Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 853

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 853
“Even among the absolute masters who have reached Hwagyeong, those who haven’t separately trained in external martial arts have surprisingly soft and fragile bodies. It’s not for nothing that assassins can kill masters. One unexpected stab from a hidden blade, and they’re on their way to the underworld.”
Eon-gwon Gaju’s words were correct.
Even an absolute master of Hwagyeong could fall to a commoner’s blade if they let their guard down.
Did they not know external martial arts?
However, there were almost no warriors like me who haphazardly collected and learned martial arts outside their sect’s teachings.
My sworn brother Sama Hyeon resembled me in that he learned various miscellaneous techniques, but Cheonwoo only learned the Mudang Faction’s supreme techniques until I taught him something else.
This stemmed from a kind of moral concept, something I understood well.
‘Ah… I overlooked the master-disciple relationship too much.’
Jin Cheon-hee, a martial arts novel fanatic professor (feat. middle-aged charm), knew this well.
These exclusive uncles of Gangho had an unusual obsession with their sect’s traditions and history, and they couldn’t bear to see the Mudang Faction using the Zongnan Sect’s martial arts!
Even if.
The Namgung Family were to collapse and their martial arts released as open source, they would secretly mix it into their own techniques, but openly…
‘I am the abbot of Shaolin Temple! From now on, I shall unleash the Ten Thousand Flowers Heavenly Rain!’
‘As a Taoist Priest of the Mudang Faction, I shall display the supreme technique! Behold! Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Strikes! Bloom! Plum Blossoms!’
‘The enemy approaches. All bandits of the Green Forest, deploy the One Hundred Eight Arhats Formation! Witness the power of the Green Forest!’
…such things did not happen.
But there was someone doing it here.
‘Hmm. But why hasn’t anyone criticized me for this… or rather, couldn’t they?’
My master Jegalling was the Gaju of the last Jegallim Family, which had been exterminated, and a walking compendium of the Jegallim Family’s martial secrets.
And portions of the Jegallim Family’s martial arts had spread throughout Gangho like illegally copied game source code on some pirate site.
That’s why even the Namgung Family used them.
The lineage of the Jegallim Family was already severed.
There was no longer a family-based faction or organization, only the Medical Guild remained.
Moreover, that Medical Guild bore the Jegallim Family name nowhere.
Of course, now that I had become the chairman of the Orin Society, I had displayed myself as a martial faction to all under heaven, but tracing the organization’s origins revealed no connection to the Jegallim Family.
I used the Jegallim Family’s martial arts, and I remained as the final successor of the Jegallim Family.
But there were no Jegallim Family warriors, and organizations like the Five Elements Sword Formation that had been the Jegallim Family’s pride no longer existed.
They were all dead.
Because of this.
No one pointed fingers at me for haphazardly learning the strange martial arts I had brought and the techniques I had improved—or rather, they couldn’t.
How dare you use martial arts from other sects and families that were destroyed without roots?
The moment someone pointed that finger.
The specter of the past would return and speak thus.
‘Indeed. Was it not because my family was exterminated by martial arts thieves, and my blood relatives were tortured to death?’
And whoever heard that answer would not die in peace.
Having thought this far, I shook my head slightly and exhaled.
‘Truly, Gangho was too harsh on Master. Far too harsh.’
With that thought, I looked at Eon-gwon Gaju.
“Then this test ends here, it seems. Is the next corpse puppet similar?”
“Truth be told, this is the real masterpiece.”
Eon-gwon Gaju rang the bell once more.
The lid of the final coffin opened silently, and a corpse puppet rose.
This one was extraordinarily peculiar.
First, the corpse puppet itself had opened the lid quietly and emerged on its own.
Second, a dark greenish aura swirled around its entire body.
And I could tell what that aura was the moment I saw it.
Poison.
“I’ve named it the Poisonous Undead.”
Poison!
“Oh… this is quite remarkable.”
‘I’ve never seen a corpse puppet like this even in the original Jicheon Cheonma. A poison-attributed corpse puppet? That’s genuinely rare.’
My eyes sparkled like starlight.
And watching me, Cheonwoo and Sama Hyeon both sighed inwardly.
‘Hyeong’s chronic condition has flared up again.’
