Longevity - Chapter 38

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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 38: Mountain Retreat
Even after entering the western forest, Jang Saeng did not stop for some time.
Though it was early spring and the leaves had not yet budded, the branches of long-grown trees tangled high overhead. The forest was so dense that from the road, even the shadows of people within would have been obscured.
Jang Saeng pressed his back against a thick tree trunk and regulated his breathing. Neither the sound of empty cart wheels nor Ba Tu-ru’s horse hooves reached his ears.
As the silence settled, Seok-gyo became all the more vivid in his mind.
Jeon Jin-gung had coughed blood as he fell into the river. Yi Jung-yong and Jin Ip-chu remained on the north side of the bridge, facing two masters. Had Ba Tu-ru hidden himself in the order Jang Saeng had taught him?
Jang Saeng turned north a few paces.

‘If you stop, the path three men opened means nothing.’

Jeon Jin-gung’s voice echoed in his ears as if he stood there still.
Jang Saeng’s feet stilled.

“I understand, sir.”

There was no one to hear his answer.
Seok-gyo lay more than two hundred ri away. Following the road would take four or five days; cutting through the mountains, who knew whether ten or fifteen. Even if he turned back now, no trace of the struggle would remain.
He considered hiding near a fork in the path to watch for pursuers. But his opponents were masters who could shorten mountain roads even from horseback. The chance they would hear his breath before he caught sight of them was great.
Jang Saeng turned his back to the north.
He could not squander the time his sworn brothers had bought with their lives by going back to undo what had been done.

“First, I have to live.”

He adjusted Bo-tung-i on his back and headed west. At his waist hung Han-wol. He did not know how to wield a blade, but standing empty-handed should he meet a tiger or wild dog in an unfamiliar mountain was no longer necessary.

Jang Saeng did not plunge straight into the deep forest. He walked diagonally through the northern woods so as not to lose the direction of the road. He maintained a distance at which the path would not be visible, yet the wind-opened direction would not escape him.
After two shi-chen had passed, his mouth grew dry. He pulled Hwa-so from Bo-tung-i, licked only the powder on his lips, and put it back.

“Water first.”

Each time the wind scraped the branches, he stopped his steps. Mistaking the sound of wind for flowing water, he changed direction and walked in vain twice over.
On the third attempt, a glimmer of sunlight wavered below the northern slope.
Jang Saeng descended, kicking through fallen leaves. His foot caught on a stone and he caught himself on his palm, but rose at once.
It was a small stream, no wider than two arm-spans.
He knelt and cupped water in both hands, drinking in quick succession. As the cold water went down his throat, his foggy mind cleared a little.
Only then did he take out Hwa-so and bite off a piece.
The stream could be crossed in a single step. Jang Saeng set foot on the far bank, then looked back upstream.
Mountain Village creeks like this often formed pools in low places. Such places held fish and shrimp.

“If there’s food, I can last several days.”

He stopped his westward progress and turned to follow the stream upstream.
Several dozen steps on, a small pool appeared between rocks. It was perhaps three arm-spans across and no deeper than two arm-lengths. In water so clear the bottom was visible, finger-sized fish swam leisurely.
When Jang Saeng dipped his hand, the school of fish scattered. But before he could roll up his sleeve, they drifted back to the shallows.

“If a man had come, you’d have vanished first.”

The water’s edge bore only animal tracks. There was no ash from a fire, no grass pressed down by water-drawing. Jang Saeng searched under stones and between reeds on suspicion, but found not a single fishing line or fish scale.
The fact that easy food remained untouched was most telling. The sun was already caught on the western mountainside.
Jang Saeng set down Bo-tung-i.

“Here.”

Finding a place to sleep proved harder than expected. Spacious caves reeked of beasts; rock crevices that looked clean were blocked inside before his body could fit.
After much climbing and descending, he found on the western slope of the pool a place where two large rocks leaned diagonally against each other. It was narrow, but lying down would hide his body.
Jang Saeng drew Han-wol.
Slice.
A young tree the thickness of a forearm fell in one stroke. It pained him to use such a precious blade for cutting wood, but without a hand axe, it was the most useful tool he had.
When he laid the branch across the two rocks, one end was too short and it slipped.
Thud. Jang Saeng pulled his foot back quickly.

