Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 505

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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 505
‘Sigh… People with strong individualistic tendencies cannot survive in this era.’
With little time alone and no concept of privacy, this fundamentally agricultural society means even a port city like this bands together with the mentality of “we’re all neighbors!” There’s no escaping it.
For those extroverted types who constantly crave human connection, this might be a golden age.
My Master is an outsider in this era, but as a doctor, he must experience stress as naturally as breathing.
The Baekrin Medical Guild’s main headquarters being located high in the mountains might be partly for the hot springs, but I suspect it’s also for this reason.
It’s a way of saying: no one but patients and staff should come.
Sama-hye, on the other hand, is a true extrovert.
“Master, the new workers have arrived!”
Her skin grows more vibrant with each passing day.
Of course, the work is demanding and exhausting, but she seems to be the type who gains energy from interacting with people.
‘I, on the other hand… am struggling.’
If I’m being honest, my natural disposition leans toward being an outsider, but through social obligations, I’ve been forcibly remodeled into an extrovert.
When an outsider tries to mimic an extrovert, the efficiency doesn’t match—no matter how easy the work is, after 7 PM a strange exhaustion and hollowness wash over me, along with the desire to not move a single finger.
Conversely, even difficult work feels somewhat better when I do it alone.
And yet, here I am, spending time until 10 PM at company dinners and such?
It’s like that sensation an endurance athlete experiences during extreme conditions—something does surge up.
It’s like a kind of nirvana that emerges when a person has completely wrung out their ultimate reserves of energy.
Usually, when I overextend like this, I make verbal mistakes.
This is when accidents happen.
And when I get home, I squeeze out that last drop of non-existent energy with trembling hands, undress, bury my face in the pillow, and spend about ten minutes in a daze.
It’s different from depression.
It’s just brutally exhausting, with no energy left.
Now, with papers and conferences and various other obligations, when I have to push through the night again, I chew on energy bars, hug my succulent plants one by one.
-Recharge 30% or more energy within one hour.
To complete this quest, I turn on my favorite music and brew a cup of coffee.
I pet the head of an alpaca plush I received as a gift long ago.
I polish some robot figures that kids these days don’t even know about, desperately trying to recharge.
Do this sort of thing until you’re fifty, and this is the kind of person you become.
Now look at Sama-hye.
“Master, regarding the new master craftsmen coming in, I think I can recommend about two people. I looked into them and they seem trustworthy!”
Sama-hye absorbs energy from neighborhood gossip as if it were sustenance, even now.
I envy her.
And her intelligence network in Hangzhou is quite accurate—more detailed than information from Gaebang and Hao-mun.
It’s remarkable.
And now I understand why my Master placed the Baekrin Medical Guild’s main headquarters in the mountains.
“Especially Seok Kyeong—his son broke a neighbor’s ox’s leg, so he needs money.”
“An ox’s leg?”
“Yes. He was dating Chunwol and they broke up. He got drunk, was crying, and fell right in front of the ox.”
Ah… So now everyone in that neighborhood shares this story?
“And your daughter has been spotted drawing water with a young man from the neighborhood recently. Seven or eight times? At that rate, it seems like they’ve developed feelings for each other. They might even hold a wedding ceremony. If that happens, they’ll need more money, so she’ll work harder.”
…So they can even keep track of numbers like that.
During my days confined to the Baekrin Medical Guild headquarters, I occasionally traveled around like a wandering physician, treating patients as I went.
This was the first time I had felt such a genuine sense of community.
Has my country been reduced to nothing but rural villages by now?
Is this considered normal here?
While Sama Hyeon was being recharged with energy, I—Jin Cheon-hee—felt my own energy draining away as I wrote the name Seok-gyeong with trembling hands.
After hearing the news about Hangzhou from Sama Hyeon, I returned to the workshop.
Inside the sweltering heat, Sama Hyeon was grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, hyeong! The workshop is running smoothly!”
“That’s fortunate.”
“The residents of Hangzhou are all enthusiastic about making big money, jobs have increased, and~ isn’t this a win-win situation for everyone~”
Sama Hyeon looked genuinely happy.
Was this fellow an extrovert or an introvert?
From what I’d observed, he played well alone and got along well with others too.
I’d rarely seen him seem exhausted.
“Come here and take a look at the ledgers for me. Hyeong~”
Sama Hyeon called me into the workshop’s office.
Inside, various abacuses were placed about, and order forms were stacked like mountains.
“To get to the point, it looks like we’ve brought in over one hundred thousand gold taels in just two months of operation~”
My eyes widened involuntarily at those words.
We had earned far more than expected.
Sama Hyeon seemed fresher than usual.
No matter what, this fellow seemed to gain energy simply from earning large sums of money. It was a good thing.
“More than you expected?”
“The premium full-length mirrors can fetch over two hundred times their production cost.”
“Ah, I see.”
Then I remembered.
The “premium” mirrors spoken of here were full-length mirrors decorated with the finest craftsmanship by master artisans.
Each one was practically a work of art. The mirror presented to the Emperor and the one sent to Prince Ju-wang could both be classified as premium pieces.
The psychology of the wealthy seemed to be that simply knowing the workshop employed the artisan who crafted the mirror presented to the Emperor was enough to stimulate their desire to consume greatly.
“We’re being selective about who we accept orders from, and reservations are backed up for at least a year. We don’t even accept reservations without an advance payment~”
Sama Hyeon repeated the word “advance payment” several times before saying this.
