The First Jin Family Mansion Reconstruction Competition
On the hill overlooking the plains sat one ration of food and two hammers. Since there was no need to patrol today, word came down to gather at Jinseong Hall on the eastern side of the manor at the hour of the snake—ten in the morning.
When Jin Seol reached Jinseong Hall, the sound of the family’s lively chatter reached her even before she stepped inside. It felt like an eternity since she’d last heard it. A faint smile rose unbidden to her lips as she quickened her pace.
Right in front of Jinseong Hall, a long banner stitched from separate lengths of cloth, each bearing a single character, caught her eye first.
The content came second to the magnificent brushwork. Jin Seol wasn’t an expert in calligraphy, yet she had never seen anything like it—so perfectly ordered and powerful, vigorous yet contained, each square stroke so full it practically radiated grandeur. Then she noticed the precious handwriting was scrawled across a shabby, threadbare rag of a cloth, and the shock hit her all over again. Such priceless characters wasted on this filthy thing! The strokes looked valuable enough to buy a house in gold—why squander them here?
“Ah. Miss Jin, you’ve arrived?”
“Miss Seomun? Wait—what in the world are you wearing!?”
Jin Seol’s second surprise quickly escalated into outright horror.
The Dragon and Phoenix Association members liked to joke that the White Lotus faction had nothing worth showing off, so they simply walked around with their chests out. In truth, however, no female disciple in the orthodox Murim dressed with half the care and elegance of Jin Seol. Her own White Lotus club members had formed precisely because they shared that deep interest in clothing and etiquette.
“It’s the Civil Engineering Fairy look. What do you think? Do I look like a shamaness?”
“What is this absurd getup? You cannot go around like this! Absolutely not! This is completely unacceptable!”
“Eh? Why not?”
“A woman must never wear all seven colors at once! That is something only children under ten are allowed! Just what are you, a little girl? Running around in rainbow clothes now, are we?”
“Oing. That’s not actually a law, is it?”
“It is etiquette! Clothing is part of proper decorum! Heavens above! And look at how it flutters! No, how could—kyaaak! And what is that ridiculous bongjikseon? It’s one single piece! As if your chest wasn’t already prominent enough!”
Jin Seol was practically spitting flames.
“Um. Calm down first—”
“Do I look calm to you!? This isn’t clothing, it’s… what do you even call this thing?”
“Err… shamaness robes?”
“Miss Seomun, have you ever actually seen a shamaness? And what exactly are you wearing on your head? Going out to catch bees? Collect honey? Why have you arranged the talismans like this, honestly…”
Jin Seol snatched the face veil and yanked it upward.
Cheong’s beauty burst forth like a sudden ray of light.
Jin Seol momentarily forgot what she was going to say. They say the soul of clothing is the face, and it seemed to be true—even in this fundamentally terrible, bizarre outfit, Cheong somehow managed to look presentable.
“Hehe.”
A bashful smile bloomed across Cheong’s face. That single embarrassed grin carried one clear message:
I genuinely have no idea what the problem is.
Jin Seol let out a long, soul-deep sigh.
“Haaaa. Have you really been walking around like this the whole time? I truly cannot live with this. I’ll make you a proper set of clothes. This will not do. It really will not.”
“The Civil Engineering Fairy won’t have many chances to appear anymore anyway. You don’t have to go to the trouble.”
“Not even for a single day. I’ll stay up all night if I must. That bizarre outfit… even the stitching is meticulous, which somehow makes it more annoying…”
“Hehe. I’ve always been pretty good with my hands.”
“Stop laughing. Anyway, what exactly is going on here? The Jin Family Mansion Reconstruction Competition?”
Cheong answered with a mischievous grin.
“We have to fix the house now. Oh, but Miss Jin—do you prefer the Big Dipper or the Heavenly South Star?”
Jin Seol’s expression turned bizarre.
The Big Dipper versus the Heavenly South Star? One was a great northern constellation, the other a flower—a sinister, venomous bloom despite the shared character for “star.” Asking her to choose between two completely unrelated things. What kind of nonsense—
Cheong didn’t give her time to think.
“You have five seconds. One. Two. Three—”
“Big Dipper. Definitely the Big Dipper.”
“Too bad. The Big Dipper is already full. Miss Jin, you are now officially part of the Heavenly South Star team.”
“…Then why did you even ask?”
“Some people were looking forward to it? Congratulations! Heavenly South Star team, let’s have some applause!”
A few of the family members who had already arrived offered up some rather awkward claps.
“Wait, what exactly is happening here?”
“It’s a reconstruction competition. We split into northern and southern teams. We’ll compete based on time taken, quality of workmanship, and artistic score. The northern team is the Big Dipper, the southern team is the Heavenly South Star.”
“Here, take your armband. Perfect fit. Miss Jin, you’re the team leader.”
