WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Order
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◈ The Heaven-Slaying Sword ◈
Chapter 72: Chapter Nine - Mission, Espionage (3)
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Wang Sam, a gate guard in his third year, had a thought.
Of all the people in the world, gate guards must be the ones who endured the greatest adversity and hardship.
‘I'm exhausted.’
He was exhausted. Tired, strained, miserable.
Meeting countless strangers every day, inspecting them, then inspecting them again, was more agonizing than boring.
Any man who called gate guards idle layabouts who loafed around at the gates was someone Wang Sam felt confident he could punch on sight.
‘My shift...’
Wang Sam looked up at the sun hanging high in the sky.
Even by a rough estimate, there was still a long while before the shift change.
His face crumpled.
After letting another person through, Wang Sam stopped the next carriage with a practiced motion.
“Stop.”
The coachman, whose face resembled a weasel's, flinched.
His eyes kept darting toward the inside of the carriage, as if watching for something.
Even a schoolhouse dog that spent three years there could recite poetry.
So what happened when a man, not a dog, and a trained martial artist at that, spent three years doing the same job?
From that tiny gesture alone, Wang Sam could tell what sort of carriage this was.
‘He's serving a master.’
Someone of high standing must be inside. And their temperament was likely not very pleasant.
After all, the anxiety written across that weasel-like coachman's face was proof enough.
Wang Sam was certain.
The person inside the carriage had to be quite hot-tempered.
“What brings you here?”
The coachman hesitantly climbed down and approached him.
Then he spoke in a quiet voice.
“M-my master has come all the way from Jiangxi to sightsee. Master is in a rather poor mood right now, so could you not simply let us pass?”
There was even a hint of desperation in the coachman's eyes.
Wang Sam snorted.
It was always like this. Those who served high-ranking people feared only their masters, never the gate guards.
They failed to understand that he was a proper soldier who lived on the state's stipend.
Wang Sam raised his voice as if there was no chance of that happening.
“There are no exceptions to inspection! The passenger inside the carriage will come out and show their face!”
His voice was loud enough that murmurs rose from the long line.
This was one of Wang Sam's nasty little pleasures.
Making high-ranking people come out at his single command and suffer embarrassment was practically what kept him going through this terrible life as a gate guard.
The coachman's face turned pale.
That sly-looking face had gone so white that Wang Sam thought a weasel on a snowy plain might look exactly like that.
“H-hey! I told you my master is in a bad mood...!”
The coachman stamped his feet.
At that moment, the carriage door flew open.
A young man with a genial face stepped out.
Still, Wang Sam was certain this was not the master the coachman feared.
The man's clothes were shabby, and he looked slightly pale.
Wang Sam caught a trace of resentment on the young man's face as their eyes met.
He quickly learned why.
The young man lay flat on the ground.
He had become a human footstool.
It was an astonishing sight, one Wang Sam had not seen even five times in his three years as a gate guard.
A sense of dread slowly rose within him.
‘H-he's that bad?’
Wang Sam's eyes shook as though there had been an earthquake.
He swallowed hard again and again.
His instincts told him that the person about to emerge would be the worst troublemaker imaginable.
A high-status nightmare, someone against whom even every ounce of a gate guard's ability would not be enough.
‘I won't back down!’
Just as Wang Sam made that resolution...
“Useless fool.”
A man's voice rang out, thick with irritation. It was deep and mature.
Then a man emerged from the open carriage door.
‘W-what is that...?!’
Wang Sam was startled.
The man's face was simply too ugly.
‘How can a person be that ugly?!’
He had a bulbous nose, jutting cheekbones, lips swollen as though he had been stung by a wasp, and eyelids so droopy they nearly concealed his eyes.
With his face twisted into a scowl, it was hard to tell whether he was a person or a monster.
The expensive silk clothing he wore only made the contrast more horrifying.
“Was it you who dared summon me?”
The ugly man spoke.
Wang Sam felt a chill run down his spine, but he forced it aside and straightened his back.
No matter how high the man's status, Wang Sam was a soldier of the state. He could not retreat.
“Y-yes! As the gate guard here, I must confirm the identities of those passing through!”
The man's expression turned even more vicious.
Wang Sam involuntarily hiccuped.
He had gathered his courage, but now a thought came to him.
‘What if he's the child of some high minister?’
Something felt wrong.
Just as that thought arose, a ray of light descended upon Wang Sam.
“Chun. How uncouth.”
A woman's voice, overflowing with elegance, drifted out from inside the carriage.
Wang Sam's head snapped around.
But there was no light.
‘Gasp!’
What emerged was a woman with a fierce face.
Her eyes slanted sharply upward, and her lips were so small that she had the perfect look of a viper.
Wang Sam felt even greater fear than he had when looking at the man.
Their eyes met.
“So, we have come out. What will you do now?”
At the venom in her voice, Wang Sam's shoulders shrank.
‘In my whole life, I never thought I would hear a voice fiercer than my wife's!’
He had been mistaken.
The wife who nagged him relentlessly every day was beginning to seem like a fairy maiden.
As Wang Sam's lips opened and closed soundlessly, the woman's eyes tilted up even further. Those eyes could rise even higher? Wang Sam was horrified.
