The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim - Chapter 335

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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 335

“You too, Teacher… No, let’s focus on the treatment first.”

I had much to say about the word ‘different,’ but it wouldn’t be too late to discuss it after the treatment was finished.

“I’d like to place needles on the Governing Vessel. Would lying face down be alright?”

If he were a martial artist, I would have had him sit cross-legged for the acupuncture.

However, the Emperor had never practiced martial arts and was advanced in age, so treating him in a seated position felt risky.

There’s something called needle fainting, where patients occasionally feel dizzy from being unable to handle the energy consumed during treatment.

If he lost his balance and collapsed during seated treatment, causing the needles in his neck to be pressed in, it would be a disaster.

“I’ll help you.”

Hwang Jihun stepped forward to help change the Emperor’s position.

Perhaps because he had never received treatment lying face down before? His pupils wavered.

If I had simply placed needles as a stroke prevention measure without any particular symptoms, I would have selected the Seven Stroke Prevention Points.

These could be easily accessed while lying on his back.

In any case, after having the Emperor assume a prone position, I disinfected several acupoints while locating them.

The order of needle insertion started with the Four Gates points.

These were meant to open pathways for energy flow, and since there wasn’t any particular blockage of qi and blood, I stimulated them only lightly.

“Mmm!”

There are occasionally patients who make sounds every time they receive acupuncture.

Perhaps the Emperor didn’t usually do this, as Hwang Jihun looked somewhat surprised.

After the Four Gates points came Yaoyangguan, Mingmen, Jinsuo, Shenzhu, Dazhui, Yamen, Fengfu, Naohu, and Baihui.

I penetrated through the center of the body along the spine from the lower back upward.

These belonged to the Governing Vessel, but not all points of the Governing Vessel.

I stimulated the acupoints where turbid qi was severe when I read his pulse, without limiting myself to Western medical diagnoses or even pattern differentiation.

From Baihui, I moved to the side of the head and inserted needles along the Gallbladder meridian.

Qubin, Toulinqi, and Jianjing.

Then moving to the legs: Fengshi, Xiyangguan, and Xuanzhong.

Besides these, I lightly touched several other notable points.

There wasn’t a single acupoint completely free of turbid qi, but since I couldn’t needle all three to four hundred points, I selected around thirty.

“I’ll perform reinforcing manipulation on just three points. Please don’t speak and focus on the flow of energy while breathing.”

“Understood.”

Among these, the most severely affected areas needed direct energy flow.

Since he seemed to already know, I didn’t bother explaining how to breathe.

Fengfu.

This was the acupoint where the Emperor had noticed something the moment I touched it with my hand.

After inserting the needle into that spot where turbid qi was most severely accumulated, I pushed energy in sync with the Emperor’s breathing.

It was quite severely blocked, so needle insertion alone would have required dozens more sessions to show improvement, but I could adjust it to provide strong stimulation without straining his body.

“…!”

As expected, his qi sensitivity was sharp.

The Emperor seemed to clearly feel something being expelled from the acupoint.

I removed the blood stasis accumulated at Jianjing and Dazhui using the same method as with Fengfu.

‘If I had my way, I’d like to perform Cleansing Marrow and Bones, but this is the limit of treatment an elderly person can accept.’

Cleansing Marrow and Bones is a type of great technique where a master who has reached a level of near-perfect qi control infuses energy into another’s body to expel turbid qi and purify their qi and blood.

Those who receive this not only become healthier but also develop a constitution that makes learning martial arts easier.

However, even the technique of transmitting internal energy through the body is extremely difficult to master.

The recipient also becomes more rigid and blocked with age, creating a great burden for both parties.

Even heads of the Five Great Families only perform Cleansing Marrow and Bones on their chosen heir, their first grandson, when very young.

‘Master…’

Unless there are occasional exceptions, that is.

Regular acupuncture treatment on acupoints operates on the same principle.

People who are both martial artists and physicians probably don’t number more than ten fingers outside of the Tang Family.

Even without techniques like transmitting energy through the body, when needles are physically inserted into acupoints, the energy disperses to some degree.

What I usually do falls somewhere in between.