“Me?”
“It matches perfectly, doesn’t it? The family head is a towering star of the orthodox Murim, so he leads the Big Dipper. And since you’re one of the Five Flowers of Murim, the flower of our generation, you lead the Heavenly South Star team.”
“But then wouldn’t that make me the Heavenly South Star?”
The Heavenly South Star was a highly poisonous plant, known as an extremely ominous flower due to its color and strange appearance.
“Ayy, don’t worry about trivial details. Now then! We shall begin the First Annual Jin Family Mansion Reconstruction Competition! Everyone, applause please!”
The clapping that followed sounded somewhat half-hearted, as if the participants were only doing it because they had to.
Bricks were pried out, exterior tiles removed, and the decorative stones that had paved the floor were torn up. On one side, the two teams mixed lime and ash to brew mortar. Once the floor was stripped away, black, rotten bloodstains appeared on the wooden foundation beneath. In truth they were worse than bloodstains—melted flesh had seeped in—but the smell was just as terrible. The joints were carefully cut apart, rotten timber hauled away, contaminated soil removed from the base, and fresh earth laid down.
The people of the Jin Family were martial artists, which meant they possessed outstanding stamina. People usually find joy in new experiences, and all the more so when the work isn’t overly exhausting. Above all, doing it together made it even more enjoyable.
“I went on patrol at Samhap Pavilion, and they were openly gossiping now. If you can’t even control your own people, why not just sell the place and leave? If it were up to me I’d have roared at them right then and there in broad daylight for daring to speak the Jin name, but…”
“You just let it go?”
“What can you do about commoners who don’t know any better? Getting angry would only make us look bad.”
“The world really has no shame these days.”
Everyone’s patrol and business schedules had been so packed that they rarely had time to sit and talk. This was the perfect chance. They chattered while prying out bricks, while mixing mortar, while carrying lumber—lost in stories only they understood.
With their mouths busier than their hands, more than two hours passed and the hour of the snake slipped into the afternoon. Lunchtime had long since come and gone, so everyone was bound to be hungry. Only then did the Jin family women, children, and elders who couldn’t help with the heavy labor bring out simple snacks on low tables.
Sticky rice, stir-fried vegetables, dried seafood quickly fried and tossed—simple side dishes—along with a huge bowl filled to the brim with yellow wine. It was hard to tell if this was a meal or a drinking party.
Yellow wine is sweet, and wine after hard labor is even sweeter. Once people cast aside formal attire, they tend to grow strangely casual. Already covered in stone dust and grime, the members of the prestigious family plopped straight down on the bare ground without a second thought and gulped down the hot wine.
“Kyaah. Was this wine always this good? I’ve never even touched the stuff before.”
“Must be the cold weather. It feels like it’s sliding straight through the body.”
They sprawled about as if they’d just finished some serious autumn construction project. In reality they’d been more excited about chatting than working, but since they were Murim practitioners who never let their hands rest, progress wasn’t bad at all.
Whenever someone found graffiti, everyone would crowd around guessing who drew it, reminiscing about the child, offering a word or two in remembrance before wandering off again. At this rate, even if Cheong had torn everything down alone she probably would have finished faster, but no one seemed to mind.
“Uncle, is that tasty?”
“Why are you coming to me? Go steal some from your father over there.”
“Come now. How much could a child possibly drink? It’s an adult’s duty to teach them about drinking. My own children turned out hopeless, so I’ll borrow my nephew’s child for a bit.”
And so a cup of yellow wine found its way to the family’s youngest, ten-year-old Jin Chu.
While the adults watched with expectant eyes, the little lady unexpectedly gulped it down neatly, emptied an entire bowl of rice, wiped her mouth, and gave her verdict.
“It’s good.”
A great tree begins as no ordinary sapling. Perhaps this was the birth of a future legendary drinker.
The ten-year-old’s face had turned bright red and she was wobbling unsteadily. Everyone burst into laughter, calling “Chu-ya, Chu-ya, come here!” and beckoning her over.
“All right, all right. It’s cold out, so let’s start the second half. Let’s see… how far has the Big Dipper team gotten with their bricks? Have they reached forty layers? Oh. Poisonous Plant team—er, I mean, Heavenly South Star team—you’ll need to work harder. At this rate you won’t even reach the eaves by tonight.”
After playing for nearly half an hour they returned to work. Since it was only a small annex to begin with, stripping it bare and rebuilding the interior and exterior didn’t require much effort. Before long the sun began to set and the brick walls were nearly complete.
Cheong was busy hammering new roof panels into place, completely focused. She gripped the eight-pound hammer close to the head and with one strike the nail vanished cleanly. This was the very “One Strike Annihilation” technique that had sent the carpenters of Gwangju into shivers of awe—one blow and the nail simply disappeared.
