Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 416

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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 416
How much time had passed?
The three of them finished their conversation and each retreated to their respective cabins.
Yet Jin Cheon-hee remained, unpacking nothing, simply waiting.
‘The moon is dark and the wind is favorable—today would indeed be the perfect moment for an attack.’
My suspicions could be wrong.
But I must prepare nonetheless.
Because I am a ‘princess,’ after all.
A princess must always be ready to crack her enemy’s skull with a pipa.
That is what it means to be a princess.
Sincere as I am, I resolved to throw myself completely into this task.
Even if we deal a blow to both families in this operation, neither will face annihilation.
Then it would be best to take as little silver as possible to Baekrin Medical Guild.
Yes.
I decided to act selfishly.
Because that is what a princess does.
As I resumed playing the melody, Hwang-gu lifted his head.
Woof?
In that instant, my fingers stilled. But only for a moment—immediately, I continued with the next note.
I couldn’t reveal that I’d noticed anything until I was certain.
Soon, Hwang-gu rose completely to his feet.
Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof—!
‘They’ve come.’
I slung the stone pipa diagonally across my shoulder.
Beneath the ornate palace robes, standing with one leg carelessly planted, my nature—one that worshipped freedom—was laid bare.
Princess, advancing to battle.
* * *
The Yellow River at night.
Along the riverbanks in the undergrowth, a considerable number of martial artists lay in ambush.
All of them were river pirates.
The total number of river pirates across all the Shandong Province channels exceeded a thousand.
Half of them—some five hundred—were participating in this operation.
The channel chiefs each led their subordinates from four directions.
The four-sided encirclement formation, the river pirates’ favorite tactic.
A method used to perfectly capture merchant vessels; once the formation was complete, even the greatest masters had no way out.
‘Fighting on water is different from fighting on land.’
Masters who didn’t understand this often fell to river pirates who were several levels below them.
‘No moonlight and perfect wind conditions.’
Had there been a better opportunity than this in recent times?
The morale of the river pirates reached its peak.
The Chief Channel Master bellowed.
“Raise the torches! Raise them high–!”
The Deputy Channel Master, as if he’d been waiting for this moment, shouted in unison.
“Capture the princess and seize the gold–!”
A deafening roar erupted.
With the war cry, the pirates simultaneously ignited their torches.
From this position, escape was impossible for the merchant vessel.
The pirates began rowing their small boats forward with practiced speed.
With cultivators handling the oars, their speed far exceeded that of any running man.
The merchant ship was already surrounded on all sides with no escape route.
All they could do was hastily raise their own torches to meet the threat.
“Enemy attack–!”
“Everyone, rise! We’re under assault–!”
The Chief Channel Master roared his orders.
“Kill them all! But the princess must be taken alive–!”
A moonless night.
Torchlight against torchlight announced the coming war.
* * *
Amid the chaos, Jin Cheon-hee still dressed as a woman, Wang Gak-yeon in male disguise, and Gongseon Yeong burst onto the bow.
The ship had come to a halt, and already the warriors of Unryongpyoguk and the Gongseon Family stood armed across the deck.
The sound of bowstrings sang out in unison.
The warriors released their arrows in perfect synchronization, but their targets were pirates aboard small wooden boats.
Moreover, in the dead of night, hitting such small vessels proved far more difficult than striking larger ships.
The pirates, as if anticipating this, raised massive iron shields overhead like roofs to shelter from the arrow rain.
And among them, a cultivator of exceptional skill manned the oars, navigating with such ease through the barrage of arrows that it seemed almost effortless.
“So they’ve finally come.”
To my friend’s bitter words, Wang Gak-yeon deliberately answered with forced cheer.
“Did you think they wouldn’t?”
She nocked an arrow to her bowstring.
Beside her, Gongseon Yeong drew his blade.
“First… let’s see how many have come. Your Highness, can you sense their numbers through martial perception?”
As a member of the Jegallga, skilled in formation techniques, she possessed derivative martial arts capable of detecting enemies through qi sensing.
However, at lower cultivation levels, such techniques proved useless, requiring at minimum the Hwagyeong realm to function effectively.
I closed my eyes and briefly extended my qi perception to survey the surroundings.
Qi could be considered a form of energy, but masters wielded it like a sensory organ of the body itself.
This was qi sensing.
Even without the Jegallga’s martial techniques, masters could feel distant presences or detect those in hiding through this qi sensing.
Having reached the Hwagyeong realm, cultivating the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong to its peak, and studying the Jegallga’s formation techniques in depth, I displayed a level of qi sensing far beyond imagination.
However, now I dared not use the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong, as even a change in eye color could expose my identity, limiting my sensing range to less than half its potential.
And yet.
My sensory range exceeded a hundred zhang—over three hundred meters.
Against first-rate assassins, even I would find it impossible to detect them without Hwang-gu’s aid, but these water bandits splashing about in their boats posed no difficulty whatsoever.
“Around four hundred men, I’d say. Five who appear to be at the pinnacle of mastery. Twelve at the peak of excellence. The remaining thirty or so qualify as first-rate warriors. Am I correct?”
At my words, the alpaca Hwang-gu started to bark with a ‘woof!’ but instead just tapped his front hooves eagerly against the deck.
Though Hwang-gu’s very bones had been transformed through the Chuk-geun technique, old habits die hard.
Tap, tap-tap—
The hoofed shoes struck against the wooden planks.
The specialist hired by the Gongseon Family had done such a flawless job that it was indistinguishable from an actual goat’s foreleg.
Even I found it utterly astounding to witness.
