Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 499

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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 499
For several days, I had been occupied with various cleanup tasks.
My Master showed the materials I had compiled on smallpox prevention to the Imperial Inspector, and said I would need to accompany him to the palace.
“I shall visit the palace and return, so you go back to the Medical Guild.”
“The Imperial Palace?”
My Master answered calmly to my question.
“Preventing smallpox means eliminating one of the world’s greatest afflictions. It is not called the Heavenly Curse for nothing. And you have accomplished this. Surely the palace will not overlook such a matter.”
“Hmm, the Inspector alone seems insufficient.”
“Haha, since I’m going anyway, I thought I’d lay down a few strategic foundations for what lies ahead.”
My Master has already constructed such a massive foundation for me, yet he remains preoccupied with protecting his disciple.
Still, seeing his worried disciple, my Master sighed.
“There is no one else who worries for me as much as you do. But before that, I sent Heuk to organize the gang, and here you are fighting smallpox while worrying about others—I’m curious if you’re even in a position to do so.”
“Ugh, Master.”
He had struck a nerve. I spoke up.
“You’ll be going with Chief Manager Yoo, won’t you?”
“Why do you trust Yoo Ho so much?”
“Yes. Because it’s winter. If I cannot accompany you, I hope Chief Manager Yoo will at least go with you.”
Behind Jegalling, Yoo Ho looked at me with a bitter expression.
“….”
This graduate student who couldn’t leave work wanted to beat me senseless.
I spoke with eyes of crystalline madness.
“I love you, Yoo Ho.”
When a professor expressed affection for a graduate student, it typically accompanied something terrible.
“…Please close that mouth of yours.”
“I’m sincere. Yoo Ho, please look after my Master.”
“Damn it.”
Even as Yoo Ho cursed, he answered that regardless of my request, he would protect the Master himself.
It was something to be grateful for.
Thus my Master departed for the palace with the Inspector.
Beyond the escort sent from the palace, some of Baekrin’s forces also moved with them.
With the two of them gone, Hangzhou’s Fountain seemed somehow empty.
‘I need to move as well now.’
I had no intention of summoning Sama-hye immediately.
I would go to the main sect, handle various matters, and then summon Sama-hye to begin the formal training process.
As I was packing my belongings, Sama Hyeon approached me.
“Hyeong. Are you busy?”
“Hmm, not right now. All the work in Hangzhou is finished.”
“Oh~ That’s good then. So, could you help me out~?”
It was extremely rare for Hyeon to ask for help first.
I asked quite seriously.
“What’s going on?”
“My Master is conducting a test.”
“A test from the Golden King?”
Sama Hyeon nods at my words.
As he moves, his ornate earrings sway with a brilliant chime.
I found myself thinking that perhaps this appearance of someone who loves luxury might also be a highly calculated strategy.
In the original Jicheon Cheonma, Sama Hyeon didn’t dress like this.
Typically, he lived by stealing the lives of others.
The clothes the face’s original owner preferred to wear, the ornaments she enjoyed, even her eating preferences—all of it.
There, he delighted in wearing the lives of others like a second skin, destroying those around him as easily as tearing chicken breast.
What is this current Sama Hyeon?
“Hyeong, what are you thinking about?”
“Just thinking your earrings are quite flashy.”
“Want me to give you a pair?”
“No thanks. They’d get in the way.”
At my words, Sama Hyeon chuckles playfully.
Then he got to the main point.
“I’m not sure what wind blew in, but Master has been saying she wants to firmly establish a successor. So she’s conducting a test.”
The Golden King personally selecting a successor? This wasn’t in the original story.
Sama Hyeon continued.
“Of course, unlike the Demonic Sect, we don’t need to kill each other. Money is what matters most to us. Well… but ultimately, it could come to that, but regardless, that’s not really the point.”
“Then what is?”
“Earning money. By any means necessary.”
Ah, so that’s why there’s no need to kill each other, yet it could ultimately come to that.
If I can’t earn enough, killing those who earn better than me and seizing their wealth is also acceptable.
‘Wow, that’s insane.’
A different kind of ruthlessness than the Cheonma’s.
The Golden King is one who rules before money.
She couldn’t possibly not know that the finest material for gold is human blood.
So that’s why she said, ‘Don’t choose your means and methods.’
“That’s so like the Golden King.”
“Right~?”
The Golden King.
In the original, she was the one who demonstrated her skill in profiting from the middle when Sama Hyeon and Yeo Ha-ryun clashed.
Her fate was never properly revealed in the original.
From a reader’s perspective… she probably survived.
But back then, she didn’t select a successor.
The Geum Blood House remained hers, and she showed no particular expectations regarding succession.
Even what she was accumulating all that wealth for was never revealed until the end.
Where she was using that money was never disclosed either.
“So how do you make money?”
“Master gave each of us five thousand gold coins to start with. Whoever multiplies it the most and returns it to Master within a year wins the competition.”
“I see.”
“Apparently it’s a traditional event at the Geumhyeol Society? Master said he multiplied the principal by six times in this very test~”
“He turned five thousand gold coins into thirty thousand in just one year?!”
In a world without stock markets, how is that even possible…?
