Chapter 48
While the neighboring series was steadily building up toward The Great Mage Zhuge Gundam Begins.
‘The Empire’s Second-in-Command Hides His Ambition Well’.
Jeinsum, as if inheriting its predecessor’s tone, once again followed a plot drenched in politics and international affairs.
“Jeinsum, is this really okay? Isn’t this too much of a rehash?”
“Don’t call me Jeinsum…… it makes me think of Jeinsuk…… Ngh, Vertical Legion Commander……!”
Just as Historie had worried.
Contrary to readers’ expectations that, as a sequel to the Cao Cao story, he would immediately take office as a strategist in Cao Cao’s army and go wild like Zhuge Liang.
- Eeeh, Sima Yi doesn’t like official posts and all that, eeeh.
Summed up, the early part was draft dodging by faking illness.
You could call it a rather low-T move.
But Roseline rather liked that content.
- Th-the maid?
- She noticed my lord was faking illness……! So I killed her!
- ……
The maid had witnessed Sima Yi, who had been lazing around under the excuse of a stroke, suddenly straighten up when rain began to fall and his dried books were about to get soaked.
Sima Yi’s wife.
The thirteen-year-old Zhang Chunhua, of all people, snapped that maid’s neck cleanly.
“This terribly intense love…… willing to kill for her husband? Love it!”
What an ideal romance narrative this is!
At last, at last, Kim Yul was finally starting to bring romance to the forefront even in a political drama!
……Of course, after about ten more chapters and seeing Zhang Chunhua’s presence disappear, Roseline shed tears of sorrow.
She was completely hooked.
- You’ve already read up to the latest chapter—how could you possibly drop it now?
Even while tears welled up at the sound of Kim Yul’s voice ringing like a multicolored hallucination, Roseline had no choice but to keep up with the latest chapters like an abused wife.
In any case.
Sima Yi’s early life, in Three Kingdoms terms, was spent in the wilderness.
Reimagined with modern sensibilities, he was living the life of a silver-spoon mansion security guard.
And yet his long-term schemes were fixed on the wider world.
After effectively putting Sima Yi forward instead of Cao Cao.
how chaotic the Central Plains of that era were.
and how Cao Cao’s overbearing rule triggered a butterfly effect, revisiting the detailed narrative that ‘Two Heroes’ couldn’t cover.
It was practically the royal road of political dramas.
And, as the saying goes, talent will out.
- If he refuses one more time, seize him and lock him up!
Because of Cao Cao’s obsession—an affliction that couldn’t resist talented men or married women—Sima Yi ended up dragged into compulsory service after all.
At the age of thirty,
he finally properly stepped onto the stage that would become the center of the story.
Of course…….
Aside from political-drama fanatics, that move didn’t draw much attention.
It was because the neighbor kid two years younger was just too broken a character.
* * *
Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms is certainly a well-made novel that stirs a man’s heart, but judged purely by historical fact, it created quite a few victims.
Prime examples include the Gan-Sun-Mi bros, and there was also the human-blender duo Li Jue and Guo Si.
Yuan Shao, too, if you look only at the official records, was a character similar to the novel’s Cao Cao, but thanks to the rivalry framing, he ended up written off as a loser.
But there was one person who got it even worse.
“As expected, it’s Zhou Gongjin.”
“I admit it. You’re a full-on Three Kingdoms nerd.”
“……somehow that annoys me a little.”
The legendary line.
‘Why did Heaven give birth to Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang! Huaaah!’
Zhou Yu, of course, never said such a thing.
But…….
“Still going to use it anyway, aren’t you?”
“If it has to be done, it has to be done.”
In the end, the true protagonist running through the entire Two Heroes series was Zhuge Liang, decided from the outset.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms ends at Wuzhang Plains.
Nothing comes after that……!
“Sure enough, with how popular things are right now, if the Gaoping Tombs incident shows up, Kim Yul will definitely be murdered.”
“Is that so.”
Seeing Kkangtong shake their head, I closed the laptop and thoroughly mussed Kkangtong’s neatly tied hair.
Leaving behind that pouty expression.
“Bring chocolate bread when you come back.”
“Got it.”
Today is the time to flex.
The Duke of Vertus’s compensation for emotional damage.
The proceeds from selling Part 1 of Two Heroes and the Heroes Assemble card packs.
And the creative support funds I’d squeezed out of Chloe as well.
I was finally planning to buy a proper house.
Why do I need a house when I already have a lab?
Remember this.
