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Given that I have a very difficult book in Chinese and that my current Japanese book is quite depressing (that’s the main reason why I don’t read it often), I need something both easy and exciting in Korean. And only one author comes to mind, and it’s 전건우 again… I still haven’t read 흉담 which I’m seeing everywhere.

The problem with choosing this book is that I know it’s going to be impossible to put down once started, and it’s going to prevent me from focusing entirely on 山中邪神. So maybe I should choose something else? Maybe a novel by 정해연?

I really haven’t done much this weekend, almost no reading done, but I’m still proud of myself for finishing the first chapter of 山中邪神.

Finished chapter 1, and even though it necessitated a lot of looking up words and research, I understood it well in the end. I actually find it very exciting and motivating to have a challenging book that I absolutely want to understand. I think that most of the time, when we’re struggling to understand a text, the reason we give up is not that the text was too difficult or our level too low, but that our desire to understand this particular text was just not big enough to justify the effort.

Anyway, chapter 1 was fantastic, I love wuxia a lot, I really should read more of this genre.

Also now that I know the setting and more or less the main actors and tensions of the plot, I think it’s going to be easier from now on.

I don’t know much about the real case that inspired the novel (the murder of 潘凱), just what I could read on the Wikipedia page which was not a lot. I don’t really feel like digging, I’ll just enjoy the novel.

I’ve been very distracted today and haven’t read as much as I wanted, so I did not finished chapter 1, but I loved the story!! It blends several genres: wuxia with extreme martial arts, historical novel with political conspiracies and a mystery novel with strange occurrences, and also a bit of supernatural horror. It’s absolutely perfect,

The first two pages of chapter 1 were very difficult, but it gets much better afterwards, with some passages easier than others. Still it’s definitely a challenging read for me, but it’s not hard to the point where I’m tempted to give up. The plot is very intriguing too which helps, and it’s been a while that I wanted to read a wuxia novel, so that’s a plus too.

Now that I think of it, a lot has happened in the few pages I read so far. The pace is very fast, and it’s very suspenseful.

I started chapter 1, and I think it took me 30 minutes to read the first page? So many unknown words… But I’m really motivated, because I feel like I’m really going to love this story. And to be fair, most if not all the books I read so far this year have all been pretty easy, so having a challenge from time to time is not bad either.

This one was really a quick read, it’s a collection of 15 short stories, I wonder if they can’t even be qualified of short short stories because they’re really very short, but I don’t know what are the words numbers for flash fiction.
They’re all 괴담 as the title suggests, and mix a variety of themes, some occult, some do not contain any supernatural elements, but they are all horror for sure. I loved every one of them, and the collection is very addictive!

Finished it, it reads very easily and very quickly!

I only read the prologue, but the story looks so cool!! I loved the beginning!! I had to look up some words and persons/events, especially the very first pages, but I loved it. Feels more wuxia than mystery so far, but whichever it is, I’m here for it!

Hopefully the novel will become easier, because if it continues like this I’ll need the whole month to finish…

I played through the first part of Alyosha’s meeting point. It looks like he got a real quest with this! And it’s voiced
I’ll probably continue this weekend. I also have the third meeting point to unlock (I only did Odette’s). I still haven’t done any exploration and haven’t started any WQ yet.

I’m building Alyosha and I chose the BP polearm for him. I don’t know if it’s better or worse than Favonius Lance, but even with three fully built Fav Lance, I sometimes wish I had more, so instead of putting yet another character on it, I decided to give him the BP one. Alyosha is also one of my favourite characters, so I like the idea of him having a new weapon.

This made me realised that I still hadn’t unlocked the weapon domain. They made it a bit too easy?

I know what my next Chinese read will be, I want to go back to the winners of the 謎團小說獎, the prize for fiction inspired by real criminal cases in Taiwan.

I’m reading them in order, so next on the list is 山中邪神 by 墨鹿客, from the first edition of the prize. It has a historical setting, so I’m bracing for a lot of unknown vocab, but I won’t give up this time!

Ok, this book is completely addictive, it’s just impossible to stop. The short stories are very short, very easy to read, and very very good. It’s just too tempting to read the next one, and just like that I already read half of the collection!