Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 677
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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 677
Perfect Harmony.
Unbiased toward all things in heaven and earth, everything between heaven and earth fills completely, becoming one unified whole, merging without obstruction.
This signifies heaven and earth communicating as one, the universe becoming singular and unified.
The ultimate technique of the Taiji Wisdom Sword could be called this.
Thus, the inner force erupting from Ha Seon’s blade fills and saturates all directions.
However.
Cheonwoo saw it.
Flaws scattered throughout the Taiji Perfect Harmony technique!
Ha Seon had not yet refined the Taiji Wisdom Sword to its peak.
Whoosh.
Cheonwoo’s two hands traced circles.
The Taiching Scattered Hands, one of the Mudang sect’s supreme techniques, unfolded.
The circle became a point, and in an instant it gathered inner force to pierce the flaws in Taiji Perfect Harmony.
Boom!
Inner force collided with inner force, and an explosion erupted.
While Cheonwoo remained completely still, Ha Seon staggered backward five steps from the shockwave.
“Cough!”
Ha Seon spat blood. Disbelief was written across his face.
“The Taiji Wisdom Sword… shattered!”
“How is this possible!”
“Was that the Taiching Scattered Hands?”
“The Taiching Scattered Hands is also a supreme technique of our sect, but can it truly break through the Taiji Wisdom Sword’s technique?”
Everyone murmured in confusion.
Ha Seon wiped the blood from his mouth and asked.
“Cheon Sasuk. How did you block my Taiji Perfect Harmony technique? I… I cannot comprehend this.”
“Ha Sasuk. Your Taiji Perfect Harmony was magnificent, yet you failed to eliminate all flaws. For Taiji Perfect Harmony to manifest properly, all eight directions must be covered according to the principles of the Eight Trigrams, but your blade created gaps in two directions.”
“You… you could see that?”
“My eye is singular, but I have trained to perceive many things. Sasuk.”
“Hehe… Yes. I have lost.”
Ha Seon the Jingin felt a wall. It was the same wall he had once seen on Gwon Je’s back.
Of course, compared to him, it was still distant and small.
Yet, he realized a new wall would now carry the Mudang sect forward.
Elder Jeong Hyeong spoke.
“I declare Cheonwoo Dojang as the supreme master of the Mudang sect!”
Roooaaarrr!
All the Mudang disciples roared in acclamation.
Even those who had cheered for Ha Seon at first had no doubt, seeing Cheonwoo’s power, that he was Gwon Je’s successor.
Jin Cheon-hee’s chest burned with warmth.
‘This is good. This is truly good.’
Given the situation, I quietly slipped toward the back door so that Cheonwoo could have a good conversation with the Mudang sect members. But as expected.
“Hyeong!”
Cheonwoo called out to stop me just as I was trying to sneak away.
“Oh, Cheonwoo.”
“Hyeong, thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything. It’s all thanks to Gwon Je.”
Cheonwoo rushed over and performed a fist salute to me.
“It’s thanks to both of you.”
The gazes of the Mudang sect members turned toward me. They all knew.
Who had orchestrated this situation. Who had saved Cheonwoo and placed him before Mudang Gwon-je.
‘It seems I won’t be able to slip away from this.’
I thought this while feeling a strange sense of admiration and respect, tinged with jealousy.
* * *
The next dawn.
The Mudang sect had constructed a martial arena beneath Haejeonji.
Cheonwoo was watching it intently.
“Do you think Master wished for this?”
At Cheonwoo’s words, I shrugged my shoulders.
“Who knows. As a fellow martial artist, I do respect him deeply, but separate from that, Gwon Je wasn’t the type to carry such a strong sense of responsibility, was he?”
“…That’s true.”
“Still, I think he must have anticipated that after his passing, the debts and grudges he’d accumulated would target the Mudang sect.”
In the Gangho, Gwon Je was a protruding nail.
Arrogant and powerful.
He had walked countless paths of blood, carving those paths with his own fists.
And he never looked back. Never made excuses. Never rationalized.
A person killing a person through martial force—that was all.
That was his Way, his path, his blood debt.
That hellish karma.
