Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 113

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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 113
Darkness settled over the streets. The cold night air hung silent and still.
Though Hangzhou was a city of pleasures, by the time dawn approached past midnight, it too grew quiet.
It was the same as Korea—even Hongdae or Gangnam fell silent around 4 AM.
‘People can’t chatter forever. The inn guests need their sleep too.’
During the Yin hour—3 to 5 AM—I opened my eyes early and began my breathing cultivation.
Despite yesterday’s gluttony, my stomach felt perfectly at ease.
‘Youth really is a blessing.’
Perhaps thanks to the delicious food, I was already hungry again.
‘I’ll have steamed egg whites for breakfast.’
It resembled Korean gyeran-jjim.
The difference was that they used egg whites and tofu, steamed until fluffy.
It was exquisite topped with soy sauce, and equally delicious drizzled with chili oil.
‘And then I’ll devour some more Dongpo pork.’
My mouth watered.
In three days—no, two days from now—I’d have to say goodbye to this establishment’s Dongpo pork.
It was truly a shame.
I gradually cleared away distracting thoughts and regulated my breathing.
Pure Five Elements qi flowed slowly through my dantian in spiraling patterns.
It was my usual microcosmic orbit circulation.
After completing one cycle, I slowly expanded my spiritual perception.
Unlike the mountains, the city carried the qi signatures of countless people.
Within the chaos, the dormant vitality of those not yet awake was caught indiscriminately by my perception.
‘This too is cultivation.’
Conflict doesn’t only occur in the mountains. Perhaps cities like this were where conflicts arose most frequently.
Where there are many people, there are many grudges.
Then a pitiful voice reached my ears.
“Brother! No! Please!”
“Ugh! Argh!”
My eyes snapped open.
Someone was being beaten. And it was a child’s voice.
A sound so faint I wouldn’t have heard it without expanding my spiritual perception.
I exhaled softly.
‘Right. This is Gangho. Even Earth is lawless—why would here be different?’
As I rose, Hwang-gu stirred as well.
Sniff!
He’d noticed his master’s movement.
I wrapped the dharma tool Yoo Ho had given me around my wrist and spoke to Hwang-gu.
“I’m going out. Why don’t you rest here?”
Bark! – Master. Going with you.
I figured you’d say something like that. You’re a dog, after all.
I scratched Hwang-gu’s head vigorously.
“If it gets dangerous, run away on your own. Got it?”
Grrrr! – Yes.
I could understand that even without Yoo Ho’s translation technique.
I opened the window and slipped out lightly.
Leaping from the top of a four-story pavilion could certainly be called a fall, but my descent was eerily silent, as if I were gliding.
It was thanks to the Heavenly Foresight.
The Jegal Family’s Heavenly Foresight was so renowned that even the proud Namgung Family would concede a point to it.
I moved my feet and walked across the rooftops toward the source of the sound.
Even as I treaded on rather dilapidated tiles, not the slightest sound escaped.
What was peculiar was that my movements were so unpredictable that it would be difficult to anticipate where I was heading.
‘It was close to the inn….’
Looking down at the alleyways woven together like a spider’s web, I moved cautiously.
Before long, I spotted the source of the commotion.
Seven muscular men came into view. Four of them had drawn their blades and held them to the throats of a girl and four young men, while the remaining two were beating a young man.
The largest of them sat in a worn chair, smoking tobacco with thick puffs, chuckling as he watched the young man being beaten.
‘Wow, a villain straight out of a painting.’
These were the sort of extras who wouldn’t last more than a few exchanges with the protagonist’s fists.
The problem was that I couldn’t intervene directly—the children being held hostage were in mortal danger.
Since they’d apparently grasped even the fringes of inner energy, I had to approach carefully.
“Kekeke. Hey, Sama Hyeon! If you’d just submitted to me from the start, none of this would’ve happened. Who told you to be so cocky about your pathetic martial skills?”
The young man being beaten by two men forced himself to his feet.
The young man spat blood and spoke.
“Hehehehe… Have all the brothels in Hangzhou died out these days? Is there really someone trying to recruit from kids like this? Do they perform ancestral rites in a dog kennel? Your family tree is quite impressive~”
The young man laughed mockingly at the man instead. It was a strange laugh, like fingernails scraping metal.
The man’s face crumpled.
“Not beaten enough yet, still got some spirit left. Fine… I was going to let you off out of respect for Elder Seok who’s passed, but—”
Crack!
The man kicked, and the young man’s body flew like garbage and rolled across the ground.
Not a single part of his body was uninjured.
“Kid, that’s how everyone grows up. You think I wasn’t like that? When those above give orders, guys like us have to follow. That’s why you’re still suffering like this.”
Thud, thud, thud!
Grown men beating a young child was a horrifying sight.
“Don’t hit the face. Some rich old man really wants that brat’s face intact.”
The men then beat every part of the young man’s body except his face.
“No need for long talk. Choose. Will you submit to me, or will you die here? I got paid yesterday and it’s been quite profitable.”
I sighed at those words.
‘Being a villain, he’s even figured out the silver I gave him.’
It was a strange situation.
The pain must have been considerable, yet the Young Man only laughed more wildly as he was struck.
It almost seemed like the consciousness of someone abandoning life itself.
“Haha, living alone among dogs is truly a taste of death. Hahaha, you all—want to die together~? Rather than writhing in this filthy mire watching such degradation… that… might be better.”
Black blood streamed from the Young Man’s mouth.
“Oh, big brother….”
“Brother…!”
The children no longer tried to stop him.
A filthy sewer. They were sewer rats.
Under Seok Nosa who had taken them in, they learned to beg while performing degrading acts, but nothing changed.