‘Hyeong really does love corpse puppets~’
Among doctors, there are surprisingly many who enjoy corpse puppets.
Hyeong was one of them.
“But its behavior doesn’t seem like a typical corpse puppet at all.”
“A trace of self-awareness remains.”
“Pardon?”
I looked at Eon-gwon Gaju in surprise.
“When a person dies, the hun-baek separates from the body, does it not?”
“Yes, I understand somewhat.”
“Hmm, then this will be easier to explain. Hun-baek is the combination of hun and baek. Normally, both hun and baek should disperse, but often only the hun vanishes while the baek remains. Usually, that becomes a ghost or a wandering spirit that eventually disappears. But very rarely… the baek remains within the body itself.”
“I see?”
“Haven’t you heard such tales in folklore? Stories of corpses rising and wandering about?”
“Every village has such common ghost stories.”
“This corpse puppet is such a case. So… the habits from when it was alive remain faintly in the body. I obtained it with great difficulty.”
Eon-gwon Gaju stroked his beard with a corpse-like expression, looking quite pleased with himself.
At this point, I was beginning to suspect this man was actually a corpse puppet pretending to be human.
“I see…”
“In such cases, it can even behave like a person. Isn’t that fascinating?”
“Yes, but then how do you control it?”
Normally, corpse puppets have almost no self-awareness and focus solely on attacking the living.
They are controlled through sorcery.
But if it’s like this, behaving so human-like, how exactly is it controlled?
“Of course. Money.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Money? You say money?
“We repaid the grudges she harbored in life on her behalf, and in exchange, she agreed to serve our family for fifty years. In her case, she was worried about her remaining family. She agreed to work for fifty years in exchange for us caring for them. We even provide her a monthly salary—half of which she uses herself, and half she sends to her family.”
“Wow… But she’s definitely still alive, right? Her soul is properly in the afterlife, correct?”
“What exactly do you take us for!”
Eon-gwon Gaju erupted in anger.
And rightfully so.
What I had just described was sorcery of the highest order—a forbidden technique that should never be practiced.
Meanwhile, I stared intently, genuinely wondering if she truly had no soul.
‘I don’t sense any spiritual presence at all…’
It was different from the sorcerous tree I had seen in Sae-oe in the past.
That tree had felt saturated with human souls, but this was different.
It was completely empty.
‘Judging purely by sensation, she’s identical to an ordinary corpse puppet.’
I asked.
“Where does she spend the monthly salary?”
“She just keeps it in a pouch by her pillow. It seems she’s repeating a habit from when she was alive. So that’s merely an echo—mimicking her living habits, but ultimately not truly her. In any case, I ask for your cooperation.”
The Poisonous Undead demonstrated a fist technique.
That alone was already completely different from ordinary corpse puppets.
And the attack that followed was surprisingly a palm strike!
Boom!
As she extended her open palm, a venom-laden palm force erupted from her hand.
I extended my hand to meet it, countering with the Mudang Faction’s Taeching Mountain Water palm force.
Boom-boom!
The two palm forces collided and exploded in mid-air, spewing venom in all directions.
Cheonwoo gasped in amazement.
‘She launched it like a surprise attack, but he immediately countered and blocked it?’
That meant he had even accounted for the variable that she could unleash a palm strike beforehand.
But that wasn’t all.
I deliberately held the venom for one breath.
‘Hmm. It’s a paralysis toxin. Quite potent, but… not strong enough to overcome my toxin resistance. Well, I do have the Black Poison Dragon sealed in my left arm after all. However… by ordinary Hwagyeong standards… it would be quite difficult.’
Greater inner energy grants resistance to toxins.
Pure and abundant inner force can even expel venom, so the universal power of inner qi was truly remarkable.
Poison is a serious threat.
Even absolute masters who have reached Hwagyeong would suffer greatly trying to expel the venom if bitten by the poisonous insects of the southern regions.
If exposed to such toxins during a life-or-death battle, it could become a fatal situation.
That’s why everyone feared the Sichuan Tang Family.
The sparring grew increasingly intense.
The Poisonous Undead used martial techniques as if she were truly alive, and from what I could tell, her techniques appeared to be from Shaolin Temple.
Meaning she had been a lay disciple of Shaolin.
‘And she even mastered poison on top of that?’
