Reading is not sufficient. If you want it to produce the appropriate HTML, you must parse too.

When you write a file name a_b_c in one place, and a mathematical expression a*b*c in another place, and you don’t want to use `code formatting`, you need to know Markdown’s rules. Because otherwise, you’ll write a*b*c and get abc, instead of writing a\*b\*c to get a*b*c.

(And those are only the exact rules if you’re using CommonMark. On another engine, it might behave differently.)

If you only want to read, don’t use Markdown. But if you want to process as well, you need to know the processing.