The children were useful.
After Seok Nosa passed from old age, there was no one left to protect them.
“Huh? This bastard still has the strength? Tough one. No choice then. You all, go… uh… aaahhhhh!”
The Gang Leader screamed and tumbled forward.
It was Hwang-gu.
Hwang-gu had approached without a sound and torn into the man’s groin.
Woof! – Master’s command. Do it! Blood! Battle!
Hwang-gu was the testicle destroyer descended upon Gangho.
The moment they all turned to look at Hwang-gu, I used that as my signal and dropped down among them.
I seized both men’s wrists and twisted them backward in one motion.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Crack!
My control of force was slightly imperfect.
Under normal circumstances it would have ended in simple dislocation, but this time the pressure twisted the muscles and pale bone tore through the skin.
An open dislocation.
But I had no intention of showing mercy to men who would draw blades and summon children to brothels.
“Who the hell are you!”
“What does it matter if you know!”
Thwack!
I kicked the remaining man’s knee with full force.
I felt the sensation of the kneecap shattering.
I grabbed the last one’s clothing to throw off his balance, then struck his throat.
As the children being held hostage were freed, the Young Man—Sama Hyeon—rose to his feet.
He lunged at the adult who had been beating him.
Sama Hyeon’s eyes gleamed coldly beneath the moon.
The Young Man’s hand covered the enemy’s face.
Crack-
The facial skin was torn away.
“Screeeeeech!”
Everyone gasped in horror at this atrocity of flaying skin rather than bone.
Sama Hyeon spoke.
“Ah, so you’re the older brother who gave silver coins. Even in this mire, there are still decent people, huh~?”
Tremendous grip strength. Combined with that bizarre technique of flaying the opponent’s facial skin.
I realized what I was witnessing.
‘Could this be… Hao Munzhu?’
With no more hostages to consider, Sama Hyeon dispatched the two adults with considerably lighter spirits.
What followed was brutally savage.
* * *
The fight ended.
Sama Hyeon exhaled heavily, then straightened his posture.
The young man’s hands were drenched in blood.
He wiped the blood away casually with a theatrical grin on his face.
There was no trembling sensation, no hint of guilt.
He would have worn the same expression if he’d merely wrung a chicken’s neck.
Flaying the enemy’s facial skin.
The method was brutally cruel. Yet if Sama Hyeon had shown mercy in his technique because he deemed it cruel, what would have become of those children?
‘The Gangho contains many contradictions mixed together.’
I saw righteous faction members dressed in white.
White silk gleamed like snow under the sunlight.
Conversely, I also saw Demonic Sect members in black robes. They called themselves the Darkness and carried out the sect master’s commands and doctrines.
I had also encountered the heterodox Haowen.
While treating Muhua and Muyue, I had contemplated much.
And here.
In this mire that belonged to neither righteous faction, heterodox sect, nor Demonic Sect, stood a young man.
The future Hao Munzhu, Sama Hyeon.
Still just a boy in his early teens.
“Are you alright?”
Sama Hyeon answered my question.
“It’s nothing much. Older brother~ we’ve been earning well lately, so those Iron Head gang bastards tried to muscle in. Our kids have pretty faces, and I’m somewhat decent-looking too, so they wanted to force us into prostitution as well~ kill two birds with one stone. Dig a ditch and catch crayfish~”
It was a horrifying story. Yet Sama Hyeon spoke of it with a smile, as if it were commonplace.
After comforting each crying child one by one, he spoke to me like this.
“Older brother, I’m so grateful for those silver coins back then—grateful enough to bow three times—and I’m thankful you saved our kids. But getting involved with guys like us won’t do you any good~”
Sama Hyeon waved his hand as he finished speaking.
“The way you carry yourself, you seem like some precious child from a prestigious clan. If unnecessary rumors spread, I’d feel sorry. Next time, please give us more silver coins~ Kids, show your respect.”
At Sama Hyeon’s gesture, the children performed a fist salute.
“Thank you. Great hero!”
“We’re truly grateful.”
“Thank you for saving us.”
“….”
“Ah, that one’s mute so can’t speak~ please understand through the salute. Well then!”
I found myself troubled by Sama Hyeon’s attitude.
A line of dialogue from a novel came to mind—one I’d read before. It was an exchange between Yeo Ha-ryun and Sama Hyeon, the Hao Munzhu, when they met in Hangzhou.
“Ho, so the Demonic Sect has justice too? How extraordinary. If you’re such a righteous god, then why is the world in this state~?”
“The world is he~ll, and humans are maggots, are they not? We are punished without reason simply by being born, and in a place where death alone is salvation—it’s curious that anyone speaks of gods existing at all.”
“Tell me, Heavenly Demon. Can this god of yours resurrect my dead loved ones?”
“They suffered too~much, so I had to kill them with my own hands. So tell me, tell me. Can that god resurrect the child who died in this hell~?”
“You can’t~, can you? I suppose that makes sense. Haha. Perhaps the god is too distant for his voice to reach. So I’ll send you to deliver the message. Go to the afterlife and relay it well~.”
“You are the Heavenly Demon, and you are the person your god loves most. If you ask ve~ry nicely, surely he’ll listen~?”
The Hao Munzhu was a peculiar man.
He savored slaughter, and he savored the suffering that arose from the act of slaughter itself.
He possessed keen intellect and martial prowess. Yet his grotesquely twisted madness made one’s skin crawl.
No one could know if his face was his true face, and no one could be certain if his voice was genuine.
He delighted in inciting bloodbaths.
He seemed like a man who lived merely to set the world ablaze and dance within its flames.

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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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