I insert needles to penetrate the turbid qi once, but flow only a very small amount of energy—enough that it causes me no strain and could be done dozens of times a day.

Since there’s almost no burden on either the giver or receiver, naturally the effects are correspondingly modest.

But rather than taking unnecessary risks, I thought it better to recover strength over several days while treating.

However, in special cases like Faisal’s or today’s situation, I could gauge the limits of what the patient’s body could handle and provide slightly stronger treatment.

Blink. Blink.

The Emperor kept blinking, as if he wanted to say something.

“Ah, it’s finished. You can speak now. I’ll remove the needles for you.”

I withdrew the needles in an instant.

“I thought you might be able to do it, but… I hadn’t expected this much.”

The Emperor immediately turned around and trembled with his hands.

His eyes widened and his voice grew louder without him realizing it.

Someone who felt what was done would be all the more amazed.

When treating this way, martial artists are usually much more astonished than ordinary people.

“You’ve tried to disperse the turbid qi before, haven’t you? I didn’t expect it to clear so easily either.”

“Of course. Something was clearly blocked there, and recently I even had fainting spells. Naturally, I tried probing it several times.”

Hmm, it seemed to clear better because it was a spot that had already been treated multiple times.

“Turbid qi…?”

Hwang Sanghun cautiously uttered a word.

If it hadn’t been his grandfather and me having this conversation, wouldn’t his face have contorted immediately?

Both Hwang Jihun and Hwang Sanghun had observed the treatment closely, but outwardly it would have looked like ordinary acupuncture.

“I used needles to release where the turbid qi was clumped together.”

“You saw that by reading the pulse?”

“Hmm… there are things you can feel from the pulse…”

If it could be explained in just a few words, the formulas of martial arts cultivation methods wouldn’t be written so complicatedly.

Unless it was a special case like Kim Ijin, it was an area that required extensive training.

“What can you say about something that’s just visible when you look at it?”

The Emperor scolded.

“What grandfather mentioned before…”

It seemed the Emperor had at least attempted to pass this on to Hwang Jihun, as he appeared to have some understanding.

“That’s right, you fool. Why don’t you know something that’s obvious at first glance?”

“…”

“Well, it’s not visible to the eyes. If your senses are a bit sharp, you just feel it.”

“Don’t you know immediately when you touch it? It’s twisted, so you get the feeling that you need to pierce here to release it! I can’t understand why you don’t know this and fumble around in the wrong places looking for acupoints!”

…No, normally people don’t know.

That thought did cross my mind.

“That’s right. Besides the treatment points learned through study, if there are places where blood is blocked and meridian flow isn’t natural, you naturally have to stimulate those areas.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!”

Seeing Hwang Jihun and Hwang Sanghun’s expressions turn strange was amusing, so I played along.

The Emperor was delighted as if he had resolved all the resentment of his lifetime.

“I really was going crazy from frustration all this time. Something that’s obvious at a glance, yet I had to explain which points to treat for what illness!”

I was simply amazed at how such a person had established a large hospital and advocated for identical treatment from all branches and directors.

“You must have been frustrated.”

“Frustrated indeed. I thought I was going insane my whole life. People came to me wanting to learn how I treated patients, wanting to become my disciples… Hah!”

The Emperor beat his chest, then soon let his arms drop.

And his face broke into a smile.

“At this age, I’ve finally met someone who sees the same world. No, is it clearer for you? When you took my pulse earlier, energy spread through my body, and everything that had been vague became very clear.”

It seemed he had felt even the forms of the twelve main meridians and eight extraordinary meridians.

The Emperor appeared to be naturally sensitive to perceiving changes in his own body.

By focusing on that sensation and distinguishing between areas where qi and blood were twisted and those that weren’t, he would have learned to detect where others’ qi and blood were tangled through his fingertip sensations.

“Weren’t you frustrated?”

The Emperor asked me, but my situation was completely different.

I had originally learned qi sensation from my Master… and within the Sichuan Dang Family, there were quite a few people who were both martial artists and physicians.

But I wasn’t without something to say.

“Looking at how ancient texts contain so much about qi, physicians in the past probably made many attempts to help their disciples feel this sensation when teaching medicine.”

