The Mending Studio - Chapter 11

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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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Chapter 11
A dull thud sounded from behind.

“You insufferable man!”

A woman’s strident voice echoed through the Alley.
Yeop Jang-cheong’s pace slowed just slightly.
He did not turn around.
It seemed Son Do-bu’s wife had come rushing out of the shop.

“What did you just say to him?”
“I—I didn’t say anything!”
“Am I deaf?”
“Darling, it’s a misunderstanding.”
“That the women in our neighborhood are coarse?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“How dare you say such a thing? I’ve been keeping my eye on my mother’s uncle’s third brother-in-law’s niece to introduce to him, and here you are insulting all the local women?”
“Who on earth is that supposed to be?”
“Why do you need to know?”

Immediately, another crash echoed out.

“Ow!”
“A man who can’t even circulate his energy lying down—where does he get off lecturing anyone about being a real man?”

Yeon Bing-shim’s eyes widened.
Yeop Jang-cheong made an effort to keep his expression neutral.
Behind them, Son Do-bu’s desperate voice continued.

“Honey, not there!”
“Today I’ll thrash you a third time over!”
“Honey, not there! We don’t even have children yet!”
“Then should I just settle this properly with a blade today?”
“Not with a blade! Hit me instead! I was wrong. Let’s just talk this out, all right?”
“Someone help me!”

Those nearby laughed, one holding his belly as he teased Son Do-bu, another remarking that of course he deserved a beating for speaking about women and men right in front of their teacher. The laughter erupted, and in an instant the butcher shop entrance had become a small spectacle.
Yeon Bing-shim stood frozen, watching the couple quarrel without shame in the middle of the street and the crowd accept even their fight as entertainment.
When she recalled the villagers calling her his wife just moments before, the blush that had barely faded crept back across her cheeks.
Yet Yeop Jang-cheong, walking ahead of her, remained utterly unmoved.
Watching him, Yeon Bing-shim wondered whether living with such power among these ordinary people, unbothered and unremarkable, might itself be the elevated state of mind she could not yet comprehend.
Yeon Bing-shim glanced back once more, then decided not to dwell on it any longer and followed after Yeop Jang-cheong.
Moments later, Yeop Jang-cheong spoke first.

“Miss Yeon.”
“Yes?”
“The people of Sojijin tend to be rather forthright.”

Yeon Bing-shim looked at him.

“There’s no malice in what they say, so please don’t take to heart anything you heard just now.”

His words sounded like he was drawing a line regarding the villagers’ misunderstanding of them as a couple, and a small flicker of disappointment crossed Yeon Bing-shim’s eyes.
Yet she smiled quickly enough.

“Don’t worry. I have no intention of quarreling with the villagers over such things.”
“That’s a relief.”

Yeop Jang-cheong smiled as well.
A moment later, as if something had just occurred to him, he asked a question.

“Ah, and you mentioned your family will be coming to find you soon, yes?”
“Yes. They should arrive before long.”
“I feel I haven’t treated you as well as I ought to have.”

Yeop Jang-cheong lifted the piece of meat he held slightly for her to see.

“Today I thought I’d prepare some meat the way they do where I come from. Whether it suits your palate, I can’t say.”

Yeon Bing-shim’s expression brightened.

“You mean you’ll be cooking for us yourself?”
“It’s nothing fancy.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s a saying that all who come are guests. Treating guests well is only natural, isn’t it?”

Yeon Bing-shim fell quiet again at those words. He spoke as though it were mere ordinary hospitality, yet the simple fact that a Sage was preparing his native dishes with his own hands felt like an incomprehensible kindness.
The two walked slowly through the alley, exchanging idle talk. Heuk-hwang appeared at some point and began following behind them, as if nothing unusual had happened.
As they entered the street where the shop stood, a young man was waiting directly in front of it.
In his Blue Silk Long Robe and long hair, with his neat brows and sharp features, he was plainly no one of ordinary birth.
Yet his face was deathly pale. In his gaze fixed upon the shop interior lay shock he could not conceal.

“Do you know this person, Miss Yeon?”

Yeon Bing-shim studied the stranger more carefully.
His aura as a cultivator was far more stable and profound than her own. From his dress and bearing alone, he could well have been a core disciple of some great sect, and that would have surprised no one.
Yet she had no memory of his face.

“I’ve never seen him before.”

Yeon Bing-shim answered briefly.
It was true that the man before her cut an impressive figure, but after two days at Yeop Jang-cheong’s side, mere presence and air no longer moved her heart as they once had. No matter how lofty his origins or how great his cultivation, she now had another to whom she must compare him—and that had changed her measure entirely.
One cannot set the faint glimmer of a grain of rice next to the bright moon of heaven and call them comparable. So too did Yeon Bing-shim stand beside someone for whom comparison itself had become meaningless.
The two drew closer.
Only then, as the shop interior came into view, did Yeop Jang-cheong’s steps falter.

“What…?”

