Longevity - Chapter 39

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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 39: The Logic of the Art of Medicine
Thousand Gold Supplement Collection

On the seventh day of studying the upper volume, Jang Saeng closed the book.
He laid out a prescription from the beginning using pebbles at hand as medicinal materials, flowing seamlessly through the names of each herb, their quantities, and the order of preparation.
After placing the final stone, he opened the book to check.
There were no errors.
Jang Saeng did not immediately move to the next prescription. Instead, he picked up one stone, shifted it to a different position, and reconsidered the formula—this time imagining a female patient instead of a male one.

“Even the same Wind-Cold presents differently depending on a person’s Yang Qi.”

He reduced the dosage of warming herbs suited to men, while keeping the original quantity for women. Next, he substituted an elderly man for the middle-aged one. When he pulled back the herb that suppressed Yang Qi, the quantities of the other ingredients shifted as well.
Reducing one ingredient did not affect only that single herb. Among the accompanying medicines, some required a decrease of a few ounces, while others needed several additional measures added.
Jang Saeng could not put down the stone in his hand.
A single prescription contained anywhere from three or four medicinal materials to several dozen. Change one, and all the rest pushed and pulled against each other.
He drew a small circle in the dirt. At the center he placed a black stone to represent the disease, and arranged herb stones around its perimeter.

“It’s like deploying soldiers to repel an enemy.”

Selecting the right soldiers to match the disease was not enough. He also had to ensure that the soldiers sent forth did not fight one another. A warrior skilled at cutting down enemies became useless if he ended up wounding his own allies.
Jang Saeng pushed the black stone away with his finger, and swept aside two of the medicinal herb stones along with it.
In the moment when medicine overcame disease, it could also harm the body.

“Killing is easier than saving.”

A blade, once driven in properly, was done. Medicine was different. While suppressing the disease, multiple herbs had to restrain one another’s toxicity and imbalance so as not to injure the patient as well.
A prescription typically contained only one or two principal herbs. The rest mostly served to hold the principal herb in check, preventing it from raging unchecked, rather than directly healing the ailment.
Jang Saeng arranged one large stone representing the principal herb and six smaller stones representing supporting herbs. When he kept only the large stone, the prescription became simple, but each time he applied the contraindications and side effects written in the book, problems arose.
The power to drive out heat grew stronger, yet it damaged the spleen and stomach; the power to raise vital energy remained, yet it robbed sleep. With each small stone he restored, the prescription grew more complex—but only then could the body bear it.
Jang Saeng’s finger stopped at the line where Ginseng

was written.
Even an herb that greatly supplemented blood and energy was not beneficial for everyone. Those with excessively corpulent frames, those who could not sleep each night, those with a cold and weak spleen and stomach—for them it could actually worsen the condition.

“Giving something good doesn’t always lead to good outcomes.”

First, one had to see what the other person truly needed. If something unnecessary was forced upon them under the guise of goodwill, both the medicine and the kindness could become poison.
Jang Saeng gathered all the stones from the dirt.
Memorizing the upper volume was not the end. Only now was he truly ready to read the book.
* * *
Life in the mountains was simple.
Jang Saeng ate only half a dried vegetable ration each day. When his provisions dwindled, he dug up the roots of Hang-yeop Sa-sam plants and Platycodon Root at the water’s edge. He caught fish and shrimp from the pond using a small fishing hook and piles of stones.
He lit fires only around noon. He chose days when the wind was strong enough to scatter the smoke, and would not touch wet wood. Once the fire took to dry kindling, he kept it just long enough to cook the fish, then smothered it with earth.
Once the wind suddenly died, and smoke lingered between the trees. Jang Saeng removed the half-cooked fish and poured wet mud over the flames. He waited on the hillside for a full hour until the acrid smell disappeared before returning to the Stone Chamber.
That evening he made do with a single piece of dried vegetable ration. He could have filled his belly by lighting more fires, but if someone had seen the smoke and come looking, he would have to abandon his refuge. Jang Saeng chose a place to hide over filling his stomach.
He was not lonely.
Jang Saeng had always been alone for long stretches. Before leaving the Mountain Village, only No Hwang had kept him company, and after No Hwang’s death, there was no home to return to and no one waiting for him.
Yet when he sat by the water, he sometimes found himself remembering Batu Ru’s large hands. And whenever he turned a page and glimpsed the small cloth pouch that Jeon Jin-gung had given him, his hands would pause.
The whereabouts of Yi Jung-yong and Jin Ip-choo were beyond his power to know. Rather than forcing conclusions about unknowns, Jang Saeng opened the book again.
On the day he had retraced the final prescription of the upper volume in his mind, he began tearing out pages one by one and feeding them to the fire.
As the flames consumed the characters, his fingertips grew rigid for a moment.

