Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 756
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Chapter 756
In that instant, Hyeolbul-seung, ignoring the massive wolf’s bite on his side, strode toward Jasi and struck him with a vicious backhand.
Crash!
Jasi’s body flew through the air and slammed into the ground.
Hyeolbul-seung spoke.
“Kekekek. Shamans like you are weak against simple fists like these.”
The wolf was tearing at Hyeolbul-seung’s ribs, yet he showed no pain—only a malicious grin.
Still grinning, he raised his fist and brought it down toward Jasi’s head.
Crash!
Jasi barely twisted away from the attack, but where he’d been standing moments before, a massive fist-shaped crater had been gouged into the earth.
‘I’m dead.’
If stone could be shattered like this, a human skull would be crushed like tofu.
He grabbed Jasi’s jaw with his other hand and raised his fist high once more.
“You can’t dodge this one. Kekekekek!”
At that moment, a blue lightning bolt descended from the heavens.
Crackle-crack-crack-crack!
Like divine punishment, the blazing lightning paralyzed Hyeolbul-seung’s body, and he collapsed.
Jasi quickly tried to move away.
However, he’d been caught in the lightning’s sweep as well, making it somewhat difficult. But it didn’t matter. He was alive. That was all that mattered.
As Jasi gestured, the wolf pelt returned to its original form and draped over his head.
At the same moment.
“Ou, are you alright?”
The black-clad youth and the white-robed youth.
Both of them looked down at Jasi simultaneously.
The youth’s face was different from what I’d seen before, yet that strange, otherworldly feeling remained exactly the same.
“You are….”
“It’s been a while. Jasi, I regret that we meet under such circumstances.”
Cough—
Jasi coughed up blood.
“Oh dear. Your condition is poor. It’s not from the lightning though…thank goodness. Noeji controlled it well. How long have you been fighting?”
Muttering complaints, I pressed acupoints along Jasi’s body without mercy.
“Ugh-hack!”
“Bear with it. I need to stop the bleeding.”
Thump-thump-thump—
Normally, even with acupoint strikes infused with inner energy, blood would still seep out, but when performed by the Divine Physician, it was as though the wound had been sealed with a cork—the bleeding stopped completely.
The finest technique under heaven.
Yet the pain was equally supreme.
“Ugh-ugh-uhhhhh.”
Jasi drooled from the agony.
“I’ve provided emergency treatment, but we’ll need to examine you properly later. Ah, take this.”
He said so and handed over a small medicinal pill.
“What is this?”
“It’s an internal injury remedy. I noticed quite a bit of stagnant qi in your chest. Since shamans aren’t Gangho practitioners, it should be fine, but just in case, chew it.”
“Stagnant qi?”
Thud!
Behind him, a black-clad man was pummeling Hyeolbul-seung.
One-sided violence.
I turned to look back.
“Ha-ryun. Don’t kill him—we need to interrogate him.”
“His limbs?”
“Breaking them is fine. He’s already killed so many people. Hoping he comes out unscathed would be pure luxury.”
“Got it!”
Yeo Ha-ryun gave a curt reply and grabbed the man’s head, dragging it across the wall with a grinding screech.
“Gaaaaahhh!”
The massive Hyeolbul-seung was helplessly dragged along by the black-clad youth’s grip.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
Yeo Ha-ryun slammed him against the ground repeatedly like he was hurling a doll.
“How much longer until he loses his strength?”
“Well… just until he can’t fight back. These types look tough but they’re surprisingly resilient. As long as there’s breath in them, they’ll somehow survive.”
“Understood.”
Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! Boom!
A superhuman battle worthy of mythology unfolded behind us, while I took Jasi’s wrist again to check his pulse and opened my mouth.
“Where are the living people hiding?”
Sensing with inner energy was difficult—too many auras were mixed together around Hyeolpungsa.
“Underground. Cough!”
He said so and pointed with his finger toward the hidden basement.
