Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 402

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 402
“Phew.”
The banquet ended like that.
Now the Six-Horned Venomous Snake would guard the crumbling ruins with its memories, and I would walk my own path.
However, one thing had changed.
The people of Baekrin Medical Guild decided to prepare a small annual banquet and wine for the Six-Horned Venomous Snake.
Of course, it wasn’t worship.
It was simply a gesture of respect toward the spiritual creature that guarded this land.
Nevertheless, the Six-Horned Venomous Snake was delighted.
This creature had been lonely too, it seemed.
The shattered jewel had already returned to its original form.
Yoo Ho had done that. He’d expended a hundred years’ worth of accumulated inner strength for that prophecy just now.
That jewel had been where he stored that inner strength.
‘So it really was something like a Yeouiju after all.’
I found a place where neither people nor spiritual creatures lingered.
In Yunnan, the form of houses varied greatly depending on wealth.
Where noble families had lived, they built two-story structures.
Since the region had many fierce beasts and venomous insects, the first floor was often left empty or used as storage.
They used bamboo and similar materials for flooring to ensure good air circulation, which prevented mold growth.
In contrast, the Oh Dok-mun headquarters had walls carved from solid marble.
Holes were pierced through them like mesh for decoration, which allowed ventilation and let water drain away during rain.
Since they didn’t need to worry about floods or fierce beasts like noble families did, they could use the first floor as well.
Still, they utilized the second floor more, just the same.
‘I wonder if the newly purchased noble family land will turn out like this.’
Once we extracted large quantities of marble, Yeonmu City’s Branch Six would be the first to receive supplies.
It was scheduled to be built in unprecedented luxury.
I smiled wryly.
‘Good grief, even now I’m only thinking about work. Even after receiving such a prophecy.’
With that thought, I climbed to the most secluded spot and gazed at the sky.
The dawn air was cold and blue.
The sun would rise soon.
I found a suitable spot and pulled out a herbal cigarette I’d been hiding.
It looked like tobacco, but it was medicinal through and through.
In other words, it was just burning medicinal herbs, but I ignited it and inhaled it like a cigarette.
I snapped my fingers to produce a flame and took a drag.
“Cough, cough!”
I immediately broke into a coughing fit.
‘Sigh, I guess I really can’t do this. In my past life, I only tried it once when I was in the military.’
There was once a time when patriotism was the most important value in the Republic of Korea.
Of course, even when I left Planet Earth, patriotism was important, but it wasn’t as emphasized as it had been in my youth.
One must serve in the military to be a true man. A man who hasn’t served isn’t a man at all. One must be prepared to sacrifice oneself for the nation.
Some still speak that way today, but back then they made comedy programs about men who hadn’t served in the military. By today’s standards, they even made movies about active reserve soldiers.
The young Jin Cheon-hee of that era vaguely thought that if everyone else was doing it, he wanted to do it too.
He had his own sense of patriotism and wanted to contribute to his country.
That’s why he became a military doctor.
‘I was such a fool back then….’
Without a family, he wanted to belong to something—to the nation, at least.
For some reason, it felt as though his heart had a gaping hole, and he craved that sensation of being connected to something.
He once believed that filling this void would bring him peace.
But it didn’t work out that way.
‘If I’d known then that I’d leave so early, would I have made a different choice?’
Everyone asked why an orphan would willingly seek hardship instead of simply receiving an exemption.
He had no regrets, but after dying and reflecting on it, he felt those years were somewhat wasted.
While others enjoyed themselves, he never indulged in anything.
‘Still, I built connections. And what I gained was substantial.’
The connections he’d made by chance back then proved invaluable until his death.
When I think about it, I was fortunate.
For a man without parents to rise to that position was impossible through effort alone.
Well, it doesn’t matter now.
He’s already a dead man in that place.
Jin Cheon-hee muttered this and set down his cigarette.
“….”
After gazing at the sky for a long while, he recalled that prophecy from before.
-Doctor, at the end of winter, you shall perish by the hand of one who manipulates fate.
What he’d seen through the Six-Horned Venomous Snake’s eyes was an endless expanse of pristine white snow.
It felt utterly unreal.
If it were the direction of the Northern Sea Ice Palace, surely mountains would have been visible, yet beyond the horizon a white line continued endlessly, and only a silence-wrapped, flesh-cutting cold covered everything.
It was simply surreal in its whiteness, nothing but whiteness.
Could it be a symbol rather than an actual landscape?
No matter how I think about it, it’s a mad prophecy.
Jin Cheon-hee laughed like a madman for a long time, then looked at the sky again.
‘At least it would have been nice to see spring before dying.’
Jin Cheon-hee loved green most. Verdure was the color of life.
Yet his specialty was ice techniques and yin-cold energy.
The child abandoned at the winter solstice could not seem to escape winter, no matter what.
Not in my past life. Nor in this one.
‘One who manipulates fate.’
There’s no way to know what that means now.
But what angers me more than death is that someone is designing me, orchestrating my existence.
Is my fate truly my own?
Is my self truly mine?
Whose body is this, and what am I?
Once I thought about it that way, I felt compelled to do something.
So I brought the herbal cigarette I held in my hand to my lips again.
It was medicinal herbs with stress-relieving and calming effects.
And I’d rolled quite a potent one at that.
Yet even so, with my solar plexus tightly compressed, breathing grew increasingly difficult.
What did “the end of winter” mean?
Somehow, I had a feeling it didn’t simply refer to a date.
* * *
“What were you smoking so much of?”
When Jin Cheon-hee returned, Yoo Ho had already changed into the Chief Manager’s attire and blended among the people.