As I widened my eyes in shock, Sama Hyeon chuckled and revealed the answer.
“He burned down a rival’s mulberry fields and then monopolized silk production~ He could have made ten times more, but the government intervened and prevented him from profiteering further.”
Ruthless and merciless.
If the authorities hadn’t stepped in, he would have squeezed out even more.
“So what are you planning to do?”
“Hmm~ I have various ideas, but I wanted to ask if you had any good thoughts. You always come up with amazing things, hyeong.”
“Come on, I’m a doctor. How would I know about that? Unless it’s developing new medicine, but that’s not something you just snap your fingers and create. It could take a year, it could take ten years—nobody knows. This field is just fumbling in the dark.”
“But hyeong, you created Qingyu and Chiyu, and you invented the ondol heating system too?”
For some reason, an ominous premonition washed over me.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say this was an intuition only someone living life a second time could possess.
‘This feels like it’s going to be a crucial turning point in Sama Hyeon’s life.’
The premonition struck the back of my head, and only then did my logical circuits activate in response.
1. This guy doesn’t seem like he’d come here just because he doesn’t know how to make money.
2. The Golden King said he doesn’t need to choose his methods.
3. There’s the method of flaying faces, and in the original work, Sama Hyeon was good at that.
4. The Golden King once burned mulberry fields and collapsed the market economy.
5. However, if either option 3 or 4 is implemented, hyeong and Hye-a would absolutely hate it.
…I see. Logical.
He came all the way here as a last resort.
If I don’t provide ideas now, he might end up spending the year like the original Jicheon Cheonma, plundering and toying with people’s faces and lives, or he could collapse the market economy and send commoners to their graves.
‘Both are part of the original history. This is serious!’
Even with some level of prevention, history seems to revert to its original course if I’m careless.
‘To resolve this peacefully, I need to squeeze out an idea…’
Sama Hyeon spoke.
“By the way, hyeong, I’m telling you in advance—I won’t be borrowing thirty thousand gold coins from you. That would be pointless.”
…Hmm. So the money route is blocked. Is the current generation’s version outdated now?
“I think… I’ll need some time.”
“That’s fine~ hyeong. We have plenty of time~ Just thinking about it together means so much to me~ Let’s play together in my hometown for a bit and keep pondering~”
“Alright. Let’s think it through together. I’ll need to delay my return then.”
I wrote a letter to the main hall.
It was a message saying I’d be returning a bit late due to some matters.
For some reason, I had a feeling the children at the lab would be throwing a celebration.
* * *
Making money, they say.
[There’s already someone who’s achieved six times the amount.]
[How?]
[That person’s parents liquidated their entire merchant house into cash.]
[…Wow… that’s dangerous.]
[They bet everything. The position of Golden King is worth that much.]
The disciples of the Golden King lived in quite diverse circumstances.
[There’s even one from the dark path faction. That one’s using all that money to buy up wandering swordsmen.]
[Hmm…. His intentions are quite clear.]
[If he’s going to use a blade anyway, there’s no need to go that far. It’s foolish.]
Even amid the chilling voice transmission, Sama Hyeon smiled gently on the surface and handed Sama-hye an ornament.
“How about this?”
“Do you still think I’m a child, oppa?”
“Hmm. Then what’s trending these days.”
Sama Hyeon was not one to be ignorant of current trends. What he was curious about was what Hye-a liked.
Sama-hye picked up a different ornament from the stall.
Whether it could truly be called an ornament was questionable, but it was.
“A shuriken… hairpin.”
“Yeah. This has been trending lately. It’s good for self-defense too.”
The shuriken had “Sichuan Dang Sect Hyeolpyeon-wang” written in red letters.
Wow, I didn’t know about this either.
In this era, it seems unlikely they’d sell it with licensing, so Dang-a probably has no idea her name is being sold this far away in Hangzhou.
Looking around, I saw various throwing weapons and ornaments similar in shape to the mask Dang-a wore, lined up in a row.
Sama Hyeon asked.
“Do you know how to use a shuriken?”
“What do you take me for, oppa? I learned the basics at Baekrin Pavilion.”
Jin Cheon-hee spoke.
“In Gangho, even a doctor must look after their own body. Of course I taught her.”
Sama Hyeon gave a bitter smile.
“That’s fortunate.”
[Hye-a is stronger than you think. Much stronger.]
[Still, I don’t want her to know about this Golden King trial. Who knows what might happen~ Everyone’s eyes are burning with ambition.]
That’s true enough.
No matter how well she can protect herself, she’s a doctor, not a martial artist of Gangho.
After passing the trial would be one thing, but exposing her to danger at this stage would be nothing short of foolish.
‘He really does dote on his younger sister.’
Still, there was one fortunate thing.
Hangzhou was Sama Hyeon’s hometown and now the territory of Baekrin Medical Guild.
[Still, isn’t the female disguise a bit much?]
[Gaga~ Hye-a says she’s happy to have an older sister too~]
As expected.
Sama-hye held up Dang-a’s shuriken hairpin and showed it to Hyeon, comparing how it looked on him.
“Wow~ Brother, it suits you so well.”
“Does it? Should I get one too? Give me two identical ones! No, wait—three!”
‘They want me to wear one as well?’

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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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