightness skill in a flash, Namgung Mugyeol vaulted clean over the residence wall and dashed straight toward the Muban Inn. A servant had just brought word that Sanwol—the elusive creator of Nangahyeopjeon, unheard from for two full months—had finally shown his face.
They said he was a master of the Peak Realm... As expected, a magnificent work could only spring from a magnificent spirit.
Namgung Mugyeol was an ardent fan of Nangahyeopjeon, second to none in his devotion. Yet he was also a born martial prodigy, hailed far and wide as the rising star of the Namgung Clan. His mind had already spiraled into an ecstatic tangle of daydreams about the time he would spend with Sanwol. In his imagination, the two of them were already deep in profound conversation over the plot of Nangahyeopjeon and its hidden moral philosophies, sparring together to hone their martial arts and forging an unbreakable bond of brotherhood. Truly, the other party hadn't even offered a morsel, yet Mugyeol was already drinking up the banquet in his head.
Sprinting with all his might, Mugyeol arrived at the Muban Inn in a matter of minutes. Figuring he might as well soothe his morning hunger while he waited, he ordered a basket of meat dumplings and a bowl of thin noodles, then sat down and scanned his surroundings. And so, where was this Peak Realm master, this illustrious creator of Nangahyeopjeon...? He was nowhere to be found.
No, wait. I was told he's a regular patron. If I wait just a little, he is bound to appear.
Mugyeol did not know Sanwol's face or attire. However, as an elite master of the Peak Realm himself, he was more than capable of discerning the spiritual presence of another warrior who had reached the same height. All he had to do was plant himself in the inn and wait until he sensed that unmistakable presence.
Lurking around might draw a few strange looks, but no one in their right mind would dare pick a quarrel with the Young Patriarch of the Namgung Clan. Besides, as long as he kept ordering dishes whenever his mouth grew bored, the waiter would hardly complain.
And so, Namgung Mugyeol waited.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour, two hours, four hours...
As the endless, open-ended wait stretched on, a hauntingly familiar sensation crept over him. It felt precisely like the agony of finishing Volume One of Nangahyeopjeon and waiting for Volume Two.
...Why isn't he coming?
Cruelly betraying Mugyeol's fervent hopes, Sanwol did not set foot in the inn that day. There were two primary reasons. First, his face had been thoroughly exposed to the public at his favorite haunt the evening before. Second, he was simply dead asleep, sprawled out like a log.
Naturally, having no way of knowing this, Namgung Mugyeol was eventually forced to drag himself away in utter exhaustion. From the Hour of the Dragon in the morning until the Hour of the Sheep in the afternoon—nearly half the entire day—he had staked out the inn. It was an astonishing display of sheer endurance.
And right around that time, Sanwol finally opened his eyes.
"Mmmgh, what a great sleep."
Sanwol's days were busy. Though he had only just woken up, he swiftly sorted through his mental checklist and sprang into motion.
"Maybe I really should've cleaned up before passing out."
First order of business: cleaning. Having spent the previous night illustrating the entirety of Volume Two, he hadn't cleaned up a single thing. He neatly stacked and set aside the dried manuscript pages of Nangahyeopjeon. When he examined his brush and inkstone, however, he found the ink dried completely solid—to a point where cleaning them indoors was out of the question.
In the end, Sanwol produced a wrapping cloth, packed up the brush and inkstone along with a cleaning brush and a few sheets of rice paper, and stepped out of the house. His destination was the mountain stream running behind his home. Hardened ink had to be rinsed away with plenty of running water; using stagnant water in a basin would turn it pitch-black in seconds, rendering the whole effort futile.
Unfurling his lightness skill, Sanwol bounded lightly from treetop to treetop, reaching the bubbling stream in no time.
"The inkstone isn't too badly encrusted, but I might have to replace the brush entirely."
Unwrapping his bundle, Sanwol muttered to himself to stave off the quiet solitude while diligently scrubbing his tools. Cleaning an inkstone took elbow grease, but it was straightforward enough. He submerged the stone in the running mountain water to soften the caked ink, blotted up the bulk of it with rice paper, dipped it again, and worked the scrub brush into every nook and cranny the paper couldn't reach before blotting it one last time. All that remained was to leave it in a sunny patch to air-dry.
"Tsk, this brush is in terrible shape."
The brush was another story altogether. Caring for the tip—the bristle head that holds the ink—was notoriously difficult. Even in the technologically advanced modern era, the maintenance of traditional Asian brushes remained an eternal headache for calligraphy and ink-wash painting enthusiasts. Due to the delicate nature of the bristles, a brush had to be rinsed immediately after use and hung to dry in a well-ventilated spot. But the brush Sanwol had abandoned after finishing his manuscript was caked stiff, ink clinging stubbornly to every single hair. One look told him it was beyond saving.
"Nothing to be done. Guess I'll have to buy a new one."
