Born As The Daughter of a Lowly Concubine - Chapter 133

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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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Born the daughter of a minor concubine.
Chapter 133
“Seong Ji, physician. Have you heard? Word is spreading throughout Jang-an that His Majesty himself intends to summon you directly and offer his commendation!”
“Oh, please don’t say such things. Meeting His Majesty is hardly an everyday occurrence. If I let myself hope and it doesn’t happen after all, I’ll be so disappointed I won’t sleep a wink.”
“But I’ve heard that the court has already begun discussing it.”
The woman speaking with Seong Ji, who had finished her preparations to go to Siyeongwon, was one of the attendants assigned to oversee the place.
She had come to assist Seong Ji on her visit to Siyeongwon because of the Inoculation Method, so she was hardly the sort to speak carelessly.
Heo Yeon-tae, aware of this fact, felt even more joy than if he himself had been praised.
‘Recognition at last. Finally.’
He had never believed such a day would come.
He was certain that during his own lifetime, the book that person had written would never see the light of day.
He had only hoped that one day after his death, Seong Ji, who had inherited all his medical knowledge, might discover that book. So he had lived, waiting day by day for death to come.
Yet somehow this day had arrived.
Feeling his chest swell with emotion, Heo Yeon-tae returned to his quarters and gently touched the medical treatise he had kept for years—the Smallpox Medical Treatise.
When he received word from Si-a that he must present the Smallpox Medical Treatise to His Majesty, he had offered instead a manuscript copy he had prepared long before.
How could he give that person’s book to another?
Even if that person were to rage at him from the underworld for stealing the opportunity to place their book in His Majesty’s hands, he could bear it gladly.
It mattered not.
As long as the content of the treatise remained the same.
This book held the greatest meaning for me.
‘You, your daughter has received the recognition that should have been yours instead. Are you not pleased? Or does it grieve you that you yourself do not receive the praise that was rightfully yours? Yet do not grieve too deeply. It is your only daughter who receives it in your stead. Your daughter partakes of her mother’s virtue—is that not better than having the credit go to another?’
The medical treatise bore a name.
Geumbi, Female Physician.
“The female physician who wrote that treatise—was she the birth mother of Seong Ji?”
……!
Though he had been alone in the room, the sudden sound of a voice made Heo Yeon-tae’s spine go rigid.
Most of all because of the content of what had just been said.
“W-who are you!”
“I came only to verify something.”
The one who had appeared without warning was a familiar face—the Gyeom-sa-bok who always attended Si-a.
The face of the man who had always been gentle and considerate before Si-a was now cold as a blade.
“Wh-what do you mean to verify? I am…….”
“Seong Ji is not your blood niece.”
……!
“And that female physician called Geumbi…….”
The moment the name Geumbi left Seong Yoon’s lips, Heo Yeon-tae’s eyes blazed and he lunged forward. But a mere physician could never overcome Seong Yoon, a former Chae-tam-in and current Gyeom-sa-bok.
Easily subdued, Heo Yeon-tae’s eyes flooded with despair.
Ughh……!
“Needless resistance won’t help you. Since Seong Ji has already left, there’s no one here to help you.”
It was almost a mercy that Seong Ji was gone.
“K-kill me.”
“What crime have you committed that you’re so eager to die?”
“If I die, won’t everything end?!”
“Not at all. Seong Ji may yet meet His Majesty himself—how could I allow a suspicious person to accompany her to his presence? Keeping you at Si-a’s side as things stand is itself a danger.”
……!
At Seong Gyeom-sabok’s words, Heo Yeon-tae looked visibly shaken.
“Seong Ji…… knows nothing. She’s involved in none of this.”
“That remains to be seen. I’ll determine whether the facts I know align with what you tell me.”
With those words, Heo Yeon-tae realized that his opponent already knew a great deal.
“How…… did you learn of this…….”
“If you were going to lie and claim she was your brother and sister-in-law’s daughter, you should have been more careful about it.”
Heo Yeon-tae did have an older brother and a sister-in-law, but they had died roughly a year before Seong Ji’s birth.
