Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 651

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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 651
After checking every room, I found no living souls.
‘A garden. A garden that cultivates flowers using corpses.’
And the troubling part was that whatever these flowers and mushrooms produced was benefiting the Hyeolseonggyo.
It was then that I felt a chill run down my spine at an even more disturbing thought.
‘Calling the officials is fine, but they’ll definitely arrive slowly. What happens if the Demonic Cult or the Dark Path learns of this in the meantime?’
If these flowers and mushrooms spread to the outside world, if the Dark Path discovered their efficacy.
‘In the worst case, if there are no survivors, it would be best to burn this place to the ground.’
Sama Hyeon was right.
To believe in humanity’s potential, one must also believe in humanity’s malice.
Turning away from that truth won’t make the world a flower garden.
First, I needed to confirm whether there were any survivors in the areas Sama Hyeon had checked. Burning the place could wait until after.
I returned to the central hall.
While I was wiping my ashen face with my hand for some time, I sensed a presence and quickly concealed myself in the shadows again.
Four martial arts disciples.
“There’s no way an intruder could have made it into our temple. The Gaju is quite sensitive, isn’t he?”
“We just do what we’re told to do, that’s all.”
“Any problems?”
The disciples shook their heads and glanced around.
They clearly looked like they were doing a half-hearted job.
“No problems. Can’t see anything.”
“Then let’s report it that way. It’s obvious someone was playing with the formation and it didn’t work out, so they ran away. Why bother with all this?”
“Ugh… I want a drink.”
The disciples grumbled among themselves and left.
‘A demanding Gaju and subordinates cutting corners…’
Was the monthly pay too low? Or was the work just miserable?
Usually it was both.
Unless they were assassins who had their emotions castrated, or kidnapped and brainwashed as children by cults like the Hyeolseonggyo and the Demonic Cult, this kind of attitude was normal.
“How could anyone break through that formation? Does that even make sense?”
“Right. How could they break through and get here?”
Yes. The Martial Arts Alliance’s Heaven and Earth Net had been broken through with similar dialogue as well.
I waited for them to disappear from sight.
‘By the way, the Gaju? From the way they spoke, it seems like it’s not Dan Seok-san but Dan Seok-han… So what happened to Dan Seok-san?’
It was strange.
Throughout this entire affair, Dan Seok-san had never once shown his face.
Even when the Hyeolseonggyo’s poison was being spread, it was Dan Seok-han spreading it, not Dan Seok-san.
I hid myself above the central pillar where I had arranged to meet Sama Hyeon.
How long had I waited?
[Brother~]
Sama Hyeon sprang up in front of me.
[How was it?]
Sama Hyeon shook his head.
[I didn’t see any of the kidnapped people. There were just a lot of medicinal cauldrons and furnaces. There were dried flowers and mushrooms too.]
Jin Cheon-hee shared what he had seen with Sama Hyeon.
After hearing this, Sama Hyeon spoke.
[I see. So the place you went to was the raw material production farm, and the place I went to was the processing workshop?]
[…Why aren’t you shocked at all?]
Sama Hyeon tilted his head slightly and said this.
[There was a butcher called Heukdo who used to make and sell human flesh. This place is similar to that. But it’s a shame. If I had gone through the passage where you were instead, you wouldn’t have seen something so rough.]
[…What happened to that butcher Heukdo?]
[He violated food hygiene standards, so I dealt with him. How dare he sell human flesh at a Golden Blood Hall franchise? The inns under the Golden Blood Hall can only handle designated pork, nothing else. That bastard wasn’t worthy of being my ‘friend’~]
‘So that’s where his focus lies.’
He was someone whose sensibilities were far removed from those of an ordinary criminal.
He didn’t say things like it was cruel, or that the victims were pitiful, or how could one person eat another person.
He simply dismissed it all by saying it was inefficient, unsanitary, and asking if that bastard wanted the other franchise inn owners to starve to death if rumors spread because of him.
The fact that someone like this didn’t join the Osalji Faction, which kills for a living, but instead went to the Golden Blood Hall, obsessed with money, was rather a blessing for Gangho.
Sama Hyeon himself was well aware that something in his mind was broken.
Sensibilities twisted and damaged so differently from other humans would never return to normal no matter how hard one tried.
So, precisely because of that, I only ‘imitate’ the methods my brother uses.
Because I know it’s the only way I can be together with Sama-hye and my brother.
[Is the only remaining path the northern corridor?]
Sama Hyeon agreed with his brother’s words.
[Gaga~ shall this humble one go ahead and take a look first?]
[No. There’s no need for that. Let’s go together.]
And the two men descended simultaneously.
Their destination was the northern corridor.
* * *
They entered the northern corridor.
Inside it.
The empty passage showed no rooms of any kind.
Finally, reaching its end, a staircase leading downward appeared this time.
[Wow, it looks suspicious just by looking at it~]
Shall we go down obediently and see.
As they descended, this time too there were quite a few statues lined up.
These were also beasts dressed in human clothing.
Some among them were cute, but there were also grotesque ones holding human skulls in their hands.
Upon reaching the end, inside it.
A more ornate and grand altar was set up than the one outside.
On the steps above that altar was a jade throne.
And I could see a person sitting there.
‘Not a living person. A corpse…perhaps?’
Mushrooms were growing from it.
Then a voice reached my ears.
“Welcome, young lady. Or should I address you as the world-renowned Great Master Jin Cheon-hee?”
“Tch. So you had already figured it out?”
Using such an alias was indeed careless of me.
‘Sigh, deceiving people with such a name was never right….’
As I thought this, he spoke.
