Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 148

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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 148
022. Ondol
Returning to the Medical Hall, everything had settled back into its proper place.
I imparted new knowledge to the Baekrin Uijak trainees who had come from Bunta, and classified the treatment cases that had arrived from each branch.
I devoted the remaining time to martial arts training, though I needed to allocate far more hours than before.
“Now that you’ve crossed this threshold, controlling your inner energy becomes the priority. Cheon-hee.”
I sat in a cross-legged position and listened to my Master’s explanation.
“First, you’ve achieved far too much for your age, and even considering that, your control of inner energy is superior to most—a result possible only because you’ve built a solid foundation in the Five Elements technique from the beginning.”
“Yes.”
“But I believe this recent battle has shown you that even this has reached its limits.”
I nodded and touched the back of my hand.
The traces of my fight with the Demonic Necromancer had nearly faded. Yet scars still remained on my body.
But I made no effort to erase these scars.
They were marks of struggle and pride, and also a reflection of my shortcomings.
The long scar running from the back of my hand was imperceptible unless examined closely, but when touched, one could feel the flesh bunched together solidly.
Since then, I had habitually touched the back of my hand.
When the time came for the scar to fade, this habit would disappear as well.
That’s what I thought.
‘The Void Grasping technique I used and the one Yeo Ha-ryun used were different, even though they’re the same technique.’
Certainly, I possessed more inner energy than Yeo Ha-ryun does now.
Yet Yeo Ha-ryun moved the same Void Grasping technique as if it were an extension of his own limbs.
The same applied to his intent.
His use and release of sword energy, and his adjustment of its density, were equally sharp and concentrated.
Almost as if he had achieved unity of sword and self.
‘Even if the quantity of inner energy doesn’t determine victory, Yeo Ha-ryun was truly formidable.’
Is that the level one must reach to become a future Heavenly Demon?
Having only thought of Yeo Ha-ryun from childhood, facing him grown to match my own progress struck me differently.
There was a strength that no novel’s prose could capture.
‘Could I ever match that?’
It’s laughable, but the truth is I have no confidence in defeating Yeo Ha-ryun even with this inner energy.
Yet from another perspective.
‘If I could gain control equal to Yeo Ha-ryun’s with this inner energy, how much stronger would I become?’
Relying on spirit elixirs has reached its limit.
Beyond this point, consuming additional elixirs would make little difference.
Jegalling spoke.
“For the first test, how about you play a dice game with this Master?”
“A dice game?”
“Using the Void Grasping technique to land the face you desire—if you succeed, you win; if you fail, you receive a penalty.”
Thunk—
What my Master placed before me was an old-fashioned wooden die carved from wood.
The die had tiny inscriptions covering every face except one.
“Master, looking at the inscriptions, I can see things like ‘receive Yoo Ho’s pressure point strikes at vital meridians’, ‘practice the Three Calamities Sword Technique with the left hand, the Ten Paces Divine Spear with the right hand’, ‘climb a cliff with one hand without using footwork’… and similar tasks.”
“You’ve read it correctly, Cheon-hee.”
My flesh is trembling. If I roll wrong, am I just heading straight to hellish training?
“I also see playing Go against Master here.”
“It won’t be easy to place Go stones where you want using the Void Grasping Technique while engaged in a battle of moves.”
I dusted off my hands and prepared myself.
On the 32-sided die, every single face except one was inscribed with hellish cultivation methods for mastering internal and external energy.
‘Human rights… don’t exist. My internal energy this year… doesn’t exist.’
Master’s hellish training had always been intense before, but now it had returned even more severe.
Either way, I had to exhaust this year’s internal energy or wring out every last drop of energy remaining in my muscles.
“Sigh.”
“Go ahead, roll it, Cheon-hee.”
Master spoke brightly and cheerfully.
‘No matter how I look at it, he seems to enjoy tormenting his disciple the most.’
It appears he’s made a terrifying resolve while stitching together the flesh of his only disciple.
I rolled the die.
Then I used the Void Grasping Technique to control the die’s orientation.
What I wanted was just one face: ‘Rest’.
I planned to control the angle and shape, then let it fall as intended.
But the die twisted at the last moment.
Thud!
“Ah, Cheon-hee. I didn’t mention that I would interfere while you throw the die. For the training to have meaning, it must be as close to real combat as possible, wouldn’t you say?”
[Yoo Ho’s pressure point strikes at vital meridians using the wooden dummy]
Damn it!
Master watched my expression with relish and laughed.
“Don’t worry. While you’re training, I’ll be training as well. You’re not suffering alone, Yoo Ho!”
Yoo Ho spoke from behind Master with an expression as if a halo were radiating from him.
“It’s a specially modified wooden dummy, Young Master. I’m curious whether you’ll be able to block it. But my recommendation would be to simply lie down comfortably and receive the pressure point strikes.”
“Who said I’d take it easy!”
“By the way, Cheon-hee.”
“Yes?”
Master struck pressure points on my wrists and shoulders.
Tap, tap-tap!
“I’ve placed a restriction making it difficult to manifest this year’s internal energy. Now dodge while operating your energy in this condition.”
A weight of ten times gravity pressed down on me.
I was dragged away by Yoo Ho.
“으아아악—!”
* * *
Master’s magical die truly contained many instruments of torture.
Yoo Ho’s strengthened wooden puppets relentlessly shattered my blood vessels, and I flailed and dodged while feeling the weight of gravity through my limbs.
