Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 781

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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 781
“Finally, they’re gone. Those monstrous master and disciple!”
“Now we can play and eat however we want!”
Everyone began celebrating with unbridled joy.
Some of the Medical Assistants even loosened their belts while eating.
“That’s right! Food has no sin!”
“Ah, finally the Patriarch has been dragged away. We’re free at last.”
Yet only Sama-hye offered prayers for Jin Cheon-hee’s well-being.
‘Eun Gong. While you were away, our Medical Guild was truly terrifying. What’s even more frightening is that I can’t understand why that bastard Jegalling acts so incredibly scary.’
The reason remained unknown.
While Jin Cheon-hee was away, Jegalling had been busy as well.
It seemed like every other moment he’d drag Yoo Ho out somewhere to accomplish something and return.
Yet it didn’t matter.
Because somehow, the Medical Guild flourished tremendously during those times.
Not to mention the expansion of influence—every martial artist in Gangho desired the aid of Baekrin Uiseon.
Those were days when we figured he must be handling things well, even if we didn’t know what he was doing.
Then one day, Jegalling returned.
‘Hmm. About forty-eight days ago, was it?’
The moment he arrived, he burst into mad laughter, then bisected an entire pavilion with his fan and ordered it rebuilt.
He offered no explanation for why he destroyed the perfectly fine pavilion or why it needed to be reconstructed.
It was absurd.
Worse, it was a pavilion equipped with mechanical devices, and advanced techniques were incorporated throughout the reconstruction.
The deadline was today.
Muyue, the Chief Manager of the Outer Hall, shed tears of blood as he rapidly recruited talented craftsmen.
Then Yoo Ho, the Chief Manager of the Inner Hall, worked those recruited talents to exhaustion.
Upon completion, all he said was that he’d hold a welcome ceremony for his beloved disciple.
Jegalling personally prepared all the dishes himself.
They were delicious.
The food was absurdly, ridiculously delicious.
The problem was that the other party was Jegalling, making it difficult to eat in front of him without appearing foolish.
If you ate through your nose, you couldn’t taste it.
And this is how it ended.
‘Eun Gong, I did give you a warning. And this really is delicious.’
The sea bream melts tenderly on the tongue.
The egg tofu, sliced so thinly it resembles noodles, dissolves delicately.
One sip and the flavor lingers before fading away.
That rich egg taste, combined with the broth created from twelve varieties of seafood in the soup.
These were precious ingredients procured through ice-transport methods.
With such ingredients prepared by the greatest master, how could the taste be anything but extraordinary!
While the Patriarch’s cooking—potatoes and fish cakes—could be enjoyed by all without burden, eaten with carefree laughter, what Patriarch Jegalling created was different.
How should I describe it?
It felt like gazing upon a tower meticulously designed down to the finest detail.
A culinary masterpiece calculated and stacked to the absolute limit!
Such refined aesthetics that one felt compelled to kneel and receive it with both hands!
‘Ah, this is wonderful. I want to eat like this for the rest of my life.’
Everyone was devouring it while beads of sweat dripped down their faces.
I wanted to bring even a little more of this exquisitely refined flavor to my lips.
“Let’s celebrate!”
Once the two monsters disappeared, the Medical Guild erupted into a small festival.
Watching this, Jasi muttered to himself.
“…Are all these Central Plains people insane?”
* * *
I slowly awakened from sleep.
The first thing I saw was moonlight.
That was strange.
There shouldn’t be moonlight visible from inside a building.
Suddenly, I realized I couldn’t move my body.
So for now, I only rolled my eyes.
‘A pavilion… at the top… it seems like it. Could there really be a glass window cut into the roof…?’
This was Saeoe craftsmanship.
Had Saeoe artisans come and gone?
I could see traces of Saeoe craftsmen’s hands working upon a foundation of Hwa Imperial architecture.
A cool breeze suddenly swept across my skin.
Completely naked, not a thread upon me.
In this state, my entire body was densely covered with acupuncture needles.
“You’re awake, Hope?”
In the darkness, only silver-long hair swayed.
Soon after, my Master’s pale face and eyes as intensely blue as starlight appeared as well.
“Master, what is this situation?”
“What else would it be? A health examination. I’m in the process of searching through your body with diagnostic pulse-reading to find any changes within you, one by one.”
It sounded slightly insane, but my Master was the genius of the Jegalling Family, after all.
I confirmed it first.
“Ah… I see. But did our Medical Guild have this type of regular checkup in our medical techniques?”
“I created it for you. You’re always getting injured here and there, aren’t you? I made it to examine all your blood vessels and qi channels, and to discover even the smallest abnormalities in your five organs and six bowels. Right now, exactly three hundred and sixty-five Nine Needles are inserted throughout your entire body.”
“A new grand technique, then.”
“For examination, not for treatment.”
To create such a technique for a single disciple.
Ordinarily, a grand technique of this caliber is created through the lifetime efforts of dozens of doctors grinding away.
Yet Jegalling spoke of having done it alone as if it were nothing.
Was such a thing even possible?
However, the three hundred sixty-five needles embedded in my body never lied.
‘Even Hua Tuo would leap from his grave.’
The Nine Needles referred to nine types of acupuncture needles used by Gangho doctors.
From the shallow-piercing needle that barely pricked the skin, to the round needle with an egg-like blunt tip, to the pressing needle that stimulated the meridians.
And the three-edged needle for lancing, the lance-shaped needle used for draining abscesses, the skin-piercing needle,
the most universally used filiform needle, the long needle exceeding twenty centimeters, to the thick needle resembling a syringe.
Each was used differently depending on the patient’s symptoms.
