Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 460

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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 460
The moment the door closed, Sama Hyeon spoke.
“Hyeong, your Master doesn’t seem to be in his right mind~ Is this normal? I mean, I knew he was a bit eccentric originally, but…”
“…Hyeon-a. You shouldn’t speak of Master that way.”
“No, I’m not insulting the sect or anything. Your Master really isn’t in his right mind, I’m telling you?”
Why did my younger brothers always view Master so unfavorably?
Sama Hyeon continued.
“I mean, if you’re going to let him run wild, then let him run wild. If you’re going to raise him like a precious orchid in a golden house, then raise him like an orchid!”
“Master is taking on disciples for the first time too. I’m his first. And we’ve survived thanks to Master, haven’t we?”
“…Hyeong, I don’t think that’s quite the issue here.”
Cheonwoo added his own comment.
Sama Hyeon spoke.
“Goodness, my Master would probably eat three meals well and sleep soundly even if I dropped dead on the street.”
Well, that would certainly be true of the Golden King of the Geum Blood Method.
He had disciples as numerous as grains of sand, and frankly, even if Sama Hyeon died, he would merely mourn the loss of one cash cow managing the Geum Blood Method.
It seemed he would simply copy that system and assign it to someone else.
Cheonwoo added as well.
“Well…My Master would probably abstain from food and drink entirely. But even that would be in accordance with the ways of Gangho, and on my memorial day, he would occasionally raise a cup of wine.”
I see. So that is what a Master of Gangho is like.
Compared to that, Master Baek Rin-ui-seon was certainly quite reclusive.
I spoke.
“Hmm…I think perhaps Gwon Je has his family, the Murim clan, and the Golden King of the Geum Blood Method has his golden calves at home, so he doesn’t feel lonely. Our Master only has Master. It’s natural that he feels lonely.”
Sama Hyeon countered without backing down.
“Hyeong, by that logic, Baek Rin-ui-seon has the Baekrin Medical Guild members as family. And Baek Rin-ui-seon has no money? Who’s sweeping up all the silver of the Central Plains right now?”
“No. Master lost his family when he was young, so he has deep affection because of that.”
“Ah…Hyeong. I really don’t think that’s it.”
Watching my two brothers vehemently deny it, I chuckled softly.
“Hyeong, what’s so funny?”
“No…Just…We came back alive, you know?”
I don’t know much about fate.
The world’s destruction felt too grand, too distant.
But the fact that we’re alive, this warmth alone, brings me such joy.
So I laughed with genuine happiness.
* * *
When war ends, a doctor’s real work begins.
The wounded who could move were sent back to their hometowns.
Since returning home was the most pressing matter for them, they received treatment at the Baekrin Medical Guild branch nearest to their homes.
Next, the severely wounded who couldn’t move were admitted to the larger branches for hospitalization and treatment.
“It seems the Hwaju Medical Institute has chosen a waypoint where everyone gathers for treatment, then disperses afterward.”
“That doesn’t seem like a bad approach either. What about the Heukjeon Medical Guild?”
“It seems the Golden Blood Pavilion is doing something with them. But they’re reluctant to expose the details. I suspect… it’s because they’re treating members of the Demonic Cult as well.”
Yeo Ha-ryun spoke. He said he’d come to monitor the situation.
And the Hyeolseonggyo would kill anyone they discovered immediately.
The Soegooju wouldn’t have sent only Yeo Ha-ryun. Other cultists must have come with him, so there would be quite a few wounded.
The tents were being dismantled one by one.
The corpses were burned in flames.
For our soldiers, we didn’t forget to verify the identities of the fallen.
We had to send their remains home.
While overseeing all of this, I gazed out toward the distant wasteland.
“Now the Khan’s subordinates will turn on each other and fight. And will a new Khan emerge?”
“Who knows. For now… that becomes a matter for the administrators.”
At least we’d learned that traditional diplomatic methods wouldn’t work with them.
It would be difficult to prevent their expansion through political marriages or envoy exchanges.
But mobilizing the army for a punitive campaign was difficult too—the Empire had suffered tremendous losses, and the steppe warfare heavily favored them.
“Eun Wang-ya must have a headache as well.”
“More than that, I don’t know what to do with the Suksin Tribe soldiers’ corpses.”
“There are too many unclaimed bodies, aren’t there?”
“That’s the situation. We can’t send anyone to retrieve them right now.”
Should we bury them in the ground? Or burn them?
If they were Imperial citizens, we’d need to send their remains home, so burning came first.
Of course, there was the method of turning them into corpse puppets and taking them away, but the number of fallen was simply too great.
“Has any directive come down?”
“Hehehehe, do you really think that administration over there will return to normal? A trivial matter like handling enemy corpses won’t be decided for another month, and the order will arrive then.”
Damn it.
This is the sorrow of those who handle the actual work.
I scratched my head vigorously.
Jegalling spoke.
“The higher-ups won’t care how the enemy dead are handled anyway, so just gloss over it and submit a report.”
How troublesome…
I gazed at the smoke rising from the crematorium.
It was made by hastily converting pottery kilns all at once, and since the war began, I’d never seen this smoke cease.
In a way, it felt like a factory that compressed and processed corpses.
It wasn’t wrong.
Though we call it a victory, many people died.
Many good people are gone.