Which meant Seong Ji was someone else’s child entirely.
Heo Yeon-tae, as if in surrender, opened his mouth.
“Seong Ji is…… the child of Geumbi, a female physician I came to know when I was at the Internal Medicine Bureau.”
“Are you saying she’s your biological child?”
“No! That woman and I were never in that sort of relationship.”
***
Geumbi, a female physician, had passed the medical examination at a young age and entered the Internal Medicine Bureau with far more experience than Heo Yeon-tae, who had only just arrived.
It was Geumbi who had quietly and discreetly resolved a grave mistake that the flustered newcomer had nearly committed.
“Thank you! I’m truly grateful! I nearly made a grave error, and thanks to you, I’m unharmed!”
“I was simply fortunate to notice. You’re still unaccustomed to the Internal Medicine Bureau, after all. Please don’t blame yourself too harshly.”
“No, it was my own mistake. How could a physician who makes such errors belong in the Internal Medicine Bureau?”
“……Yet among all the physicians I know, you are the only one who recognized your error at once and sought me out to offer thanks, despite learning of my involvement.”
“Pardon?”
“I meant only that you possess integrity. I would be honored to see someone of your character remain at the Internal Medicine Bureau.”
The female physician Geumbi spoke these words with a gentle smile.
For reasons he could not name, that smile carved itself deeply into Heo Yeon-tae’s heart.
Unfamiliar with the nature of female physicians, Heo Yeon-tae at that time knew little of how they were treated in the world.
Female physicians were women of lowborn origin who had learned scholarship and medicine. Though they received better treatment than other female court servants, even a skilled female physician ranked below male physicians in status, making it difficult to refuse unreasonable orders.
Faced with such circumstances, many sought emancipation from lowborn status by becoming concubines to Yangban families, where they had learned to associate. The Yangban themselves were eager to take such cultured and medically skilled women as concubines.
Despite receiving such proposals several times, Geumbi declined them all and remained faithful to her work as a female physician.
Heo Yeon-tae had once asked her, knowing it was impertinent to do so.
“Would it not be better to become the wife of a Yangban who welcomes you, rather than endure such treatment?”
But Geumbi only smiled and shook her head.
“Since childhood, I have wished to become a physician. If even one more female physician exists, we might spare children like me—those who lost parents to disease. And even if I am of lowborn status, I do not wish to end my days as someone’s concubine.”
Though she endured lowborn treatment, Geumbi was a physician of pride.
Heo Yeon-tae wished to support such a woman.
The disease that took Geumbi’s parents was smallpox.
For this reason, Geumbi took great interest in smallpox. Through those she treated, she learned of the Human Inoculation Method, and heard of Cowpox Inoculation with fascination.
“I intend to take leave and meet directly with those who have contracted cowpox, to confirm my understanding.”
“If you take leave, you ought to rest—otherwise you’ll fall ill yourself.”
By then, Heo Yeon-tae already harbored her in his heart. Yet believing it would only burden her, he did not dare speak of these feelings.
When Geumbi returned from her leave, she had a betrothed.
He did not know the full circumstances, but he heard that she had discovered someone injured on the road, treated and cared for them, and feelings grew between them.
Learning that Geumbi had a betrothed, Heo Yeon-tae felt despair, yet still wished for her happiness.
But even that wish came to nothing.
The man was connected to Yeokdang and Shin Heo-do. He had encountered Geumbi while fleeing from government soldiers.
By the time Heo Yeon-tae learned this, Geumbi was already with child.
Whether some neighbor had recognized the man and reported him, he fled alone.
Geumbi learned the truth only after giving birth, when it was already too late to flee with the child.
When Heo Yeon-tae came to hear the news of the birth, he was caught off guard by the revelation.
“If it becomes known that I harbored a traitor and bore his child, I can never return to being a female physician. And the child—the child cannot escape it either.”
Though abandoned by the man she loved, Geumbi did not surrender.
“Though it is shameless to ask, I have a request of you, Physician Heo.”
Geumbi was already writing a medical treatise on smallpox at that time.