Sanwol gave the bristles a cursory rinse in the stream, scooped out a small patch of earth nearby, and gave the brush a proper burial. Some might accuse him of illegal dumping, but alas, the august statutory laws of the Central Plains were still primitive and lacked environmental regulations. Besides, the shaft was wood and the bristles were animal hair. What harm could entirely biodegradable, all-natural materials do to Mother Earth? He buried the used rice paper alongside the brush for good measure, leaving only the inkstone and scrub brush in his bundle as he made his way down the mountain.
Screeech.
Returning home, Sanwol winced at the ear-splitting shriek of the door hinges.
Once I make enough money, moving out is my top priority.
After a brief grumble, Sanwol laid out the stacked manuscript pages and began arranging them in proper order. In the Central Plains, books were read and written in the opposite direction compared to modern Korea—from right to left. Having rearranged the comic pages with that in mind, Sanwol fetched a sewing kit from a drawer and threaded a needle. To make proper use of Secret Manual Duplication, the work first needed to take the physical form of a book. While a fully bound book wasn't an absolute requirement to trigger the ability, replicating a completed book was vastly more efficient than duplicating loose sheets and stitching every single copy by hand.
And so began Sanwol's bookbinding session. He stitched the comic manuscript together first, then bound it a second time with a pre-prepared cover. Only when cover and manuscript were united into a single, finished volume did the replication process begin. He was truly a one-man cottage publishing empire.
Duplicate, duplicate, and duplicate.
After producing ten copies of Volume Two, Sanwol halted the duplication. He stored the original manuscript of Volume Two in the same drawer that housed Volume One's original. Sure, he could replicate from duplicates, but there was a certain sentimental value to preserving the original master copy. At any rate, with ten pristine copies of Volume Two in hand, Sanwol pulled out another wrapping cloth. This time, instead of an inkstone and scrub brush, he bundled up the ten volumes of Nangahyeopjeon and walked out the door.
"Anyone here?!"
"Keep it down, you'll tear my eardrums out! You could just walk in—why shout your head off?"
The place Sanwol visited was a bookstore of respectable size in Wuhan, run by a man named Kang. Having previously promised to consign the next volume of Nangahyeopjeon here, Sanwol had come now that Volume Two was complete.
"Let's call it common courtesy."
"What courtesy does a Peak Realm master owe a humble bookseller?"
Kang waved his hand in feigned annoyance, but Sanwol didn't miss the subtle pitch in his voice or the twitch at the corner of his lips. Following the clearly delighted shopkeeper deeper inside, Sanwol was met with an inquisitive gaze that asked what brought him here today. Grinning, Sanwol extended the cloth bundle.
Kang sucked in a sharp, ragged breath. His normally sullen eyes flew wide, his pupils trembling faintly as his hands crept toward the knot of the wrapping cloth with utmost reverence.
"Could this... could this possibly be that?"
"It certainly is."
Neither man explicitly stated what "that" was, yet both shopkeeper Kang and Sanwol knew with absolute certainty what lay inside.
At last, Kang's fingers loosened the knot. The cloth parted like blossoming petals, gliding softly aside.
Lo and behold—the epoch-defining masterpiece that had set Wuhan ablaze and brought the Murim Alliance to its knees! A whole ten copies of Volume Two of Nangahyeopjeon, the work that had rewritten the landscape of entertainment across the Central Plains, lay neatly stacked before him.
Sanwol's mouth curled into a satisfied smirk at their dazzling presence, while Kang trembled from head to toe as though gazing upon a sacred mythical beast. After a stunned pause, a sudden thought seemed to strike the bookseller. Whirling around, Kang hurried toward the storeroom he normally kept firmly padlocked.
Sanwol shot him a baffled look, wondering what on earth he was doing, only for Kang to frantically beckon him over to lend a hand.
Rolling up his sleeves, Sanwol assisted the huffing, puffing bookseller in dragging a massive burlap sack all the way to the front counter.
"What on earth is this?"
Sanwol gaped in astonishment. The sack easily weighed dozens of gwan—a heavy measure typically reserved for metal ingots. He had literally been forced to circulate his internal energy just to haul the thing. When Sanwol asked what he had just brought out, Kang replied with nonchalant satisfaction.
"What else could it be? It's the silver your Nangahyeopjeon brought in. This is what's left after deducting my ten percent cut."
Sanwol was rendered utterly speechless. In that single sack rested more money than he had earned in his entire life since transmigrating into this world. And to think this staggering fortune was merely what remained after the bookstore took its modest ten percent consignment fee.
"Normally, I'd take a thirty percent cut," Kang chuckled, adding as an aside, "but even at ten percent, I made enough to eat and laze about for years." He flicked Sanwol's forehead as the young man stood there, staring blankly at the sack. "There are still several more sacks inside, so you'd better get to hauling."
Only then did the explosive popularity of Nangahyeopjeon truly sink in. Indeed, nothing served as a more convincing metric of success than cold, hard, tangible wealth.