Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 535

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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 535
For a while, I remained at Baekrin Uiseon, assisting my Master with his work.
‘It seems like Master is scheming something… something I don’t know about, isn’t it?’
Though I sensed this, I didn’t ask him directly about it.
After all, there were things my Master wouldn’t want to show his disciple.
‘Just as there are things I don’t want him to see of me.’
Wang Gak-yeon had once described our relationship as peculiar, and I couldn’t say she was wrong.
So I completed a single piece of candy and presented it to my Master.
He popped it into his mouth at once and chewed it down with a crunch.
“How does it taste?”
“Not bad. However, I find taffy more to my liking. Candy is pretty to look at, but it’s not something I’d seek out to eat.”
“I see.”
Next time, I should try making taffy.
I made a mental note of it.
Meanwhile, I was also in the process of making rock candy.
It was to provide Yeo Ha-ryun with various sensations since he couldn’t taste.
‘I’d like to make soda too, but how would one make soda in Gangho?’
Candy that crackles and pops in the mouth.
On Earth, soda was everywhere if you just went to a supermarket, but in this world, I had no idea how to make it.
‘I remember seeing a documentary about a lake made of sodium bicarbonate…’
Ah, that’s right. It could be obtained from lakes or groundwater, couldn’t it?
If I used this, Yeo Ha-ryun would experience interesting sensations in his mouth.
Wouldn’t that be better than not eating anything?
The spicy candy from last time had gotten quite a good reaction.
For now, I was concentrating various flavors into rock candy.
Since he said every meal tastes like sawdust, if he ate something like this occasionally, it would add some luster to his life.
I spun the enormous wheel for making rock candy round and round as I thought.
‘Anyone watching would think I’m making elixir.’
Making rock candy itself was possible with the technology of this era.
You coat sugar with syrup and spin this massive wheel regularly and methodically to create it.
What mattered was time and perseverance.
It could take a week, but I infused some of my inner energy into it.
Doing so shortened the time (though it still took a while), and watching Hwang-gu and Noeji, I realized that food infused with inner energy tasted different.
Of course, it didn’t have the efficacy of elixir, but still, if it provided any stimulation to my younger brother who couldn’t taste, that was good enough.
Whoooosh—!
A red rock candy is formed.
I mixed concentrated málà spice with my inner energy into the syrup.
‘Honestly, it’s not good for the stomach.’
With something this spicy, how could it not irritate the digestive system?
However, what Yeo Ha-ryun needed wasn’t healthy food or elixir.
Something to hold onto as a human being.
Even I, as his older brother, couldn’t provide a definitive answer to what that something was, but it was certain that a life devoid of taste was wearing away at Yeo Ha-ryun’s humanity.
‘If a person only eats sawdust, even a sane man will go mad.’
Occasionally eating flour-based foods and sipping warm broths—that’s what keeps the mind healthy.
Kill people every day and eat sawdust, and even a Buddha would lose his mind.
So during my rest, I filled four boxes with star-shaped candies.
Not just spicy flavors, but I wondered if sour or astringent tastes might work too, so I made various kinds.
One more box of experimental batches.
A total of five boxes of star candies.
‘Enjoy them well.’
I packaged them carefully and sent them through Pyo Guk to Yeo Ha-ryun’s cover identity.
Packaged as though it were some tremendous secret, only to open it and find nothing but oddly-shaped candies—how ridiculous that must be.
Still, as his older brother, I hoped my younger brother would at least smile once.
‘Well then, should I send some to Sama Hyeon and Cheonwoo as well?’
Cheonwoo is a swordsman who mainly eats vegetables, but… sugar comes from sugarcane, so isn’t it vegetarian?
With such absurd thoughts, I made additional batches of regular-flavored star candies.
And what I made the most of was for my Master.
“Yoo Ho. This is my heart!”
“…Have you lost your mind?”
“Eat this and let’s make sodium bicarbonate together.”
“…You’re not even trying to hide the strange things you say anymore.”
“Then let’s make baking soda! Yoo Ho! We’ve only been making medicines for the Third Prince all this time, but don’t you think we could make something tasty and good for cleaning too? If you eat this in moderation, it even works as an antacid?”
Natural mineral natron itself has been used by humanity since ancient times.
The Egyptians used it. But when was baking soda—sodium bicarbonate as we know it—actually commercialized? The mid-1800s, I think?
That’s what I’m after.
“…”
“It’s much easier than the first, second, and third! Making it is incredibly easy!”
“…”
“Put it in dalgona and it’s amazing! Absolutely delicious!”
This mad young master doesn’t care that Yoo Ho had crushed his spirit instead of his body last time.
Even though he must have struck a deep weakness, as if nothing had happened, he clung to him again like a leech.
“Yoo Ho! Let’s look at the fourth with me… the fourth!”
Crack!
“Kyaaaagh!”
Yoo Ho, finally unable to contain his rage, struck Jin Cheon-hee, and I crossed my arms and flew through the air like in a cartoon.
Both of us were considerable masters.
We didn’t get hurt at this level, but the postures both of us took in that instant were of the highest realm.
Even the hospitalized patients passing by were mesmerized watching.