“If Ba Tu-ru were here, one stone would’ve done it.”

The image of Ba Tu-ru’s massive back came to mind. Ordinarily, he would have grumbled while moving the heaviest stones first.
Jang Saeng propped up a short branch as a lever and cut a longer piece of wood to place on top of it.

“If he can’t be here, I’ll have to manage it myself.”

Two branches alone concealed the crevice in the rock, but without leaves, evening light and cold wind seeped straight through.
Jang Saeng picked up the Han-wol again.
Only after more than ten branches did the sky disappear from view. He weighted them down with bluestone from the surrounding area. The branches didn’t shift in the wind, and it seemed the structure wouldn’t collapse easily even if an animal tried to tear through it from above.
He scattered dried pine needles across the fresh earth exposed on the surface. From below, looking up, the rocky crevice vanished—only an ordinary pile of stones remained.
By the time he narrowed the entrance with stones, night had fallen.
Jang Saeng was about to sit down when he surveyed the gap in the darkness. It was just wide enough for an animal to poke its head through.

“A door, too.”

He stripped the bark from the remaining branches to make cordage, then wove the cut wood together. Only after confirming that the crude door panel caught on the stone crevice and wouldn’t slide easily did he set down the blade.
His body was utterly exhausted, but his mind eased somewhat. The roof and door existed because of his labor. The hours spent working diligently with his hands at least hadn’t lied.

“As long as no one comes, I can endure.”

He hadn’t finished the half portion of Hwa-so. Jang Saeng wrapped what remained in cloth, set it by his head, and fell asleep.
* * *
He opened his eyes around the fifth watch.
Inside the rocky crevice was warmer than he’d expected. He washed his face in the stream, gathered an armload of fallen dried grass, and spread it across the stone floor.
Then he fastened the Bo-tung-i once more.
This time it wasn’t to leave.
Sitting beneath a tree about ten paces from the stone shelter, he could see both the entrance and the path down to the stream. It was a position where, even if someone discovered his hiding place, he wouldn’t be trapped inside.
Jang Saeng tested escape routes—once down the eastern slope, once behind the western rocks. Either way was faster than crawling out of the shelter.
During the day he would stay here observing his surroundings; only at night would he return to the shelter.
When he untied the Bo-tung-i, the Gun-ryang appeared. That he’d taken his seven-tenths portion when dividing it with Ba Tu-ru at the fork in the road was no accident.
Yi Jung-yong’s voice came back to him.

‘Spend money only on fares and food. Don’t tell strangers where you’re headed.’

If he didn’t meet people, he’d have no reason to disclose his destination. If he didn’t enter villages, he’d have little need to spend coin.
Na Yang-ja’s request had to be honored. But there was no deadline for when he must deliver the Hoicheon Geumdan

to Gakjo Mountain.
Jang Saeng divided the Gun-ryang into small daily portions.

“I’ll hold out here until the rumors die down.”

This decision he made without consulting anyone. Yi Jung-yong, who had plotted his route, and Jin Ip-chu, who had spotted the gap, were no longer at his side. Now, if he misjudged, he alone would bear the cost.
Jang Saeng chewed on the Hwa-so he’d saved yesterday and opened the upper volume of the Qianjin Yifang

.
The Qianjin Yifang was a medical treatise written by the medicine sage Son Jin-in in his later years. The Qianjin Yaofang

that Jeon Jin-gung had taken was from an earlier period.
From the first chapter, medicinal ingredient names filled the page. For each ingredient, he had to memorize which of the Five Elements—metal, wood, water, fire, or earth—its essence belonged to.
The words of the old man who’d taught him to read as a child came back to him.

‘You absorb everything you read with your eyes directly into your mind.’

Jang Saeng had always trusted his memory.
That confidence wavered at the very first formula.

“Three taels.”

He closed the book, recited from memory, then opened it again.

“……Three coins, then.”

After correcting the measurement, he found that the steeping time was missing entirely.
Jang Saeng stared at the figures for a long while. From a history text, he could have guessed the meaning of a few characters. In a prescription, swapping one tael for one coin meant a misremembered character had entered someone’s belly.