He must have known that someone would come seeking payment in blood, and that it could be quite substantial.
In a way, I thought that the reason he lived past a hundred years was because he was that strong and also quite fortunate.
If I hadn’t stopped Jeong Gwang’s blood calamity in the past, the Mudang sect would have become a living hell.
‘It’s rather irritating.’
I had to clear away at least some of this blood debt.
However, it was impossible as a Mudang member like Gwon Je. They were the parties involved.
Someone standing a step removed was needed. And someone with deep ties to the Mudang sect.
Someone with influence, and someone who despised blood calamities more than anyone.
‘There’s no one but me for this.’
He did as he pleased until the very end.
-Did you enjoy the parting gift I sent you?
That old man’s legacy was far too heavy.
The citron was so sour that tears welled up in my eyes as I ate it. And it was absurdly expensive.
‘To have to guard the Mudang for a single citron fruit. Isn’t this too much, Elder?’
Damn it.
I wiped away the traces around my eyes with my sleeve several times.
-…You were never meant to be in this place to begin with. Isn’t that so?
-It’s fine. I’m not saying anything about it. However, that body was originally yours, so don’t burden yourself too much with it.
At least tell me how you came to know this.
‘Come to think of it, Cheonma seemed to know something about the Heavenly Secrets as well.’
Gwon Je had said he could only glimpse the heavens right before his death, but I myself couldn’t understand the process.
I couldn’t even tell if what Cheonma saw was the same as what Gwon Je saw before his passing.
“The training ground is now complete, I see.”
There’s nothing grand about it. It was merely the work of clearing stones from the ground and leveling it.
There was no need to decorate it with marble, since we weren’t going to lavishly lay granite floors.
All I did was adjust the formation patterns used by the Mudang.
Even that alone created an excellent training ground.
“The dawn air is cold.”
“Yes. Come morning, many will arrive.”
Even sitting quietly, I could hear much being said.
“The gamblers will come first.”
“Indeed.”
Money always clings to such training grounds. Cheonwoo let out a soft laugh.
“They say everyone has wagered on my defeat.”
Forty-nine days.
For one person to guard the Mudang for forty-nine days—isn’t that impossible?
That’s what everyone thought.
And the Mudang people thought the same.
Though Cheonwoo succeeded Gwon Je, wasn’t he still too young?
Even if it had been ten years, or even three years from now, it might have been possible, but now it was deemed difficult.
“The challenge notice has arrived at the Mudang according to procedure.”
I nodded my head.
“If he wins, all debts between the Mudang and them will be settled. If he loses?”
“…They say they will take Master’s memorial tablet.”
My eyes widened at those words.
They would seize the tablet of the deceased?
Wasn’t that like spitting on a grave and killing a person twice over?
“The Jang Mun-in said…Gwon Je had incurred great debts during his lifetime.”
“Did he actually agree to this?”
“Yes.”
….
I pressed my forehead repeatedly with my fingers.
“If you lose, the Mudang sect will seal its gates.”
Cheonwoo answered calmly.
“Yes. A sect that cannot even protect its master’s tablet has no right to face the Gangho. It is inevitable.”
“You will become the most worthless wretch under heaven, having lost your master’s tablet.”
“….”
Cheonwoo closed his eyes.
His massive frame simply breathed in and out quietly with the dawn air.
I spoke.
“How ruthless. But if that too is a seed sown by Gwon Je, then it cannot be helped.”
“…In truth, the fact that we were able to conduct this martial tournament so orderly was itself called a miracle. The Jang Mun-in and the Elders said so as well.”
Neither I nor Cheonwoo knew of the events that occurred in Gwon Je’s generation.
We did not know how much blood he had shed, or in what manner.
We only knew that our debt to him ran painfully deep.
“So that is why the Jang Mun-in made his decision.”
“…Yes.”
The Gangho. It was always the Gangho.
* * *
People from the Martial Arts Alliance arrived early in the morning.
As soon as Gwon Je passed away, Patriarch Akjin sent his people, and those who had come as mourners at the funeral suddenly became witnesses to this affair.
And those who arrived before them were gamblers from the betting dens.