Since Heo Yeon-tae also took interest in smallpox, the two of them, though not appearing close outwardly, shared the contents of their medical writings.
Geumbi had knowledge of the Human Inoculation Method and was preparing to test it upon herself. Not until she learned she was with child.
But faced with such circumstances, Geumbi steeled her resolve and performed the Human Inoculation Method upon herself.
She entrusted the child to Heo Yeon-tae, who had come by chance, and lied to the government soldiers that the man had taken only the child.
No government soldier would approach recklessly when signs of smallpox appeared, traitor or not.
She remained confined to her chamber, and few cared greatly for the life of a mere lowborn female physician.
Taking advantage of this, Heo Yeon-tae claimed to the attending physician that the case was necessary for smallpox research, paid them, and succeeded in smuggling Geumbi out by having her falsely declared dead.
“How can you do so much? I shamefully entrusted the child to you, yet you risk such danger.”
“Don’t speak so coldly. How much have I received from you over the years? And would it not be a great loss to the world if a physician like you were to disappear?”
“……You may be the only one who has ever called a female physician by the name of physician.”
“Then live.”
“Yes. It must be so.”
Fortunately, Geumbi recovered and did not die. Yet, having contracted smallpox so soon after childbirth, her recovery was slow and she suffered greatly. Still, she never surrendered.
“If I had to name the thing I regret most in my life, it would be meeting that man.”
Geumbi sometimes spoke such words, as if remembering.
Even as she held her daughter close, she spoke with such regret.
The words were not untrue.
Had Geumbi never met him, perhaps she might have completed her medical treatise and earned renown as a female physician.
But her life was utterly twisted from the moment she met him.
Heo Yeon-tae devoted himself to caring for Seong Ji and Geumbi, telling those around him that they were his late brother’s child and sister-in-law, yet he could not fill the void in her heart.
Instead, it was possible to create a medical treatise together.
Geumbi, while raising her child, organized the materials she had compiled, and those Heo Yeon-tae had secreted away beforehand, binding them into a book.
As Geumbi grew confident in her research, she even inoculated her young daughter with cowpox.
Fortunately, Seong Ji contracted cowpox mildly and soon recovered. Geumbi laughed, saying that even very young children could safely receive the cowpox inoculation.
Yet even those who had contracted cowpox before sometimes developed smallpox years later, and he mentioned that re-inoculation might be necessary after several years.
Recognizing the need to inoculate others, she often traveled about with the young Seong Ji, persuading people wherever they went. Smallpox preyed most heavily on those without means—the poor and destitute.
Geumbi knew this, and so she would secretly administer the inoculation without revealing it was cowpox. Though she found herself branded a lunatic and forced to flee more than once, she only laughed it off.
Even if she were condemned as superstitious, wouldn’t it be the greatest good if countless people were spared death from smallpox?
And in those same years, Heo Yeon-tae had become the attending physician to the young princess in the Internal Medicine Bureau.
Having spent so long caring for Seong Ji, he was well practiced at tending to a young girl, and the princess—who spent much of her time separated from her parents—quickly grew fond of him.
Unlike the robust Seong Ji, the princess was frail and sickly.
It was not a comparison one could fairly make, and yet each time he treated both children, the disparity struck him as if their stations and constitutions had been reversed, leaving him with a tangle of conflicted feelings.
And then the princess fell ill with smallpox.
More precisely, it came to light that the lady-in-waiting closest to the princess had contracted smallpox, and the princess showed signs of fever.
She was still very young, but if the Inoculation Method could be performed within days of her exposure to smallpox, she might be saved. Had he not spent all this time researching smallpox alongside Geumbi for precisely this moment? So he thought.
But could such a young and delicate child withstand the strain of cowpox inoculation?
While wrestling with such doubts, someone came seeking Heo Yeon-tae.
Yeong-bin—then still a lady-in-waiting to a court lady of lower rank.
And in the Chwiyeongdang, where he was summoned in secret, he heard words he had not expected.
“I know that you’re harboring the family of a traitor.”

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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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