“What if I’d given it as it was?”

The answer required no thought.
Jang Saeng spread out small stones equal to the number of medicinal ingredients. Each time he memorized an ingredient, he moved one stone; the quantities and steeping times he marked separately on the dirt floor.
Still, it was wrong.
When he corrected the order, the weights fell out of balance. When he matched the weights, the Five Elements assignments tangled together. He only noticed it long afterward when he’d already swapped two stones from their places.

“From the beginning.”

He erased the dirt floor and started again.
* * *
For several days, his life unfolded in the same sequence. When dawn broke, he examined the town and the area around the stone chamber; beneath the trees, he read medical texts. As the sun declined, he verified the prescriptions he’d memorized, then gathered the stones and books and returned to the stone chamber.
He could not spend every day identically. Some days, a single birdsong made him shut the book. Other days, he believed he’d finished memorizing an entire prescription, only to stumble on the first ingredient the following morning.
On the fifth morning, Jang Saeng recited the previous day’s prescription without opening the book. His words faltered at the third ingredient.
His hand reached instinctively toward the book.

‘Once you’ve seen a character, you seldom forget it.’

The old man’s praise, this time, sounded less like commendation and more like an excuse.
Jang Saeng held back his hand.

“Again.”

The second attempt, he had the quantities wrong. The third attempt, he reversed the steeping order. Only when the sun had climbed well above the trees did the ingredients, quantities, and times all align.
He felt no joy.
Yesterday he’d thought he’d finished perfectly, never knowing he’d made a mistake.
From that day forward, he halved the amount he memorized each day. It was better to leave one prescription that wouldn’t fail him tomorrow than to rush through more pages.

“Accuracy matters more than volume.”

Memorizing medicinal ingredient names and treating people were not the same thing.
Jang Saeng wrote two lines on the dirt floor.
Pattern Differentiation

. Prescription.
First, one had to discern the root of the disease, then apply medicine. The Organs and Viscera of a person, their flesh and blood, all carried imbalances of Yin and Yang and the Five Elements, and disease arose where that equilibrium shattered.
A wrong initial assessment meant even a superior medicine struck the wrong place. Even if one found the cause of the illness, a careless blend or dosage was no different from pouring oil on fire.

“You can’t rely on just one of them.”

The more he understood, the slower his hands moved.
That evening, Jang Saeng closed the book covers, then opened them again. A passage the old man had taught him to memorize in childhood surfaced in his mind.

“To learn without thinking is futile; to think without learning is perilous.”

Until now, he had rushed only to cram prescriptions into his head. He had never properly asked why these ingredients were included, or how their quantities differed. In the time he’d spent accumulating what he’d memorized, his eye for reading prescriptions hadn’t advanced at all.

“Memorization alone won’t suffice.”

Now he needed to lay different prescriptions side by side and compare them.
Then one day, three prescriptions used for similar ailments caught his eye.
The medicinal ingredients varied slightly, but all showed rapid effects. Jang Saeng unfolded prescriptions for different ailments. Those addressing fever, wounds, and the balance of Organs and Viscera proved no different.

“This is no coincidence.”

That day, he turned the pages without noticing the sun’s descent.
The Qianjin Yifang’s prescriptions did not ask the body to wait long for self-healing. Once the root of illness was found, the most precise ingredients and proportions restored balance at once.
There was no prescription that dragged on for two Shi-chen when one would suffice.
The faster the remedy, the greater the risk if misapplied. When done correctly, the medicine reached the disease first; but if even one detail faltered, harm reached the patient first.
Jang Saeng closed the book.

“Son Jin-in, why did you leave only such dangerous prescriptions for a novice?”

In the mountains, only the sound of water answered.
He ran his fingers across the cover almost in complaint. Then he remembered — from the very first day — the dosages and sequences he had gotten wrong.
Son Jin-in had been a physician of the age. He would not have extended a sickness that could be cured in one Shi-chen to two. He possessed both the compassion to free patients from pain swiftly and the skill to doubt nothing in his diagnosis and prescriptions.
Compassion alone could not justify such potent medicines. One had to be precise enough to border on arrogance.
Jang Saeng opened the book again. This time, he read the first prescription slowly.

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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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