Of course, none of them knew anything about carpentry, so they couldn’t appreciate just how remarkable Cheong’s skill was.
When Cheong reached out, a hand—not as beautiful as hers but still quite lovely—placed a nail in her palm. A woman’s appearance might be a matter of taste, but beautiful hands were universally admired if they were white, slender, long, and graceful. In that sense, Cheong’s hands were simultaneously the most wicked and most beautiful demonic hands in the world.
Even if Jin Seol’s hands fell slightly short of that standard, the fact that they could even be compared was something to be grateful for.
Then, along with a nail, came a single sentence.
“Thank you.”
“Eh? For what?”
“This whole event was your idea, wasn’t it, Miss Seomun? The lunch too. Something like letting the common folk experience real labor?”
“Ayy, it wasn’t anything special.”
Jin Seol gazed at Cheong. Even beneath the sunset her skin was clear, her face truly beautiful.
“I should have accepted the Murim Alliance’s help after all. When sad and hurting people gather together, they can only keep feeling sad and hurt. It’s truly fortunate that you came, Miss Seomun.”
As Jin Seol spoke, she looked around at the Jin Family Mansion bathed in sunset light and at the family members still chatting with lingering traces of wine in their voices. The sight unconsciously softened the corners of her mouth.
“It’s been so long since it’s been this lively.”
“Then why not send some letters now? The guest quarters can be fixed up quickly too.”
“Dad—I mean.”
Jin Seol’s face flushed red.
So Miss Jin still calls the family head “Dad.” Cheong quietly filed away the meaningless new information.
“I plan to speak with my father. In truth, the moment I realized the Evil Faction was interfering, I should have requested support immediately. The situation was bad, and everything felt so miserable and shameful that I kept putting it off. I should have pulled myself together sooner. How pathetic.”
Jin Seol gently bit her pretty lip.
Instead of answering, Cheong simply held out her hand. Jin Seol hesitated a moment, then carefully took it and squeezed.
Cheong’s hand was always cold, so another person’s touch felt especially warm. Feeling that warmth against her palm, Cheong slyly withdrew her hand and spoke.
“I was asking for a nail, not your hand…”
The First Jin Family Mansion Reconstruction Competition ended in victory for the Big Dipper team.
They had finished before dark, so both teams tied in speed. There were no crooked corners anywhere, so the artistic score was tied. No safety incidents occurred, so the “safety good” score (everyone had wondered why it wasn’t simply called a safety score) was also tied.
What ultimately decided the winner was the height of the “ears.”
In the distinctive Cantonese architectural style, the front and back edges of the roof were built up high with bricks and finished in an attractive ear-like shape. It was called the “wok-ear” style—named after the lugs on a cooking pot, since the roof resembled both a pot and ears. The carpenters claimed it helped keep the house cool in summer, so there was probably some scientific principle behind it. Cheong had no interest in analyzing it, so she simply accepted it as ancestral wisdom. If that was what the forebears of the central plains had decided, then so be it.
The Big Dipper team had stacked their ears five layers higher, earning a generous “soaring spirit” bonus and taking the win. Poor Jinseong Hall was left with mismatched ears.
Was that really how it worked? Just whoever had taller ears won? Hadn’t the family head secretly given them extra points? And so on. (Even the normally dignified Jin Family Head’s eyebrows had twitched at that last remark.) There was some debate about the fairness of the judging, but since the whole thing had been organized for fun, no one took it too seriously.
Of course, that last part was only Cheong’s personal opinion. She had underestimated the competitive spirit of Murim people. In the second competition, the Jin Family’s ears were likely to become donkey ears rather than a king’s ears, but Cheong remained blissfully unaware.
The leftover materials were dumped beside the main gate of the Jin Family Mansion and a notice was posted.
The wood is contaminated waste lumber and can only be used as firewood. The bricks are being discarded because washing them for reuse is too much trouble. They have been purified by the Civil Engineering Fairy with utmost sincerity. Will be removed in ten days.
This was a common method of disposing of waste materials in the central plains. In other words: take it if you want to use it as firewood. Take the bricks if you’re willing to wash them. Creeped out by the contamination? The shamaness purified them, so it’s fine. If no one takes them, they’ll be thrown away in ten days.
Passing commoners excitedly began hauling away as much as they could carry. It was truly a win-win situation—an eco-friendly construction project that minimized waste.
And so the news spread throughout the city of Gwangju.
They said the Civil Engineering Fairy really was efficacious; she had finally turned her hand to the Jin Family. Did she serve the Xiang Yu warrior? If she served the Xiang Yu warrior, her monstrous strength made sense, but she seemed a bit ambiguous when it came to curses. So the whispers went. Just how long could the Civil Engineering Fairy endure before the Jin Family’s curse?