The Genius Construction Worker Who Moved to America - Chapter 20

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 20

The Last Puzzle Piece

Kang Jun traced the remnants of an aqueduct stretching nearly two kilometers.

The water channel, abandoned for years, lay buried under sediment in places, and the very skeleton of stone masonry had begun to crumble.

Water that escaped the aqueduct seeped into the muddy earth halfway up the mountain.
At this rate, the pond at Elm Street 1,248 would remain nothing but a desiccated hollow.

“First, there’s something I need to do before laying the water channel.”

Kang Jun brushed the dirt from his trousers and rose to his feet. Impatience tugged at him, but one misstep in sequence and everything would come to nothing.

Before he could draw the water, he had to repair the vessel meant to hold it. A cracked vessel, after all, could hold nothing.

Kang Jun turned and made his way back to the courtyard at Elm Street 1,248.

Standing before the parched pond, Kang Jun set down his tool bag and dragged over a thick oak tree that lay toppled to one side.

“This weight is perfect for a mallet.”

He reached for an axe and a thick chisel instead of a chainsaw.

Rasp, crack!

As Kang Jun flicked the axe lightly, the dense oak’s bark peeled away to reveal the heartwood beneath.
He turned the wood this way and that, repeating his cuts.

Through the sensitivity in his fingertips, he found the center of gravity and gradually flattened the striking surface.

And thirty minutes later.

In Kang Jun’s hands lay a Tteok-me nearly the size of a person.

A rounded, smoothly finished handle, a substantial striking face. It looked exactly like the wooden mallet used for pounding rice cakes in Korea.

He hoisted the finished Tteok-me onto his shoulder and unfurled a large sheet of plywood beside the pond—a workspace for making the lime-mortar paste.

Just then, brisk footsteps echoed from behind him.

“Director, I’ve brought all the materials you requested.”

It was Sophia, dressed in a neat business suit. Behind her, laborers laden with plastic bags followed in her wake.
Early this morning, Kang Jun had asked her to gather these materials, and she had delivered.

“Thank you for your trouble, Sophia. I know you must be busy with the ledgers. Set them down here, would you?”

At Kang Jun’s words, Sophia nodded slightly and began to examine the bags carefully.

Quicklime, yellow earth, coarse sand, and sea salt. Materials almost never used in modern construction—thoroughly analog in character.

The moment Sophia saw the list of materials, her heart sank.
A childhood memory she had forgotten—or rather, deliberately tried to suppress—came rushing back.

‘This is… the method Father used to employ.’

An image of his father, sweating in the Courtyard as he kneaded the earth, overlaid itself in his mind.

“Sophia, come here and look at this, will you? This is what will keep our Pond from drying up.”
“Wow! Dad, I want to play with clay too! Give me some!”

Those childhood hours, crouched beside her father, playing with the earth and chattering away.
Her father had struck the nameless clod of earth thousands upon thousands of times with a wooden mallet, tamping down the Pond’s floor.

Thanks to that devotion, the Pond had weathered even torrential downpours without flinching. And no matter how severe the drought, the Pond always held clear water, rippling gently.

But once her father passed away and his hand was no longer there, the Pond soon lay bare.

Sophia fell into thought for a moment.
It occurred to her that perhaps her own stubborn pursuit of numbers was something inherited from her father.

A faint smile crossed her lips. Sophia bowed her head to Kang Jun once more.

“Inspector… I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Her voice trembled. By now, moisture glistened at the corners of her eyes.

Kang Jun, determined to save the house using the very same method as her father. The tears flowing now were an expression of reverence.

Kang Jun set down the plastic bags he’d been holding and answered calmly.

“This isn’t work done only for you, so there’s no need to feel that way.”

Sophia interpreted his blunt manner of speaking as a gesture of comfort.
As she bowed again, Kang Jun murmured inwardly.

‘It’s for the Contribution Rate, but… well, it works out to a win for both of us anyway, so it doesn’t matter.’

* * *

From that day on, an unfamiliar scene unfolded in the Courtyard of Elm Street 1,248.

“Huh! Ha!”

In the midday heat of California, Kang Jun swung a Tteok-me, his sweat-soaked shirt cast aside.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Each time he raised the massive mallet and brought it down, a heavy sound echoed across the Courtyard. Quicklime, Yellow Earth, Coarse Sand, and Sea Salt mingled and spread across the Pond’s floor.

The Artisan’s Grip Strength was channeling endurance into his body, but the heat radiating from the quicklime’s reaction with water and the relentless sunlight were grueling.

Sweat dripped from Kang Jun’s forehead onto the earthen floor, mixing with the paste.

“This… I’m absolutely roasting.”

He labored on, breathing hard but unflinching, swinging the mallet again and again. Hundreds of times, thousands of times, tens of thousands of times.
He didn’t stop until the floor’s density had become as hard as granite.

Days later, the Pond’s floor had been transformed into a Waterproof Layer so seamless that not a single drop of water could seep through.

Once the floor work was complete, the next phase began: constructing the Stone Masonry that would encircle the Pond.
Kang Jun gathered the collapsed stones and natural rock from the surrounding area.

As he concentrated his attention, a blue light flickered in his eyes. And the optimal points where each stone should be placed appeared before him, blinking like a cursor.

Kang Jun picked up a stone and began chiseling it with the Double-faced Hammer and chisel. Each strike was precise beyond measure.

Clang! Crack! Tap-tap-tap!

