WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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Chapter 18: The First Gate (2)

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The First Gate (2)

"Why's that one throwing the gate wide open and just standing there like an idiot? Is she doing it to lap up the cheers or something? Attention hog. Total attention hog."

Mo Il-hwa watched Hong Hye-ryeong, daughter of Hong Hwa-yun of the Four Immortal Masters, who stood there with the gate flung open, and spoke in a thoroughly disgusted tone.

"......"

Jin-hyeok clicked his tongue inwardly at the way she talked.

She was, after all, the one and only daughter of the Minister of Justice, a high official of the Senior Second Rank, yet her speech was no better than some gutter ruffian's.

The woman herself liked to say, "Hey, isn't it cuter when I don't put on airs?" But to him, raised from childhood under Madam Jang, a scholar's wife, it was nearly impossible to understand.

'Isn't she just jealous?'

A woman's heart was beyond him.

In the middle of all this, Mumu let out a wide, bored yawn.

"I don't get why anyone's cheering over a gate opening and closing."

"It means their level is that high, young master Mumu."

"Their level is high?"

"The wider the gate opens, the deeper their internal energy reserves."

Hae Ryang of the Hao clan answered helpfully.

Of course, all of this was groundwork laid to grow closer to Jin-hyeok and Mo Il-hwa.

The leader of the Hao clan always said to look three moves ahead. To win over a top-tier client, the most important thing was to win over the people around them. That was the advice he had always given Hae Ryang.

'The kid's going to wash out at the first gate anyway.'

This much of an investment was nothing.

While that was going on, Hong Hye-ryeong stepped through the gate, and the entrance exams went on.

As it had been all along, six in ten could not so much as budge the gate, while three or four in ten barely cracked the first one open and slipped through.

Their turn was no longer far off.

While everyone watched the others wrestle with the gates or waited tensely for their own turn, one boy stood alone with a grave look on his face.

He had a black band tied across his forehead and wore a red robe, and the air about him was strange.

'The Southern Blade Imperial Uncle's daughter......'

The boy was still turning over Hong Hye-ryeong, who had opened the gate and gone through a moment ago.

He had expected her to be strong, but it had still astonished him. To think that at a mere seventeen years of age, in a woman's body, she possessed that level of internal energy.

He had come prepared, yet this would not be easy.

'But I must teach them the pain of losing one's own flesh and blood.'

He had trained in the martial arts with that fierce, single-minded resolve.

The hellish training in the Valley of White Death had been for this day alone.

Everyone gathered here was steeped in the complacency of peace.

But that, too, would not last much longer.

'I, Ha Ryun, who have inherited the bloody will of those revered ones, will burn this Changcheon Martial Academy, packed with loathsome traitors, and stain it red with blo...'

"Hey. The space in front of you's empty. You gonna move or not?"

A sharp voice cut in from behind him as he stoked his fighting spirit.

Ha Ryun glanced back.

There stood Mo Il-hwa, face full of irritation, flicking her hand at him.

'What is this wench?'

Pretty face, and yet utterly overbearing. The cheeky way she kept waving her hand at him was not to his liking either.

"What? You glaring at me now just because I told you to move up a little?"

'Glaring? What kind of woman talks this rough?'

Ha Ryun stared at her, then swallowed the murderous urge rising in him and walked forward, as if he had no choice.

Showing his hand here would be a pathetic thing to do. He carried far too much on his shoulders.

"You're moving anyway, so why the glare?"

'Why you!'

For an instant Ha Ryun nearly spun around and drove a knife-hand straight at her throat.

That tomboy of a wench was provoking him.

And at that very moment...

"Young Chun. Eighteen years of age. Inheritor of the secret techniques of my home school, the Eastern River Sword School, studying under the Eastern River Sword Sage, Shin Ui-gyeom. I wish to undertake the first gate's exam."

'The Eastern River Sword Sage?'

Ha Ryun's gaze, on the verge of boiling over, turned toward a boy standing before the gate in blue martial robes, a large wooden chest strapped to his back.

His back was turned, so his face could not be seen, but his presence was extraordinary.

"He's from the Eastern River Sword Sage's school!"

"Wow! The Eastern River Sword Sage's disciple is taking the entrance exam this time too?"

"This batch is a total jackpot."

"The Southern Blade Imperial Uncle and now the Eastern River Sword Sage. It's a clash of titans."

Every eye turned to Young Chun, the third disciple of the Eastern River Sword Sage, one of the Four Immortal Masters.

Under all that attention, Young Chun's simple, honest face, fixed on the gate, twisted like an evil spirit's.

But he soon smothered it back into composure.

'I have to endure. Endure it.'

Young Chun, who hated being singled out or dragged into bothersome situations more than anything, swung wildly between moods.

Even his master, the Eastern River Sword Sage, would click his tongue at the way he shifted.

In any case, passing the first gate mattered more right now.

Young Chun stepped up to the gate.

Looking down at him, Hak Gyu, the proctor of the first gate, stroked his beard and muttered,

"Quite the boy, with all those changing faces. To think a fellow like that ended up under that dignified gentleman's roof."

"What's so strange about him?" Yeon Nam-gyeong asked, curious.

Without so much as turning to look, Hak Gyu flicked his hand.

"What would you do with that knowledge? Mind your own business."

'......This is your business, though.'

Truly too much. Was that any way to speak to someone helping you with the work you were supposed to be doing yourself?

His insides churned and boiled, but knowing Hak Gyu's temperament well, he barely managed to settle them.

Just then came the rattle of the gate.

Young Chun, the Eastern River Sword Sage's third disciple, was drawing up his internal energy in earnest.

Kreeeeak!

In a single moment, the gate moved all the way to the third panel.

Then, before long, the fourth panel teetered on the edge of moving.

Young Chun was already channeling internal energy to the eighth level, and watching the gate waver between opening and not, anger surged up in him.

'If word gets out that I did worse than the Southern Blade Imperial Uncle's daughter, my master and senior disciples are sure to mock me.'

Crrrack!

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