“Ah, does it smell?”
“Humans won’t be able to detect it. Well, it doesn’t seem to be a good prophecy. The one who gave the prophecy looks quite apologetic too.”
Jin Cheon-hee answered calmly to those words.
“Well, sometimes a bad prophecy is more helpful than a good one.”
Yoo Ho caught the scent of the medicinal herbs clinging to Jin Cheon-hee’s fingertips.
At this concentration, it would take down an elephant in one go.
If he’d smoked it just to calm himself for a moment, yet still hadn’t fallen asleep and had walked here….
In the end, it meant only one thing.
“If you feel like you’re going mad, just smoke more.”
“Am I the Veiled Madman for nothing?”
Jin Cheon-hee said that and laughed with a grin, patting Yoo Ho’s back.
“Once I’m dead, our Chief Manager Yoo will be a free man.”
“That’s quite a good prophecy.”
Watching him respond so readily, Jin Cheon-hee immediately went back to work.
It meant he intended to inhale such potent herbs as a sedative and spend the day as if nothing were amiss.
Truly, a strange man, Yoo Ho thought.
* * *
‘What I don’t know, I don’t know.’
I’m sorry to the Six-Horned Venomous Snake who spent a hundred years of cultivation on this prophecy, but honestly, it’s not much help.
How could I possibly understand what this means?
-Doctor, at the end of winter, you shall die by the hand of one who manipulates fate.
…Like that—such absurd, nonsensical prophecy just thrown at me and gone—what am I supposed to do with that?
I understand it’s quite frustrating, but it provides zero practical help.
‘It’s been like this since Greek mythology. If you’re going to prophesy, shouldn’t you at least fill half an A4 page?’
I’m not asking for much. Standard formatting with font size 10 would be enough.
Did I ask for a thesis, a report, or perhaps something written like a newspaper article following the five W’s and one H?
At least you should give humans something they can deduce from.
‘Jicheon Cheonma is a martial arts novel, not a mystery thriller…?’
And in those mystery novels, whenever a prophecy like that appears, don’t a few people die before the detective finishes their deduction?
If I follow the detective formula and slit a few throats with my Bing Jeong Sword, will the brilliant Detective Baek Rin then appear and finish the deduction for me?
By that formula, Sama Hyeon is the trickster.
He confuses the mystery reader, and at the end for the twist, ‘Tada, it wasn’t!’ and after I rattle off the whole backstory, I’d have to put on handcuffs.
‘Forget it. Damn it, just forget it.’
I handed Sama Hyeon his birthday gift first.
“I prepared it beforehand to give it to you directly before we parted, but I collapsed and when I woke up, the seasons had changed. Still, I’m glad I managed to give it to you before your birthday.”
Sama Hyeon’s birthday was September 24th.
If my recovery had been delayed even slightly longer, I would have missed it.
The Geumhyul Room’s Yunnam Branch.
It was now a place that properly displayed the characteristics of a branch.
I went there and handed the gift to Sama Hyeon.
“It’s fine. Hyeong~”
Sama Hyeon accepted my gift.
‘Could it be that “the end of winter” refers to someone’s birthday?’
Not knowing his own birthday, he used the Winter Solstice—the day he was abandoned—as his birthday here as well.
The Winter Solstice was the longest night, but it was hard to call it the “end” of winter.
My Master’s birthday was January 4th.
That’s too far to call winter ended.
Yeo Ha-ryun’s was July 2nd, right when it gets hot. At least Cheonwoo’s was in spring, April 22nd.
But that’s definitely after winter has ended, isn’t it?
I was oddly bothered by how many of the dates were even numbers.
‘I’m going to develop paranoia at this rate.’
If someone manipulates destiny, in the end it can only be the author, right?
I couldn’t remember how I came to read Jicheon Cheonma, nor could I recall the cover, publisher, or author’s name.
‘There are no clues. It’s too vague.’
Then I suddenly felt a gaze and looked over to see Sama Hyeon staring at me intently, having stopped unwrapping the silk cloth.
“Hyeon?”
“Hyeong, you’re thinking about something other than my birthday right now, aren’t you?”
His perception was uncanny.
Sama Hyeon spoke.
“Gaga~ Is it possible you’re thinking of another sweetheart while this girl is opening her gift~?”
It was clearly the youngest brother’s aegyo, but for some reason, I felt killing intent.
“I-I’m sorry.”
“Gaga~ Please pay proper attention, won’t you?”
Knowing what kind of crazy things this guy does while smiling, I just nodded my head earnestly.
Click—
“The box has three layers total? The first one is… medicine?”
“Yeah. Emergency medicine. I wrote down what to use and when, so take it when you get injured outside. You can give it to others to take too, not just yourself.”
“How can I use something this precious? Hyeong~ Sigh… Even if Sa Jeo’s arm rots and needs amputation, I couldn’t give this away.”
That lunatic.
Sa Jeo regarded Sama Hyeon with cold, icy eyes.
“….”
I couldn’t determine what kind of relationship the two of them shared, but I could tell it wasn’t some ordinary connection found in the Gangho.
‘Are all the Disciples of the Golden King like this?’
As I stood between them, cold sweat dripping down, Sa Jeo spoke calmly.
“It’s fine. I don’t think I’d give that bastard medicine meant for myself anyway.”
“Still, you saved us by making the trip to Bunta near the Geumhyeol Pavilion so quickly this time.”
At my words, Sa Jeo nodded.
“I took my cut, so it’s settled.”
Just how much did he end up taking?
The Baekrin Medical Guild also made quite a bit from this land acquisition deal.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————