Yet to think he’d used all of them and inserted three hundred sixty-five needles throughout my entire body!
“I… I see.”
My Master truly is remarkable.
Wasn’t it said that the line between genius and madness was paper-thin?
I lay naked, completely covered in needles, and pondered this.
“Qi-sensing pulse diagnosis involves using qi to probe the body’s interior. That’s essentially a tactile sense created by qi, isn’t it? But you, Hope, have also used qi as a form of sound-based martial art. Yes, that ultrasound technique.”
“Yes, yes. I have written—or rather, compiled—or rather, documented secret knowledge regarding the medical application of sound-based martial arts.”
“Exactly. By borrowing only the principles of that method and using these three hundred sixty-five needles, I send qi waves throughout your entire body to comprehend everything. Of course, I must teach this technique to my one and only disciple.”
Extraordinary!
My eyes gleamed with excitement.
This madman had just regained consciousness after fainting, unable to move his limbs, yet remained utterly devoted to medicine.
“So this is acupuncture-based qi-sensing pulse diagnosis!”
“Indeed. You can understand the state of all five organs, six bowels, and the eight extraordinary meridians at once. Of course, calling it ‘at once’ understates the extreme difficulty, but you should be more than capable.”
“How magnificent, Master. I truly wish to learn this! But if you could just remove these needles…”
“Your regular health examination will take considerable time. So cultivate your patience. You’ve been brought back from death, after all. Oh, and I’ve made sure you cannot harm yourself. I will not permit such ‘escape’ routes.”
“…”
My eyes narrowed.
Yet I dared not question my Master.
Jegalling stared at me intently.
Soon he spoke.
“Are you not curious how this Master knows such things?”
“That… I am curious. But I think it’s possible that you could know, Master. Even if Yeo Ha-ryun didn’t tell you, Ilkana might have mentioned what she witnessed. Yes.”
I had explained to Yeo Ha-ryun only that it was a type of hidden demonic technique.
A form of body-refinement method, though one with side effects.
I had told Ilkana something similar.
None of them had suspected much.
When the mountain collapsed, we weren’t completely trapped—my brother had used some form of body-refinement method through advanced calculation to escape.
‘For that to be possible, one would need to be among the Three Elites.’
However, these people were demonic cultists.
They served Cheonma, one of the Three Elites, and she was the very measure of martial prowess.
Ilkana thought that if they possessed the skill to escape from that explosion without a single scratch on the children, it might just be possible.
As for Yeo Ha-ryun.
‘…’
I’m not sure what he’s thinking, but it seems he’s moved past it for now.
However, if it’s my Master—my Master would surely know through deductive reasoning that even I myself am unaware of.
Unlike others, my Master is the only person who knows in detail what martial techniques I’ve learned and to what level I’ve mastered them.
“When you were at the North Sea Ice Palace, I suspected you lost your fingers because you glimpsed the future.”
“….”
“But if that’s not it, then if your death were the condition instead.”
“….”
“Could it be, Hope? If you were to face death, would you choose between reversing time or transcending space—one or the other?”
A chill ran down my spine.
The question pierced straight through to the truth, and goosebumps erupted across my skin.
My Master continued speaking.
“Losing your fingers in the past was the price. The blood that vanished this time is likely the same. What do you think?”
It wasn’t truly a question.
My Master had already reached his conclusion.
He was merely asking for my honesty—whether I would be truthful or not.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“…Then at least you needn’t worry about dying in a foreign land. Of course, that’s only if you haven’t paid the price with both your legs.”
“Yes.”
“Hope, do you wish to take your own life again?”
My Master asked in return.
With three hundred and sixty-five acupuncture needles embedded in my body like this, suicide was impossible.
Not only could I not circulate my inner energy in a rampage, I couldn’t move my body at all.
Yet despite this, he asked such a question….
“…Master, you’re curious about how broken my mind has become, aren’t you?”
“Yes. No matter how many needles I embed in your body, I cannot know the state of your mind.”
“Master…. I am afraid of death. And afraid of the price it demands.”
“….”
At those words, I saw Jegalling’s eyebrows soften gently.
“That’s a relief.”
Out of a hundred possible words, only one escaped from Jegalling’s lips.
He had wanted to rage, to resent, to frighten me.
But ultimately, it was this—that I was still human.
With just that realization, the stone weighing on his chest melted away like snow.
A sigh of relief followed, and followed again.
The Master, who had been like a cold blade, now pressed his trembling hand to his forehead.
It was a deep, profoundly deep relief.
“You must hope that your mind remains unbroken rather than your body.”
“Is that so?”
“For you, death can be an escape route that changes circumstances. But if your mind were violated instead, there would be no answer. What would you do if an enemy attempted brainwashing or illusion?”
“…That is….”
“There are many things in this world more terrifying than death. Hope. If your spirit breaks, then everything will likely end.”
Jin Cheon-hee felt a wave of dizziness wash over him.
“The human spirit is far more fragile than you imagine.”
Jegalling closed his eyes, lost in memories of the past.
Then he opened them again and resumed inserting and withdrawing needles into his disciple’s body.
“You must have been terribly lonely.”
“….”
In that moment, tears suddenly streamed down my face.
I wanted to wipe them away with my hands, but with needles embedded across my entire body, there was nothing I could do.
I could only stare intently at the moon outside the window.
“Tell no one of your secret. Should they learn of it, the wicked would stop at nothing to capture you and brainwash you into submission.”
“….”
“Of course, you already know this, which is why you haven’t even told me, your master.”
With that, as if offended, he drove a needle deep into Jin Cheon-hee’s neck.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!”
“Your dramatics are unparalleled in the world. Hold still. You’ve accumulated considerable blood stasis in your chest.”

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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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