Chapter 49
Chapter 49
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 49
Chapter Title: Shaolin Temple
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Dan Seoryeong eyed Dang Mujin suspiciously. Naturally, Dang Mujin found it just as hard to believe her.
"If the Chief of the Pursuit Hall told you to seek out someone from the Dan family to help fix the Wooden Man Lane..."
"Then you've come to the right place."
"The right place?"
"No one knows more about the Wooden Man Lane than I do."
Dang Mujin twitched his eyebrows. No matter how he thought about it, something felt off.
"I've heard that women are never allowed inside the Shaolin Temple, no matter the circumstances."
"That's right."
"Then how has Miss Dan Seoryeong seen the Wooden Man Lane?"
"Of course I haven't."
Dang Mujin's eyes narrowed. Had he come to someone whose mind wasn't right?
"You haven't seen it, but you claim to know it well?"
"It's possible... No, more importantly, who are you to come questioning me like this? This is the first time someone's been sent by the Chief of the Pursuit Hall, so are you a con artist or what?"
Dan Seoryeong's softened demeanor turned sharp again. Dang Mujin hurriedly waved his hands.
"No, that's not it. The Chief said it was fine to inspect the inside, so I did, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the structure. When I asked if there were any records or documents on the Wooden Man Lane's layout, he told me to come here."
Dan Seoryeong stared at Dang Mujin with a tilted posture as she spoke.
"That's a plausible excuse... But I heard the Chief doesn't let outsiders into the Wooden Man Lane. How did you get in?"
"It's a bit embarrassing to say with my own mouth, but I'm pretty good with my hands."
"That's the only reason?"
Sometimes, showing once was better than explaining a hundred times. Dang Mujin approached the slowly turning waterwheel.
The waterwheel was made up of many parts. Naturally, a few were worn or in poor condition. Dang Mujin's eyes landed on a thick wooden gear about half a chi in size.
It wasn't a part bearing the waterwheel's main load. But from years of abuse, a clear crack was visible.
"This part looks pretty precarious."
"You're right. It seems like it'll break soon, so I've been making a replacement."
Sure enough, there were quite a few discarded wooden scraps around the waterwheel.
Some had knots that made them concave, others had split along the grain from force applied in the wrong direction, rendering them unusable.
"Could I borrow a small knife and some wood scraps?"
Curious about Dang Mujin's skills, Dan Seoryeong readily handed over a knife half a chi long and some wood scraps.
He felt the unique dry texture of well-seasoned wood. Perfect. Carving unseasoned wood would cause it to warp as it dried, making it unusable.
Dang Mujin placed a scrap next to the faulty part, checked the size, and began carving immediately.
Dang Mujin's crafting speed was beyond imagination.
Back in Zhongjing when he made swords, more blacksmiths marveled at his speed than at the quality of his work.
If hammering metal was that fast, how quick was he with wood? In an instant, Dang Mujin finished the gear and handed it to Dan Seoryeong. She stuck out her tongue in amazement.
"Wow, it's not like you're carving—it’s like you're peeling off the shell to reveal the core."
"I hear that sometimes. Check if it fits."
"Hold on."
When Dan Seoryeong pulled at the precariously seated gear, it didn't come loose—it crumbled pathetically.
With a dissatisfied look, she tossed aside the broken part and fitted the new one Dang Mujin had made. It fit perfectly, almost magically.
"Now do you believe me?"
"Impressive. You deserve a look inside the Wooden Man Lane. Oh, and speak casually. We're not that far apart in age."
"Got it... I mean, alright."
"Anyway, you're going to fix the Wooden Man Lane, right?"
"Yeah."
"Great!"
Dan Seoryeong grinned like a child, delighted. It was a simple, bright, unadorned smile.
Standing close, Dang Mujin caught a faint whiff of her sweat, but it didn't feel off-putting. If anything, it suited her.
"Sorry for being prickly. Everyone who's come looking for me and Dad before was either the type who poked around out of curiosity and broke things or con artists claiming they could fix the Wooden Man Lane."
A quick, straightforward apology. Dang Mujin nodded.
Now it was his turn to ask.
"You say you know it well without ever seeing it? Why did the Chief send me to you?"
"I think showing you will be faster than explaining. Come in!"
Dan Seoryeong led Dang Mujin into her house.