Several massive Wild Boars lay scattered across the floor.
Each one was so enormous compared to ordinary forest pigs that muscles bulged beneath their coarse fur, and their exposed tusks were the size of a grown man’s forearm. They were among the largest beasts Yeop Jang-cheong had seen since arriving in Sojijin.
These enormous corpses had fallen against one wall in a peculiar heap.
And on the wall directly above them hung the Black Hwang Painting.
Heuk-hwang sat calmly in one corner of the shop.
Yeop Jang-cheong’s eyes darted between the young man and the Wild Boars.

‘Why would there be Wild Boars in a misc. shop…?’

Yeop Jang-cheong could make no sense of it whatsoever.
He opened his mouth cautiously.

“Pardon me.”

The young man turned slowly.

“I believe there’s been a misunderstanding.”

Yeop Jang-cheong gestured into the shop.

“This shop does not accept Wild Boar.”

It was only after hearing Yeop Jang-cheong’s words that the young man finally came to his senses.
Yi Jang-myeong, the Sage of the Taehyeon Holy Ground. A prodigy born with an Ultimate-grade Dual-attribute Dual-spirit Root.
Yi Jang-myeong, who had been Sword Riding continuously from Taehyeon Mountain, slowed his pace the moment the village came into view. As he drew near, he dismounted from the sword altogether, walking instead along the ordinary dirt paths and past the low walls of houses, his senses suddenly alert.
There was only one reason.
He wanted to show proper courtesy to the Sage rumored to be living in seclusion somewhere in this small village. The thought of approaching by Sword Riding overhead before even confirming their identity struck him as deeply discourteous.
At first, he had doubted it himself.
Piecing together the circumstances, he had arrived at the conclusion that a Sage descended from the Upper Realm might indeed be in Sojijin.
Yet it remained difficult to believe, even now, that such a being would dwell in so ordinary a small village, until he witnessed it with his own eyes.
But the moment Yi Jang-myeong set foot in Sojijin, his doubt swiftly dissolved.
A faint aura different from Spiritual Qi caught in his narrowed gaze.
It was a subtle force that slipped through his fingers when he tried to grasp it, yet touched his senses again when he tried to let it go. An ordinary Cultivator would never have detected it, but Yi Jang-myeong, born with an Ultimate-grade Dual-attribute Dual-spirit Root, was not ordinary.
He did not let that single thread of aura escape him.
When he had heard only the stories from his masters, he had imagined a remote, minor village where the Spiritual Qi was so meager that any serious Cultivator would scarcely spare it a glance.
But now that he had arrived in person, Sojijin proved the opposite of his expectations.
Yi Jang-myeong felt the pure, crystalline Heaven-Earth Spiritual Qi that he would have expected to sense only near a Spirit Vein deep in the mountains—now spread gently throughout the entire village, indiscriminate of humble houses and narrow alleys.

‘As I thought.’

If, as his masters had conjectured, the Spirit Vein that had slumbered beneath Sojijin had awakened once more, the aura would only grow denser with time. Yi Jang-myeong’s heart raced.
If that were so, there was no telling how many more cultivation geniuses might be born in this small village.
Yi Jang-myeong suddenly recalled the eight children his masters had brought.
One superior Spirit Root, and seven Ultimate-grade Spirit Roots. Even when he had first heard that incredible result, he had thought it difficult to dismiss as mere coincidence.
But having felt the Spiritual Qi of this land with his own senses, his understanding shifted. With the children having grown on a land where the Spirit Vein had been revived, and the very being who had restored that Spirit Vein dwelling here—there was nothing about the eight children’s natural gifts that could not be explained.
Yi Jang-myeong’s footsteps grew even more cautious.
He was certain that this person stood at the center of all the Spirit Vein’s changes and the children’s gifts that had unfolded until now. He carefully pursued each faint thread of aura scattered through the empty air, missing not a single one.
After passing through one alley and turning down another narrow path, he saw a shop that was neither old nor ornate—the Jang-cheong Misc. Shop came into view.
The moment he saw the signboard, the Sword Intent radiating from those five characters made Yi Jang-myeong’s steps falter.
Each stroke concealed within it a different Sword Path.
Yet those paths wove together again into a single, enormous Sword Momentum. Words like “sharp” fell far short.
Now he understood why Yuk Mu-ssang had been entranced upon seeing merely the signboard.
No—even compared to her, Yi Jang-myeong’s superior Cultivation aptitude revealed far more variations hidden between the strokes. The deeper he looked, the harder it became to fathom where it all led.
One Sword Intent layered behind another Sword Intent, and beyond that lay something to which his current level could not even give a name.
Yi Jang-myeong clenched his teeth and forced himself to tear his gaze away before his consciousness sank any deeper.

‘This is the place.’

If a true Sage descended from the Upper Realm dwelled anywhere, it could only be here.
Yi Jang-myeong slowly stepped into the shop.
And in the next instant.
Thud!
Something invisible struck his Divine Soul.

“Ugh—!”

A terribly thick and heavy Demonic Qi erupted from all directions at once, crashing down like a massive black wave, and the color drained from Yi Jang-myeong’s face in an instant.
A splitting headache rushed through him. Yi Jang-myeong gritted his teeth and held fast to his consciousness.
Only after his vision cleared some time later did he notice the enormous wild boars scattered across the shop floor.