Before the martial tournament grounds were even completed, they brought various things and stacked money pouches high in baskets, beginning to raise the stakes.
And beside those gamblers, merchants from Hao-mun squeezed in and began selling boxed meals.
“Chicken skewers! Selling chicken skewers!”
“Sweet rice cakes! Sweet rice cakes here!”
“We have refreshing sweet rice punch ready!”
Seeing this, martial artists from other sects spoke in exasperation.
“Those Hao-mun bastards—there’s nowhere they don’t stick their noses into.”
“Don’t even mention it. Ever since the sub-patriarch of the Golden Blood Hall became Hao-mun’s successor, they’ve become the type to charge into molten lava at the mere scent of money.”
“They loved money in the old days too, but not to this extent.”
Even at this hour, Sama Hyeon was relentlessly raking in profits.
Sure enough, the most well-dressed merchant came running and spoke to me.
“The sub-patriarch asked me to convey his regards to So Ui-seon.”
With those words, he handed over a ten-tiered boxed meal.
“Of course, the Mudang’s food is delicious, but he said that after conducting the forty-nine day rites, your strength will be greatly depleted….”
“Th… Thank you.”
“And here, please deliver this to Third Brother as well.”
With those words, a bamboo lunch box….
And it was the smallest one being given to Cheonwoo, no less.
“….”
‘Hyeon-a… Hyeon-a….’
It was a lunch box that would have been better left unprepared.
Cheonwoo smiled gently.
“Please tell him it’s fine. My elder brother has already prepared a generous breakfast for me out of concern, after all.”
“Ah, shall I convey it exactly as you said?”
“Yes. Haha. That would be perfect.”
Cheonwoo drove his fist into Sama Hyeon’s solar plexus from a thousand li away.
It was an exceptionally brilliant Tai Chi technique—using the enemy’s own attack to launch a counter.
After all the inspectors from each sect had arrived.
The Jang Mun-in descended and read the challenge letter.
The challenge letter contained such deep resentment that merely reading it caused killing intent to spray forth from all directions.
Yet the Jang Mun-in’s voice was surprisingly calm.
As if he had known from the beginning that it would come to this.
And before all witnesses, the martial duel began.
Cheonwoo walked into the center of the arena.
“I am Cheonwoo, a disciple of Mudang Gwon-je and the former disciple of Myeonggil Jingin. I have come to observe my master’s forty-ninth memorial and to settle my master’s debts in this place!”
Booooooo!
Everyone jeered at Cheonwoo.
It was Wol-seon-san-in who stepped forward first.
“I am Wol-seon-san-in of the Jeolcho Sect. In the past, Myeonggil Jingin came to our sect and showed our master merciless techniques. Now I have come to repay that debt. Yet you send the Solitary Finger Iron Fist! Does the Mudang Sect hold our sect in such contempt!”
It was a natural reaction—they had expected a martial artist of the same tier to emerge, yet instead came Cheonwoo, who was a thousand-character tier.
Moreover, Cheonwoo was the type who gained surprisingly little fame despite his abilities.
He was merely counted among the rising masters, hardly comparable to Hyeolpyeon Wang Dang-a or Changryong Sword Namgung Un.
Cheonwoo answered calmly, as if accustomed to being underestimated.
“I am Cheonwoo, third-generation disciple of the Mudang Sect. I humbly seek instruction in the Way from Wol-seon-san-in of the Jeolcho Sect.”
“Heh… How reckless. Very well! I shall break you and teach the Mudang Sect a lesson in humility!”
Cheonwoo glanced briefly at his elder brother.
Behind his brother, the physicians of Baekrin Uisaek who had rushed to support him were clasping their hands in prayer.
“Heavens and spirits above, please let these martial artists end with merely bruises and contusions.”
“Please spare us from seeing their internal organs!”
“And fractures—please avoid compound fractures and open fractures! And the locations, please spare the hip joint and spine!”
“If the worst should occur, please grant us the ability to swiftly locate the remaining pieces(?) within the arena!”
“And the head, please…”
While Gwon Je’s disciple began the life-or-death duel.
His elder brother’s disciples were offering impossible prayers.
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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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