I couldn’t know what kind of life this person had lived, but I could sense she had a tragic fate worthy of several martial arts novels.
However, ultimately.
Since poison had no effect, it could not become my opponent.
Boom!
The Poisonous Undead flew backward after taking a palm strike to the abdomen.
The Poisonous Undead tried to rise, but the Five Elements true qi spreading from its abdomen prevented it from controlling its body properly.
“How did you manage that?”
“I infused the Five Elements true qi’s mutual generation and mutual restraint effects directly into its body. It might kill a person, but I wondered if it would work differently on a corpse puppet… and it seems I was right.”
“Different how?”
“I thought the Five Elements true qi would interfere with the corpse puppet’s internal energy and restrict its movements. After all, a corpse puppet is ultimately refined through sorcery, isn’t it? I’m simply disrupting that.”
In modern terms.
‘Add a virus to a perfectly functioning program and the system crashes. Even one wrong command line causes everything to malfunction.’
“An unexpected weakness. Excellent.”
Eon-gwon Gaju nodded and wrote something down quickly.
Shortly after, the Poisonous Undead rose again.
“That’s enough. Thank you for your effort.”
The Poisonous Undead saluted and walked back into its coffin on its own.
I watched its movements carefully.
“Thank you for your cooperation. I’m truly grateful.”
“You’re too kind.”
Thus, the test of the corpse puppet commissioned by the Jin Ju-eonga family came to an end.
* * *
“Brother~ there’s something that smells off.”
“I think it’s suspicious too.”
“I knew it, right?”
The three sworn brothers were being guided to their quarters.
A servant from the Jin Ju-eonga family led the way ahead, but the three spoke openly.
There was still no problem.
They had shaped their qi into a barrier, preventing sound from leaking out around the three of them.
Any master who had reached Hwagyeong and mastered qi manipulation could do this.
Since telepathy was one-to-one communication, this was how they conversed instead.
“I’ve only heard in legends of a corpse puppet that retains memories from life. Seeing them displayed so openly is unsettling…”
I knew the novel called “Jicheon Cheonma.” Such a corpse puppet had never appeared in that novel.
Of course, there were descriptions suggesting such things existed.
The passage about the Half-Soul Corpse Puppet was one such reference.
-The Half-Soul Corpse Puppet is a cursed corpse puppet that prevents the spirit of the deceased from leaving the corpse. Though it appears as if alive, it ultimately succumbs to madness due to the irreconcilable contradiction between death and the separation of body and spirit. The result is inevitable destruction, and its creation is so difficult that no one has succeeded since ancient times.
Yet something resembling such a Half-Soul Corpse Puppet had appeared so brazenly?
The spirit departed, and the corpse supposedly happened to be inhabited by a hundred coincidences, but was it truly just good fortune?
Something was deeply wrong.
Especially.
I had recently heard that the Heavenly Mechanism had completely scattered and the age of Chaos Heaven had arrived.
Just looking at Eon Jeong-mu, I could sense something was amiss with how things were unfolding.
“This is turning out to be quite entertaining.”
As I broke into mad laughter, Sama Hyeon joined in with the same delirious chuckle.
“Truly my brother. Rather than fear, he laughs.”
When the two of us began laughing together, only Cheonwoo shook his head in dismay.
I spoke.
“Well, thanks to this, it seems we’ll get a decent book out of it.”
“The Eongaju paid good money to bring you here, intending to exploit you.”
We’ll see who ends up being exploited when all is said and done.
“Anyway, I should double-check whether the Eon Jeong-mu Grand Master I first met actually had a soul.”
I hadn’t done it before out of courtesy to a living person, but there’s no helping it now.
With that said, I made subtle preparations to leave.
“Brother, you’ve already inserted a needle into someone else’s family’s secret technique, and now you’re just going to freely check whether he has a soul or not? Is this really okay?”
Cheonwoo was the sole voice of reason among the three of us.
“It’s fine! This is all for saving lives, saving lives!”
“Our brother is doing it, so who’s going to say anything~!”
Watching the two pairs of eyes gleaming with madness, Cheonwoo’s stomach began to ache.
Cheonwoo quietly called out to Gwon Je.
‘I never thought I would miss Mudang Mountain.’

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————