WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Editor: Abstract
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Chapter 20: The Second Gate (1)
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The Second Gate (1)
"Well then, go on inside. I would like to talk with you longer, but an examiner has all sorts of duties piling up, so let us meet again later. I pray you pass the remaining gates and earn your place here as well."
"Thank you."
Mumu gave a quick bow and privately reckoned this was a stroke of luck.
After all, there was no need to pay for the city gate.
But fearing the examiner Hak Gyu might change his mind, Mumu waved toward Jin-hyeok, Mo Il-hwa, and the others and bolted in through the gate at full speed.
"See you, everyone. I'll go on ahead and wait."
Jin-hyeok and Mo Il-hwa could only gape at the sight.
'Hold on. He wrecks the gate like that and then just runs off by himself?' 'Did he do that on purpose?'
When the gate had first been smashed, the act itself had been a shock.
But now that they thought about it, by leaving the city gate of the first stage in that state, Mumu had made it impossible for any of the applicants behind him to take the test at all.
Hae Ryang of the Hao clan scratched his head, looking just as troubled.
"This is going to be a problem."
Were the applicants behind them really going to have to wait until the gate was repaired?
Every applicant's eyes turned toward Hak Gyu, the examiner.
Feeling the weight of their stares, Hak Gyu turned and looked at the torn-off gate lying on the ground.
'This is awkward. So it really was a malfunction after all?'
After testing Mumu's strength, he had found the boy possessed monstrous power rivaling an Expert.
That alone was truly astonishing.
But ripping a gate connected by such intricate mechanisms clean off, even with that much strength, seemed beyond reason.
'Judging by that child's temperament, there is no way he held back on my test.'
He had tested the boy himself, so of that much he was certain.
Which meant he could only suspect a malfunction caused by the aging of the connecting parts.
For over a decade, countless people had opened and closed the gate for the test, again and again.
'Could it be that he forced open a device meant to respond to internal energy, and that is what did it?'
For now, that was all he could surmise.
Meanwhile, the discontented muttering among the applicants kept growing louder.
'This is maddening.'
It would be absurd to tell the applicants who had already waited this long to keep waiting until the gate was fixed.
That left no choice but a rather troublesome method.
Hak Gyu called down to Yeon Nam-gyeong above, gave him some instructions, then shouted to the applicants.
"From now on, I will measure your internal energy directly, so step forward in order, as you have been doing."
In the end, there was nothing for it but to grind through each one by hand.
His leisurely supervising over a cup of wine was over.
Looking at the enormous crowd of applicants spread out before him, Hak Gyu's head began to throb.
* * *
The city gate that could be called the first gate of Changcheon Martial Academy.
Step through it, and a long path ran ahead, walled high on both sides.
Follow that path, and a vast plaza capable of holding tens of thousands opened up, along with a sweeping artificial lake nearly a li across.
Blue trees stood planted in neat rows around its edges, hinting at just how much wealth had been poured into the landscaping.
What stood out here was that wooden poles jutted up from the surface of the lake.
These poles began at the very start of the lake. At first they stood two paces apart, then three, then five, then ten, scattered haphazardly across the water.
The strange part was that the poles barely broke the surface, and were so narrow that only the tip of a foot could rest on them, a layout that made it all too easy to fall in.
Tak! Tak!
There was a boy running across those poles above the lake.
The way the boy ran was unlike that of ordinary folk. This was what martial artists commonly called the Body-Lightening Technique, that is, the movement skill.
'I have to go faster.'
The boy's heart raced with impatience.
He had to reach the far end before the short stick of incense planted in the censer at the lake's far side burned out, for only then would he pass the second gate.
But here another obstacle lay in wait.
Chwak!
The instant the boy set a foot wrong on a pole, the still lake water rippled and splashed up.
It dampened his shoe and the hem of his trousers.
"Damn it!"
A rough curse burst from the boy's lips.
He had tried so hard to be careful, yet in his haste he had slipped up after all.
By the time the boy finally reached the end of the artificial lake, the hems of his trousers were soaked through.
Biting his lip hard, the boy approached the great censer.
Tss, tss, tss.
The burning incense was just barely crossing the red line.
The timing held, but the problem was something else.
"Your trousers are nearly soaked. You lack composure. You fail."
"Tch!"
The boy could not hide his disappointment at the words of the woman beside the censer, who looked to be in her early forties and seemed the type who would not shed a single tear even with a thorn in her eye.
The woman was Ga Yu-hang, the examiner in charge of the second gate of Changcheon Martial Academy's entrance examination and the movement skill instructor who would teach the first-year students.
The boy spoke to her carefully.
"Examiner, I made one small mistake along the way. Couldn't you give me just one more chance?"
"Everyone gets only one chance. Go back."
But all that came back was a heartless answer.
Watching the boy's back as he trudged away in defeat, a cute girl who looked about eighteen, with deep dimples, jotting notes with a portable writing set behind Ga Yu-hang, spoke up.
"It's surprising how many of the younger ones can't get past this stage, Sabu-nim."
"That is because they lack composure and grace."
"......Ah, yes."
'What does grace have to do with anything?'
The girl thought it to herself but kept it off her face.
Her name was Tang So-so.
Footnotes:
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