He carved the underside of the upper stone to match the curve of the stone below it.

The pond’s previous owner had already grasped the fundamentals of dry stone masonry.
But Kang Jun’s hammer work transcended human capability entirely, making any comparison meaningless.

Golden lines stretched across his vision, arranged horizontally and vertically.
The stone wall, built with nothing but weight and friction, locked together without the slightest gap.

Yet this was far from the end.

‘Why not add a touch of artistry here?’

Whoosh—

A blueprint unfolded before Kang Jun’s eyes, revealing calculations of the sun’s arc and the length of shadows falling across the courtyard.

He stacked the stones on the pond’s south side slightly lower and those on the north side marginally higher, adjusting the depth and dimensionality of the shadows.

He also calibrated the depth layers of the pond floor itself.

When water flowed in through the aqueduct, the stepped levels would create natural ripples and sound.

From the courtyard entrance. From the wooden deck looking down. From the living room window.
He had designed it so that the sky and scenery reflected in the pond would create an entirely different picture depending on the viewing angle and position.

It was a work of art born from the marriage of Kang Jun’s aesthetic sense and nature itself.

“Perfect. The vessel is complete.”

Kang Jun wiped the sweat from his brow and surveyed the pond. Now it was time to breathe life into this beautiful vessel.

“Then, shall I go find the final puzzle piece?”

He gathered his tools and materials and wasted no time heading upstream along the aqueduct.

Bundled across Kang Jun’s back were pre-made Curved Wooden Planks in a semicircular shape, and in both his hands hung buckets of Lime-mortar Paste.

U-shaped wooden planks baked with fire and water. Kang Jun planned to stack them vertically and horizontally to replace the collapsed aqueduct.

Every process was conducted by hand to maximize the Contribution Rate.

Kang Jun pushed through dense undergrowth and climbed the hillside, persistently hunting for traces of the old aqueduct.

“It must start here.”

He located the starting point of the aqueduct connected to the pond and excavated the earth and broken stones with his shovel.

Then he carefully lowered the semicircular wooden plank into the space.
Plank after plank had to interlock without any gaps.

Whoosh—! Beep-beep!

Throughout the work, a blue light shimmered in Kang Jun’s eyes.
The Human Protractor and Ruler’s Blueprint skills pushed to their absolute limit.

He read the contours of the terrain and calculated in real time the gradient that would allow water to flow without stagnating.

“Shave away just two more millimeters from the floor, and shift the direction three degrees to the left.”

Kang Jun murmured to himself, carefully smoothing the ground.

He laid wooden planks over the compacted floor, then meticulously sealed the gaps, the aqueduct bed, and the planks’ surfaces with lime-mortar paste. Finally, he covered everything with a wooden cap and finished.

Once the paste hardened, not a single drop of water would seep through the channel.

The work in the mountains continued, day and night, for several days.

During the day he battled the merciless sun; at night he relied on a single lantern’s glow to maintain the proper gradient.

With his natural ability, Kang Jun would have completed the two-kilometer aqueduct repairs in two days.

But this time was different. He was more careful than ever before.
This aqueduct was the final puzzle piece needed to achieve a contribution rate of ninety percent.

If the gradient was even slightly off, the property title transfer plan would fall apart.

One day, two days, three days….
Kang Jun’s work clothes fell into disarray, but the aqueduct stretching from the mountainside down to the courtyard traced a perfect curve as it took shape.

And at last.

The Rocky Area where the water source lay appeared before Kang Jun’s eyes. Clear groundwater rising from the crevices in the stone had formed a natural spring pool.

“Finally… it’s finished.”

[Overall Aqueduct Gradient: 1/1500 (approximately 0.038 degrees)]

Even as it traversed two kilometers of winding terrain, the aqueduct’s gradient maintained precisely 1 to 1,500.

The most ideal slope—water neither stagnating and fouling nor overflowing.
Precision in civil engineering that one might find in ancient Roman aqueducts had been inscribed upon this nameless hillside in America.

In Kang Jun’s hand lay the final piece to complete the aqueduct: a semicircular wooden plank.

Once he fitted this piece into place, water would flow, and life would return to the parched courtyard pond. And the system’s reward notifications would pour in.

Kang Jun steadied his racing heart and carefully lowered the wooden plank into the gap between the rocky outcrop and the aqueduct.

Click.

The wooden plank found its place and locked into the aqueduct. Kang Jun quickly sealed the gap with lime-mortar paste.

Trickle-trickle!

As if it had been waiting, the water welling from the rock crevice began flowing into the aqueduct.

The stream slid down the wood grain toward the courtyard of number 1,248.

Kang Jun collapsed where he stood, watching the water flow past. A surge of euphoria swept away his exhaustion.

“Now that land is… mine!”

Kang Jun closed his eyes and waited for the system’s notification. For the reward cascading in golden text.

But then—.
Kang Jun’s mind remained silent.

“What…?”

He swung at the empty air, bewilderment flooding his face.

“System? System! Why won’t you show the quest completion window? I brought the pond back to life and restored the entire aqueduct!”

The blue message window remained silent. A mountain breeze swept through just then, brushing away the cold sweat on his forehead.

Kang Jun’s gaze followed the water flowing down the aqueduct.
Not a single drop leaked. The gradient couldn’t have been more perfect. Yet why on earth wouldn’t it work?

“So… it’s not going to be easy, then?”

Without another thought, Kang Jun turned and started down the mountain at a run.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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