“I haven’t forgotten.”

Leaving the book behind would have risked discovery by someone else. A medical text taken from the Medicine King Tomb was a marker that revealed his movements. Now that he had committed it all to memory, there was no reason to carry the danger with him.
After the final pages became ash, Jang Saeng opened the lower volume.
This time his method of study was altogether different.
He carved a thin wooden strip and used it to cover the left side of each page. Reading only the disease description on the right, he would compose his own prescription, then slide the strip aside to compare his work with the formula given by Jin Ip-choo.
The result from the first page was dismal.
His choice of principal herb differed from the original, nearly half his supporting herbs were wrong, and his dosages were off by several measures in each.
He did not erase his own prescription. He laid both side by side and studied them line by line, searching for why Jin Ip-choo had chosen those particular herbs.
Sometimes it took half a day to understand a single line.
Jin Ip-choo’s prescription contained medicinal materials that Jang Saeng had omitted, while the herbs he deemed crucial appeared in reduced quantities. At first he tried to memorize the answers from the book, but prescriptions learned without understanding proved wrong the moment the patient’s age or sex changed.
Jang Saeng wrote brief notes beside his incorrect answers: Saw only the principal herb. Forgot to consider the spleen and stomach. Counted an elderly man’s Yang Qi as if he were middle-aged. Such annotations accumulated beneath the pages.
The next day he solved the same disease condition anew. The medicinal material that had been wrong yesterday was now correct, but a different supporting herb fell out of place.

“Back to the beginning again.”

He covered the wooden tablet and thought again.
The pages turned slowly.
At first, finding similarities between Jin Ip-choo’s prescriptions and his own proved difficult. Days later, the principal herbs began to align. Then the supporting materials matched one by one.
On the fifth page of the lower volume, at the second disease condition, Jang Saeng’s hand stopped.
He slid the wooden tablet aside and found that the herbs he had written matched those in the book almost exactly. The only differences were in the quantities of a few supporting materials.
Jang Saeng sprang to his feet and nearly cracked his skull on the stone.

“I got it right.”

The joy was short-lived. He quickly covered the wooden tablet again, altered the patient’s age and pulse condition slightly, and crafted a new prescription. This time one supporting herb differed.
Yet not everything fell into discord as it had before. He could now identify where his judgment had diverged.
It was not mere chance that he had guessed one disease condition correctly. Among thousands of medicinal materials, selecting a mere dozen or so necessary ones and arranging them within a single prescription so they would not conflict—this was the result of genuine understanding.
Jang Saeng clasped his hands toward the bookshelf. Though he had never seen Jin Ip-choo’s face, the master was no different from one who left behind both answers and reasons with each mistake.

“Thank you for teaching me.”

From that day, his correct prescriptions multiplied gradually.
Two or three out of ten disease conditions, then four or five. The differences that had once measured in whole drams shrank to mere fractions.
Jang Saeng spent longer studying his incorrect prescriptions than his correct ones. The smaller the discrepancy, the harder it was to find the reason—and the smaller the difference, the more dangerous it could be for an actual patient.
By the halfway point of the lower volume, nine out of every ten prescriptions matched Jin Ip-choo’s exactly.
The last one was not drastically different either. Jang Saeng had chosen Licorice for three drams as a supporting herb, while the book listed Scute for two drams.

Both medicinal materials cleared heat and resolved toxin. Both had applications that supported the spleen and stomach, so either could fit into the prescription without seeming drastically wrong.

Both medicinal materials cleared heat and resolved toxin. Both had applications that supported the spleen and stomach, so either could fit into the prescription without seeming drastically wrong.
Jang Saeng closed the book.

“They look the same. Why did he change it?”

The question that began at dawn continued until sunset. He retraced the natures of Licorice and Scute, read the disease condition from the start again.
Whenever his thinking stalled, he washed his face in the stream. No answer emerged, only a heavier head.
He could have moved on to the next page without greatly erring in the prescription. Yet Jang Saeng did not set the wooden tablet aside.

“It’s a human life. We cannot settle for mere similarity.”

He returned his focus to one of the patient’s symptoms: a prolonged cough that had lasted long.
When a cough persists, the lungs are damaged. Scute enters the lung meridian and possesses greater power to stop bleeding than Licorice.
Jang Saeng’s hand stilled above the page.

“It was not merely about clearing heat.”