“Thank you.”
I said so and immediately rushed off to rescue the commoners.
At the same time, Yeo Ha-ryun lifted Hyeolbul-seung into the air and unleashed a Kangwhan, detonating it.
Overwhelming violence!
“Is, is, is that even a person!”
“Demonic Sect! The Demonic Sect!”
While the remnants of Hyeolpungsa cried out in horror, Yeo Ha-ryun reduced Hyeolbul-seung to a pulp.
* * *
I gathered the surviving villagers and treated them.
Jasi distributed shamanic medicine using the dead livestock.
Thanks to the shamanic medicine, medical treatment, water, and provisions, many lives were saved.
“Let me see… Hyeolpungsa is dead, but their weapons and horses will be useful, and the houses will all need to be rebuilt—I wonder if the compensation will match.”
I fell into thought, mentally calculating with an abacus.
Yeo Ha-ryun spoke.
“Since the plague has only recently begun to subside, livestock is selling at premium prices. It should be possible.”
Jasi said.
“Still fond of money, I see.”
“Consoling those who have passed is one thing, but people must live first.”
Separate from my sorrow and anguish, time passes and hunger comes, cold comes, heat comes.
Life continues.
Money is necessary to sustain it.
I finished my calculations and handed a letter to Noeji, sending him to the surrounding villages.
“There’s a trustworthy merchant who will purchase at high prices. You can buy provisions and materials there. He belongs to the Demonic Sect, but… the Demonic Sect is better than some charlatan cult.”
Yeo Ha-ryun replied.
“Those who seek power will be given the qualification to join our Ilwol Singyeo.”
“At least there won’t be human sacrifices. Though there might be Demonic Sect bandits in the future… but since the garrison soldiers can’t reach here, that might actually be better. Every time the Hyeolpungsa attacks, we’ll deal with them.”
“That’s the way of Gangho.”
“But this place is remote.”
Jasi suddenly realized that the young man before him wasn’t doing this for the first time.
‘No, it’s beyond that level.’
He appeared experienced in relief and reconstruction.
That meant he had done this countless times already.
After finishing the arrangements.
And incidentally interrogating Hyeolbul-seung afterward.
I, Yeo Ha-ryun, and Jasi gathered together again.
I then formally introduced the two to each other.
And stated my purpose.
“I’m currently tracking the Hyeolseon Sect. It could be the Mireuk Sect… but the cults are impersonating each other, so it’s confusing.”
Jasi nodded. Then he briefly told me the story so far.
What happened to his village.
How Usha, whom he had raised like a son, died.
A deep silence filled the room. Then he spoke.
“From the interrogation, this Hyeolbul-seung is actually a lackey of the Mireuk Sect and doesn’t know much information. It seems the Mireuk Sect members are impersonating Hyeolbulsa and handling operations.”
“How troublesome.”
He nodded at my response.
Jasi said.
“If your path is the same as mine, may I travel with you?”
I nodded.
* * *
Sodium bicarbonate.
Shortened to soda stone.
It’s the raw material for baking soda, and when we buy baking soda, advertisements often add “natural” before it.
This is because it’s something that’s mined from the earth.
Synthesis through the Solvay process is of course also possible.
Sodium chloride, calcium carbonate, ammonia, water.
When these four combined, production became possible, and there were many such factories in the past.
Before the Solvay process was discovered, there was something called the Leblanc process, but using that method meant hydrochloric acid gas came out as a byproduct, so it wasn’t a sustainable approach.
The world of chemistry is truly fascinating.
I thought environmental pollution might settle on the Solvay process, which was less damaging than the Leblanc method, but nowadays they simply mine it directly.
Because it’s cheaper that way.
It was one of the rare cases where simple mining was more cost-effective than chemical synthesis.
So I, Jin Cheon-hee, came all this way just to mine one of these shimmering white, yellow, and gray stones.
Sodium bicarbonate.