“What a wonderful word, hyeong. People throw large sums of money at us without even receiving the goods. There really are this many wealthy people in the Central Plains~”
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, as they say…
What more is there to say?
The wealth accumulated by the scholar-officials and Gangho families over dozens of generations wouldn’t simply disappear.
Even if emperors were overthrown, nations changed, wars swept through, or the Demonic Cult rose to power, they were always there.
“Are the premium pieces three thousand gold taels each?”
“Yes. Just ten pieces and that’s thirty thousand taels~ if we receive dozens, it easily exceeds one hundred thousand taels.”
Here, there are simply two types of products: premium and standard grade.
The problem is that the standard grade actually has lower production volume than the premium grade.
‘This is a secret, but still.’
Because of this, standard grade mirrors are being allocated to customers who purchase multiple premium or ultra-premium pieces.
‘This fellow Sama Hyeon is running a luxury watch scalping operation here.’
I never taught him, yet the speed at which his mind works is extraordinary.
“The difference between ultra-premium and premium is just the material difference and the difficulty of craftsmanship, right?”
“Right. The mirror quality is the same. But ultra-premium pieces incorporate jade, amethyst, ivory, gold—things like that.”
“Hand mirrors and face mirrors. We’re not taking reservations for these.”
“Right. We’re selling them as fast as we make them, and we’re prioritizing allocation to our major customers who regularly purchase ultra-premium pieces.”
‘Hyeon-a… if you ever made it to Earth, you’d be an incredible businesswoman.’
Sama Hyeon continued speaking.
“So I was hoping you could take a look at this, hyeong.”
“Hmm?”
What Sama Hyeon produced was a thin booklet.
Unlike an ordinary book, every single page contained illustrations, depicting various mirrors.
It was a woodblock-printed booklet.
The colors—red, yellow, and blue—were applied using separate woodblocks with ink, layered and printed in succession.
“Wow… that’s luxurious.”
“Right? I’m thinking of sending this out twice—once in summer and once in winter.”
“You’re introducing new products?”
“Something like that… Honestly, if I sell mirrors now and people use them for ten, twenty years, I won’t make any money, right hyeong?”
“…Y-yeah, that’s true.”
I suddenly recalled the vacuum cleaner from Earth that I’d been using together for twenty years.
When my senior visited home, he cursed at me, saying it must have a goblin dwelling in it, and begged me to replace it.
“So the idea is to continuously introduce new mirror designs through illustrations. For example, if last year we created a vibrant atmosphere with orchids, this year we’d release mirrors with a solemn pine aesthetic.”
“Then the orchids would… feel… like they’re going out of style, wouldn’t they?”
“Exactly. So people will want the pine mirrors. Of course, in the current situation, it would mean pre-ordering next year’s products now. But for now… that’s the plan.”
“…Ah, I see.”
No matter how I look at it, this fellow was born into the wrong world.
After studying Sama Hyeon’s sample booklet for quite some time, I had to admit it was quite captivating.
“Is there anything you’d want to reinforce here?”
“Hmm…”
If possible, keeping people engaged with this booklet for a long time would be good for sales.
“What if there were a crossword puzzle… c… no, a crossword puzzle game?”
As I said this, I roughly sketched and explained how crossword puzzles work.
“The characters used should be simple ones. Preferably from the Thousand Character Classic if possible.”
“Like riddles. People will feel satisfied when they complete it.”
“Right. And it would be nice to have a maze game too.”
I sketched out the basic shape of a maze.
“Both black and white will be sufficient, so it won’t cost that much.”
“If we do this, won’t people hold onto it for a long time?”
“That’s right. The answer is… I think it would be good to put it in the next chapter.”
Revealing the answer half a year later? In modern times, people would refresh and forget everything in three seconds, but this isn’t the digital age, and there aren’t many other entertainments available.
Even after playing with green jade and red jade over a hundred times without growing tired of them, people of this era wander about seeking new challengers.
“It would be nice to have a skilled craftsman.”
“Yes. And the explanatory text in the booklet should be written as simply as possible.”
“Don’t the literati prefer difficult things more?”
“That’s true, but we’re sending this to Kang Ho-in as well, right? Instead, I think it would be good to write in some elegant verses here and there.”
The purpose isn’t knowledge transmission like the Analects or the Book of Documents.
It simply needs to be entertaining.
People naturally desire things that appear splendid and amusing.
Sama Hyeon wrote down every single opinion I expressed without missing a word, then said this.
“I’ll be making some money.”
“Thanks to you, I’ve earned some too. The Gongson Trading Company is also bringing in quite a bit of profit.”
“The Gongson Trading Company does well since they sell outside the capital too.”
Back then, Sama Hyeon ultimately decided that it couldn’t be completely free, and we agreed to leave some profit for everyone.
Of course, given the circumstances, I told them to send it slowly if things were difficult, but now even that statement has become meaningless because the amounts have grown too large.
It was a good thing.
Sama Hyeon spoke.
“By the way, there are more spies.”
“Are they trying to steal information?”
“At first I wondered if it was simply that, but it seemed like they were checking the workers’ schedules.”
At those words, I responded with a cold expression.
“…Is an attack coming?”
Sama Hyeon let out a quiet laugh.
“What was bound to come is coming.”
Crack—
My younger sister cracked his knuckles.
Whenever the thought of bloodshed crossed his mind, he always laughed as if it were a joke.

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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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