“Where else would one find fifty years of chastity besides you? A pure soul that grows fresher the more one beholds it.”
‘…So it was him!’
Dan Seok-han spoke.
“My son tried to use your souls as sacrifices and schemed accordingly, but I never imagined he would discover fifty years of chastity. Hah, I shall dedicate all these pure bodies to Hyeolseonggyo!”
Pure bodies—plural?
I turned my head sharply to look at Sama Hyeon.
Sama Hyeon covered his mouth with his sleeve and spoke as if embarrassed.
“Hah, I’m so embarrassed that you’ve recognized my chastity~”
That was it.
Sama Hyeon was truly obsessed with money.
Being obsessed with money didn’t simply mean earning a lot of it—it meant abandoning romance and everything else to earn money alone.
To become the hall master of the Golden Blood Hall, one had to ignore romance entirely.
At the same time, another thought occurred to me.
‘Could it be that none of my brothers have ever experienced romance?’
Four virgin brothers?!
And with the character for “madness” in each of their aliases, they were all lifelong virgins with their romantic cells dead from birth?!
‘No, Ha-ryun is Cheon Sal-seong so there’s no help for it, and Cheonwoo is a swordsman so romance is forbidden anyway. Hyeon-a, even you?!’
At the same time, another thought crossed my mind.
‘Right. As the eldest brother, I couldn’t experience romance, so my younger siblings shouldn’t either. Right. We all die with our romantic cells dead together.’
I had even made a strange resolution.
“Hahaha! Would I be embarrassed now about someone coveting my chastity? Mock me all you wish! Hyeolseonggyo! Our Medical Guild is so busy that lifelong virgins overflow from the start! I am not ashamed!”
My older brother had taken a strange turn.
I continued speaking.
“By the way, ‘son’? I can’t fathom what you mean.”
Dan Seok-han burst into laughter.
“No wonder you don’t understand. I am Dan Seok-han, a bastard born from a lowborn woman’s womb. I’ve never revealed our relationship to the outside world in my entire life. What problem could there be with a father using his son’s body?”
“As if a soul had transferred….”
At that moment, the book I had found in the imperial palace’s secret chamber came to mind.
“Could it be that you transferred your soul into your son’s body?!”
The Soul Transfer Technique?!
Sama Hyeon quickly sent a transmission.
[Then that means Dan Seok-san’s soul has been inside Dan Seok-han since we arrived here?]
[That’s right. If those two aspects match up—the shabby, unreliable appearance from when he first showed suspicion, and his current personality which is the complete opposite—then everything makes sense.]
My assumption that they were twins like Gold and Silver King was wrong.
I never imagined the father was possessing and controlling his son’s body.
Sama Hyeon asked in return.
“Then… does that mean, Great Master Dan Seok-san, that mushroom bed over there is your original body?”
A deduction that perhaps he had turned his own body into a mushroom cultivation bed.
…At this completely absurd question, Dan Seok-san burst into laughter.
“Kahahaha! I never expected someone to see through this so quickly! You have a scent similar to ours!”
“Seems like it, brother.”
Sama Hyeon spoke calmly toward Jin Cheon-hee, whose pupils were trembling.
“If it’s Dan Seok-san, he’s had a body trained in martial arts while consuming all sorts of spiritual medicines since childhood, so whatever grows there couldn’t be ordinary. It will become a remarkable spiritual medicine. That thing~”
“…How could this….”
Dan Seok-san answered.
“You’ve grasped it precisely. My body itself is the cultivation bed for creating true spiritual medicine! The mushrooms grown this way will surely become spiritual medicine comparable to Heavenly Earth Stone Fungus!”
Nausea surged through Jin Cheon-hee.
‘He’s toying not only with others’ bodies but even his own.’
What in the world was this?
The Doctor could not comprehend their way of thinking at all.
Just as my mind grew hazy and I felt the world twisting around me.
“…Brother.”
Sama Hyeon’s dark hand gently obscured my vision.
A tart fruity scent wafted over.
It was the fragrance Sama Hyeon favored.
The scent that concealed bloodstains and suppressed the metallic reek of blood.
My Heart Demon surged up, then my consciousness returned.
‘Their way of thinking has already transcended humanity by far.’
I had already felt this at the North Sea Ice Palace.
Wasn’t the fake Saint Germain also already deficient in something as a human being?
They had already transcended the five desires and seven emotions we understand, and could not be called people with the same thoughts as us.
The father wearing his son’s shell spoke.
“My soul is immortal and eternal. The body is merely a consumable, so one must use it well. Besides, since I am using my own body, who could object?”
“You… how long have you been doing this?”
“Who knows? I’ve lived several hundred years, roughly. I’m getting tired of counting how many times the Emperor has changed.”
At that moment, Jin Cheon-hee felt a chill and closed his mouth.
But it seemed I had to pin this down clearly, so I brought out the horrifying deduction that had just occurred to me and asked.
“Then… have you been continuously sacrificing your own children all this time?”
He laughed for a long time at Jin Cheon-hee’s question, as if delighted.
“Children can simply be born again. In the past, during the Three Kingdoms era, didn’t the Emperor Zhao Lie, Liu Bei, abandon his own son from his carriage and flee to save himself?”
“That’s not…!”
“After all, children are merely consumables for my use. And the reason I’m explaining this so kindly is….”
Boom!
The door through which they had entered slammed shut.
My eyes widened. Watching my reaction, Dan Seok-san laughed.
“…To capture both of you.”
Dan Seok-san seemed delighted, like a man trapping mice in a jar.
However, Sama Hyeon chuckled as well.
“Sir, you’ve also lost your escape route—are you sure about this~?”

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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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