Discovering the Secret Records of the Sex Emperor
The morning sun rose. Sunlight streamed through the window, brightening the room, and Jeonghu’s eyes slowly opened where he lay deep in sleep on the bed. He sat up, poured water from the teapot, and drank. Then he flung the windows wide open.
A brilliant flood of light poured in. As Jeonghu gazed outside, a faint smile curved his lips. His body felt surprisingly light—most likely the pleasant afterglow from the day before.
Yesterday was truly satisfying.
Of course it was. How could it have been easy to bed a woman who had raised him like her own son? He had shattered the frame of “thinking of him as a child” so thoroughly that she never felt any resistance, slowly dyeing her with his color. The sense of accomplishment was profound.
If she had seen him as a man from the very beginning… if that had been the case… he wouldn’t have needed to…
Hold on.
His train of thought suddenly snapped. A strange unease settled over him.
Why was it so difficult? Why did I take such a roundabout path?
If he had simply made her see him as a man from the start, what could have gone wrong? She was a woman. A middle-aged one at that. Only a few days ago he had thought it would be easy, yet the version of himself from yesterday had clearly been different. Instead of taking the direct route, he had circled around as if obsessed, making things unnecessarily complicated.
Jeonghu sat in a chair and sank into thought. There was a clear dissonance. Something was missing.
Hmm…
He closed his eyes and fell into deep contemplation, retracing every memory.
The moment they met, the nanny had stopped seeing him as a man. Why? To keep her guard down. That was why she could bathe with him. Up to that point, everything had been fine. Then the subsequent memories rose in sequence.
In those memories, he had deliberately maintained the appearance of not seeing her as a woman while subtly guiding her to see him as a man. At the time he hadn’t found it strange, but now that he reviewed the entire process, it was clearly abnormal. Even more abnormal was the fact that he hadn’t even noticed he was avoiding the wide-open straight path and taking a long detour instead.
If he had simply shown her from the beginning that he saw her as a woman, things would have been far easier. An obsession or compulsion he himself hadn’t been conscious of.
He dug deeper into his own mind. And then… he reached it.
“Hah…”
The true nature of that discomfort was justification.
The need to build up a moral pretext—that it was all right because the nanny now saw him as a man. He remembered the thought he had when entering the prison cell before. Murim was a place where anything was possible as long as one had proper justification.
Even after casting off the shell of Hwangbo Mujin, the lingering righteous-faction temperament and the compulsion to always have justification had twisted even his relationships with women. Looking at it that way, it also explained why, on the very first day, he had ignored the women around him and headed straight for the prison.
At the time he hadn’t been conscious of it, so it felt like a natural flow. But in truth, while he wanted to act immediately, he had no justification. Touching the maids would have been coercion through power and authority. The women in the prison, however, were criminals whose lives and deaths were controlled by the family, so anything was permissible.
Originally he should have been someone who felt no guilt and therefore paid no attention to such things. The reason Jeonghu had become like this was because his Patcheon-shingong had reached great completion before his Hwangol-taltae, reviving his lost vitality. Thus, losing a few aspects of his humanity had not made him a villain, and being filled with lust had not turned him into a rapist who assaulted anyone.
The vitality that awakened late had faintly kept his center intact. However, to Jeonghu—who had come to accept the version of himself that had been corrupted by bloodlust as simply “himself”—this newly discovered underlying tendency to “act only with proper justification” felt like a suffocating shackle.
Why should I have to do that? Why go the long way around when a straight path exists?
Simply realizing what had been suppressing him was already a huge gain. Because it had become as natural as breathing, he had never noticed it. If he hadn’t discovered the discomfort while reflecting on yesterday’s events, he might have lived his entire life without ever recognizing these chains.
Just as the body would not follow thoughts if mind and body were not one, his twisted mind and consciousness had been misaligned. Because he had failed to realize they were not in harmony, his consciousness—trapped in the frame of needing justification despite his desire to reach the destination—had kept him circling instead of taking the direct path.
“Tsk… I was bound by something so utterly useless.”
He cast the shackles away. Now that he knew, he simply had to change. What need was there for justification between a man and a woman? If both wanted it, they simply did it.
Jeonghu clicked his tongue with a displeased expression and reviewed his memories once more. Just as one would refine a martial technique, he cut away every unnecessary branch while recalling the process with the nanny. The entire sequence until they consummated the act became dramatically shorter.
It felt refreshing.
“Hahaha, hahahahaha!”
Feeling a sense of liberation, Jeonghu laughed heartily for a long time. Now that the shackles were gone, the center held by his vitality grew even fainter, while he himself became far freer.
After a while he called Somi and ordered her to prepare a meal. Once he had eaten, he left Mujingak. He had somewhere to go.
The building’s exterior was worn and shabby, bearing the traces of many years, yet it was surprisingly large. Jeonghu paused for a moment and looked up at the signboard. Unlike the Hwangbo Martial Archive that housed martial arts texts and secret manuals, this place collected all kinds of miscellaneous books.
From rumors circulating in the murim to absurd tales of monsters—any book classified as “miscellaneous” that entered the Hwangbo Clan was brought here. So why had Jeonghu come to the Hwangbo Library, a place he had only visited once out of youthful curiosity and never glanced at again?
Creak.
He opened the closed door and stepped inside. The hinges groaned with the rusty sound of old metal. An old man sitting at a desk near the entrance lifted his head with a puzzled expression, then jumped in surprise the moment he saw Jeonghu.
