The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim - Chapter 118

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 118

The names of this couple who came seeking to open the 4th branch were Yu Gyeonghun and Jeon Minji.

They were newlyweds who had gotten married this year and just returned from their honeymoon.

According to their self-introduction in the cold email they sent me, they were campus couples from the same school with exactly a 3-year age gap.

The older Yu Gyeonghun had accumulated 3 years of clinical experience serving as a public health doctor in lieu of military service after graduation, and had diligently studied by attending various conferences and lectures.

Jeon Minji got married immediately after graduating this year, and though she had no clinical experience due to taking a rather long honeymoon trip, she appealed her own studies in her own way.

So the vague impression I got from receiving their email was… I just thought they were people who liked studying and lived diligently.

What? Ten Thousand Flowers Rain?

Why is that coming out of these people’s mouths?

“You must like martial arts novels.”

“Yes. I practically grew up in my grandfather’s Traditional Korean Medicine Clinic when I was young, and the waiting room there was packed with martial arts novels.”

It was quite an unusual family environment.

Both the grandfather raising his grandson, and having novels and comic books in the clinic.

But the important thing wasn’t that.

“Hmm, yes. You got to know me through that video. I read your introduction well. You seem like someone who has studied a lot, so what aspects are you hoping for from our network?”

It was about what they wanted from me.

“Do you want us to be involved in everything from the beginning – location selection, treatment protocol composition, interior design, staff training, etc.? Or would it be enough to just help with marketing… aspects?”

“Oh, we can choose that?”

“If your style is established and your skills are sufficient, I don’t force you to match treatment styles.”

Even when going to Traditional Korean Medicine Clinics for the same illness, the acupuncture points differ slightly. The medicine might have similar directions but the herbs added or subtracted can differ slightly.

Fundamentally, Korean medicine treatment helps natural healing with one’s own strength, so I think the body can be helped this way or that way.

Of course, you shouldn’t go the wrong way backwards, but if both path 1 and path 2 are correct answers, I have no intention of forcing my methods.

“Naturally, if you want, I can help you do acupuncture, chuna techniques, and prescriptions the same way I do.”

I had refined the manual a lot together with Chu Miyoung, Hwang Sanghun, and Kim Chunsik who joined first.

When I first taught Chu Miyoung, I spent time going through trial and error, but now I should be able to copy and paste more efficiently.

It would be difficult to make up for lack of experience in a short time… but still, about 70% could probably be replicated. If there’s something they don’t know, they can ask again.

“Wow, I want to follow the Clinic Director around and learn!”

Jeon Minji said eagerly.

Since she had no proper clinical experience yet, she seemed to have vague anxiety.

On the other hand, Yu Gyeonghun’s face relaxed at the part about not interfering with his own methods.

“And about YouTube.”

What on earth should I call this?

“I’ll be honest with you. It did result in promotion, but it was absolutely not filmed for promotional purposes.”

There were people who came after seeing it.

There were quite a few when the video was first uploaded, and even now they appear very occasionally.

They have the suspicious common trait of really liking martial arts.

“We’re not doing YouTube marketing at all. Instagram is jointly managed by Director Chu Miyeong from the 2nd branch, and blogs are operated individually. Honestly, the 1st branch is almost neglected.”

“Ah…”

When I revealed my thoughts about promotional strategies, Yu Gyeonghun was very disappointed.

No, common sense-wise, what Korean Medicine Doctor would think to film a Ten Thousand Flowers Rain video for clinic promotion?

“Then we can’t learn martial arts techniques?”

…Here they are.

“Don’t tell me you came here wanting to learn that?”

“Yes.”

“Gyeonghun was really looking forward to it.”

“No, there’s nothing I can’t teach you.”

“Oh?!”

“Ooh?”

If it’s just mimicking rather than teaching everything from the internal energy cultivation, it’s not that difficult.

It doesn’t actually require accuracy to hit acupoints, and it just needs to look plausible in the video.

About ten thousand times of practice should do it?

“But do you really want to learn that? To upload it on YouTube?”

“Yes!”

Yu Gyeonghun’s eyes sparkled brightly.

“It’s absolutely necessary for the Traditional Korean Medicine Clinic we’re envisioning!”

Jeon Minji also shouted energetically.

“…What kind of Traditional Korean Medicine Clinic are you thinking of that requires martial arts techniques.”

I was at a loss for words.

I felt like taking out whatever was in these two people’s heads to see it.

“Oh, we’ve thought of several ideas!”

“Ideas?”

As soon as I took the bait, they eagerly responded.

