Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 562
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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 562
“Why didn’t you remove the masks from the Hwagyeong disciples?”
“Some things are better left as established facts, but others are better left ambiguous—that’s how I protect myself.”
Gongseon Yeong pondered this for a long while before reaching a conclusion.
“Hmm, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Exactly. If I were to identify each of them, they would become ‘confirmed’ enemies. But if I remain ‘ignorant’ like this, even if the families know why their dantian suddenly closed, they’ll find it difficult to speak of it to outsiders.”
“Because you don’t want it revealed that the Righteous Faction attacked its own?”
“Precisely. Once hypocrisy is exposed, it ceases to be hypocrisy—it becomes evil.”
“So you’re hoping it remains hypocrisy.”
“Yes. I only hinted at suspicion about which family it was. I deliberately avoided finding evidence to identify them specifically, and I didn’t kill them. They’ll simply have to explain to themselves why their dantian suddenly closed—as the Hwagyeong’s supreme master.”
“What if they feign madness and attack out of resentment?”
….
I closed my eyes.
After a moment, I opened them and brushed Hwang-gu’s forehead. The north wind lifted the young man’s long hair into the air.
The scent of winter.
While the south had already turned to spring, the north still clung to winter’s embrace.
Feeling the intense cold, I answered.
“Then they’ve abandoned their claim to the Righteous Faction, so I’d have no choice but to respond accordingly.”
“…Sigh…. I don’t even know what’s what anymore. I understand now that Gangho is dirtier than I thought.”
“Haha. Sister, you’ve been through so much, yet you seem surprised.”
“That’s true. I knew the Heterodox Faction and demon cultivators were dirty. But I never expected the Righteous Faction to pull the same tricks.”
“Yes. They probably hope I die at the North Sea Ice Palace. Perhaps… they even hope the Righteous-Heterodox War breaks out. Of course, the North Sea Ice Palace Master they envision and the one Master predicts are likely different people.”
“You absolutely cannot die.”
“I shouldn’t be injured either. So minor injuries are acceptable, but I cannot suffer permanent damage. My limbs must remain functional.”
“Your standards are….”
“My body recovers from almost anything except severed limbs.”
‘Is there really a person who talks about their own body like that…?’
Only then could Gongseon Yeong finally meet Jin Cheon-hee’s eyes directly.
And then.
Smack!
“Ow! Sister!”
“You deserve a beating.”
She proceeded to strike the back of my head repeatedly.
I wondered how this was even possible while on horseback, but it turned out that with her height and long limbs, combined with Han Hyeol-ma running at the right pace without needing the reins, it was entirely feasible.
“Sister.”
“You sound like you’re tearing someone’s heart out! Huh? What kind of Jegallim is this? You stupid fool. Idiot Hwang-gu! You only know one thing and miss the other!”
“Aaah, sister! Stop, please stop hitting me! Ow!”
Finally, when I stopped Hwang-gu, she dismounted as well.
Gongseon Yeong huffed indignantly, grabbed my hair, and twisted it roughly with her fist.
“Aaaaah! It hurts!”
“If you’re human, you shouldn’t say such things. Foolish boy! Your Master, the one famous for being indifferent to worldly affairs—he must care about you to some degree. So you really are just going along with everything, aren’t you?”
“Sister! Ow! Aaaah!”
Why did it hurt so much when there was no inner force, no strength, no killing intent behind the punch?
“I am being careful with my body in my own way! That’s why I’m still alive!”
“That’s different, you foolish, dense idiot!”
She spoke while fuming, her voice sharp with frustration.
“Everyone around you must be brilliant and remarkable people. And they’ve either received your kindness or simply think you’re so damn precious that they can’t say anything to you.”
Thwack, thwack, thwack!
“I’m ignorant, so I’m just going to say it! Try saying that one more time! I mean it!”
“Aaaah! What are you saying?”
“Is your body a sword?”
“What?”
“If only the blade doesn’t get damaged, they’ll just fix it at the blacksmith? Then why buy one? Why do you live like that?”
Smack!
Only then did I look at Gongseon Yeong.
Her nose was flushed crimson.
It wasn’t simply from the cold.
She wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand.
“Damn it.”
Then she suddenly realized tears were streaming down her face, and she wiped them away hastily with the back of her hand, still smeared with mucus.
“Sister….”
I pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to her.
“Damn.”
She cursed and accepted the handkerchief, blowing her nose loudly.
“Hey. Cheon Hee. You’re not this handkerchief.”
“What?”
“Not a disposable handkerchief! You idiot! Whether you need it or not, you’re just my brother! Don’t think about and calculate every little thing like that. Just say, ‘I don’t like being hurt!'”
“But people in Gangho live that way too.”
“It’s different. People in Gangho do it for their own satisfaction. Even I could die a hundred times, a thousand times for my sister! That’s because of my satisfaction. Is maintaining your function for you? Is it for your satisfaction?”
My eyes widened slightly.
“So the Jegallim Family taught you nothing. You’re just pretending to be smart.”
She blew her nose loudly again.
“I’ll wash this and return it later. You idiot.”
With that, she mounted the Han Hyeol-ma and rode ahead.
“….”
I stared blankly at the horizon for a moment before finally climbing onto Hwang-gu.
Whine?
“No. We didn’t fight. Sister just said that because she was frustrated.”
After thinking about something for a while, I finally chased after her.
How much longer did we run like that?