After rolling three times with a falling technique, I sprang up and rushed toward Yoo Ho.
“Yoo Ho! I’ll make it for you too! I’ll make dalgona for you free for life!”
“This blasted brat and his words! It’s obvious this will just be more trouble down the road!”
“Yoo Ho! Just try one piece of candy. This heart I’m giving you… kueeeek!”
While the professor and his graduate student who couldn’t graduate fought a life-or-death battle.
The patients—warriors all—stood slack-jawed watching.
“Ilgwang’s martial prowess has grown even higher in the meantime. Yes, that itself isn’t strange—he’s always been that way. But this Chief Manager who’s beating down someone like Ilgwang… just who is he?”
“It’s clear Ilgwang is letting him do this.”
“But would anyone willingly take a beating like that, even if someone was going easy on them?”
“This Yoo Ho shows no mercy in his strikes. Terrifying.”
Meanwhile, the medical staff of Baekrin Uiseon turned a blind eye to this tremendous display of martial power and went about their work.
“Do you know what they’re serving for lunch at the dining hall today?”
“I checked the menu—duck noodles today?”
“Oh, that’s my favorite. Lucky.”
Perfect indifference.
The warrior patients stared at the medical staff with bewildered expressions, but even those looks were familiar to them.
“Yoo Ho! Just once, just once—let me taste it! Yoo Hoooo!”
Only the Patriarch’s desperate wails echoed through the Medical Guild.
The violence continued until Yoo Ho, finally conscious of the surrounding gazes, cursed the tattered professor and dragged him away.
After being beaten thoroughly, I stubbornly kept asking Yoo Ho to eat just one piece of candy, and he reluctantly obliged with one.
Then he took the entire box.
The patients spoke.
“So the true master was the Chief Manager.”
“No, Ilgwang was definitely going easy on him!”
And so, quite unexpectedly, discussions about the martial prowess of Baekrin Uiseon’s Chief Manager began spreading throughout Gangho.
* * *
Life, after all, is like a river—even what seems slow always flows away in an instant when it’s something precious.
“Then I’ll be going, Master.”
A dog, a bird, and the weakness that symbolizes a wanderer’s pouch.
My disciple departs once more to attend to the next task.
Jegalling watched my disciple descend the stairs and thought he resembled a pear blossom drifting down a stream.
Especially with the white outer robe billowing in the wind and the green sleeves—it made the image all the more vivid.
“The young master still hasn’t realized that all of this is a scheme designed by you, my lord.”
“He could if he wanted to. He’s already suspicious that something is amiss. But if I don’t wish it, he’ll never come close. That stubborn brat.”
“Do you perhaps wish for the young master to realize it, my lord?”
“Not at all. It’s just… I can feel that the more clever he is, the more he draws a line when it comes to people he holds dear.”
Jegalling laughed bitterly.
“Isn’t it strange? A child who has never once thrown a tantrum, never even whined to his father-like master for old stories. That boy tried so hard to live only virtuously until adulthood, never once thinking of his own desires.”
Yoo Ho watched Jegalling’s complicated expression and grew irritated.
“Why aren’t you like that with me?”
“Heh heh heh, well. At least I’m curious about your true nature, yet I always seem to cover for you.”
“That’s only so you can use me more. How obvious.”
Is that truly the case?
This precocious one clearly knows that his master is scheming something.
And despite being fully aware that his master is hiding it while manipulating his disciple, he simply nods and departs.
“He’s no ordinary boy. I tried to give him everything as if he were my own son, but instead he straightens his face and says it’s fine, always laying what he has at my feet. That’s what makes this so troublesome.”
This one is far too different from ordinary children his age.
He desires neither wealth nor fame, and martial prowess is merely a means to save lives.
It never becomes the goal itself.
Despite suffering from the compulsion to perfectly accomplish everything his master commands, he never questions anything about his master.
‘How did I end up meeting such a fellow.’
Jegalling sighed.
“Do you know? The one most difficult for me to deal with is that boy.”
“You speak of him, Master?”
“Yes.”
“That one will do anything you command, won’t he? He’d even smile and march toward certain death. And he’d return in tatters.”
“Already… even when I send him to safe places, he returns in tatters, so I wonder if there’s any point to it.”
Jegalling tapped his forehead with his fan and continued.
“A boy willing to become tatters for my sake, yet he wants nothing from me. Yoo Ho, you have no idea how vexing that is.”
“How would I understand the nature of human creatures.”
“And on top of that, he’s sharp, flawless, and excessively virtuous—it’s a real headache.”
“Are you boasting about your disciple?”
At those words, Jegalling looks at Yoo Ho.
Yoo Ho, grumbling, cannot tear his gaze from the back of Jin Cheon-hee’s head as he recedes into the distance.
Those eyes can surely see far deeper than any human could.
He felt a twinge of envy, and simultaneously realized that gaining any understanding from Yoo Ho would be impossible.
Yoo Ho is Yoo Ho. That’s simply what he is.
It’s merely amusing how this one is gradually developing a strange fondness for Cheon-hee.
‘Though, to be fair, the care Cheon-hee has invested is no small matter.’

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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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