He'd thought it was a ramshackle hut from the outside, but it was surprisingly spacious inside.
Unlike the shabby exterior, the interior was sturdy and meticulously built.
The most unique feature was on the inner walls.
The back walls were carefully covered with thin paper mulberry and oak panels, densely inscribed with tiny writing.
"What's all this?"
"Dad wrote down everything he knew about the Wooden Man Lane. I added some later. Our family has lived around the Shaolin Temple, helping with Pursuit Hall matters. We're practically a Shaolin household. I heard one of our ancestors built the Wooden Man Lane long ago."
In that case, talking to Dan Seoryeong's father would be much faster. Dang Mujin asked her.
"Where's your father?"
"Over there."
Dan Seoryeong pointed somewhere outside the house.
Beyond a small hill on the mountainside, a cluster of bushes by a stream was visible.
"The bushes?"
"Yeah. Dad's grave is beyond those bushes."
"Ah..."
"No need to look so sorry. It happened long ago, and I don't even maintain the grave."
"...Why?"
"I'm annoyed with him. He couldn't fix the Wooden Man Lane himself but left me a ton of work. A few years back, while weeding around the grave, I told him: 'You dumped all this work on me and left, so don't be upset if I skip grave-tending. I'll let you know when it's done.' That should be enough."
She spoke cheerfully of such a melancholy tale. Her father's absence was clearly all too familiar.
Dan Seoryeong traced the writing on the wall with her finger as she continued.
"Anyway, our ancestors couldn't fix it either. Dad obsessed over it for years, but his skills weren't up to it. Looking back, he didn't even fully understand how it worked."
Dang Mujin nodded. As someone who also failed to grasp the structure, he empathized deeply.
To understand and repair the Wooden Man Lane, wouldn't they need to gather every mechanism expert in the Central Plains?
Dan Seoryeong went on.
"But Dad compiled all the information he had and verified the internal and underground structures to create these records. It's everything there is to know about the Wooden Man Lane."
With that, she tapped the wall firmly.
So these inscriptions detailed the structure. Dang Mujin read a snippet from the wall.
[...From there, seven and a half chi east is a gear. Its radius is two chi five pun. The gear faces due west-south, connected to a pillar about as thick as a pinky finger, extending seven chi toward the upper beam...]
Just reading it made his head spin.
Naturally, describing something as complex as the Wooden Man Lane in writing was absurd.
Even drawing it with ink and brush wouldn't be easy.
"Can you understand this?"
"At first, I was lost too. But staring at it all day, every day since childhood, I eventually got it."
Dang Mujin looked at her skeptically. Did that even make sense?
"It's true. Look at this."
Dan Seoryeong went outside to the clearing and brought back a scroll and a model.
Unrolling the scroll revealed a crudely drawn diagram. It felt complex, but its meaning was hard to grasp.
The model she brought was more intuitive: clumsily made gears and pillars jumbled together. When she turned a rod at one end, the other parts moved organically, just like the wooden figures.
"What's this?"
"I skipped the parts I understood from Dad's records and built models for the unclear ones. Most make sense when sketched, but some only click when made physically. Dad's records aren't all accurate."
Dang Mujin reread the wall. It still looked like cipher text.
To decipher such vague descriptions, fill in the gaps, and even build prototypes—how much effort would that take?
No, this went beyond effort into raw talent. If Dang Mujin had talent as a blacksmith, didn't Dan Seoryeong have genius in a different field, surpassing ordinary folk?
But there was something Dang Mujin couldn't comprehend. Not the structure, but something more fundamental.
"What does this mean to you? You can't enter the Shaolin Temple anyway."
"True. Dad didn't plan to teach me either. Like his father did for him, he organized it for my little brother."
"Where's your brother now?"
"Next to Dad."
Dang Mujin was speechless again. He shook his head twice and pressed on.
"Then why organize your father's records?"
"I can't go in, but the son I bear can enter the Shaolin Temple. My child will fix it in my place. I'm doing what I can outside while waiting for that day."
Dan Seoryeong pointed to a pickaxe leaning against the house. Only then did Dang Mujin realize why she'd been digging with it.
The power turning the pillars linking the wooden figures to the floor came not from people, but the waterwheel beside the hut. Dan Seoryeong was digging beyond the Shaolin walls to transmit the waterwheel's power inside, repairing the wheel, burying wooden shafts in the ground, and compiling the Wooden Man Lane's structure.