‘Why did I learn medicine just to witness this?’
After the curtain falls on the stage, there’s nothing more exhausting than cleaning up the scene.
I looked up at the sky.
“I’d like to smoke a cigarette.”
“Hmm… You’ll have to refrain from now on.”
Jin Cheon-hee nodded.
Hadn’t he mentioned there was some dependency involved?
Since this wasn’t a matter of life and death, there was no need to indulge unnecessarily.
‘Besides, the Medical Guild prohibits smoking.’
Still, there were patients who couldn’t resist and smoked in secret.
They were individuals of considerable standing in various families, reaching the rank of Elder, and in a Confucian society, it wasn’t easy to stop them.
Suddenly, Jin Cheon-hee thought the smoke from the cremation grounds resembled the smoke from the pipe Yeo Ha-ryun had given him.
His water-blue eyes gazed across the wilderness for a long while.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Well… I’m thinking we should have the Suksin Tribe preserve their belongings the same way, cremate them, and then send everything to the appropriate local government office to handle it themselves.”
“So you want to handle it hygienically, but you don’t want to take responsibility for it.”
“Roughly brush it aside and we leave.”
Jegalling chuckled softly.
Why was that? This disciple was truly seasoned in such matters.
These were things that couldn’t be taught through education.
They came purely from experience and judgment.
Jin Cheon-hee had been good at such things from the beginning.
After a moment, he made a second consideration and spoke.
“The King said he would actively cooperate in allowing us to establish a Baekrin Uiseon branch along the trade routes as compensation, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
Light rain fell across the wilderness.
Land too ambiguous for farming.
Jin Cheon-hee spoke.
“Sichuan is famous for its mulberry trees. Silkworms that feed on those mulberries produce high-quality silk. It’s no wonder Shu is called the land of silk. That’s precisely why the Shu Kingdom is renowned for it.”
“That’s why the Sichuan Tang Family has so much wealth.”
Jin Cheon-hee nodded.
“This is the fastest route to the Western Continent, isn’t it? Going straight from here leads to a port heading to the Western Regions, and traveling through that port is safer than going through other ports.”
Between the Eastern and Western Continents lay a massive maelstrom.
Crossing it through conventional navigation was said to be extremely difficult.
However, there was one port heading northwest, and passing through it allowed for relatively safe trade with the Western Continent.
“The Sichuan Tang Family is at the southern end. Since this place, which will become a Baekrin Uiseon branch, is at the midpoint of the trade route, selling Shu silk should make for a thriving business.”
“It would become quite a venture.”
“Yes. Moreover, we wouldn’t just be dealing with the Western Continent but could also trade with neighboring kingdoms nearby. The issue is whether the Sichuan Tang Family Head will cooperate in the silk trade…”
“The medical exchange last time was successful, and the Family Head has made considerable profits through us, so he’ll likely be pleased rather than refuse. However… since we need to take our cut in the middle, the Western merchants will feel overcharged.”
“That’s fine. We’ll actually be overcharging them. Sichuan silk is worth that much.”
Jin Cheon-hee spoke in a humming tone.
“And this is my own greed, but I think it would be nice to create potato fields here.”
“You mean the seedlings we recently improved.”
That was right.
What had surprised Jin Cheon-hee in this world was the incredible variety of potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, and wheat.
Potatoes came in different colors and different sizes.
They weren’t the uniform shape I’d always taken for granted.
‘I wasn’t ignorant of the fact that as agriculture industrialized and crop varieties were improved, those other potato types gradually disappeared.’
Being obsessed with culinary arts as I was, I sought the finest potatoes for chips, the finest for buttered baked potatoes.
For stews, for steaming, for braised dishes.
I was testing each variety one by one.
I hadn’t made any groundbreaking development like Dr. Woo Jang-chun, just researching as a hobby which varieties grew well even with minimal care, and which tasted the best.
And Jegalling approved of his disciple’s eccentric pursuit, assigning personnel to assist.
After all, having him tinker with potatoes was far safer than having him meddle in blood techniques or treat patients while his mind wandered elsewhere.
“Which potato will you grow?”
“Jerusalem artichokes. They can be used medicinally too, so they’ll be useful in many ways. I’ll need to experiment first to see if the soil is suitable.”
I once watched a documentary about potato cultivation in Mongolia.
If the soil composition here was similar to that region, I thought it could work out well.
On Earth, potatoes came from the American continent.
I wasn’t sure how they started here, but they were gradually spreading from the South Sea downward past the Yangtze River, expanding their territory.
Of course, there were many farms growing potatoes.
But whether they held the same position as in the modern Earth—well, that was another matter.
The Hua Empire’s land was so fertile and water management so developed that no major famines had occurred since the Previous Emperor’s reign.
‘Eventually it will become necessary though….’
Famine-relief crops only showed their value when drought came.
‘Still, localized droughts happen regularly, so it should prove quite useful.’
I’d have to subtly offer counsel when I met Eun Wang-ya later.
I was bringing in potatoes by variety and cultivating them in large quantities.
“Nomads lack vegetables. If potatoes could be cultivated, they could obtain nutrients year-round.”
“So you’re planning to trade.”
“Moreover, if they wanted to cultivate potatoes, they’d have to settle somewhere. That’s simply how agriculture works.”
An unusual approach.

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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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