They weren’t particularly hiding anything, and looked like they couldn’t wait to talk about their ideas right away.

“Our families are all against it… but would you listen to us once?”

I nodded. If these two were going to open under the same name, I naturally needed to know.

“This is what our planned clinic site looks like.”

“Yes.”

I thought he might show me a photo of the building, but Yu Gyeonghun opened a note app and displayed a white screen.

There’s nothing there?

Before I could even think it, he drew a picture with his stylus.

Well, should I call it a letter?

What he drew ended with the letter ‘ㄷ’.

“You’re saying it’s shaped like the letter ‘ㄷ’? The building?”

“Yes, so there’s space left in the middle here, right?”

“That’s right.”

“We’ll farm here!”

“….”

“Smart farms are trending these days!”

Weren’t we just talking about opening a clinic?

“Instead of just running a herbal medicine preparation room, we’ll grow the medicinal herbs ourselves from scratch! Isn’t that unique?”

“Have either of you ever farmed before?”

Of course they haven’t.

If they had ever farmed even once, or even visited a weekend farm, they couldn’t have come up with such an idea.

I wondered why smart farms were trending these days – is it because people who know nothing about it are jumping in like this?

“No.”

“My grandmother did plant some lettuce though….”

“It’s not like I haven’t thought about it either.”

I had tried it.

Not in South Korea, of course, but in the martial arts world.

I had attempted to learn before establishing myself as a physician, and being a modern person, I had even tried taking initiative as a Medical Institute leader.

The Sichuan Dang Family managed all collection and cultivation of poisonous and medicinal herbs under their control, and since I was in quite a high position, I had the authority to try things if I put my mind to it.

So what happened?

Nothing came of it.

I just realized something.

That all a physician knows how to do is evaluate whether something is good or bad.

“Each medicinal herb requires different soil and climate conditions. The land is nowhere near sufficient, and even if you farm all day long, you can’t handle it all. You might be able to grow one easy-to-cultivate medicinal herb in a smart farm for display purposes, but… I’d rather build a pond instead.”

I shook my head.

Medicine and farming aren’t things you can do together from the start.

Unless one of them is the reincarnation of Shen Nong!

“Wow, have you tried it before?”

Jeon Minji said with wide eyes.

Despite my pointing out that the idea was impossible to implement, she seemed extremely interested instead.

“That’s amazing. I just thought about it….”

Ah, so they weren’t really planning to do it from the beginning?

That’s rather fortunate then.

“We also thought the farm would be difficult for us.”

“Our second idea is a cafe.”

“A cafe?”

Before I could feel relieved, the two poured out a new idea.

“Wouldn’t there be synergy if we combined a Traditional Korean Medicine Clinic with a cafe?”

“This is the Traditional Korean Medicine Clinic my grandfather used to run, and it’s in a tourist area.”

“One side of the ㄷ-shaped building will be a Korean medicine clinic, and the other side will be a cafe! People can wait at the cafe while they’re at the clinic, or come get examined and receive acupuncture while they’re at the cafe.”

If the farm was really an idea no one would dare try.

This was an idea that quite a few Korean Medicine Doctors had thought of at least once.

“Is that cafe by any chance a traditional Korean medicine cafe? One that sells herbal teas?”

“Of course it is.”

As expected.

I had once thought about something like that too.

But I learned from certain experiences in the martial arts world that this too was very difficult.

“Why do you think there aren’t many traditional Korean medicine cafes?”

“Uh… just because running a Traditional Korean Medicine Clinic makes more money?”

“Non-medical people can also buy medicinal herbs approved for food and medicine use and make tea with them.”

“Hmm, because people aren’t familiar with it?”

That’s part of it, but there’s a more crucial point.

“How many medicinal herbs actually taste good?”

The important thing was precisely the ‘taste’.

“Um, licorice? Oh, and jujube dates too.”

“Isn’t astragalus also edible? The sweet kind.”

“Ssanghwa tea is delicious, right?”

“Wouldn’t it just taste good if you add a lot of honey?”

It would taste better, I suppose.

Better than without it.

And if possible, it would taste even better to leave out the medicinal herbs and just add honey and milk.

Balancing taste and health is very difficult. No, it’s impossible.

“If you add enough honey to make the medicinal herbs taste good, it’s not healthy. If you’re going to give up on health anyway, you might as well drink a strawberry latte.”

“Ah…!”

Jeon Minji opened her mouth as if she had gained enlightenment.

“If you’re going to endure something tasteless for your health, that’s just medicine. If you put in an ambiguous amount, you won’t get the medicinal effect and it’ll just taste bad. If you’re going to put in enough to have therapeutic effects, you should prescribe it properly.”