His chest tightened. What madness was this girl devoting her life to?
No pretty dresses like other girls, no powder on her face—just baggy clothes, sweat pouring as she swung the pickaxe to tear up the earth.
While others toyed with trinkets, she shut herself in a dim room, groaning over headaches alone.
Even if her plan succeeded flawlessly, it was pointless.
No one would acknowledge or reward her dedication. The one who fixed it would be her son, not her.
Dan Seoryeong was sacrificing her life for a dream she could never reap. One she might not even witness.
For such a dream, she burned her life away. Throwing it all to become a stepping stone, passing knowledge along.
Dang Mujin asked.
"Why?"
He wasn't living it himself—just hearing about it from the sidelines.
Yet it choked him unbearably. How could she accept such a life?
"It's the Wooden Man Lane—you'll never see it with your own eyes. Is there a reason to tackle it? When you're a white-haired old woman, you won't regret it?"
"Is that not allowed?"
Dan Seoryeong shot back briefly, staring straight into Dang Mujin's eyes.
Like a pine on a mountainside. Eyes that had grown straight through countless twists and torments. Her gaze made him dizzy.
"Not allowed? Of course—"
"Of course? No. Nothing's 'of course.' You wouldn't get it. Dad wasn't talented, but he wasn't bad. Yet he spent his life hunched like a criminal for failing to fix that stupid wooden doll. Even the Shaolin monks never blamed him."
Dan Seoryeong chuckled.
"As a kid, I thought Dad was an idiot. Now I'm turning out the same. No matter what I do, I can't shake the thought that the Wooden Man Lane is stopped. My child, my descendants—they'll live the same. So I decided: I have to hear that damn thing moves. I need to hear the Dan family finally did it. Weird?"
Of course it was weird.
The Wooden Man Lane was bizarre, the Dan family bore a bizarre duty, and Dan Seoryeong chose an even weirder life.
But at the same time, Dang Mujin understood her a little. Not with his head, but his heart.
Others would weep that their life was tragic.
But Dan Seoryeong's voice brimmed with excitement.
She stepped outside and hauled in a knee-high jar, grunting. Inside sloshed a cloudy, slightly greenish liquid.
"What's this?"
"Booze!"
Dang Mujin sniffed the jar.
It reeked strongly of the cheap yeast from yellow liquor. Dan Seoryeong sang out.
"I used to sip it when I felt down, but today I'm drinking it all. No more bad days ahead."
She handed Dang Mujin a rough cup. He glanced at it, then at her. She held one too.
"Why give me some?"
"You're helping fix the Wooden Man Lane, right? We drink together."
Her logic didn't hold, but he understood.
She pulled out a few dried fruits. For her sparse household, it was lavish drinking fare.
"Bottoms up!"
Dan Seoryeong and Dang Mujin downed their cups. The liquor was sour.
Dan Seoryeong looked at him and grinned, baring her teeth. It suited her perfectly. Dang Mujin grinned back unwittingly.
She refilled the cups, unrolled the earlier scroll, and began explaining.
"Look at this diagram. This part connects inside the Shaolin wall—I haven't seen it myself, but I know the structure..."
Dang Mujin listened to her animated explanation.
He nodded occasionally, chimed in now and then, and asked questions when he could. Dan Seoryeong grew even more excited, pressing on. As the talk flowed, the jar's contents dwindled.
How much time passed? Dang Mujin, drunk, fell asleep unawares.
*
Dang Mujin awoke.
It was dark around him, and his mouth and nose reeked of alcohol.
Pondering where he was, he recalled drinking with Dan Seoryeong. He jolted.
'Hope I didn't do anything stupid.'
Dang Mujin quickly checked himself. Fortunately, he was fully clothed, and Dan Seoryeong wasn't inside.
Patting his chest in relief, he cautiously stepped outside.
A bright moonlit night. Gray clouds drifted lazily across the sky.
By the moon and stars, dawn was still far off.
Wondering where Dan Seoryeong was, he scanned around. Finding her was easy.
She sat by the waterwheel, knees up, chin in hand, humming a slow tune.
Dang Mujin followed her gaze. She stared toward the bushes beyond a small hill.
He watched her profile for a long while, then quietly slipped back inside to sleep.