Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 472

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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 472
The Baekrin Uiseon doctors who had come with him furrowed their brows at the sight.
“As expected, poor people are ignorant because….”
“No, why would the Patriarch need to do this sort of thing in a place like this?”
“They don’t even appreciate the Patriarch’s kindness.”
At that moment, I tapped one of the Medical Assistants on the back.
“Come now, let’s regain our senses. Whether a person has money or not, they’re all fundamentally the same. Even beasts become desperate when hungry—how could humans be any different? Today I care for these people, but tomorrow, who knows what might become of me.”
The faces of the Medical Assistants flushed at my words.
‘The idea that poor people are virtuous is a fantasy. People are just people.’
Even without media packaging it, the poor scholars, poor farmers, and poor woodcutters in traditional folktales were always good-hearted, weren’t they?
If the poor were always happy with their families and full of affection, there would be no divorced families ruined by business in this world.
‘Poverty is difficult. And when things are difficult, temptations abound.’
Of course, there are those who maintain their integrity despite hardship.
Those people are truly remarkable.
I treated the patients without particular thought, observing the true faces of those in the relief shelter.
‘In my past life, there were many children who tried to steal relief supplies even after receiving treatment.’
When desperation sets in, what couldn’t a person do?
‘Yet no one here has tried to extort money by finding fault after I treated them.’
That must be because this is Gangho, where the disparity in power between individuals is stark and obvious.
But on Earth, things would be different.
Humans are multifaceted.
Man Seon watched me work mechanically and quietly, then asked a question.
“Patriarch, doesn’t it frustrate you when you gain nothing in return for what you’re doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. You do good deeds, but some people take them for granted, don’t they?”
“Ah, but there are those who thank me too. Just now, when I hit that rascal’s back, his mother thanked me.”
“She could have gotten angry instead, asking why I hit her child.”
“Well… that could happen too. But this is Gangho, after all.”
“Don’t you become disillusioned with humanity?”
“I do. Sigh.”
“Then why do you do this?”
“Hmm. Now that I think about it, you’ve only seen a fragmentary side of me when I help the poor.”
“Yes, well.”
“You’ve only seen the side that people praise as the White-Robed Divine Dragon and call a renowned physician, so you probably couldn’t imagine this.”
I scratched my cheek and spoke like this.
“If you ask why I do this… well….”
After pondering for a while and choosing my words carefully, I came to a conclusion and spoke.
“I do it because of my younger siblings. They lived exactly like this when they were young.”
“I see.”
“But they weren’t bad children, were they? And when opportunity was given to them, they helped many people, rose to greater heights. They became capable of doing things I cannot do.”
“There are far more people who aren’t.”
“Well, that’s true. But since I’ve already saved three, I have every reason to continue.”
I, Jin Cheon-hee, said this and laughed awkwardly.
Man Seon stared at me for a long moment before speaking.
“Now I understand why everyone tries to take care of you first, Master.”
“Oh~ Have you fallen for me?”
“Let’s say I’ve been moved by your character.”
* * *
The mornings at this relief station were always the same.
They began with boiling water and ended with boiling water.
Boiling and heating, then boiling and heating again.
Everyone in the slums knew that So Ui-seon, the greatest physician of Gangho, began each day with this task.
As he worked, the neighborhood children, middle-aged women, and grandfathers would come to draw water alongside him.
“So Ui-seon, you look healthy as always today.”
“Indeed. And you look well too, auntie.”
The people of Hangzhou’s slums knew that screams had echoed from the relief station until dawn the previous night.
The anguished cries of a patient’s suffering had a power that reached far and deep, piercing through one’s heart.
Yet the handsome young man before them showed no sign of exhaustion, simply attending to his work.
Here, I was not the Veiled Madman or the Baekui Gwangryong—I was So Ui-seon.
And people who wished to help So Ui-seon always remained by my side.
“That medicine you prescribed was wonderful. Since the herbs are easy to find, it saved us.”
“Don’t overexert yourself. Rest at the first sign of pain—that’s better than spending money on medicine. If it becomes serious, you won’t be able to earn.”
“That would be nice. But if I rest, what happens to my family?”
“If you could eat something nutritious, that would help….”
“That’s difficult too.”
“If you could sleep in a warm place and prevent the cold from seeping into your bones….”
“If that were possible, I wouldn’t live here.”
In the end, So Ui-seon nodded.
“…You’re right.”
Some say the poor are poor because they’re lazy, but from what I’ve witnessed firsthand, they wake earlier than anyone else.
They rise before the gentry of Hangzhou to clean waste, draw water, and gather flowers.
That’s the only way to earn a day’s living.
“Wait, So Ui-seon went there?”
At the same time, Cheonwoo found his elder brother.
Tracking my brother’s movements wasn’t difficult.
All one had to do was stand still and watch how people moved.
Strangely, my brother was like a typhoon, and people moved accordingly.
Especially the news that a divine physician had appeared in Hangzhou’s slums to save the poor spread faster than words could carry.
As I descended from Wudang to Hangzhou, I encountered Sama Hyeon.
Yeo Ha-ryun and Sama Hyeon don’t get along, but I can manage to see them both well enough.
Especially with Sama Hyeon, after we crossed through life and death together during the war, we’ve become close enough to stop by when passing through.
-Ah, damn it… It’s my hometown, but I can’t go. I can’t go back!
The Golden King had given Sama Hyeon a test.
