Chapter 29
Chapter 29
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 29
Chapter Title: Returning Home
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The Weird Physician gazed at the silent Wi Sowol, a tangled mix of relief and frustration stirring within him.
'Yes. Our school of surgery has advanced precisely by transgressing taboos.'
The body, hair, and skin are gifts from one's parents.
To cherish them is the foremost filial piety.
This absolute value espoused by Confucianism, the guiding principle of the Central Plains, was none other than filial piety.
Even for a corpse after death, to slice it open and dismantle it—how grave a sin was that?
It wasn't for nothing that dismemberment and public display had become the ultimate of extreme punishments.
These days, such practices were grudgingly accepted to some degree, but back when Buddhism first arrived in the Central Plains, why had the people decried their cremations?
It stemmed from the Confucian backlash against burning the body inherited from one's parents.
In the Weird Physician's eyes, Wi Sowol didn't strictly adhere to any ideology, but her feelings toward family were undoubtedly real.
Thus, the body—the most steadfast symbol of her unbreakable bond with her family—must hold profound value for her.
'She's quite shaken.'
Understandably so. Not only was the act of dissection itself shocking, but learning that the foundation of the Weird Physician's medicine, whom she truly believed to be the world's greatest, was a taboo condemned by all... that shock must be immense, he thought.
But it wasn't like that at all.
No, Wi Sowol was simply pondering why the Weird Physician was so tense about it. 'What's the big deal?'
'In the jianghu, dozens or hundreds die every day. What's so special about cutting open a corpse?'
A taboo...?
Yet surprisingly, dissections were still happening even now.
Right there in the coroners' offices, they sliced open bodies to determine causes of death.
Didn't they do it with the righteous justification of resolving wrongful deaths, officially sanctioned by the state?
Dissection was for advancing medicine, too.
Of course, excess was problematic.
Seizing living people for "medical research," torturing them, or dissecting them alive—that would make even Wi Sowol frown and want to kill the perpetrators.
Not out of some sense of justice, but pure instinctive revulsion.
But for a corpse, especially one with prior consent? In her view, no issue at all.
Truth be told, in the unorthodox paths of the jianghu, far more grotesque and heinous acts persisted beyond mere dissection.
Wi Sowol knew this.
From her past life, where her peerless martial prowess inevitably drew her into the heart of the jianghu, despite her reluctance.
Like how heavy matter warps space and draws things toward it through gravity, the jianghu's strongest inevitably became the center of events.
'There are those who turn the human body into a weapon.'
The outer path freakish group, Greedy Weapon Forge.
Proclaiming "every human is a weapon," they weaponized human bodies.
They had targeted her past self, afflicted with the Nine Yang Absolute Meridian—a band truly befitting the inhuman outer paths.
Compared to them, dissection seemed downright mild.
'But is touching a corpse evil karma?'
The Buddhist precepts state:
Collecting and burying corpses is merit; desecrating graves and abusing remains is demerit.
Buddhism practices cremation, yet bone-burying monks gather the dead of sentient beings and inter them to accrue merit.
Both Confucianism and Buddhism deem handling corpses unclean, so to Heaven—who spoke of immortals and meritorious deeds—what meaning did dissection hold?
That was Wi Sowol's sole question.
As she sat lost in thought, unable to resolve it, the Weird Physician gazed at his pitiful disciple with stern compassion and spoke.
"One day, you too will perform a dissection. For a surgeon, having dissection experience is as crucial as manifesting sword aura for a swordmaster."
"I see."
"Not right away. Dissecting just any corpse would make us no better than those vile Ghostlight Cult fiends. I only dissected bodies from those I had saved with my arts, who upon dying left wills bequeathing their bodies to me."
"Like self-immolation offerings."
The Buddhist practice of self-immolation, burning one's body as an offering to the Buddha.
It aligned in that the body remained intact no longer.
Having read many sutras at Zenith Temple, Wi Sowol's analogy carried a distinctly Buddhist flavor.
She showed no intent to condemn dissection; rather, likening it to Buddhist acts and seeming accepting, which eased the Weird Physician's mind.
"So when the time comes for you to dissect, remember and repay that devotion. Just as the Buddha bestows buddha-grace upon receiving self-immolation, so must we."
Was this why the Weird Physician never overcharged the poor, even dipping into his own savings?
He claimed his medicine built a foundation for vengeance, but Wi Sowol thought otherwise.
The more she heard, the more she learned of him.
The firmer that belief grew.
His medicine might have begun as a tool for revenge, but at its depths lay compassion.
Compassion for those who died despite his ignorance, like his sister.
As Wi Sowol nodded, engraving his teachings on her heart, the Weird Physician nodded back, satisfied, and said,
"My instruction in anatomy ends here for now."
"There's still much left to learn."
"True. But those can wait. Master Truthful Justice's Orthopedic Scriptures, An Deok-yeol's Dissection Manual, and the Treatise on Human Anatomy—you'll have grasped eighty percent of my arts."
She had mastered the foundational Unforgetting Heart Method and Dazed Haze Hand; Firm Chastity Heart Method could be substituted with Great White Light True Qi.
Beyond surgical procedures, acupuncture, and moxibustion, she had now learned true medicine's bedrock: anatomy.
All the essentials imparted.
