Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 814

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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 814
Several hours had passed.
“So you’re telling me that someone disguised as me showed up, stayed for two days, and then left~ Well, I’ve certainly lived long enough to see all sorts of strange things. Is this some kind of threat? Are they saying they can harm my sister whenever they please?”
Crack—
Sama Hyeon cracked his knuckles.
Sama-hye was the reason he lived, his everything.
To protect his sister, had he not walked down every dark path without hesitation?
Throughout the Golden Blood Hall—no, all of Hao-mun—he had eliminated anyone who dared to threaten his sister. He had shed blood. He had killed.
Things that happened in the shadows, unknown even to Sama-hye herself.
And now, someone had appeared who could flawlessly impersonate him and meet with her.
It was strange.
If they merely intended to meet Sama-hye, there would be no need to mimic a family member.
In this vast Central Plains, even close friends sometimes went years without seeing each other.
One could simply capture some stranger and use them as a disguise. That would make cleanup easier.
There would be no risk of discovery that way. Yet they deliberately took such a risk to do this?
Jin Cheon-hee spoke.
“It’s probably a provocation directed at you.”
“Right. They wanted to be caught for sure. That person is really something~ Why go to such lengths?”
“….”
“You seem to be thinking about something, hyeong~”
His instincts were truly uncanny.
“Let’s open the box that Hye-a gave us first.”
Before the two men was an iron box. Sama-hye had briefly returned from her work and left it with them.
-By the way, didn’t you say you left this with me and told me to give it to you when you returned? What’s inside this? Surely it’s money? Secret funds?
Sama-hye’s eyes had sparkled as she claimed that since she had helped hide her brother’s secret funds, thirty percent belonged to her.
Like brother, like sister.
Sama Hyeon had made an excuse to send her away before they could look inside together.
Jin Cheon-hee spoke.
“We don’t know what’s inside this either.”
“Worst case, a poison pellet explodes or someone’s flesh is placed inside~”
“If the poison pellet detonates the moment the box opens, it’s for assassination. Flesh would be for intimidation?”
“That’s how the Heterodox Faction operates. But hyeong, I can’t figure out what this person is doing. What kind of person are they?”
Sama Hyeon rubbed his head.
The box was locked with a padlock.
“There’s no keyhole. Are they telling me to just break it with my hands?”
“Right. That’s how you break boxes like this.”
Sama Hyeon nodded at his brother’s words.
“Let’s see~ Open sesame.”
Sama Hyeon reached out and crushed the padlock, tearing it off.
Crack—
The lock was torn apart by sheer grip strength alone.
Sama Hyeon opened the box without hesitation, as if prepared to counter any trap that awaited him.
There were no poison pellets. Nor did any human flesh appear within.
What lay inside was….
“A hairpin?”
An old hairpin. A very old hairpin sat there.
Sama Hyeon’s expression hardened in an instant—he recognized it.
But for me, it was something I had never seen before.
“It looks like an object with quite a story. Do you have any idea what it is?”
“The first hairpin I ever bought for Hye-a. She should still have it, shouldn’t she?”
I rubbed my chin thoughtfully.
“Then this is a fake that looks identical?”
“No. This one looks genuine too… because when I gave it to Hye-a back then, I made a mark right here…. It’s a secret only she and I know.”
On one side of the hairpin, a zigzag pattern was scratched in with a fingernail.
In that moment, I wiped my face with my palm.
“Brother, do you know something?”
“First… it could be a misunderstanding. Let’s ask Hye-a if she has a hairpin similar to this one.”
My eyes grew dark.
* * *
Upon confirmation, Sama-hye did indeed possess that hairpin.
“Of course! You gave it to me when you didn’t have a household of your own. You said you hoped I’d live long enough to wear it, didn’t you?”
Now that I thought about it, the hairpin’s design was quite mature.
Sama-hye brought her own hairpin from her room.
“Will this do? What do you need it for?”
“It’s nothing special~”
“You’ve been acting strange since earlier. It’s really nothing, right?”
Sama Hyeon nodded.
“Of course~ I was just thinking of getting our Hye-a a pretty new hairpin, so I was taking a look.”
“That’s suspicious.”
Though she said so, Sama-hye couldn’t pry any further.
The medical staff came rushing over, shouting “Lord! You need to come right now! It’s urgent!”
Sama-hye clicked her tongue.
“Tsk, so busy. Alright. See you later!”
With those words, she rushed off.
Sama Hyeon watched her departing figure for a moment, then gazed long at the hairpin she had handed him.
I asked him.
“It was an object with quite a history.”
“Yes. When Hye-a was young, she wanted to die so badly that I had to do something. I knew there was no way to make it better, really. She just kept getting worse day by day. Still, I wished she would live a long life.”
The only persuasion the young Sama Hyeon could offer back then.
I couldn’t tell a sick child stories of great heroes, nor could I urge her to live with determination.
So that day, Sama Hyeon scraped together every coin he’d earned and bought the most beautiful hairpin he could find.
It was a mature choice for Sama-hye to make.
He had to fast for three more days to afford that hairpin, but such things didn’t matter.
At that moment, Sama Hyeon placed the hairpin in Sama-hye’s hands and begged her—do nothing else, just live until you can no longer wear this.
“Usually when that happens, people think about how their family is suffering for them and try to do something about it, you know? That’s what usually happens. But when someone is too sick, they don’t have the strength to even hear such things, Hyeong.”
Sama Hyeon turns the hairpin over in his hands.
His touch is careful, afraid the ornament might fall off.
“Hye-a told me back then that she wanted to die. She asked me to just put her in a coffin. Well, we didn’t have money for a coffin, so in a straw mat instead. She told me to live my own life.”
