Yi Rong’s “Recognition”, “Ghostwriting”, and “Rise to Prominence”

by Hu Zhengqun

Sword of the King is the work that made Yi Rong famous in Taiwan wuxia literary circles and was his first work after establishing himself as an author writing under his own name. It was published in 1965.

if you want to talk about Sword of the King or its author, Yi Rong, then you must first go back to the source and start by talking about Wolong Sheng.

Starting in 1959, Wolong Sheng’s wuxia novels were popular at home and abroad, and he became the grandmaster of the martial world par excellence, which lasted for a long time. At his peak he was serializing five different novels in five different daily and evening newspapers every day in Taiwan. He was truly at the height of his popularity.

Among these five works, one was Heavenly Whirlwind, published in Public Opinion Daily News. When it was in the middle of serialization, Public Opinion announced that the publication was shutting down. Wolong Sheng at the time was the “leader of the pack” of the martial world, so the paper shutting down lightened the interest and pressure on his writing, and so he stopped writing it. But the publisher that was already putting out monthly booklet installments of the work still hoped it could continue, so they pressed him closely.

In order to deal with the publisher and allow the booklets to continue being released, Wolong Sheng found someone to “grasp the knife” and ghostwrite it for him. That person was Yi Rong.