What remained for Wi Sowol was to build experience on his knowledge and forge her own medicine.
"It's time for you to descend the mountain."
His expression as he spoke wasn't exactly joyful.
Mount Hua's majestic peaks were blanketed in snow, and the season had come when its symbolic plum blossoms prepared to bloom.
No plums actually bloomed on Mount Hua, but the sword tips of its daoists cleaved the frost, bursting forth white and red blossoms.
Wi Sowol gazed upon plum blossoms blooming a touch earlier than others', from an old daoist who had once fully unfurled such flowers.
Plum blossoms were also called snowbound nobles.
The Pure Void Daoist standing amid Hua Mountain's snowfall embodied that perfectly.
His sword seemed almost like a tree branch.
"I've heard you're to receive instruction."
Wi Sowol had received an unexpected message from the Weird Physician.
To learn from the Pure Void Daoist.
It might sound arrogant, but she had never felt there was anything to learn from him.
One might call it insolence toward a transcendent master ruling the jianghu, but Wi Sowol herself had reached that realm through raw talent alone, without proper master or sect.
Even surpassing the Pure Void Daoist.
He had been called Shaanxi’s foremost in his prime, yet never claimed fame under heaven, while she had proudly ranked among the Five Great Masters.
Thus, he might beg her for martial instruction, but she had no need of his.
“Indeed.”
“I have no intention of joining Mount Hua.”
“I know. No coercion, no request. Merely settling accounts by sharing my shameful old tales.”
Amid the biting snowflakes, his figure shimmered like a precarious plum branch swaying.
Dark Fragrance Float?
Mount Hua’s famed transcendent lightness skill.
Leaving scent even in darkness—truly an exquisite art.
No, it’s different.
Dark Fragrance Float was subtle yet steady.
His movement was not.
Infinitely precarious, yet utterly serene.
A willow leaf in a gale.
Amid raging storms and churning waves, the light, supple leaf drifts on, unsinking, leisurely afloat.
A supreme softness, utterly alien to Mount Hua's martial principles, dwelled in his motions.
He asked,
"Is the human heart strong?"
A question too obvious from one who had transcended human limits into transcendent realms.
How much endurance, mental cultivation had that ascent required?
Thus, the answer should affirm it.
And as a former transcendent master, Wi Sowol replied,
"I think it's weak."
The polar opposite of expectation.
The Pure Void Daoist smiled gently.
This elder, who had lived long enough to yearn more for the end than the future, reflected on his life's experiences.
"I think so too. The human heart is weak. Terribly so. Martial arts root in mind methods because the heart is our frailest part. Being weak, without tempering it, nothing is possible."
The Pure Void Daoist remembered.
His childhood, when the entire complex crumbled in an earthquake, leaving only South Peak's Golden Heaven Palace as shelter. There, the sect leader and all Mount Hua disciples huddled.
The great quake ended, but aftershocks dragged on.
Over five years, they sapped Shaanxi's will to rebuild. Mount Hua and Mount Zhongnan clawed from ruins, rallied survivors, rebuilt halls, rationed scant food, and endured.
"I was afraid."
"Afraid?"
"Yes."
Afraid of not surviving.
Afraid his loved ones would someday leave.
Afraid his life would end meaningless.
Afterward, he chose release.
Letting life flow as it would, faithful to the present to flee fear.
"Even when my master's arm was crippled, I deemed it inevitable. Chanting the Primeval Lord's name, I sought only what I could do, harboring no resentment, self-blame, sorrow, or fear."
As heaven wills, so man acts.
The Pure Void Daoist abandoned self-judgment, entrusting all to heaven.
His heart grew serene.
Thus ascended to transcendent realms.
This was neither Mount Hua's teaching nor a survival creed for harsh times; he wished to discuss not martial arts, but life.
"I expect no recognition for my deeds. I don't believe good returns good, nor evil its due. I simply choose faith. Someday, reward will come. Someday, punishment for evil. Without that, I couldn't endure."
The Pure Void Daoist met Wi Sowol's eyes for the first time.
The trembling girl's eyes, at his ramblings—valueless from a mere old man lacking martial or Daoist profundity.
"I won't say abandon fear. But create a heart's refuge. Embracing all alone, claiming all outcomes—unbearable."
"For you, that was heaven?"
"That is my Dao."
The Weird Physician would rage that golden seven pounds' worth of teaching amounted to this, but ignorant Wi Sowol seemed to gain something.
Even knowing their deal, she'd not quibble over the gold.
Instead, she made one request.
"I want to swing my sword."
"'Dark fragrance known only to the bright moon.' If the moon calls, one must bloom scent."
Wi Sowol's Great White Light True Qi absorbed moonlight, cleaving the night; the Pure Void Daoist's Dark Fragrance Float wafted subtle scent, greeting the moon.
Invisible fragrance dyed in moonlight.
Moonlight suffused with fragrance, quietly spreading.
That day.
Wi Sowol named the sword she wielded.
Linked Blossom Moon Sword.
"I'll head out first."
Wi Sowol shouldered her pack and bid farewell.
"See you later."
And farewells promise returns.
Winter passes.
One year ends, a new begins.
The season still painted the world white, snow unmelted.
The girl, prepared to weather winter, had resolved her scholarly aspirations and now strode vigorously homeward.