I really… tried hard to make herbal medicine taste good.

Of course, it wasn’t because I was trying to open a cafe.

It was when an epidemic broke out in the Hebei region.

– The Peng Family has requested that we dispatch a physician.

I naturally accepted the request and went to the Hebei region.

Although they were a martial family, as a prestigious clan supporting a region, the Habuk Peng-ga demonstrated something like noblesse oblige and threw themselves into suppressing the epidemic.

And a tremendous number of clan members ended up catching that disease.

Usually, martial artists are strong and have good immunity, so they don’t get sick easily, which is why they went to dangerous areas without much worry.

But that disease had too high a fatality rate.

While the elderly and weak died without pain, patients who had the strength to resist the pathogen suffered greatly as they fought the disease.

Should I call it fortunate? The suppression was relatively easy.

It was partly thanks to me demonstrating the abilities of a modern person who had read various possession novels, implementing quick isolation measures and emphasizing thorough hygiene, but the nature of the disease itself was significant.

Diseases with low fatality rates but high transmission rates spread faster, after all.

In any case, we succeeded in early suppression of the disease.

As a result, not a single martial artist from the Habuk Peng-ga died.

Even though almost all of them suffered from that disease.

So what does this incident have to do with making herbal medicine taste good?

The martial artists of the Habuk Peng-ga collectively fell ill and were making a fuss about sore throats, headaches, and stomachaches.

I wrote prescriptions according to each person’s symptoms.

The prescription composition wasn’t difficult. Traditional Korean medicine theory had developed while treating infectious diseases, after all.

But there was a major obstacle.

– Ugh, I can’t drink this! Honey, give me honey!

– Argh! Are you planning to poison us all?

– My will…! If I drink this herbal decoction, I’ll…!

The Habuk Peng-ga.

People who were about twice the size of ordinary people and carried enormous swords around.

Those people… collectively had baby-like taste buds.

From young children to late-stage masters, even elderly people of advanced age.

Even while suffering from the disease, they complained that the herbal decoction was too bitter.

– There’s no need to struggle over trivial matters. If they don’t want to die, they’ll drink it. If they’d rather die than drink it, they’ll die.

Master told me to leave them alone.

But at that time, I thought that making patients take their medicine was also part of a physician’s role.

I made every effort to make it taste good while minimally harming the medicinal properties.

But it was impossible.

When memorizing herbology and prescription studies, the descriptions of medicinal ingredients being bitter and cold, or spicy and hot, weren’t there for nothing.

When I forcibly made it sweet by adding honey or syrup, sometimes the medicinal effects didn’t work properly.

Most of the time… it just made the taste weird.

In the end, I could only conclude that making pills to swallow with water.

Or tying them up and force-feeding them was the best solution.

It’s not that there are no successful cases of herbal cafes.

They must have made tremendous efforts to select tasty herbal ingredients and make them into teas.

People who have only tried ssanghwa tea starting from now and preparing together with opening a clinic?

It’s better to just discourage them.

Unless someone has unusual tastes like An Juhui, most people don’t really like the smell and taste of herbal medicine!

“If you really want to open a cafe, just add a few menus like ssanghwa tea to a regular cafe. There’s a reason why there aren’t many herbal cafes.”

Since I couldn’t tell the Habuk Peng-ga story, I explained it as having tried to find medicine that could be used for children who absolutely couldn’t take bitter medicine.

“Wow, that’s true.”

“So taste is a major obstacle… Well, coffee does taste good.”

“Thank you for discouraging us!”

Fortunately, the two people understood quite well this time too.

They couldn’t contain their overflowing ideas, but they didn’t seem to be terminal cases of business disease with absolutely no sense of reality.

“But what do these ideas have to do with martial arts techniques?”

“Oh, that’s all connected to the third idea.”

There’s a third one?

Before my hand could reach the back of my neck, they opened their mouths.

“We’ll decorate the Traditional Korean Medicine Clinic with a martial arts concept! Interior design, proper costumes, and upload martial arts techniques to YouTube…!”

“Huh?”

“Originally we thought it would be good to do the cafe and farm too, but since the Clinic Director said no! Wouldn’t it be okay to just do the concept for the clinic alone?”

“At first we thought about naming it Martial Arts World Clinic, but it won’t work without martial arts! We really want to learn techniques from the Clinic Director and do it properly!”

In some ways, it was an even more ambitious plan than the smart farm or cafe.

A martial arts concept Traditional Korean Medicine Clinic?

“That’s…”

Actually not bad?

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