“Ah, snow.”
Beyond the vast plains lay the northern kingdom.
I had arrived at the Aisha Kingdom.
* * *
The Aisha Kingdom.
In the Records of the Supreme Heavenly Demon, this kingdom barely receives a mention.
The Supreme Heavenly Demon, our female Heavenly Demon, goes to destroy the darkness lurking in the North Sea Ice Palace, and the descriptions of the surroundings there are minimal at best.
Of course, they’re not normal descriptions.
-The frozen earth stained with blood, countless corpses scattered across the snow. The quaint northern foreign land had long since fallen under the control of the Hyeolseonggyo. In this land filled only with madness and death, Cheon Sal-seong unleashes his furious roar. Yet there is no one to hear his cry.
-Yeo Ha-ryun trudged across the frozen earth, clutching the skull of an old comrade in one hand. Only cold blood would speak of his rage. The corpses whispered in his ear. ‘We suffer, please kill us, please kill those bastards.’ Yeo Ha-ryun listened to the whispers with emotionless eyes. The resentful voices of the dead wrapped around Cheon Sal-seong. Madness, madness, madness….
‘…Hmm. This really isn’t helping at all.’
I need living people to understand what the characters are like and how politics actually works.
Tsk, truly the Supreme Heavenly Demon.
No matter how many times I search through my memories, it’s only ‘the dead’ and ‘those who will die.’
In the end, when I received the Emperor’s secret orders, I had to pass through the Aisha Kingdom unexpectedly, so all I managed was a brief investigation through Hao-mun and Gaebang.
But both were information brokers of the martial world, not of the secular realm.
Rather, Gongseon Yeong, who came with me, could be called the expert.
“These are the finger gestures you absolutely must not make, this one, this one, and this one. Be careful.”
She taught me various obscene hand gestures and their meanings.
“They don’t smile much. The people here. In fact, if outsiders smile too much, they think you’re up to something. But if an outsider doesn’t smile, they also think you’re up to something.”
“What am I supposed to do then?”
“That’s why outsiders are disliked whether they smile or look stern.”
…I see. So they wish I’d just disappear the moment I start breathing?
Jin Cheon-hee nodded.
Then at some point, I witnessed a massive wave of sheep.
“What…? Are all of those sheep?”
I thought it was a snowy field, but there was a yellowish tint to it.
As I drew closer, I realized they were moving, and simultaneously realized they were sheep’s wool.
Between those enormous flocks of sheep, two dogs—slightly smaller than Hwang-gu but still as large as a person—could be seen running about.
‘I’ve definitely seen that before… where was it?’
After searching my brain for a while, I remembered. I’d seen it introduced on MeongTube.
‘No matter how I look at it, isn’t that a Caucasian Ovcharka?’
The Caucasian Ovcharka.
In Earth terms, it’s a dog breed originating from Russia, and on Earth it’s renowned as not just a large but a giant breed.
‘I heard they can grow incredibly tall, weighing over 120 kilograms?’
But the shepherd dog running before my eyes was far larger than those I’d seen in videos.
‘Ah…. It’s larger because this is the martial world.’
Right. In a world where moths are the size of a human head, large dog breeds would naturally be bigger.
Though they couldn’t compare to the spiritual beast Hwang-gu….
Woof!
Hwang-gu barked low, and the sheep dogs responded with soft “yelps” of their own.
‘Anyway, a dog breed from Russia… This world is certainly a mixture of various things, but if that’s the case…’
Could the Aisha Kingdom actually be 14th century Russia?
Even if it were, that would be a problem.
‘I know almost nothing about 14th century Russia.’
Typically, standard curricula cover Russia in detail only during the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War era—there’s very little proper coverage of daily life in the 14th century.
I only know this much because I’ve pieced together fragments I glimpsed long ago using the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong.
As I stood blankly observing the flock and the dogs, a figure on horseback approached from the distance.
It was a woman wearing fur clothing, and her frame was extraordinarily robust.
‘Her height… about seven or eight feet? She has the muscular build that reminds me of Nang-in Wang from Hangzhou.’
And she wasn’t just approaching—she was drinking from a metal flask as she came.
The aroma was quite strong, wafting all the way to where I stood.
“Burp.”
The belch carried a scent similar to vodka.
Not a spirit from the Central Plains, but definitely a strong liquor by its aroma.
She scratched the horse’s hindquarters affectionately and approached slowly, then uttered something I couldn’t understand.
Gongseon Yeong began responding to her words.
The two exchanged words, and soon Gongseon Yeong spoke to me.
“She’s asking if we’re travelers. She says this is private land, so if we follow that direction, there should be a path, and we should take it. And if we’re interested, she’s asking if we could give Hwang-gu some… breeding time before we go. She says it’s been a long time since she’s seen such a large dog.”
Not just seeing it for the first time, but after a long time.
What kind of place was this anyway?
In any case, the shepherd who had been herding sheep while drinking stared intently at us.
Hwang-gu shook his head vigorously.
“Hmm… Hwang-gu seems to be refusing?”
“Really? Spirit-class war horses usually like it, but it seems dogs are different.”
I suddenly recalled the Gunrim Black Horse that my Master had briefly borrowed.
‘That beast had quite the party with the mares at Baekrin Medical Guild.’
After it left, the mares in the stable stopped eating grain for a while.
I was shocked when Yoo Ho mentioned that some of the mares had even fallen ill with lovesickness.
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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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