‘Nine of them. Insane—he’s created nine wooden puppets!’
To defend against this, I couldn’t waste even a single thread of inner energy. I had to move my power along the shortest path to evade their attacks.
But on the first day, after evading for about half a double-hour, I took a blow to my abdomen and endured merciless pursuit and blood strikes from all nine wooden puppets.
My outer energy increased with each hit I took.
The result of the dice thrown on the second day was separating white rice from brown rice.
“The key is seeing with your eyes and separating them as you go. Until now, you had to move your inner energy to operate only large things like swords, but now you must separate them one by one using only the smallest amount of inner energy. Quite a tedious task, isn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t it be better to separate rice from millet instead? That would be more helpful for meals.”
“Haha, Cheon-hee. If you did that, you’d end up classifying by the weight difference between the two grains. That would be easy if you just controlled the Wind Cloud Technique finely.”
‘…He saw through me after all.’
Master and disciple of the Jegal Family understood each other well.
“Indeed, white rice and brown rice have only subtle differences in weight, but if you relied on the Wind Cloud Technique based on that alone, it would become chaos. I’m sure you understand that well, Cheon-hee.”
Master smiled gently and stroked my head.
“Yoo Ho, have the brown rice prepared for Cheon-hee’s meals. Since he’s in the midst of training, brown rice would be better for him now.”
“Understood.”
Yoo Ho answered thus and glanced at me.
I watched Yoo Ho and thought to myself.
‘I’ve been putting Yoo Ho to work again lately, but that fellow doesn’t seem to tire as easily as I expected.’
Perhaps as I grow, he grows as well.
There was no way to know.
“Well then, Young Master. Please call me when you’re finished.”
“Don’t open the door forcefully.”
“Ah, that’s part of the training as well.”
I’m doomed.
After separating the white rice from the brown rice, I’ll need to either fix them in place with the Five Elements Formation Technique or delicately practice the Void Grasping Method to hold them steady when Yoo Ho suddenly yanks the storehouse door open.
And so Master and Yoo Ho left the storehouse.
Left alone, I recalled the classic children’s tale of Kongji and Patji from the hundred best fairy tales.
‘Don’t I have animal friends to help me? Damn it. No, wait…. Even if I call Hwang-gu or Noeji, they’ll just knock everything over.’
And using such shortcuts wouldn’t help my training anyway.
‘That’s right. This is proof that I’ve grown lazy.’
I summoned inner energy the size of a millet seed from my dantian.
To distinguish brown rice from white rice in this dark storehouse, I had to continuously maintain the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong. And in this state, whether using the Wind Technique or the Void Grasping Method, I had to classify them one by one using the minimum amount of inner energy.
‘This is tough.’
I’d find it easier on my mind to simply take a beating from nine wooden puppets instead.
And so I separated the grains of rice.
* * *
‘This time it’s needlework.’
I had to insert a needle into firm cowhide and embroider it.
This was similar to suturing practice for a surgeon.
Proper suturing of human flesh required countless hours of practice like this.
The real problem is that I can’t use my hands—I have to embroider using only my inner energy.
‘To keep the leather from tearing, I need to pierce it all at once. For that, I’d need to channel my sword energy thinly into the needle before inserting it, wouldn’t I?’
I decided to enjoy this challenge.
‘Well, I should make gifts for Yeo Ha-ryun and my younger brothers.’
What should I send them? I fell into contemplation.
Since returning to the Medical Hall, I’d been spending time in a blur of activity.
I needed to send letters of greeting, and I also received word that Yeo Ha-ryun was organizing a vehicular collision test—no, rather a “Selection Tournament for the Greatest Medical Brother Under Heaven. Subtitle: Die to Become a Brother”—something along those lines.
‘I also need to send the ancestral urn to the Mudang Sect, but I think it would look better to deliver it in person.’
Gangho is a Confucian society where people live by the sword and rice.
It seems like two things that shouldn’t meet have come together, yet they harmonize in a mysterious way.
If I sent the great-great-grandfather’s ancestral urn through Pyoguk’s courier service, I couldn’t even imagine what kind of criticism I’d receive.
And by “couldn’t imagine,” I mean I truly had no idea.
Among all the martial arts novels I’d read in my previous life, I’d never seen one where someone extracted only the grudges and sent the ancestral urn by delivery service.
If I were going to be a villain anyway, I shouldn’t have held a funeral ceremony at all—this was half-hearted virtue.
‘Regardless of how long it takes, I should go deliver it in person with style and make a grand entrance.’
Even though I wasn’t a martial artist, my experience in modern society was telling me to do exactly that.
After deliberating, I decided to make fur scarves for my three younger brothers.
Since returning to the Medical Hall, time has been flying by as I train.
As I’ve grown, my younger brothers will have grown too.
Since they’re at the age where they grow rapidly, I have no idea how much they’ve developed.
‘If I cut generously and sew both sides together, they’ll be able to wear them for a long time.’
So I received wolf fur, sable fur, and rabbit fur from Yoo Ho.
“These are premium furs, Young Master, so the material costs quite a bit. If they get ruined and you need new pelts, I’ll deduct the material cost from your monthly stipend then.”
Gulp—
Hearing those words, I gathered my inner energy at the needle’s tip with intense concentration.
Prick—
That warning from Yoo Ho was the perfect incantation to raise my concentration.

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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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