‘Greater Demon Beasts……’

Judging from the Demonic Qi lingering in their bodies, these were Greater Demon Beasts that one could not approach lightly in life, yet they lay carelessly strewn across the shop floor.
As Yi Jang-myeong’s gaze traveled upward, it came to rest on a single painting hanging on the wall: the Black Hwang Painting.
It depicted a black dog.
But to Yi Jang-myeong’s eyes, it did not appear as a mere painting.
Two forces of Yin and Yang circled above the image. A faint glow like the light of twilight spread outward, and within it, the black dog radiated the oppressive presence of a living Divine Deity.
Even breathing became something to be cautious about.
In that moment, everything connected.
Now he understood all at once why the wild boar Greater Demon Beasts had perished here, why their bodies bore no fatal wounds yet their life forces had been completely shattered, and where all this terrible Demonic Qi filling the shop had flowed from.

‘With a single painting…… they destroyed the Divine Soul.’

Yi Jang-myeong’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
There was no other way to explain it: the Greater Demon Beasts had tried to cause trouble in this shop, only to have their Divine Souls annihilated along with their bodies by that Divine Painting.
Only then did Yi Jang-myeong truly look at the person standing before the shop.
His face was handsome and carried an air of pristine refinement, yet he gave off no aura of strength, and not a trace of spiritual power emanated from him. If anything, he was so unremarkable and natural that a stranger might have difficulty calling him a Cultivator at all.
Yet that very ordinariness terrified him more. Watching a man hang such a Divine Painting on his wall and stand unmoved before the corpses of several Greater Demon Beasts—Yi Jang-myeong found himself straightening his posture without thinking.
Only then did the meaning of what he’d heard earlier slowly register. The man before him was pointing at the wild boars scattered across the floor, apparently thinking Yi Jang-myeong was someone who’d come to sell them.
A person who treated even the death of wild boar demons with such indifference had somehow mistaken him for a customer bringing livestock to market. The gulf was so vast that Yi Jang-myeong couldn’t decide what to say first.
He spoke carefully.

“Forgive me, but… who are you?”

Yeop Jang-cheong studied him once more.
His face was handsome and his bearing refined, yet his jaw tightened subtly whenever he spoke.

‘He looks perfectly fine. Why does he seem so stiff?’

He smiled and answered.

“The owner of the Jang-cheong Misc. Shop.”

The owner.
At those words, Yi Jang-myeong’s eyes widened considerably.
Since he had now directly confirmed that this was indeed the owner of the place he’d sought out, there was no further reason to doubt.
Yi Jang-myeong tried once more to read the man’s aura, but found not a shred of spiritual power or trace of cultivation level. Rather, that perfect ordinariness only strengthened his certainty—this being existed at a realm so far beyond his own comprehension that he sensed nothing at all.
He bowed deeply from the waist.

“Yi Jang-myeong, disciple of Taehyeon Holy Ground. I am honored to meet you, senior.”

He swallowed the title Sage.
Yeon Bing-shim stood nearby.
This woman had only recently entered the Chukgi Realm as a practitioner. Since a Sage was deliberately hiding his true identity in seclusion at Sojijin, Yi Jang-myeong could not afford to recklessly expose that truth and risk offending him.

‘Calling him senior is the safest approach.’

Meanwhile, Yeop Jang-cheong’s gaze turned back to the wild boars on the floor.
Taehyeon Holy Ground.
At the mention of that name, he recalled Yuk Mu-ssang, who had stopped by the shop some time ago.
She had paid three coins and taken a calligraphy scroll.
And now today, another disciple from the same Taehyeon Holy Ground had arrived.
The shop floor held several enormous wild boars.
But it was curious why disciples of a renowned cultivation sect would arrive empty-handed except for a few coins and live animals instead of proper payment. It seemed that even the Taehyeon Holy Ground had disciples in less fortunate circumstances.
A light of understanding gradually kindled in Yeop Jang-cheong’s eyes.

‘Ah.’

There could be only one answer.
Yuk Mu-ssang must have spoken quite favorably about his calligraphy after returning to the sect.
This young man, also fond of calligraphy, had come to obtain a scroll. Since he’d received an introduction from a senior in the same school, he’d felt awkward arriving empty-handed and brought wild boars as a gift—or so Yeop Jang-cheong reasoned.
If that were the case, the matter took on a different character entirely.
Yeop Jang-cheong looked at the wild boars again.
Moments earlier, uncertain how to dispose of them, he’d found them simply troublesome. Now they seemed like quite a generous gift. If he cleaned them and turned them over to Son Do-bu, they’d fetch a decent price. At the very least, he should be able to receive twenty silver coins without difficulty.
A far cry from three coins.

‘This man knows the proper etiquette.’

Yeop Jang-cheong’s expression softened considerably.

“By any chance…”

He smiled and asked.

“Are you here seeking calligraphy as well?”

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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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