Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 29

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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 29
Treating an illness requires money.
Even if one encounters a benevolent doctor willing to provide free treatment, one must still procure the medicinal herbs themselves.
He had no money to purchase those herbs. Nor did he have the means to buy incense to ease his wife’s passage as she suffered through her final moments.
His wife grasped his hand and spoke.
She entrusted their daughter to him.
She worried deeply, knowing he was a man of only kindness.
She asked that he raise their daughter without want, in her stead.
That was the extent of her final words.
After that, she released anguished moans for days and nights, suffering endlessly before dying in agony. She could not even close her eyes against the pain.
It was the moment Gungwi became Gungwi. He would later gain an opportunity to master martial arts—something befitting an archer like himself.
After that.
He took any work that paid.
Bodyguard work, warfare, hunting, and countless other tasks.
Through intermediaries in the underworld, he undertook various jobs and killed numerous martial artists. With the money earned, he held his wife’s funeral and raised his daughter.
He wished to provide his daughter with comforts he could not give his wife. Yet he could not have known this kindness would become poison.
Those with grudges in Gangho set their sights on him and his daughter. Thus he concealed her identity and was forced to accumulate ever greater wealth to protect her.
And now.
He was offering his entire fortune if only they would spare his daughter’s life.
Money earned for precisely this purpose, he said.
“What is the matter?”
Finally, Jegalling emerged.
Long silver hair and refined features. A tall frame bearing the physique of a trained martial artist. Yet his pale skin, devoid of any color, stood out starkly against it all.
Even a stranger would not doubt he was Baekrin Uiseon. True to form, Gungwi pressed his forehead to the ground.
Thud!
“Please, I beg you, save her.”
“Tell me where the pain is, and I shall examine her.”
“My daughter was assaulted by seven ruffians. Hwaju Yakson’s clinic diagnosed her with internal injuries—they said her organs were shattered. They administered medicine, but there has been no improvement.”
“Those with grudges in Gangho are terrifying indeed.”
From those words alone, Jegalling deduced how matters had unfolded.
No matter how carefully he had avoided harming commoners and killed only martial artists, the fact remained that he had done so for money.
All of them had been someone’s student, someone’s rival, or someone’s master.
Gungwi was one versed in both archery and movement techniques.
Those unable to kill him would inevitably seek to vent their rage upon his family instead.
“Let me examine the patient first.”
Jegalling approached him.
Gungwi offered the wrist of his daughter, whom he had laid down.
He took her pulse and sent his qi inward, slowly examining her interior. Then he released a long sigh.
He took his daughter’s wrist that he had been holding. He placed his fingers on her pulse and sent his energy to slowly examine her insides. Then he finally let out a sigh.
“…It is remarkable she has survived this long.”
“But then…”
“Treatment is already too late. We cannot save her.”
“…!”
Bloodshot veins erupted across the man’s eyes. He reached out, attempting to seize Jegalling by the throat.
‘No! Master!’
Thwack!
Yet that hand froze in mid-air. Yoo Ho had stepped in to block him effortlessly.
“The patient’s family should calm themselves. This is Baekrin Uigak.”
‘Yoo Ho! Indeed… a person with little explanation in the novel… yet so formidable.’
I widened my eyes at the sight before me.
“Release me! Do you treat me this way because my money is filthy? Hwaju Yakson. And you, Baekrin Uiseon—you’re all nothing but hypocrites! I will…”
Murderous intent flooded the space. My spine turned cold.
‘This is killing intent…’
The doctors of the Medical Hall froze under that oppressive aura. They could scarcely breathe beneath such dense malice.
He was truly Gungwi. And then it happened.
Step. Step. Step. Step.
The martial artists who had been standing ready advanced forward. And from various corners, more warriors appeared.
It was only natural.
The Medical Guild was rooted in the martial world and dealt with martial artists, so it could not lack a military force.
The difference from other sects was that they did not resort to force for factional disputes.
They operated the sect by selling their medical skills.
Tension wrapped around the hall. Then Baekrin Uiseon sighed.
“The impossible remains impossible.”
“Then kill me and slay my daughter here as well! Otherwise, I swear by the name of Gungwi that I will slaughter everyone in this Medical Hall! And that hypocrite Hwaju Yakson shall die by my hand too!”
Gungwi spread his killing intent in fury. Yet Jegalling, my master, and Yoo Ho merely faced his aura with composure.
Jegalling spoke with perfect calm.
“Do as you wish. Then you shall witness the corpses of Gungwi and an unnamed girl rotting in the streets.”
“What do you…”
Jegalling laughed coldly.
“A jest, perhaps?”
Jegalling held neither sword nor spear in his hands.
Only an ordinary fan, the kind seen anywhere, rested in his grip.
I knew what power that fan possessed. Yet the expression my master displayed now was one he never showed me.
The chill of such coldness—as if he were a different person entirely—made my skin crawl.
Gungwi laughed. The twisted smile of a madman.
