Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 356

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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 356
How much time had passed like this?
The girl Gong Yu-bing’s complexion was visibly improving with each passing moment.
At this positive change, a smile bloomed across Jin Cheon-hee’s weary face.
‘It worked!’
Gong Ya-geon was undoubtedly a peerless master, and with such formidable martial prowess, she showed no signs of aging—her appearance suggested a woman in her early thirties.
In truth, her body’s vitality far surpassed that of ordinary twenty-year-olds in their prime.
Even in twenty-first century Korea, people over fifty who boasted youthful appearances often became topics of discussion.
In the martial realm governed by the omnipotent energies of martial arts and qi, such occurrences were nearly commonplace.
Because I had trusted in Gong Ya-geon’s robust health, the procedure ultimately succeeded.
Gong Ya-geon’s superhuman kidneys were purifying the blood at an extraordinary rate.
‘Now it’s just a matter of time. I’ve immediately alleviated the acute uremic symptoms through dialysis, and afterward, whether through this world’s dietary methods, qi healing, or restoring kidney function, there will be no need for regular dialysis.’
She had been poisoned by this world’s toxins, and since I used the blood of the martial artist Gong Ya-geon, I cannot make absolute guarantees.
Depending on circumstances, several more dialysis sessions may be necessary.
However, the critical danger had passed.
That alone warmed a corner of my heart.
‘Good, good. Still, Wuying Touguai should focus on nourishing life cultivation techniques for a while.’
Even amid the joy of success, I continued thinking ahead.
Wuying Touguai watched as Jin Cheon-hee’s expression shifted moment by moment, finding it peculiar.
‘Indeed… the rumors of Gangho were not mere falsehoods.’
With that thought, she closed her eyes once more.
* * *
She dreamed.
‘Grandmother is the Divine Thief.’
After her parents’ funeral ended.
Wuying Touguai—that is, her grandmother—spoke these words first.
Blink, blink.
Granddaughter Gong Yu-bing simply stared blankly, listening to her grandmother’s words.
In truth, even after hearing them, she questioned internally whether she had heard correctly.
Perhaps she had misheard something.
‘Grandmother can be called the Wuying Touguai, the greatest Divine Thief under heaven.’
“Um…”
She knew her grandmother was a martial arts master.
For one, she looked younger than her mother, and her lightness skill was incredibly fast—no one knew when grandmother arrived or when she left.
Mother said grandmother was a famous escort in Haowen.
Indeed, she seemed to come and go from the escort agency and brought back money.
Like most first-rate masters’ households, they lived without lacking for funds.
But suddenly, not just a master, but a legendary Divine Thief?
She asked her grandmother.
Whether she had something like a divine object that could save lives.
My grandmother’s expression grew terribly dark.
There were necromantic arts like corpse reanimation to bring the dead back to life, but she said that wasn’t truly bringing them back.
So… I simply wept.
No matter how skilled a martial artist one became, there was no way to stop a plague.
My grandmother wept as well.
She said she should have spoken sooner, that she had made a mistake because she was ignorant and all she had learned was thievery.
Before the memorial tablets of my mother and father, my grandmother apologized, saying she had been foolish.
She wept like a child, saying that if she had known it would come to this, she should have told them long ago about the Gangho debts and everything else.
Then she struck her head against the floor several times with loud thuds.
With blood streaming from her forehead, she continued to strike it again and again.
She said she didn’t know how to raise her granddaughter.
If she taught her martial arts, the debts would follow her too, and if she didn’t teach her, it would become a different kind of regret later.
At the same time, she said her granddaughter honestly wasn’t naturally gifted, so she didn’t know how to raise her.
She herself had been born with a martial physique, and Oseng was a genius, which was why their achievements were possible.
But her granddaughter would struggle to achieve greatness as she grew.
She would develop mediocrely, like most martial artists.
If that happened, she wouldn’t be able to bear the debts of Tugoe that came with the martial arts either.
And so she simply wept like a bear, sobbing uncontrollably.
‘Grandmother is crying too.’
To Gong Yu-bing, her grandmother was a distant figure.
Unlike other grandmothers who always sat by the warmest part of the floor and took out candies from the cupboard, she did none of those things.
Because of her youthful appearance and beautiful features, even younger than her mother, she was often misunderstood.
And my grandmother simply left those misunderstandings as they were.
So the neighbors often mistook her for an aunt, and sometimes even for an older sister with a significant age gap.
We had never really talked much.
My grandmother spoke.
‘I’ll raise you somehow. I’ll raise you no matter what. Even if I teach you martial arts, I won’t raise you to be a thief like me, so somehow…’
But my grandmother didn’t know.
That she herself had no talent for teaching, far more than she realized.
Even with an ordinary physique, one could barely succeed with a good teacher, but my grandmother was the worst kind of teacher when it came to instruction.
Still, Gong Yu-bing loved her grandmother.
I loved my grandmother’s hands.
Gone was that sharp, fierce demeanor from long ago, and sometimes she would embrace me and weep as if collapsing.
But still.
I loved my grandmother.