After preventing damage from the calamity and grappling with the Mireuk Sect, I sometimes wonder if I really need to go this far just to use some toothpaste, but there’s no helping it.
It’s not just toothpaste—there are countless uses, from various medicines to glass.
‘Heh, when the Mireuk Sect appears, the Hyeolseon Sect follows.’
According to information I’d gathered by dealing with Mireuk Sect monks along the way, the Mireuk Sect and Hyeolseon Sect appeared to share the same roots, and there were numerous doctrines that made me suspect they were essentially brother religions.
Observing this, our pseudo-authority expert Yeo Ha-ryun assessed it as follows.
“Hyeong, isn’t it just that when the Hyeolseon Sect moved in, they simply laundered the name to Mireuk Sect? We’re called the Ilwol Singyeo, Baekryeon Sect, Demonic Sect, and so on. It’s possible they split apart at some point.”
“So you’re saying there are cases where someone believes in the Ilwol Singyeo but claims to belong to the Wolshin Sect, believing only in the Moon God rather than both the Sun and Moon?”
“Exactly. And then they get executed as fallen apostates.”
It seems absurd, but in Gangho where literacy rates exceed 90% and wanderers train mostly alone in the mountains through sheer force, such things are possible.
Actually, that’s how religion works from the start.
Splitting over the interpretation of doctrine is hardly rare.
Moreover, since there are martial arts techniques belonging to the sect itself, it only made things more complicated.
There were many people who learned secret manuals left by some Aged Taoist before his death, thinking they were righteous faction techniques, only to later cry out, ‘Oh no! This was evil heterodox demonic martial arts!’ and arrive at Baekrin Uiseon’s Bunta on stretchers suffering from demonic cultivation backlash.
When it seems we can’t cure them, we send them straight to the Black Palace Medical Guild.
That’s their specialty.
“So the Mireuk Sect and Hyeolseon Sect are essentially one body?”
“Rather than one body, I’d say they’re more like branches. Just as Taoism has different Shamanic and Gonglun factions. Plus there would be variations in doctrine and different people put forward as leaders. The evidence is that Sip Cheon-gun hasn’t come forward directly.”
For some reason, I recalled the long-established pseudo-religious genealogy in Korea.
“I see.”
People are the same everywhere.
I, Jin Cheon-hee, thought to myself.
“I understand that the Prince was secretly supporting the Mireuk Sect. Well, whether the King knows about it or not doesn’t really matter at this point. But why are those Hyeolseon Sect bastards using the Mireuk Sect name?”
Jasi answered that question.
“The concept of immortals isn’t very famous in this region. Buddha is much easier to understand.”
“So doctrine can be changed so arbitrarily…. Ah, it can. After all, pseudo-religions ultimately prioritize the sect over the people.”
“Hyeong. Hearing you say that while looking at my face feels strange.”
To summarize what I’d learned so far:
1. Mireuk Sect: In league with the Hyeolseon Sect. The Prince secretly supported them, but the funding was cut off.
2. Hyeolseon Sect: Same roots as the Mireuk Sect. Though they claim to be separate, they’re still connected to the Mireuk Sect’s core and are playing final boss games. Sometimes they impersonate Hyeolbulsa and commit massacres.
3. Hyeolbulsa: Doesn’t move together with the Mireuk or Hyeolseon Sects. They at least maintain the appearance of a proper religion, but like the other two, they practice human sacrifice. However, they only use voluntary human sacrifice done of their own free will.
“What a mess.”
No matter how much I think about it, this region seems to have a vein of heterodox sects flowing through it.
Yeo Ha-ryun spoke.
“Hyeong. Many in Gangho have forgotten this, but the Central Plains were the same before Confucianism spread. After Confucius came, human sacrifice was banned on a massive scale, and as the martial arts of each sect deepened, those in Gangho took their place.”
In a world where human sacrifice truly yielded rewards, Confucius was just another scoundrel.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————