“Kekeke. I’ve heard the rumors that Baekrin Uiseon’s martial prowess ranks supreme even in the heavens. Perhaps, as you say, I might become a corpse. But surely I could drag at least one person down to the underworld with me in mutual destruction?”
His gaze fell upon the young me, watching from a considerable distance away.
‘Me? Why me?’
Jegalling spoke.
“Truly befitting of Gungwi. Taking a child as hostage. With that, all hesitation has vanished.”
Jegalling gazed down at him with a languid voice.
His movements were as natural as if they were part of everyday life.
Contrary to his voice, which grew softer like a spring day, a bitter cold began to emanate from around Jegalling.
Frost formed on the ground.
To dare take my only disciple hostage—I had decided to kill him.
And it would certainly not be a gentle death.
‘I need to stop this.’
With that resolve, Jin Cheon-hee took a step forward.
“Master.”
“What is it, Cheon-hee?”
Even now, his voice was warm only toward his disciple.
All eyes turned toward Jin Cheon-hee. Rather than being frightened by that murderous intent, everyone found it strange that he remained so composed.
Gungwi even glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
‘This is rather burdensome.’
Still, it was better to speak one’s mind.
“Would it be alright if I took a look?”
“What?”
“I agree with what you said, Master—that you cannot save him. But if his fate is to die anyway, I think it would be worth attempting something bold. Furthermore….”
“Furthermore?”
‘And I’m thinking of trying to recruit that villain.’
Jin Cheon-hee swallowed the rest of his words.
* * *
We eventually moved the patient into the Medical Hall.
With just that, Gungwi’s face transformed from that of a madman back to a father’s.
I thought that nothing changes as easily as a person does, yet nothing is as easy to change as a person either.
‘Originally, he was not the type to take a child hostage.’
Before his daughter’s life and death, the father abandoned all his pride far too easily.
Gungwi stared at his trembling hands for a long time.
The face of his wife, still wide-eyed in death, came to mind.
It felt as though she was reproaching him—why did you do this, why did you start a family when you couldn’t even afford a single medicine?
In truth, she had only asked him to take good care of their baby, saying that now I am the only one this child can rely on, please raise her well.
With the venom gone, only worry remained.
He grabbed his own trembling forearm and spat out a curse.
As Jin Cheon-hee approached, Gungwi spoke.
“I’m sorry…”
“It’s fine. Haha, next time, why don’t you try taking someone else hostage instead of me?”
Jin Cheon-hee made the joke with ease.
It was to ease the guardian’s tension. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but now he noticed this habit had surfaced again, and he clicked his tongue.
It was a long-ingrained habit from his days as a surgeon.
Gungwi spoke.
“Wielding a bow requires keen eyes. Walking the path between black and white for so long, the only thing I’ve honed is my eye for detail. That’s when I saw Baekrin Uiseon’s gaze. It was the look of someone who doesn’t see others as human.”
“What made you see it that way?”
“I’m not sure. He wore a beautiful face and refined bearing like a mask, but my instincts told me the truth. That no matter who died in that moment, he wouldn’t flinch. Except for one person.”
Was that one person Jin Cheon-hee himself?
“My master holds me in high regard, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. I felt it. Those who ascend to the position of Uiseon experience death far more than ordinary warriors. Because of that, I knew they tend to be more eccentric than most people. Hwaju Yakson was a strange one too.”
“Have you seen him directly?”
“Not while carrying my daughter. He never agreed to meet. But long ago, when I took on a commission, I saw him from a distance once. The eyes of an old fox clinging to fame and fortune. But they were very different from Baekrin Uiseon’s. At least he seemed somewhat human.”
He picked up a stone from the ground.
“From my long experience as an archer, my instinct tells me that Uiseon would smile the same smile at this stone and at all people. That’s why I grew impatient.”
I understood it was my cornered father’s self-justification.
But I also knew that to apologize properly, one must be honest.
“I’m truly, truly sorry, my child.”
If Jin Cheon-hee hadn’t stepped forward then, would Gungwi have really shot him?
That answer was something neither Jin Cheon-hee, who had read the novel, nor Gungwi himself could know.
All Jin Cheon-hee knew was that people could do anything for their family, and could become anything.
‘In the novel, Gungwi lost his daughter and burned paper money. Not ceremonial paper currency, but real money.’
Searching for the beast that killed his daughter, killing doctors who refused treatment.
Later, he even killed innocent people to burn that money.
Whether silver or gold, he carefully accumulated it and exchanged it for paper form at the merchant house.
If that was too difficult, he bought things his daughter had loved in life. And he burned those. But that was still a future that hadn’t happened yet.
He was Gungwi, the Bow Ghost, but not yet Gungak the Evil or Gungma the Demon.
Gungwi spoke.
“Please, just save our baby. I’ll give you anything for that. Please….”
The man exhaled in ragged gasps.
Despair filled the air. It was a taste more bitter than any poison.
Jin Cheon-hee held Gungwi’s wet hand and thought.
‘Yes. This is what a hospital truly is….’
Though the world I lived in and my age had changed, I felt the young man stepping back into the ring.

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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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