How Entertaining Must This Book Be?
"Just how entertaining must this book be for my friend to raise this kind of ruckus over it?"
Scholar Hwang left his friend—who had come rushing over in a frenzy—in the next room for a moment to calm down, then fixed his gaze on Dangga Pungun.
A friend who had ignored every recommendation and never shown the slightest interest in books had come pounding on his door in the middle of the night over the next volume. Just what kind of story could possibly be inside?
The shopkeeper had called it an erotic martial arts novel. Was it really true that in Joseon, the mere appearance of such a book would draw crowds so thick they packed the street in front of the bookshop?
With a pounding heart, Scholar Hwang opened the first page of Dangga Pungun.
"Huh. So the protagonist really is from the Sichuan Dang Clan."
It wasn't as if novels set against real sects or great families had never existed. They had simply never measured up to Scholar Hwang's standards and always bored him. But an erotic novel starring someone from the Sichuan Dang Clan?
His heart still racing, Scholar Hwang began to read.
The protagonist's name was Dang Jeong.
He was a young man skilled in the poison arts and hidden-weapon techniques of the Sichuan Dang Clan, upright in character and overflowing with chivalrous spirit.
"A protagonist with this kind of personality usually isn't very interesting."
Scholar Hwang frowned slightly.
He could already see the rest of the story. Do good deeds, suffer hardships, do more good deeds, face crisis after crisis, and keep repeating the same foolish, bear-like cycle of getting wounded. These kinds of heroes were impossible to understand. The more you read, the more the frustration piled up.
If not for his friend's reaction, Scholar Hwang would have slammed the book shut then and there. Pushing his unease aside, he forced himself to keep turning the pages.
"Ohh. Sichuan's Number One Beauty!"
Did they actually line women up in Sichuan and rank them by looks? He had never heard such a thing, so it had to be a term the author invented. Truly a clever idea.
Right after the upright protagonist came the most beautiful woman in all of Sichuan.
The hero's personality might seem frustrating, but if he became entangled with a woman like that, it would be a pleasure all its own.
Scholar Hwang sank deeper into the story.
Sichuan's Number One Beauty, Gu Sukjeong. She was a single blooming flower. Countless young men of the martial world had trembled before her full-blown beauty, tried their seductions, cast their longing glances—only to be rejected every single time.
"Here. You dropped your handkerchief."
"Thank you."
One day, the protagonist Dang Jeong picked up the handkerchief of Sichuan's Number One Beauty and received her thanks.
"You! Coming from a clan that uses hidden weapons and poisons! How dare you!"
"How dare you monopolize Sichuan's Number One Beauty's smile?"
Dang Jeong himself fell for her at first sight, yet he knew his place. An ordinary face. Even though he belonged to Sichuan's greatest clan, their martial arts were pointed at behind their backs.
Youths handsomer than him and far stronger in martial arts still failed to catch her eye.
Someone like him could never approach a woman that beautiful—could not even hold her in his heart. Dang Jeong suffered.
"Khh. He's just like ordinary me."
With a thoroughly unconscionable reaction, Scholar Hwang found himself projecting onto the ordinary-looking yet upright protagonist before he even realized it.
He wanted to draw closer to her.
Because he carried one woman in his heart, the protagonist achieved martial progress faster than anyone. And at last, with the elders' permission, he was allowed to set out into the jianghu.
"A Lust Demon has appeared in Sichuan!"
Countless women had fallen victim to the Lust Demon. Furious, Dang Jeong set out on his trail. At the end of the chase he found the Lust Demon on the verge of violating a woman.
And of all people, the woman about to be raped was—
"You dog bastard! How dare you try to violate Sichuan's Number One Beauty?"
It was Gu Sukjeong, Sichuan's Number One Beauty.
"You! How dare you lay a hand on her!"
"Young hero, run!"
The protagonist barely managed to stop the Lust Demon from raping Sichuan's Number One Beauty, yet the Lust Demon had no intention of giving her up.
"Heheheh. You dare interfere with this old man's business? As a greenhorn just stepping into the jianghu, you must not know your place."
The opponent was a Lust Demon who had slaughtered countless martial artists for the sake of violating women. Against him, the protagonist's skill was nowhere near enough.
"Miss! My skill is meager; I cannot guarantee victory. But if the Lust Demon wishes to reach you, he must first take my head."
"Khh. Cool. That's how a man should be!"
The protagonist's upright nature might create frustration, but this kind of frustration was more than welcome.
For Sichuan's Number One Beauty, the protagonist began a fight he seemed certain to lose.
Sichuan's Number One Beauty could only stare endlessly at the broad back of the man willing to stake his life for her.