* * *
“Grandmother…”
After a long time, the girl awoke from that old dream.
Blink, blink.
The unfamiliar ceiling was filled with ornate carvings.
Though young, I understood that such a ceiling was not ordinarily inexpensive.
I paused briefly, wondering why I was here.
When I turned my gaze to the side, I noticed long, thread-like tubes inserted into my arm.
Two tubes. And they were connected to something like a leather pouch hanging from a pole of moderate height.
As I surveyed my surroundings further, I discovered I was lying on a bed adorned with ornate wooden carvings.
Only then did I realize someone was holding my hand firmly.
A warm hand.
When I turned my eyes toward that touch, there was my grandmother.
Gong Ya-geon.
One of the ten strongest people in the world.
After losing my mother and father, she was the only family I had left.
I had known my grandmother existed.
She would stay for a month or two or three each year, then disappear somewhere.
There was never word of when she was leaving or when she would return.
When I was younger, I would throw tantrums, begging her not to go because I wanted to be with her.
Each time, my grandmother would subtly build walls instead.
Looking back now, it seemed she had her own way of ensuring her resentment would not touch her granddaughter.
After I grew older and thought about it.
My grandmother, despite being revered as the Divine Thief, had an innocent side to her.
I loved her for that.
Yet sometimes I resented her.
Because she was not there when my mother and father passed away.
Even after living alone with her following their deaths, I could not immediately believe when she said she was Tugoe.
Still, if my grandmother had not been there, would I not have dissolved away in my sorrow and tears?
‘Grandmother would have dissolved away too if I had not been there. She cries quite easily, after all.’
After living so long.
After even earning the alias of Quirk in Gangho.
After performing several righteous deeds in the martial world.
…My grandmother was a crybaby.
Even now, sometimes at night she would call out my mother’s name and apologize, her shoulders trembling, or she would buy two ornaments—one in the color my mother loved and one in the color I loved.
Then she would insist stubbornly that she had bought one for herself.
After that, she would say she was going to the outhouse and leave the room, but would actually go to the kitchen and stay there for a long time.
Then she would return with puffy eyes and prepare something delicious for me.
‘It is a secret I cannot tell anyone.’
I squeezed my grandmother’s hand tightly.
She would probably cry again when she learned I had recovered.
She would think of my mother again.
And I myself, Gong Yu-bing, would probably think of my mother too.
‘…I will cry again.’
Some wounds simply do not heal easily.
Sometimes just the brush of wind brings tears, the pain is so sharp.
That must be Mother.
‘Grandmother and I are comrades in arms.’
If one of us two dies, there will be only half as many people left to remember Mother and Father.
Grandmother never quite approved of Father, always calling him the thief who stole her daughter.
Father, a war orphan at the time, came as a live-in son-in-law and was given a surname accordingly.
It seemed Grandmother had wished for Mother to marry a son from a family that raised their children with abundant love.
Yet Father would laugh it off and listen to Grandmother’s grumbling to the very end.
Though Grandmother complained that she disapproved, she always prepared clothes and food that Father would enjoy.
She cared for him in her heart while keeping the words “daughter thief” perpetually on her lips.
I cannot understand that psychology, though I am her granddaughter.
‘She must have permitted the marriage because she loved Mother so dearly.’
Mother loved her so much that she fell ill with lovesickness.
That must be why Grandmother was upset about her being stolen away.
Thinking that a true thief—and a Divine Thief at that—was the one saying such things, I found it somewhat amusing.
I gazed at Grandmother’s sleeping face for a long time.
No matter how I look at her, she is not a ‘grandmother.’
‘When I grow up, when I grow old—will Grandmother still have a young face then?’
I thought that perhaps after an extremely long time passes, someone might even mistake Grandmother for my daughter.
According to Grandmother, she did not become young through enlightenment regarding martial arts.
She stole an elixir of immortality from a secret chamber hidden deep within somewhere incredibly difficult to reach.
And she drank it right away.
With nothing to boast about to others, nothing to fence as stolen goods.
That is why people call Grandmother the Wuying Touguai.
Grandmother said that was the theft she remembered most vividly.
‘So… Grandmother will remain like this forever.’
Gong Yu-bing thought, gazing at the ceiling.
‘Then Grandmother will forever remember Mother, and remember me too?’
No matter how I think about it, I do not seem capable of accumulating the same achievements as Grandmother.
Even if I learned martial arts under Grandmother, who lacks any talent as a teacher, through bone-grinding pain, and even if I succeeded, something like the Banrowan technique seemed impossible.
‘If I die too, Grandmother will have to carry two keepsakes around…’
That would be quite lonely.
Gong Yu-bing thought.
Then Grandmother, who had been sleeping, slowly opened her eyes.
Soon tears began to well up in Grandmother’s large eyes.
“How is your body…?”
“I’m fine.”
“Thank goodness. Thank goodness…”
Grandmother did not stop her tears. Then, habitually, she touched the keepsake.
The color Mother loved.
‘Look, you’re thinking of Mother.’
And at the same moment, Gong Yu-bing also found herself thinking of her mother.
She missed her mother.

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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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