I Became the Oriental Doctor for Divine Beasts - Chapter 2

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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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Physician of Divine Beasts
#2
In an instant, a chill crawled down my spine.
I jerked my upper body backward reflexively from where I stood on the staircase and shot back, “What—what are you talking about? I don’t see anything!”

“Hmm. That so?”
Baek Eun-ho narrowed his eyes, studying me as though he could pierce straight through to my core.
A brief, suffocating standoff.
After a moment, he began descending the stairs slowly, as if his interest had waned.
“Phew…….”
The moment a long exhale escaped my lips—
Whip!
That tiger’s tail swept past my eyes in a flash.
“……!!”
My heart dropped like a stone.
Startled, I lost my footing on the stairs.
My body tipped backward, and both arms flailed desperately through empty air.
Thud—!
Just as my vision tilted, a firm hand seized my wrist.
Baek Eun-ho closed the distance in one stride, catching me, and together we descended the rest of the steps.
Then he spoke in a low, blunt tone.
“See? You can see it after all.”
“…….”
I didn’t have the nerve to keep lying after being caught red-handed.
Embarrassed, I turned my gaze away and swatted his hand.
His slate-blue eyes narrowed once more.
“And you saw it yesterday too, when you were treating him. That golden aura—Spiritual Energy. And the black aura, Tainted Qi.”
My breath caught.
How could this man possibly know that?
It felt as though something beyond my control was unfolding.
I squeezed my eyes shut and cried out defensively, “No, I really don’t know!”

Then something astonishing happened.
Baek Eun-ho’s threatening, confident demeanor crumbled in an instant.
His head bowed deeply, and in a low, desperate voice that betrayed none of his earlier arrogance, he said, “My father needs you to make a full recovery. Only you can do it. Please help.”

In that moment, I saw past his wealth and status.
I saw the face of a son clinging desperately to save his father.
But at the same time, a sharp intuition cut through me: if I agreed to this request, my peaceful, ordinary life would be turned completely upside down.
Noticing my expression waver, he continued rapidly, “That black aura you call Tainted Qi—ordinary human doctors can’t sense it, and obviously can’t cure it.”
“But yesterday when I placed needles, it disappeared? Shouldn’t he be fine now?”
“So you did see it.”
“Ugh…….”
When I let out a short sound of frustration, he fixed his gaze on me once more.
“Go Yeon-hui, I formally request your medical care for my father. This isn’t how I usually ask people for favors.”
“Look, this whole situation—it all sounds insane to me, and I don’t want any part of it.”
I shoved his back with all my strength. “It’s almost time to open the clinic anyway. Please go.”

Yet he didn’t budge an inch.
“Go Yeon-hui. You are a physician, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then are you the kind of physician who turns their back on a patient?”
“……!”
Those words struck at my deepest core.
My inability to pass by a suffering person was less a choice than it was a habit, ingrained in my very nature.
Like a crow drawn to glitter, like a moth to flame.
I fingered the necklace at my throat and ventured carefully, “……What is the chairman’s condition, exactly?”

He pursed his lips before shaking his head. “Thanks to you, we’ve passed the critical stage. But it’s not a condition human doctors can fully treat. Without your care, we don’t know when his vessels might block again. If that happens a second time, he might not open his eyes again.”
“How did he end up with this Tainted Qi in the first place?”