"You bastard! All you know how to do is throw hidden weapons! Coward!"
"A man who poisons a fragile woman and tries to rape her has no right to speak of cowardice!"
If it had been an ordinary fight between martial artists, the outcome would have been decided in a few exchanges. But the protagonist was of the Sichuan Dang Clan.
"The fight scenes are so good I could almost believe someone from the Sichuan Dang Clan actually wrote them."
The protagonist kept his distance, calmly targeting the Lust Demon's vital points with hidden weapons to paralyze him, and the instant a gap appeared he flung another into a death acupoint.
"Kahahaha! You think this old man will fall to children's games?"
The Lust Demon swatted the incoming hidden weapons aside as if they were mere falling leaves and closed in on the protagonist. A desperate crisis.
"No!"
So he was going to lose to the Lust Demon after all. Scholar Hwang cried out without realizing it.
"Children's games? Does the martial art of the Sichuan Dang Clan look like children's games to you?"
Despite Scholar Hwang's dread, the protagonist laughed at the Lust Demon and spoke with perfect calm.
"Khh! When did you scatter caltrops on the ground? No—my body? You bastard! You used poison!"
"Poison arts are the exclusive domain of the Sichuan Dang Clan. To grow arrogant just because you know a little amateur poison work..."
"Khhhk! You bastard!"
"Come, then. Into my poisonous killing space—."
Such composure. The Lust Demon fell into confusion.
The countless caltrops the protagonist had somehow already scattered. Hidden weapons that could fly out from anywhere. The ones he threw came at such mysterious angles one almost believed they had eyes.
And he had called it a poisonous killing space. He had clearly left some ultimate trump card in reserve.
The Lust Demon could not even guess what kind of poison was already riding his bloodstream.
Should he risk everything to claim Sichuan's Number One Beauty? The deliberation was deep, yet not slow. The world held many women. The Lust Demon retreated swiftly.
"I was only bluffing because I was out of options. Luckily it worked."
"This protagonist! His guts are something else!"
Poison arts and hidden-weapon techniques could look this cool? And on top of that, the protagonist's wit. Before he knew it, Scholar Hwang found his own fists clenched tight.
Scholar Hwang had already read with great satisfaction, yet the true flavor of Dangga Pungun still waited ahead.
"Miss, you have been struck by an aphrodisiac! It is a poison that stirs lust, sets the body ablaze with heat, and will melt even your bones and organs. It can be cured by an antidote or by sexual intercourse—and the Lust Demon holds the antidote."
An aphrodisiac? Such a poison existed? Scholar Hwang, startled by a toxin he had never heard of in his life, turned the next page.
"If you have a beloved nearby, tell me. I will carry you to him at once."
"This humble one... until a moment ago, I had never once held a man in my heart."
"Then what are we to do?"
"You frustrating bastard. Just strip her already."
Earlier his uprightness had been cool; now the frustration came flooding back. Of course, just like any other erotic novel, he had to undress the woman, didn't he?
Surely he wasn't going to leave without stripping her? Scholar Hwang put force into his eyes and read the next line.
"But... just now, this humble one has gained a beloved."
"What do you mean by that?"
Gulp. Scholar Hwang swallowed dryly.
"G-gongja. Please... take this humble one's first time."
And so the deed began.
"Ooooooh. For real. Has the world gone mad? Has everything gone crazy? It's not the man stripping her—the woman is making him strip! This kind of development? Insane. Euheheheh!"
An outlandish aphrodisiac poison. And through it, Sichuan's Number One Beauty herself desiring the protagonist. Truly thrilling beyond belief.
"We have been joined today, yet this is no different from rape. She desired me because of the aphrodisiac, not because she loved me. I will capture the Lust Demon and come beg your forgiveness."
After a satisfying night, the protagonist left the road without waking her, trembling with guilt as she slept soundly.
"Gongja. Where have you gone? Gongja!"
"No! You frustrating bastard! Why are you running away!"
Scholar Hwang shook with rage. He thought it was rape?
"Even after the poison was neutralized at the end! Huh? With her chest! She did that for you!"
To think she would do something like that with her chest. And Sichuan's Number One Beauty at that. Yet he still thought of it as rape.
Scholar Hwang wanted to weep from both above and below.
Fortunately one page remained. Whether he cried from above or below, he first read the last remaining page.
"A preview of the next volume?"
Seeing the preview of what came next, he could only utter the exact same words as his friend.
The protagonist enters the greatest brothel in Hubei. There, a courtesan who has never given her body to anyone and who commands a fortune of ten thousand gold merely to be summoned lies poisoned by an aphrodisiac...
"Next volumemmmm!"