Translator: Sin | Editor: Nebosuke
Shall I really try it?
Shit, I don’t know.
Shit!
Palms-filled sense of hitting. At the same time, Lee Byung-ryong’s head was spinning. It was just a slap in his face when he was off his guard.
“……!”
“……!’
Even Lee Byung-ryong, who was hit all of a sudden, as well as me, stopped fighting and became frozen like a stone statue.
“Sorry, I’m sorry.”
“What the fuck!”
Lee Byung-ryong used a new skill. However, this time, it was not just a kick or a fist martial art. Both hands were strangely stretched and bent like grappling, which seemed to be Gumnasoo skill.
Instead of knocking me down with a single punch, he was going to grab me, throw me down on the floor, and break my bones.
I stepped back spasmodically while swinging my hands and feet at random. It was just a newbie fighting with no format nor style.
But it never worked. Despite that, I could catch every move of Lee Byung-ryong’s Gumnasoo skill. The movement of my hands did not keep up with it.
Fortunately, it was possible to avoid his attack by tracking his movement in advance due to its slow motion.
After running away a couple more times, I turned around one time and stood back at the table. There was no more space for me to run away.
“I’ll break your hand!”
At the moment, I saw a plate of fried beans lying on the table. Needless to say, I hit the plate with my hand and flipped it over.
Lee Byung-ryong, who had taken a step and grabbed me by the collar, stepped on the bean and slipped forward.
Even at that moment, Lee Byung-ryong tried to hit the floor by changing the direction of his hands.
I’d seen it before in my previous life. It was a method of hitting the floor with two hands and getting up again using counter-elastic force. Is it called Banjangsoo?
However, my knee was placed about a span ahead of him in the direction of his fall.
It was just luck for me. I quickly bent my knee and pushed it under him.
Bang! While Lee Byung-ryong hit the floor with his hands. Bang! His philtrum was also accurately stamped on my knee.
His splendid fall was nowhere to be found, and Lee Byung-ryong changed his direction and lay down supine toward the sky.
“Uh!”
By then, I also stepped on the beans and slipped forward. At the moment, I hit Lee Byung-ryong’s philtrum hard again with my right elbow.
Bam!
Lee Byung-ryong, whose philtrum was beaten twice, had his eyes wide open. Blood was dripping down from both of his nostrils, and he was unconscious and wheezing.
Slap! Slap!
“Brother! Wake up!”
“Uh……!”
Lee Byung-ryong’s consciousness returned a little when I hit his face twice. Then I heard hurried steps up the stairs.
I was awakened. Without knowing what had happened here, anyone could say that I beat my brother bloody hard.
It’s not enough that I jumped into the West Lake for a woman to be my third brother’s sister-in-law, so now I was trying to kill him. If such a rumor spread out…….
‘But would they believe I hit him?’
The steps were getting closer to me.
What the heck!
There’s nothing wrong with being careful.
I got on Lee Byung-ryong’s chest and grabbed him by the collar.
“Hold me by the collar too. Come on!”
Rather than my words, when I mounted him and grabbed him by the collar, Lee Byung-ryong instinctively grabbed me by the collar.
With grabbing each other by the collar, I lay back vigorously.
Then Lee Byung-ryong naturally seemed to get on my chest. I took Lee Byung-ryong’s nosebleed with both hands and rubbed it on my nose.
The men and women who ran upstairs were the men and women who went down earlier. They seemed to have come up worried when they heard a series of thumping noises from the third floor.
Lee Byung-ryong came back to his senses just in time.
People looked at Lee Byung-ryong and me alternately and were surprised. The women’s faces were especially distorted.
In people’s eyes, Lee Byung-ryong would mount on me and punch me with his fist to bleed, and as I shook his bloody hand desperately, it looked as if Lee’s face also had some blood on it.
I avoided getting the stigma of an immoral person, and Lee Byung-ryong avoided the rumor that I beat him up. It was a momentary response that matched each other’s interests.
Namgoong So-So exclaimed.
“That’s enough, Gongja Byung-ryong!”
“Well, it’s not that…….”
“I came here because I heard it was a good occasion, but I’m disappointed. What does that mean that you rebuked your brother in front of people, and moreover, you beat him up to make his nose bleed?”
“Miss, it’s not that…….”
“Old Saints told us not to vent your anger even to the dog in front of guests. Does Gongja Byung-ryong really care about us?”
