Shaolin Temple
The group stepped inside, each imagining what the Wooden Men Alley might look like within. Even Tang Mujin and Hong Geolgae were brimming with curiosity, and even Goiyi—who prided himself on his broad experience—had eager eyes.
When they pushed open the triple gates, dust rose in a thick haze, blurring their vision.
Cough, cough. Tang Mujin couldn't hold back his coughing, and the Chubodang master spoke awkwardly.
"We were planning to demolish the Wooden Men Alley soon, so it hasn't been cleaned for three or four years. Please understand."
His attitude had softened from before. Tang Mujin nodded.
As the dust settled, the interior came into view.
Wooden Men Alley (Mok-in-hang). True to its name—a corridor lined with wooden men—it wasn't a broad hall but a long, narrow passage.
It stretched about ten jang in length, and only a jang and a half in width. If people stood side by side, at most three or four could squeeze in.
But that didn't mean three or four people could walk side by side through it. Dozens of wooden men lined both walls, leaving only a narrow strip of space—barely enough for one person to pass at a time.
The Chubodang master addressed them.
"I'll return to Chubodang now. If you need anything, just tell me. I may not be able to offer much, but I'll help however I can."
"How long can we stay?"
"Take your time. You'll be the last to examine the Wooden Men Alley, after all."
That was no empty remark.
The Chubodang master believed that if anyone could repair the Wooden Men Alley, it might be Tang Mujin. But if not him, then no one in the world could.
If Tang succeeded, all the better. But if he failed, at least they could abandon the last shred of hope and demolish the place once and for all.
Once the master left, the three began exploring the interior.
Most of the wooden men were crude in appearance.
Their heads looked like roughly hewn tree stumps, and their torsos resembled logs cut to length. The arms were crudely joined upper and lower halves, ending in fists capped with round lumps of iron.
Shoddy craftsmanship, Tang thought.
All of them were decayed, though each in different parts.
One had a rotted-away head but intact forearms. Another had ruined arms but a torso and legs in fair condition. The wood type varied from part to part, puppet to puppet.
"Looks like people patched them up over the years, bit by bit."
"Seems so. Look at this."
Goiyi pointed to a fallen wooden man at the far end of the corridor.
Unlike the others, its form was finely crafted—so lifelike it looked almost human. Even Tang Mujin had to admit it was impressive.
It appeared older than the rest, yet careful layers of paint had preserved its outward shape.
"So this must be what the first wooden men looked like."
"Likely."
Tang gazed at it, imagining what the alley must have been centuries ago. Dozens of such finely crafted figures lining the corridor would have made a grand spectacle.
But Goiyi frowned, perplexed.
"Still, something's odd. Plenty of artisans today could carve figures like this. Offering such huge rewards just to make new dolls doesn't make sense."
Tang agreed. Give him a few days, and he could carve a whole new set himself.
"Maybe Shaolin's generosity is just that vast. Works in our favor, anyway."
But Hong Geolgae, trailing behind, shook his head.
"No. I don't think it's that simple."
"Why? Did you find something?"
"Look here."
In his hands was a detached wooden arm, so rotted it had fallen off. At first glance, nothing unusual.
But when Hong manipulated the joint where the arm would have attached to the shoulder, the elbow bent smoothly.
"What—how did you do that?"
"Come see."
Tang and Goiyi crouched beside him and examined the arm.
To their surprise, the inside was hollow—a cylinder packed with fragile wooden parts intricately linked.
"Let me turn this rod."
Hong twisted one component, and gears at the end of the timber rotated, setting connected parts in motion.
As he kept turning, the wooden arm bent and straightened, again and again.
"Fascinating, isn't it?"
"This is…"
Tang recognized the principle.
Rotating parts drove others in turn, which drove more—an endless chain of motion.
It was the same as the waterwheels at Dujiangyan near Chengdu.
Those waterwheels turned lazily in place, but their connected devices milled grain. He'd even heard some smithies used them to power bellows.
The sight of dozens of waterwheels in motion had been so awe-inspiring that many claimed Dujiangyan and its wheels rivaled the Great Wall as the greatest feat of engineering in the central plains.
Could it be…
Tang examined the broken wooden men. Each severed cross-section revealed hollow interiors, filled with tangled mechanisms. Not just the arms—even torsos and legs.
The message was clear: when first built, these figures had moved their limbs like living men.
Then Tang noticed something else.
The wooden men did not stand freely on two legs. Each was supported by a thick wooden pillar connecting torso to floor.
He hadn't paid it much attention before. But now the significance was clear.
"What is it?" Goiyi asked.
"Wait a moment."
Tang crouched beneath the sturdiest figure, gripping its support pillar with both hands. It was stiff, but with effort, the pillar slowly turned.
And as it rotated, the wooden man moved—arms and legs shifting.
But before it could complete a motion, something inside snapped. A part had broken.
The puppet froze.
Even so, that tiny motion was enough to reveal its nature.
Tang, Goiyi, and Hong all wore the same stunned expression.
"Unbelievable."
"Who could have imagined? Do the others work too?"
They each tried turning the pillars of other figures.
Most were broken and unmoving. But a few twitched to life—swinging arms, kicking legs, thrusting elbows toward vital points.
Tang frowned with a new question.
For the figures to move, the support pillars beneath them had to turn. But who—or what—had turned them?
Could dozens of people have sat beneath, cranking the pillars by hand? Impossible. The corridor was too narrow; there was no room.
Tang tapped the floor with his heel. Thump, thump. The sound was hollow.