Clever Sama-hye knew exactly how much her brother would have to starve to buy this hairpin.
She knew that with no cure in sight, the torment would continue.
She knew that as long as she lived, her brother would keep sinking deeper into this quagmire alongside her.
“You endured that situation for quite a long time.”
“Yes. If Hyeong had been even a little later, I probably would have made an irreversible choice.”
Sama Hyeon said this and pulled the hairpin from the box in his sleeve.
The ornaments and major scratches were identical.
But the one Sama-hye had given him bore fine scratches—marks made as adult Sama-hye wore it daily.
Meanwhile, the one in the box was pristine.
Instead, the ornament’s luster had faded to a dull yellow, as if far more time had passed.
“Hyeong. Who left this here? You know, don’t you? You must.”
Jin Cheon-hee exhales softly.
“Well… yes. Shall we have some tea?”
Jin Cheon-hee made his decision. He thought it would take quite long, but surprisingly, the choice came lightly, almost effortlessly.
And for good reason.
Sama Hyeon and Jin Cheon-hee are warriors of the Gangho.
But Sama-hye is a doctor.
She has learned martial arts well enough, but uses it only to save lives.
She has never killed anyone in her life, never seriously injured anyone.
Just a doctor.
A hardworking doctor.
An innocent child caught up in all this.
Would his heart have been easier if Hye-a had been a warrior who lived by the sword instead?
“I’m not sure if you’ll… believe this.”
Master already knows this story. But this is the first time I’m telling it to Sama Hyeon.
Where should I even begin? And how much should I tell?
Even if I speak, will he believe me?
* * *
After pouring the tea, Jin Cheon-hee and Sama Hyeon looked at each other.
“….”
Quite some time passed, yet Jin Cheon-hee remained silent, staring into his teacup. His dark pupils flickered and wavered.
He was hesitating.
The hand bringing the tea to my lips felt strangely weightless.
It seemed as though I might drift away at any moment.
What on earth was this man before me thinking?
Sama Hyeon waited quietly for his brother to speak.
At last, Jin Cheon-hee parted his lips.
“Hyeon-a. Do you know what happens when you dream for a long time? If you never woke up and continued living within the dream—would that be reality for you, or would it still be a dream?”
“It’s just like the parable of Zhuangzi and the butterfly.”
*Sip.*
“You know it well.”
Zhuangzi once dreamed he became a butterfly.
Upon waking, he asked, “Was I Zhuangzi dreaming of being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi?”
Why was my brother saying such things?
Even the perceptive Sama Hyeon found it difficult to grasp his meaning this time.
“The world within that dream had no martial arts, no spiritual creatures, and no sorcery like that. Even there, I was a doctor, but….”
Jin Cheon-hee broke into laughter.
When I came to this world and received the Eight Extraordinary Meridians technique from my Master, didn’t I dream of becoming a butterfly?
‘Of course, it was less a beautiful dream like those in the parables and more of a nightmare.’
My eyes trembled slightly.
Was revealing the truth really this difficult?
Sama Hyeon listened to his brother’s words with patience.
“And so… somehow I woke from the dream and found myself here.”
“At first, you thought this place was the dream?”
“Ah, yes. But this place turned out to be real too.”
“And interestingly enough… everything I learned in that dream turned out to be actually possible here. So that world was real as well.”
Surely this would be difficult to believe.
Even I would find such words hard to accept.
“….”
Sama Hyeon listened to Jin Cheon-hee without even blinking.
‘Wow, this is a bit frightening.’
Has this fellow’s gaze always been like this? Now that I’m conscious of it, it’s even more terrifying.
‘If he doesn’t believe me, could I get away with saying it was a lie? But Hye-a is involved, so that would probably be difficult.’
But this moment had to be the truth.
No matter how Sama Hyeon chose to accept it.
“The Baek Rin Divine Elixir was also created thanks to that dream I had long ago. And so, as I adapted to living in this place… I met you.”
“Me?”
Jin Cheon-hee gripped the teacup tightly.
The warmth of the cooling tea felt like that of a baby bird.
I continued speaking while forcibly accepting that warmth.
“Yes…. So I was incredibly shocked. Because I saw you in the dream as well.”
“How?”
“Well… I suppose you could call it a sort of prophecy. Something similar to that.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say the word “novel”—something I’d once read merely to pass the time.
I couldn’t dare admit that your tragedies had entertained me, that they’d become my daily vitality.
Back then, it was merely a fictional story contained within printed characters.
But it wasn’t fiction after all.
That’s why I called it a prophecy.
I told my Master something similar, so our stories align without contradiction.
‘Of course, that was only when he believed me.’
I couldn’t meet Sama Hyeon’s eyes as I continued speaking.
“After Hye-a died… you became a villain, slaughtering people in resentment against the world.”
“Hmm~ Is that so?”
“Yes. You secretly killed Hao Munzhu and pretended to be him… and eventually you died as a villain.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say that you died by Yeo Ha-ryun’s hand.
Because now both Sama Hyeon and Yeo Ha-ryun had become precious to me.
I force myself to drink the tea.
The lukewarm liquid wets my lips.
Liar.
It felt as though Sama Hyeon might call me that at any moment.
‘Why are my fingertips trembling like this?’
Why am I shaking so badly? What is there to fear?
But my expression and voice are fine. I appear composed.
“Ah, well, when I encountered that Hao Munzhu from the dream in reality… I was so shocked. I never thought I’d actually meet him. And then suddenly, I thought I had to save him.”
“…So you didn’t save me because I was a good person? Hyeong?”

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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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