Jin Ip-choo had not looked only at the disease as it stood now. He was already shielding against damage that had befallen the internal organs and preventing the suffering that would follow.
Jang Saeng crossed out Licorice in his prescription and wrote in Scute.
After that, though the frequency of moving the wooden tablet remained the same, the discrepancies that appeared continued to shrink.
Nine out of ten prescriptions transformed into ten out of ten. The herbs matched, the quantities matched, and even the order of preparation left no room for error.
* * *
At some point, he lost count of how long he had stayed in the mountain.
At first, he carved a short mark into the Stone Chamber wall each day. But when nights spent clinging to a single page of the book mingled with days he could not venture outside because of rain, the tally lost all meaning. Jang Saeng counted instead by his remaining dried vegetable rations and the remaining pages.
The dried rations had long run out, and the fish and shrimp in the pool had visibly dwindled. Thin branches had sprouted green leaves that now blocked the sunlight. On the ground, young grass had grown up to his knee, and small insects crawled from the crevices between the stones at the water’s edge.
He had to leave before the rains grew heavy. Much longer and thorny thickets would bar the path, snakes and insects would multiply.
Three pages remained of the lower volume.
The path to mastery was not without its obstacles. In one prescription, Jang Saeng chose Poria,

while Master Jin Ip-choo used White Poria.

When he could not find the difference between the two medicinal materials, he suspected for the first time that the book itself contained an error.

“Master Jin Ip-choo is only human, after all…….”

Heat bloomed across his face before he could finish the thought. Jang Saeng returned to the first line of the disease condition.
The patient was a woman.
White Poria, beyond calming the spirit, also possessed the virtue of clearing the complexion. In terms of healing power alone, it was a small difference—but Master Jin Ip-choo had sought to restore the patient not merely to health, but to the way she had been before the illness took hold.
Jang Saeng struck his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“I was wrong.”

The book offered no answer.
He completed the prescriptions for the remaining disease conditions, then cast the lower volume into the fire as well. The Thousand Gold Supplement Collection did not contain every ailment in the world, but encountering an illness not recorded in its pages was no reason to abandon the work.
Conceal the root of the disease, match the nature and quantity of the medicinal materials. Memorized prescriptions were not an ending but a path to master that judgment itself.
He began preparing to leave.
First, he burned the soldier’s clothing. He opened the Black Lacquer Box and examined the nine wax-sealed medicinal pills once more.
At the bottom lay the blue Detoxication Pills

—Detoxication Spirit Pills

—and Detoxication Golden Pills.

In the middle lay red Healing Wound Pills

—Healing Wound Silver Pills

—and Healing Wound Golden Pills.

At the top were Heaven Returning Pills

—Heaven Returning Silver Pills

—and Heaven Returning Golden Pills.
Jang Saeng withdrew one of each: a Detoxication Pill, a Healing Wound Pill, and a Heaven Returning Pill. On the road ahead, if he were poisoned or wounded, there might be no time to find medicinal herbs and brew a decoction.
He could have kept the more precious Spirit Pills and Golden Pills for himself. But the medicines in the Black Lacquer Box were objects that Na Yang-ja had guarded at the cost of her life. Jang Saeng selected only the three weakest pills as his share. If a danger arose that he could not survive with them, there was no guarantee that carrying more precious medicines would save him.
Finally, he withdrew a Heaven Returning Golden Pill and placed it separately within his garments, wrapped in an additional layer of cloth. This was not his medicine. It must not be mixed with the other three.
He could not carry the Black Lacquer Box or the Han-wol. A child ignorant of martial technique who carried a treasure blade would draw human eyes rather than serve as a refuge.
Jang Saeng placed the two objects in the hollow of a nearby dead tree, then withdrew them at once.

“A woodcutter might fell it and take everything.”

He selected a living tree with a thick trunk and scored the bark with the Han-wol. He hid the Black Lacquer Box, the blade, and the flute he had received from Jeon Jin-gung inside, then fitted the cut bark back in place and sealed it with mud.
From the outside, the scar was barely visible.
That night, Jang Saeng slept in the Stone Chamber for the last time.
* * *
As dawn light seeped through the gap in the stone door, he fastened his bundle. He pressed each of the four pills in his garments in sequence to confirm them, then surveyed the sanctuary—the well where water had long since dried and the cairn of stones.
On the hidden tree, he left only a small blade mark, faint enough to escape notice. Should he ever return to this mountain, that mark would guide him to the Han-wol, the Black Lacquer Box, and the flute.
Jang Saeng chose a rocky slope that would leave no footprints and descended the mountain toward the west.

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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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