Of course—the floor itself was empty.
He pried up the boards. Beneath lay countless carefully cut timbers, interlocked grooves spanning the entire floor, all connected to the pillars of the figures.
The underfloor space was too narrow for people to crawl in. And the timbers extended beyond sight, linked to something far away.
The force driving the Wooden Men Alley came from outside.
The three fell silent.
What they saw beneath was vast, intricate, overwhelming. Even broken and collapsed in places, it was astonishing.
They could only imagine what it must have looked like three centuries ago, when the Wooden Men Alley was whole.
In the days when the Wooden Men Alley still functioned, this whole mechanism must have moved like a living creature.
The wooden men would have ceaselessly swung their limbs, barring the path of anyone attempting to pass through the corridor.
The Wooden Men Alley was not merely a corridor—it was a living martial canon, a moving manual of martial arts.
Countless warrior-monks must have gained enlightenment while facing the wooden men, and it was likely through this very alley that Shaolin, once only a humble temple on a mountain, came to stand as the pinnacle of the Central Plains martial world.
Goiyi gazed long at the structure beneath the floor before muttering quietly:
"Now I understand the Chubodang master's attitude. Anyone who claims they can repair this… nine times out of ten is bound to be a fraud."
Anyone who truly understood the grandeur and precision of the Wooden Men Alley's mechanism would never even imagine repairing it. At first glance inside, they would have simply shaken their head and walked away.
By contrast, anyone who lingered, claiming they could restore it, must be one of two types: a fool too dim to grasp its greatness, or a swindler with no intent to repair it at all.
"This isn't something an individual can repair. Now I see why the abbot promised anything to the one who could. 'Anything but the Green Jade Buddha Staff'? No—if you repaired this, you could steal even the staff and the Daehwandan and still be forgiven."
Goiyi fixed his eyes on Tang Mujin.
His gaze asked the unspoken question: And you? Could you do it?
Tang closed his eyes, thought for a long while, then shook his head.
"I can't repair this."
"Because of all the delicate components?"
"No, not that. Rotten or broken pieces, small parts—I could remake all of them given enough time. But I don't know where each part goes, how the mechanism truly works, or even what specific movements each wooden man is meant to perform."
Frustration welled in Tang Mujin's chest.
Had he come here two or three centuries earlier, when the Wooden Men Alley was intact, he could have repaired it. If the broken parts had still been in place, he could have replaced them one by one and set the figures moving again.
Hearing Tang's heavy, regretful answer, Goiyi replied briskly:
"If that's the problem, it's too early to give up."
"You have a way?"
"There might be records somewhere. Let's ask the Chubodang master."
***
When the three returned to Chubodang, the master asked:
"Were you able to determine if the Wooden Men Alley can be repaired?"
"At present, it seems unlikely," Tang Mujin admitted.
"Then you mean to give up?"
"Not yet. I'd like to investigate a little further."
Despite the negative tone, the master's face brightened.
From his experience, those who had seen the Wooden Men Alley gave one of two responses: either they raised their hands, saying no one could fix it, or they boasted confidently that they could.
The former were the sincere ones, the latter frauds or fools.
But Tang had acknowledged the difficulty without abandoning hope. This was the reaction the master had long awaited. He gave a small nod.
"In that case, I assume you came to me with a reason. Is there some way I can help?"
"Would there be any records about the Wooden Men Alley? I heard Shaolin has the Sutra Library."
The master shook his head.
"The Sutra Library holds only scriptures and martial texts. Nothing concerning the Wooden Men Alley. I'm sorry."
"Oh…"
Tang's expression darkened. After some thought, the master added:
"But there is one person who might be able to help. I cannot say how much, though."
"Who would that be?"
"Leave the gates and head west. Not far, you'll find a fairly large hut. Its inhabitant may know something."
***
Goiyi and Hong Geolgae returned to the guest quarters to rest, while Tang Mujin set out alone, westward beyond the temple gates.
As he searched for the hut, he spotted a woman he had seen days earlier, hard at work. She had her sleeves rolled up, sweat streaming down, swinging a pickaxe to dig into the earth.
Knowing she would scold him if he got too close, he kept a cautious distance and looked around. Soon, he found the makeshift hut, not far from a waterwheel.
He hesitated, wondering how to approach without the woman noticing, when she straightened, glanced around, and spotted him.
Her face instantly twisted in a scowl. Pickaxe in hand, she strode toward him.
The way she gripped it awkwardly in front of her suggested she might swing it at any moment.
"So, first time you brazenly denied everything, and now you sneak back, skulking around? Get lost."
She raised the pickaxe threateningly. But Tang Mujin was not the sort of man to be cowed.
With a swift Jaunbo step, he closed the distance, and before she realized it, he had smoothly taken the pickaxe from her hands.
"Huh?"
The man before her had moved like a ghost, and the weapon was gone in an instant.
Startled, she retreated a few steps. Her eyes stayed sharp, but her lower body shifted uneasily, ready to bolt at any moment.
Tang returned the pickaxe to her and spoke calmly.
"I didn't come to harm you or break anything. I came to ask a question."
Perhaps because he returned the weapon—or perhaps because she knew it wouldn't help her anyway—her expression softened slightly.
"…What do you want to ask?"
"The Chubodang master said I should seek out the hut's resident for help. Could you tell me where to find Master Dan?"
"Master Dan? The only Dan here is me—Dan Seol-yeong."
Dan Seol-yeong fixed him with a wary stare.