“Why can't you speak? Hmm?”
The woman's brow drew together.
Startled, Wang Sam repeated what he had said before.
“A-as the gate guard, I need to know the identities of those passing through here...”
“Hah!”
The woman gave a hollow laugh. Her expression plainly said, ‘How dare someone like you?’
As Wang Sam swallowed again, she spoke.
“Fine. You dragged us out here, so I shall gladly indulge you. Though I cannot say what will happen afterward.”
What had made her so angry?
After saying that, the woman sharply turned her head toward the carriage.
“Hey! Hyeon! You come out too!”
‘T-there's another one?!’
Those two were obviously siblings. Their appearances were strange, and their tempers vicious.
The two of them alone had drained him dry. What was he supposed to do if another emerged?
Wang Sam felt as though the heavens had abandoned him.
“Understood, Sister.”
Yet once again, the person who emerged defied Wang Sam's expectations.
In the opposite way from before.
“Ah...!”
An exclamation burst out from somewhere. It spread like a contagion through the line.
Wang Sam himself felt his mind go blank.
‘W-what is this...?’
It was because of the man who had stepped out of the carriage.
The man called Hyeon had an unbelievably beautiful face.
Even his faintly furrowed, expressionless face was captivating. His hair swayed like silk with every step, and the luxurious black robe he wore seemed dull beside his beauty.
Could this truly be the beauty of a human being?
Wang Sam swore he had never seen anyone this handsome in his life.
Wang Sam was certain.
‘A half-brother!’
The man who had just emerged had to be their half-brother.
“What is it?”
The man stared into empty space.
His voice was hollow, as though he did not care in the slightest about worldly affairs.
A fair-skinned woman emerged behind him, but Wang Sam could not even spare her a glance.
“That man says he needs to see our faces.”
“Hmm.”
The man's eyes rolled toward Wang Sam.
For some reason, Wang Sam suddenly felt as though he had committed a terrible wrong.
His gaze dropped of its own accord.
At that moment, the man's brow furrowed even more.
Then a sound escaped him.
“Tsk...”
Wang Sam's whole body jerked violently.
Only then did complete regret seize him.
‘T-this is bad!’
It was certain. That man had to be the child of a high minister.
Once word of this reached his superiors, he would surely be disciplined.
He even felt like crying.
Then the woman spoke.
“Is that enough? Hmm? Are you satisfied?”
Wang Sam's eyes welled up.
His head nodded faster and more vigorously than ever before.
“Y-y-y-yes! That's enough!”
With a snap, Wang Sam stepped aside.
The man in the black robe clicked his tongue once more and climbed back into the carriage.
The fierce woman, the ugly man, the fair-skinned woman, and even the human footstool all entered the carriage. The coachman then glared at Wang Sam with an expression that said, ‘I told you so.’
Then the carriage passed through the gate.
Only after the sound of the departing carriage faded did Wang Sam go limp and let out a breath of relief.
Wang Sam thought again.
Being a gate guard was brutally hard work.
* * *
“How was that?!”
Inside the carriage, Mok Ri-won, the man called Hyeon in the black robe, asked Dang Hwa-seo with the face of a child seeking praise.
Dang Hwa-seo smiled and nodded.
“You did very well.”
“I thought so too! I never knew I had such talent for acting! Ah, Miss, you were incredible too! You acted so well that you seemed like a villainess straight out of a story!”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
The carriage was filled with a cheerful mood.
Except for two people.
“...Is it over now?”
Namgung Jin-cheon wanted to go somewhere and remove this irritating human-skin mask as soon as possible.
So many prosthetics had been stuffed into it that simply wearing it left him with an intensely unpleasant foreign sensation.
Needless to say, the expression Namgung Jin-cheon had shown Wang Sam was also caused by the discomfort on his face.
“Please endure it a little longer. We have already secured lodgings. Ah, are the other two of you all right?”
Dang Hwa-seo asked Il-un and Hye-un.
Hye-un had been overshadowed by Mok Ri-won and had not needed to do anything, so she nodded. Il-un looked dejected.
“Did I really have to be the footstool?”
The human footstool.
This had not been part of the plan from the beginning.
Since the gate guard was conducting such a thorough inspection, they had hurriedly created the role inside the carriage.
The idea had come from Hye-un.
After the two least reliable members, Il-un was the one they worried about most, so she had assigned him a role that required no speaking.
Naturally, he felt reluctant.
Still, it had not been a situation where he could throw a fit and refuse.
That was right.
The resentment Il-un had shown Wang Sam was resentment at the guard for being so thorough that Il-un had ended up with such a role.
The inside of the carriage fell quiet.
Only Hye-un hummed as though it had nothing to do with her.
Mok Ri-won cautiously watched their reactions before opening his mouth, hoping to lighten the mood.
“C-come to think of it! Brother Jegal's acting was truly amazing! For a moment, I even thought Brother Jegal had always been my coachman!”
“R-right! Whatever else one might say, his acting certainly deserves praise!”
Dang Hwa-seo joined in.
Their tearful efforts changed nothing.
Namgung Jin-cheon's irritation and Il-un's gloom were not things they could do anything about.
“...Cheer up.”
In the end, that was all Mok Ri-won could say.
Footnotes:
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