Visitors were so rare that the sound of the hinges had made him wonder who would come so early. To suddenly find the young master standing before him—how could he not be startled? The caretaker shot up from his seat so quickly it seemed his joints might complain.
“Young… Young Master, what brings you to a place like this…”
Normally he would not have felt any curiosity or asked, but the words slipped out before he could stop them. The young master could not possibly have come to read miscellaneous books… perhaps he had business with him?
“Ah, don’t mind me. I was simply bored and came to read some miscellaneous texts.”
“I… I see. If there is any book you seek, please let me know at any time.”
“I will.”
As Jeonghu walked deeper inside, the old caretaker watched with a pitying expression. Having been in closed-door training for ten years, how stifled he must have felt. From the rumors, the young master who had loved the sword so passionately as a child had shown no interest in it after becoming an adult. Moreover, no one had seen him training in martial arts. The caretaker had begun to worry that he had lost all interest in martial arts entirely.
Step. Step.
Jeonghu passed five massive bookshelves. Books were packed tightly even along the walls. The deeper he went, the more the shelves held obscure miscellaneous texts that few people sought. That was exactly where Jeonghu was headed.
The corner wall. There it was—the very thing he sought.
Jeonghu pulled one volume out and scanned the title. Emperor’s Jade Mirror. It was an erotic manual. He dragged over a nearby chair and began to read.
“Oh… so this kind of position exists as well.”
It was a book detailing the positions that the emperor’s concubines learned and practiced. Since those women existed solely to please the emperor, they studied such things. Jeonghu turned the pages, occasionally letting out sounds of admiration.
There were a thousand positions recorded. Some were bizarre, some had names that made him laugh out loud. At times he thought, Oh, a woman can actually do that? There were poses so stimulating that even Jeonghu—who had never envied anyone—momentarily felt jealous of the emperor. There were also positions that made him wonder if they were even possible.
He read with calm focus. Although it claimed a thousand positions, in reality only a few were useful. Most were common movements given grandiose names. For example, “Swinging on a Vine”—a woman straddling the man’s lower body and rocking her pelvis back and forth like swinging on a vine. In the end, it was simply a woman on top shaking her waist.
There was also a position called “Millstone Turning” that truly left him speechless. The handle of a millstone was called an “eo-i,” and the name referred to a woman straddling the man, inserting him, then rotating her waist in circles as if turning the millstone handle.
“…Tsk. They’ve named every single common movement as if it were some special position.”
He kept reading. When he finished one book, he picked up another without hesitation. The next day. And the day after that.
Jeonghu visited the Hwangbo Library every day, spending the entire time absorbing every erotic manual and every book related to sex, steadily stacking the knowledge in his mind. His behavior was exactly like when he had been obsessed with martial arts in the past. Only now his interest had shifted from martial arts to this subject. Just as one would read a secret manual, he was engraving the knowledge and indirect experience he lacked into himself through books.
Once the foundation was solid, he planned to test it in practice—discarding what felt wrong, keeping what felt right, and stacking his real experiences on top like building a tower. It was the same principle as martial training. Swinging the sword alone again and again to become stronger, to be acknowledged by oneself or others. The patience required to reach a goal.
The lust he harbored was no different. Thanks to the faint center provided by his vitality, he did not rush to relieve every urge the moment it appeared. Sometimes he could endure. For the sake of an even sweeter fruit.
A week passed.
“Hahaha! What an idiot. No wonder he keeps losing his women.”
After devouring every erotic manual and every book related to women and sex, the next thing Jeonghu picked up was a novel. The Sword King’s Biography. Tales of the Heroic Maiden. Journey of the Heavenly Demon. Purely entertainment books written for fun.
Usually such books were written by scholars or storytellers working together to earn money by weaving together rumors floating around the murim. Reading them, he found useful elements for indirect experience and parts that resonated with him.
Take the Sword King’s Biography he was reading now. It seemed to have been researched based on real events, since it included facts he already knew. Yet the protagonist’s relationships with women were pathetically foolish. How many times had he thought, I must never do that, while reading?
If you sense a woman has feelings for you, just pin her down first.
To hesitate and miss the chance? No wonder the Sword King’s arranged marriage partners had suddenly changed when he was young—such a hidden story lay behind it.
Pfft.
A snort of laughter escaped Jeonghu as he continued turning pages. The relationships with the women involved in scandals afterward were equally ridiculous. His timid personality showed itself even toward the opposite sex. If he kept weighing and hesitating, of course the women would grow tired.
The rest left him indifferent. Because they were based on real people, the authors seemed wary of repercussions and had written nothing but praise, making every character sound impossibly heroic.
Thus, after finishing the final page of The Sword King’s Biography, Jeonghu had read every book he had set out to read. He stretched, then tossed the book into the corner as if it were worthless.
Crash.
The pile of miscellaneous books stacked in the corner shook from the impact and collapsed. That area was where the discarded texts no one bothered to read had been thrown.
Jeonghu was about to turn his head when a glint appeared in his eyes. Between the fallen books, a portion of a title poking out caught his attention.
Step. Step.
Driven by curiosity, he approached. He bent down, grabbed the book that had drawn his gaze, and pulled it out. An ancient tome so old it was on the verge of crumbling, releasing clouds of dust. On its cover were written the words Saekhwang-bijeon.