He moved his lips silently, then shook his head. “That… I’ll tell you once you’ve made your decision and contact me on this number.”
He withdrew a Business Card and pressed it into my hand, then finally turned and left the clinic.
Soon after, the bodyguards stationed around the courtyard withdrew in orderly fashion, and the commotion evaporated like a lie.
Baekho Group
Executive Director Baek Eun-ho
Mobile. 010-XXXX-XXXX
I stared blankly down at the letters on the card.
The glimmer of gold lettering on white paper—that alone told me this was no dream.
* * *
By nine o’clock in the morning, I unlocked the clinic door out of habit, but my mind had already wandered into the clouds.
The tick of the wall clock’s second hand in the treatment room. The faint scent of medicinal herbs pervading the whole clinic. The chirp of sparrows outside.
Everything was exactly as it always was, yet my head would not settle.
Perhaps it was a mercy that no patient had shown up by ten in the morning.
In this state, I had no confidence I could treat anyone properly.
“Mom……. What in the world is all this……?”
I pressed one temple hard and retraced everything that had happened.
The heir to Baekho Group couldn’t possibly have a hobby of wearing animal costumes. And even if he did, there’d be no reason to show me.
Or could it be some sort of elaborate con?
But what would Baekho Group gain from scamming a small neighborhood clinic?
‘I’m just an ordinary, unremarkable person.’
And what was that strange message about a quest?
That translucent window that had appeared before my eyes.
But no matter how hard I tried now, it wouldn’t appear again.
‘Does it only show up at critical moments?’
I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
As I sat dumbly in the treatment room chair, there was a light thud—.
Alfred hopped onto the desk with the sound.
His white fur gleamed in the sunlight, and his odd eyes—one gold, one blue—swept lazily over me.
[Yeon-hui. Are you ready to talk now?]
I laughed with complete abandon. “Wow~ A cat talking is hardly surprising anymore.”
[That’s good. What you just met isn’t an ordinary human. He’s a Tiger Divine Beast, one of the Twelve Divine Beasts.]
“Twelve Divine Beasts……? The puppy squad? Dduk-ee and Dung-ee and Ho-chi and…?”
When I began reciting the opening to an anime from my childhood, Alfred’s nose wrinkled ever so slightly.
[What is that? Anyway, you know the legend of the Twelve Divine Beasts, don’t you? The one where the Jade Emperor gathered animals to choose twelve Divine Protectors to watch over the world?]
“Oh, I know. On the first morning of the new year, the animals race, and the ones who arrive in order get assigned their places.”
[Right. Those twelve beasts became Divine Beasts and each formed their own clan, and each was granted a power to protect the world. That power is Spiritual Energy—a warm, golden aura like the sun. And the opposite of that is the wicked aura called Tainted Qi. Dark, murky as tainted water.]
The more he explained, the more my head throbbed.
“So the Twelve Divine Beasts are really a thing……?”
[Why are you so shocked? There are also things like goblins and nine-tailed foxes, you know. Though they’re far inferior to Divine Beasts.]
“What?!”
I’d hoped for clarification, but all I got was an even more bewildering explanation.
I pressed my temples harder and asked, “Okay, fine. But why can I see all this? I’ve never even seen a ghost before—I’m just an ordinary person.”
Alfred studied my eyes carefully.
[Yeon-hui. You’re not an ordinary human. Your father was human, but your mother was a Divine Beast.]
“……What? My mother?”
My eyes went wide. My hand, which had been pressing my temple, froze in place.
My father had passed away when I was young.
The two of them were a couple of practitioners of Oriental medicine who’d met in medical school and married. After that, Mother alone had kept this Baekmiodang clinic and raised little me.
Then, when I turned seventeen.
Something changed about Mother.
She wouldn’t smile when I looked at her. Her eyes would dart away the moment they met mine. Her words grew shorter and shorter.
Once she even said something coldly out of nowhere:
─ “Yeon-hui, you can take care of yourself now, can’t you?”
─ “Mom……. What are you suddenly saying?”
─ “I’ve done my duty as a mother well enough. I want to live more comfortably now too.”
I’d convinced myself it was just a crude joke, or perhaps she was simply tired that day, and I’d let it pass.
But that Chuseok break that year—
Mother suddenly packed a bag without a word and left the house. Days later, she returned to me as a cold corpse.
‘Mom, what were you? You left me alone so miserably, and you were hiding such a secret all along?’
Ding—.
In that moment of confusion, the clinic’s door chime rang.
Then came a familiar voice.