Gongseon Yeong spoke.
“They have numbers, but in terms of elite strength, we seem to have the advantage, don’t we?”
At those words, I smiled bitterly.
“They don’t even seem to be attempting concealment. It appears they’re relying on something.”
I offered a wry smile.
Water bandits were fundamentally evil by nature.
The heterodox sects earned their name for good reason—they spurned the righteous and difficult path, pursuing instead the easy and wicked way.
Consequently, most of them possessed martial prowess inferior to the orthodox sects.
Thus, it was only natural that despite their overwhelming numbers, they lacked many truly formidable masters.
‘Hmm, if they’re relying solely on numbers… it’s disappointing.’
Yet the numbers still added up correctly.
Absolute quantity was always threatening.
Had I not been present, it would have been far more so.
‘I need to see whether they truly rely only on numbers, or if there’s another hidden trump card.’
Still, part of me—the strategist’s mind—hoped this was all they had.
* * *
‘Then… let’s go!’
I drew in a deep breath.
The Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong, spirit creatures, even swordsmanship—
I would suppress my enemies without employing any of my primary techniques.
To accomplish this, I made my choice.
Toxin mastery!
I pressed my index and thumb together, forming a perfect circle.
Venom pooled between my fingertips.
“Whoooosh!”
I exhaled the poison.
The Five Elements Mutual Destruction Poison technique was a martial art that built resistance to toxins, but its fundamental principle lay in decomposing poison through the five elements, then recombining toxic qi freely within the body.
In other words, alongside five-element true qi, I could generate toxic qi at will.
However, any competent toxin master could accomplish this much.
Compared to the poison arts of the Tang Family or Oh Dok-mun, who accumulated toxins in their bodies, this was several tiers below.
‘Under normal circumstances, that would be true.’
The Five Elements Mutual Destruction Poison is ultimately a toxin technique that grows stronger the more poisons one encounters, identifies, decomposes, and accumulates within the five elements.
Though incomplete from my last battle with Oh Dok-mun, my Five Elements Mutual Destruction Poison was able to advance rapidly after being saturated with the poison emanating from a Hyeongyeong-level Toxin Master.
The reward for risking my life and surviving was substantial.
Comparable to most extreme poisons!
Moreover, any poison once identified and decomposed could be reconstructed as a lower-tier variant.
My right arm, which had once harbored the poison of a Hyeongyeong master, produced toxic liquid at the behest of its wielder.
Whoosh!
The toxic miasma I released spread outward in all directions.
And it engulfed the water thieves who had just clung to the ship.
“M-my arm won’t move!”
“Damn it. It’s a paralysis poison! Get away!”
The water thieves tumbled off one after another.
Decay poison, nerve poison, paralysis poison, sleep poison, and more.
There are many varieties of toxin techniques.
Right now, I had infused and released a paralysis poison!
With the knowledge of a Doctor added to it, my toxin technique had become so refined that even a master of poison arts would be astonished at its advancement.
* * *
‘Ah, so that’s why she observed the wind direction first.’
Without needing to go all the way to the Battle of Red Cliffs, the Jegallim Family has always been regarded as the pinnacle of formation mastery in Gangho.
And such formations contain not merely Gangho formations, but also military encampment deployments.
The Jegallim Family had always read the wind well.
Of course, that was merely what I had heard from the elders of the Gongseon Family—this was the first time I had witnessed it directly like this.
Gongseon Yeong realized for the first time just how fearsome a power the Jegallim Family wielded in large-scale battles.
With my first move, I had dealt with the water thieves who clung to the ship.
By rough estimate, approximately half of the water thieves had been poisoned by my advanced paralysis poison and fallen into the river.
The remaining water thieves were handled by the martial artists of the Gongseon Family and Unryongpyoguk.
Many water thieves were drowning, but fortunately my profile appeared composed.
‘He seems to show no mercy toward villains compared to before.’
In the past, he would still wear a bitter expression, but now he seemed to have drawn a clearer line.
‘He has grown.’
In the Gangho of Dosan Geomrim, no matter how outstanding one’s martial prowess, a weak heart inevitably leads to death.
Gongseon Yeong felt relieved at the somewhat improved expression compared to before.
Shwip–!
An arrow from Wang Gak-yeon flew past Gongseon Yeong’s side.
Not a real arrow, but one formed from inner energy.
When I asked if it was a Divine Bow technique, Wang Gak-yeon said it wasn’t a true Divine Bow in the strictest sense.
Yet the arrows formed by Wang Gak-yeon were piercing through the enemies I had paralyzed with steady precision.
The two of them moved in perfect synchronization, as if they had practiced combined techniques together for a long time.
‘Childhood friends, she said?’
The combined techniques flowed like water, but only for a moment.
I ceased my toxin technique.
Crash!
The man wielding the giant halberd leaped onto the deck.
“Kekekeke, I never expected such a beautiful princess to have mastered toxin techniques?”
With my face already altered by makeup to be difficult to recognize, and now wearing a veil on top of that, it was no wonder they couldn’t identify me as Jin Cheon-hee.
Since I wasn’t using my signature ice crystal sword technique, nor even employing spirit beasts for restraint, they seemed convinced I was a different master.
As one climbed up, three others followed, scrambling onto the deck behind him.
“I thought you were an inspector from the Bota Clan, but are you a master from Yunnan? Or perhaps from the Tang Clan…?”
“If it were Hyeolpyeon-wang, he wouldn’t hide his identity this way. He would have drawn his whip immediately.”
“True, given Hyeolpyeon-wang’s temperament, he would have split the ferry in half first.”

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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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