I couldn’t know what that task was, but if he passed that trial, Sama Hyeon would be one step closer to his goal.
The Golden King wasn’t the type to do things without reason.
Cheonwoo became the messenger in Sama Hyeon’s place and received various items.
A young child rushed past Cheonwoo toward me.
Then he clasped his hands together in prayer. I quickly told the child to unfold his hands and asked if there was anyone who was ill.
So Ui-seon was becoming the religion of the slums.
It wasn’t easy to push through all these people to reach my brother.
Rather, I saw a middle-aged woman blocking the way after seeing Cheonwoo’s expression.
Did he look that fierce?
Cheonwoo habitually reached for his eye patch before finally speaking.
“Brother.”
At that moment, I lifted my face.
Pale white, with more color in my complexion than when we parted.
“Oh, Cheonwoo. Good timing. Come here and draw some water for me.”
Instead of saying I was glad to see him, he puts me to work first. This brother of mine.
Still, Cheonwoo was glad to see such a brother.
* * *
“How did you end up coming all the way here?”
Carrying buckets of water, Cheonwoo walked beside me.
As we moved the water jars together, the slum dwellers finally relaxed their guard a little.
Only a little, not much at all.
A child who made eye contact with Cheonwoo burst into tears.
Cheonwoo sighed inwardly.
“Well… I was passing through to have a martial match with the Bota Clan, and my youngest brother asked me to stop by for something. Brother.”
“Hm? You’re having a martial match with the Bota Clan?!”
This was quite unexpected.
Coming all this way for a martial match—it seemed Gwon Je was truly working him like a weed.
Cheonwoo spoke.
“In the Wudang Sect, if a disciple wishes, he can travel through the orthodox sects, including the Nine Great Sects and One Unorthodox Sect, to have martial matches and hone his blade.”
“But why the Nine Great Sects? Won’t you do matches with the Eight Great Families and Three Clans?”
“The Eight Great Families and Three Clans don’t often accept martial matches. Honestly, the Sichuan Tang Family is the strange one.”
“Dang-a enjoys it to that extent.”
True, even though the Nine Great Sects and One Unorthodox Sect and the Eight Great Families and Three Clans are both orthodox sects, their positions differ.
Being gathered by blood ties means something like that.
The two of us arrived in front of the relief tent.
There, several large cauldrons were boiling water.
“Put the bucket to the side.”
“Wow… Water really does seem endless, doesn’t it, Elder Brother?”
“We have to boil everything from the needle cases to the medical cloths. Even so, today’s amount is relatively light. Cheonwoo.”
I patted his shoulder and laughed.
“All of this…?”
“The Medical Guild and this place are quite different, aren’t they?”
I stretched after saying so.
The clothes I wore were not the usual fine silk garments, but a thin green muslin cloth.
Before opening the relief clinic, I washed my hands and feet, then quickly changed out of my soiled clothes.
My muscular torso bore countless scars and stitching marks.
They were, in fact, the marks of So Ui-seon’s back.
“If you’re going to help, change into comfortable clothes. Don’t ruin expensive martial robes.”
With that, this man stretched his muscular long legs and changed into a peculiar form of footwear.
“Crocs are truly the best. I even tried making something similar.”
He sucked on medicinal paste and handed Cheonwoo an identical one.
“Eat this. You need it to survive.”
So Ui-seon—he was also Ilgwang.
* * *
My Elder Brother, dressed in thin green muslin, treated the flood of patients one by one with ghostly speed and skill.
By Cheonwoo’s estimation, the number of people who came seemed to be around two hundred.
For those who could be treated immediately, he treated them, and for those who couldn’t, he wrote prescriptions for affordable medicinal materials.
My Elder Brother’s specialty was bone-setting, but the technique he used most frequently was acupuncture.
“Bone-setting is expensive. Besides, the most common ailments here are actually malnutrition and overwork-related diseases. Warriors don’t have business in slums.”
Martial prowess becomes wealth.
Many with mouths to feed, like Sama Hyeon in his youth… And even when they earn money, unless it’s a special case where they must spend it on patients, most leave this slum.
Martial prowess is an opportunity for the poor to rise in status.
As a result, most of those remaining in this slum are commoners ignorant of martial arts, and when they’re beaten by thugs, they usually arrive dead.
There’s no opportunity to use bone-setting.
“Cough.”
I coughed.
A little blood mixed with the cough.
“Ah… My inner energy is depleted again.”
Saving lives consumes more inner energy than taking them.
Even my Elder Brother, renowned throughout the realm, has completely exhausted his inner energy.
“Elder Brother… If you use that much, won’t you enter demonic cultivation…?”
“That only happens to those with shallow inner energy cultivation. The Jegallga’s Five Elements Divine Art doesn’t cause demonic cultivation just from depleting all inner energy. Ah… Does the Wudang School also become dangerous when pushing inner energy to the limit? If the Five Elements are depleted equally like in the Five Elements Divine Art, and the Yin and Yang are similarly depleted, it should be fine, shouldn’t it…?”
“Elder Brother. Stop contemplating the Taiji. Can you move?”
“If I sit like this for about an hour, it’ll come back.”
Fortunately, what seemed like an endless stream had just ended.
From what Cheonwoo could see, my Elder Brother had factored that into his inner energy expenditure.
We closed the tent briefly, and the doctors busily boiled the needle cases and cloths again.

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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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