“Oh my, my back~.”
It was Jeom-soon, one of our clinic’s regulars.
In a clinic without staff, I handled everything from reception to treatment to cleaning.
“Alfred, we’ll talk later!”
I managed to collect myself and hurried out of the treatment room.
I was about to greet her with “Welcome,” when—
‘Gasp.’
I nearly let out a surprised sound.
Around Jeom-soon’s lower back, black aura was clustered thickly, and a pale-blue aura was stagnant, not flowing properly—I could see it clearly.
‘Why is something strange showing up again?!’
I hid my inner turmoil and guided her to the treatment room.
I placed the needles as usual, and then…….
Suddenly, the Myo-anseok Necklace at my throat glowed softly.
As the light traveled along the needles, the black aura faded and the pale-blue aura began to flow smoothly.
‘What on earth is this……?’
When the treatment ended, exhaustion crashed over me as though I’d just completed a long-distance run.
Dragging my feet back to the treatment room, Alfred—who had been licking his paw—lifted his head to look at me.
“Something feels different. This time I saw white light instead of gold.”
[You’ve opened your Spirit Eyes. Your Healing and Purification ability has awakened. That old woman has no Spiritual Energy, so her aura shows as white.]
“What’s that supposed to—…. Ugh. Anyway, let’s finish what we were talking about first.”
I collapsed into the chair. “So what was Mother among the Twelve Divine Beasts?”
[She wasn’t among them.]
What?
My eyes went wide as he continued, “[The cat from the legend—the one who was deceived by the rat’s lie and didn’t make it into the Twelve Divine Beasts. That was your mother. She was the Myo Clan’s thirteenth Divine Beast, and more specifically, the only daughter of the Myo Clan’s clan head. I’m a descendant of the butler family who served that household for generations.]
“The thirteenth Divine Beast……?”
[Marriage between Divine Beasts and humans was originally forbidden, but your mother renounced her clan and chose your father. I, too, followed the person I’d served since childhood and left the Myo Clan.]
Suddenly, memories with Mother surfaced.
“Ah, so that’s why Mother named you Alfred? Because you’re a butler?”
I’d once asked her. Why would a cat living in a traditional Korean clinic suddenly have a name like ‘Alfred’?
She’d smiled and said she’d taken it from Batman’s butler’s name.
Now it all made sense.
“Then why did Chairman Baek Ho-jung end up infected with Tainted Qi?”
[I don’t know either. You’ll have to ask the heir of the Tiger Clan, Baek Eun-ho, about that.]
“Can… can only I cure it?”
I swallowed hard and clenched my fists on my knees.
[Spiritual Energy is a sacred power granted by the Jade Emperor himself. If it’s damaged, Divine Beasts have no way to restore it—they simply fade from existence. But only the Myo Clan was given the power to purify and heal it.]
It was a power the Jade Emperor had bestowed out of pity for the cat, who had fallen victim to the rat’s deception.
Alfred licked his paw and added, “[It’s a power you inherited from your mother.]
I slowly nodded.
“Ah……. So that’s why Mother said her maternal family had all been physicians for generations.”
[To be precise, the women of the direct line were all healers. The Myo Clan’s power passes only to female children. Your Healing and Purification ability comes from your mother.]
I pictured Chairman Baek Ho-jung in my mind.
Stroke tends to recur within 48 to 72 hours of onset.
If a second attack came and human doctors couldn’t stop it, he could die—or spend the rest of his life paralyzed.
Crunch.
I bit my lip and lowered my head.
The years came back to me—years spent living cozily with Mother, then from high school onward, surviving alone through sheer will, keeping this Baekmiodang standing.
‘I honestly don’t want to remember those days again.’
I’d never forget how terrified I was when suddenly left alone in this world at seventeen.
I resented Mother for abandoning me so coldly, and I resented her family on her side for never reaching out, for turning me away.
I’d somehow scraped into Oriental medicine school, but I’d spent years drowning in student loans, squeezing time for tutoring just to graduate.
I’d only just finished paying off the debt, and I’d been looking forward to living a little more at ease.
‘If I agree, it feels like I’m inviting trouble…….’
But.
Baek Eun-ho’s words—”Then are you the kind of physician who turns their back on a patient?”—still pierced my heart like an awl.
“……Sigh.”
That’s right. A patient’s life comes before my own comfort.
I finally pulled the Business Card from my pocket and dialed the number.

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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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