In modern times when such attempts aren’t made at all, the orthodox view is that qi is merely a concept for explaining symptoms.

But I knew that wasn’t entirely the case.

“Hmm.”

“However, modern Korean medicine doctors can treat many more diseases much more efficiently than in those times.”

However, not all diseases are caused by tangled qi and blood.

For example, even with a simple ankle sprain, it doesn’t end with just placing needles where blood stasis has clumped – treatment must be repeated until ligaments and muscles recover and inflammation disappears.

Even if acupuncture is perfectly placed and pain disappears with one treatment, if ligaments haven’t recovered, sprains can occur again at any time.

Not to mention internal medicine and psychiatric conditions like diabetes, hypertension, pneumonia, and depression.

“Ah…”

“Having sensitive qi perception is just that – the whole thing. Others could probably do it with extensive practice, but even without this, isn’t there so much to study in the world? Even if you can’t hit acupoints precisely, multiple treatments will suffice. I don’t think it’s a very important capability for Korean medicine doctors.”

That’s why I hadn’t talked about qi and such things even to Chu Miyoung, who first came to me wanting to learn, or to anyone after that.

Treatment capabilities could be sufficiently developed with explainable language.

In a way, these were words opposing the Emperor.

But the Emperor was even more surprised than when the Fengfu point had been opened earlier.

“It took me decades to reach that realization, but you already know it.”

Ah, so he had performed many miracles in his youth, then later gained enlightenment and made efforts toward standardization.

I was grateful for the praise, but in my case, it wasn’t enlightenment I had gained.

The Emperor had thought he could pass it on but hit a wall.

But I had known from the beginning that it couldn’t be taught to those who hadn’t practiced martial arts.

Of course, instead of lengthy explanations, I gave a meaningful smile.

“I’ve encountered a fateful opportunity in my old age.”

The Emperor muttered.

He suddenly stood up from his seat and paced around the hospital room.

“Grandfather, is it okay for you to move around like that?”

Hwang Jihun, who had been unable to speak due to the atmosphere, asked worriedly.

The Emperor chuckled.

“My head is clear for the first time in 20 years. Everything that had been complicated since I started considering retirement feels completely cleared up.”

He said everything felt incredibly refreshing.

He could feel the turbid qi, but it was all the more frustrating because it wouldn’t easily wash away with acupuncture.

Moving around was fine, but I did have some concerns.

“Even though I’ve untangled the severely knotted areas, I can’t completely resolve the narrowed blood vessels themselves or the rapid blood flow.”

It would be impossible unless he underwent a complete transformation.

“I know that too. If you could do even that, wouldn’t you be an immortal? My functions have inevitably declined with age, and when the time comes, I’ll go. Still, my condition has improved incomparably. Even if I live another 5 years, it would be a blessing to be this vigorous.”

Fortunately, the Emperor had an accurate grasp of his condition.

“I’m truly grateful.”

He firmly grasped my hand.

“As I’ve aged, I’ve only learned to give up. My children, the hospital, even my own body – nothing goes according to my will.”

…Children aren’t supposed to go according to your will in the first place.

“But now everything is clear. I think I clearly know what I need to do.”

The Emperor poured out his words without allowing any opportunity or atmosphere for interruption.

I nodded roughly.

Unlike the Emperor who had lived trying to control everything around him, I respected various ways of life even when there were things I didn’t understand.

Just like President Lee Mansu, the Emperor must have lived toward some goal.

Even if one had achieved more than enough in others’ eyes, regrets could still remain.

The overseas expansion he called his long-cherished project?

Since there were factions between Hwang Jihun and his uncle-in-law Jeong Suhwan, it might be a plan to settle the succession issue definitively.

In my opinion too, the current Imperial Korean Medicine Hospital needed internal discipline.

Just as I had with President Lee Mansu, I was about to step back and cheer him on to work hard.

But the Emperor looked straight at me and opened his mouth.

“This proposal isn’t impulsive. Actually, even before the treatment, from when I decided to meet you, I’ve been thinking about this.”

A proposal? Is there something else he wants to ask of me?

He spoke without hesitation.

“I’d like to invite Director Hanyewon as an external director of our Imperial Medical Foundation.”

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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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