“Miss, could you please calm down for a moment…….”
“I don’t care if it’s a family squabble or a love quarrel, but I’d like you to do this when only these parties are involved. Don’t call someone who’s busy. I’m going now.”
Then, Namgoong So-so disappeared.
“Hey, Miss!”
In a hurry, Lee Byung-ryong rushed after her. His friends and Cho Young-young also rushed out. Then, on the third floor, only Jang-sam, who followed the people belatedly, and I were left.
“Dear Gongja!”
Surprised, Jang-sam came running with a fuss and tried to help me up. I got up with a swipe at him and then a clean sweep of my ass.
“Are, are you all right?”
“From now on, you have to answer what I’m asking without telling a lie. Okay?”
“Yes?”
“Did I master martial arts?”
“You tried once and gave up.”
“For how long?”
“When you were about twelve or thirteen years old? Masters who taught you martial arts gave up on teaching you. Since then, you have never learned martial arts.”
“In your opinion, what is my level…….”
I ended up talking just because I remembered what Jang-sam told me this morning.
‘I’m sure that I’ll win the battle with you, dear Gongja.’ This one word explained everything to me. What else could I ask?
I looked around and found flies flying over the leftovers.
“Whoo…….”
After a long exhale, I began to concentrate my mind as before. A moment later, a swarm of flies rose as I shook my hand.
The moment, the vivid movements, orbits, flapping of flies……. not to the point of counting, but to my surprise, I could see their wings.
I stretched out like a sleepwalker with chopsticks in one hand and began to catch flies.
Exactly one fly for each movement of the chopsticks. A couple of times out of the ten, I knocked down the fly with the tip of chopsticks, but the rest were all successful.
‘How can this be……!’
Like when I fought with Lee Byung-ryong earlier, my hands were equally slow, but I was able to catch the flies.
This is because I know the trajectory of the flies in advance, and then I reach out. At the same time, unlike slow hands, my mental calculation is twice as fast.
Flying flies, my chopstick skills, Jang-sam’s droopy voice asking me how I’m doing.….
Hmm? A droopy voice?
‘Time is running slowly!’
Oh, my God!
My whole body shuddered.
I don’t know why this strange thing happened to me, but it must have been a phenomenon caused by the slow passage of time. There is no explanation other than that.
I flung myself down by the shock and fell on my hips. Only then did time begin to pass normally again.
“Are you all right, dear Gongja?”
“Water!”
“Yes?”
“Get me some water. Quickly.”
“Coldwater?”
“Yes. Cold!”
Jang-sam picked up the water kettle on the table and slurped it. He then slammed it down and said it seemed to not be enough.
“Wait a moment!”
When Jangsam disappeared, only I was left on the third floor.
Let’s make things clear.
I had no such ability in my previous life. Is it Lee Jeong-ryong’s ability? However, Lee Jeong-ryong never mastered martial arts.
Moreover, magic that slows down time – when I concentrate, it is not an area where I can do anything with physical abilities.
It was then. Suddenly there was a blaze in my chest. Surprised, I quickly threw off my coat.
Then, in my bare chest, an unidentified pattern was shining white with light, not letters nor pictures, but something sophisticated in the midst of complexity.
“Jukgan-bon (Bamboo Note)!”
It must be. The Jukgan-bon of Gongja, which was burned by my hand before I died in my previous life, seemed to have been embedded in my body and imprinted while the ancient talisman, which had been engraved in it, burned with me in the flames.
It must have been due to the unknown strength of this talisman that I was reincarnated up to 30 years ago, and that time passed slowly when I concentrated.
“What is this talisman……!”
In fact, when I heard from the head of the messengers that there was a bamboo note of the ancient talismans written and woven by Confucius himself, I did not believe it.
Confucius called it the Superhuman Ghost and was reluctant and unwilling to comment on strange and supernatural things throughout his life.
Thus, I didn’t think it made sense that Confucius gathered the ancient amulets, wrote them, and wove them by himself.
At first, I thought it was fake. But now I honestly don’t know what was what.
Just in time, Jang-sam came up with a bowl of water. When he saw me taking off my shirt and my burning top under the table, he ran quickly and threw away the water he had brought. Then he shouted back at me.
“Why did you take off your fine clothes?”
“Jang-sam.”
“Yes!”
“I think I…….”
“What?”
“……I think I hit the jackpot.”