Stocks can betray people, the U.S. market can betray people, the domestic market can betray people, and crypto can betray people.
But real estate, especially real estate in the capital, is invincible……!
.
.
.
Today’s companion was Roseline.
- Regrettably, this one has matters at the main house and cannot accompany you.
Truthfully, I wanted to bring the patron along, but since they’d be leaving the capital for about a week and then coming back.
“Author-nim, long time no see?”
“It’s not even been a week.”
I judged that traveling with a powerhouse whose aura I could borrow if things got rough would be advantageous.
Roseline also readily agreed to come along.
Today’s offering was.
“Spring potatoes……. Are spring potatoes really that delicious……? Haaah, they’re too sweet! So sweet I feel like I’m melting, ahh……!”
A public-domain work.
Jeomsuni from The Camellia Flower.
“Hitori-nim, your style is truly ever-shifting……. How, how can you capture such fresh emotion like this……! Haa, haaah, huuung……!”
It can’t help but be ever-shifting.
This time, it’s text lifted from the copyright devil, Han■ Typing Practice.
Once the final rite of the saint-summoning ritual is successfully completed,
this saint is mine now.
I can’t exactly do whatever I want with her, but I can take her along.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes!”
Real estate transactions are extremely dangerous.
If a novice like me carelessly stepped in, I might suddenly end up saddled with a ticking bomb of a bad property in a lousy location.
So Roseline was necessary.
……Honestly, I couldn’t even imagine what she’d had to do to earn the nickname ‘monster saint’.
In any case, our saint was pretty famous even in the empire.
So.
There was no way I’d dare scam the saint.
I gave Roseline a slight smile.
She, too, returned a bright smile.
* * *
The cheerful mood lasted only a moment.
The shelf life of the one-track pure love shown by the gender-reversed world’s Jeomsuni was short, too.
On the way to the real estate agent.
“But why did Zhang Chunhua get married so young? Is that, like, Kim Yul’s type?”
“……Mmph.”
How rude.
I’m on Team Big Boobs.
“Then what does Huang Yueying look like? She’s not going to be young like Zhang Chunhua, right?”
“That’s not it either.”
I don’t know Huang Yueying’s age either.
But how could I possibly place Zhuge Liang in the same category as the legendary degenerates of Mangtakjo, represented by Harem King Dong Zhuo, Married-Woman King Cao Cao, and Pedo King Sima Yi?
Of course she’d be a Koei-style tan-skinned big-breasted beauty, and a character like that is best enjoyed as an older-sister type.
“Sure enough, Author-nim does have a slightly perverted side.”
“Weren’t you the one who said I was like a virgin who couldn’t write smut worth a damn?”
“Can’t a virgin and a pervert coexist? Besides, the very fact that you imagined Zeus’s grotesque sexcapades alone──”
“……Let’s stop that topic here.”
I had been completely defeated in the exchange.
Damn it, Roseline.
You’re top-tier not only in the bust department, but even with your tongue, huh.
Damn, that’s really unfair.
I was just keeping the lore straight, and I get lumped together with that notorious rapist Zeus.
“Hehe. Kim Yul, your ears are red.”
“From now on, I’ll leave romance out of my novels.”
“Ugh…… I’m sorry……”
.
.
.
While we were walking and trading jokes like that for quite a while.
“Ulysses? Isn’t he just some overhyped, run-of-the-mill writer?”
A voice I could never afford to ignore reached my ears.
When I turned my head, what I saw was.
“His novels have no soul, and the world itself is just a mess.”
I saw one worthless bum sipping coffee in front of a woman while ripping into me to my face.
The man’s looks were passable enough, but my eyes were drawn to something other than the face of some utterly unimportant fellow.
A golden fountain-pen badge was pinned to his chest.
As far as I knew, it definitely was.
It was the so-called Golden Pencil, awarded only to writers who had made a name for themselves at the Imperial Daily.
Well…….
Since trash-talking fellow professionals is a rule of the road both in modern times and in another world, I was about to lightly ignore that snake’s petty malice.
“As expected, you’re a great writer!”
“You’re too kind. Heh. I’m just stating facts. I can already see the future where that fellow, Ulysses, gets crushed under the vast delusions he’s spun and snaps his pen in two. A vulgar title, vulgar characters, vulgar narrative—it’s obvious.”
What the hell is wrong with this bastard?
“Kim Yul, calm down.”
“Of course I can hold it in.”
I nodded at Roseline’s whisper.
“But it seems Ulysses can’t hold it in.”