Chapter 12
Shaaa-
Rain poured down from the ink-dark clouds that blanketed the sky.
This had once been the finest clinic in the region, thriving beyond all others, but now the patients were gone, the physicians were gone, even the nurses were gone, and the place had an air of desolate abandonment.
"......."
In the back courtyard of the clinic, a man sat collapsed on the ground, holding a child in his arms, utterly dazed.
He was the best physician in Gangseo.
The White-Haired Divine Physician.
The Future Divine Physician.
He had earned every manner of acclaim as a doctor, but what remained in his hands now was neither needle nor medicinal broth.
"Come on, eat this."
Honey candy from the market.
This was all he could do for the child in his arms.
Instead of painful needles and bitter medicine, he could only place something sweet on her tongue.
At least in those moments, the child had smiled.
Even if it had only been a smile given to brighten his heart, however briefly.
The man put the candy into the child’s tiny mouth.
Thud-
The candy rolled out of her mouth and dropped to the ground.
So unlike the little bird he had once fed by hand, the child’s mouth didn’t move at all.
"Oh, whoops. Guess I dropped it by accident."
Apologizing, he took another piece of candy from his pocket.
But this time, too, it fell to the ground.
How many times had he repeated the same futile act after that?
Thud-
Along with the candy, the child’s hand slipped limp toward the floor.
"Ah... ah, baby... my baby...."
With trembling fingers, the man touched his daughter’s cheek.
What had once been soft was now rigid, frozen cold like an icicle.
"A-ah... AAAAAH....!"
Something flowed from his eyes.
Trickle-
He had already spent every tear a life was meant to allow him, so what spilled from his eyes now was blood.
Though rain was pouring down, the red tears showed no sign of fading.
On the contrary, the stain only grew sharper.
"My baby... you must be cold...."
He drew a needle from his robes.
"Daddy... Daddy will... make you warm... r-right away...."
He reached for his daughter’s pulse, intending to place needles at the acupoints that raised the body’s warmth.
To feel the pulse, assess the patient’s condition, and insert the needle.
It was a task he had performed hundreds, thousands, no, tens of thousands of times without error.
"Krrk...!"
But his hand was shaking like mad.
He was afraid.
Afraid of what he would learn the moment his fingers touched his daughter’s pulse.
No—he already knew.
His daughter was already....
"Cough...! Cough!"
A spray of blood burst from his mouth.
Trickle-
And that wasn’t all; blood was seeping from the sword wound in his chest as well.
The makeshift bandage he had wrapped around it in a hurry had come loose again, and the wound had split open anew.
"I’m sorry... I’m sorry, Daddy is sorry....."
The man wept like a beast in the throes of grief.
The illness that had stolen his daughter’s life was beyond the reach of his own medical skill.
He had done everything in his power to save her.
He had researched the cure, then researched it again and again, but that had not been enough.
So he had gone to the great orthodox sects, knocking on their gates and begging and begging and begging some more.
Please, give me a divine elixir.
I need it to save my daughter.
If you grant me that much, I’ll give you everything.
But a father’s desperate efforts to save his child never saw the light of day.
What he received instead was a sword wound to the chest and his daughter’s already-cold corpse.
"Kek... keuhahaha...!!"
The man who had been sobbing suddenly laughed.
-You want a divine elixir? Have you lost your damn mind!
-Do you think a divine elixir is some kind of grain pill? Get lost!
-Your daughter’s sick? What the hell does that have to do with us?
The orthodox sects had brandished swords the moment he asked for a divine elixir, and he thought those people were ridiculous—just as ridiculous as he was for chasing after them and begging.
Because of that, he hadn’t even been able to see his daughter’s last moments properly. Could there be anything more absurd than that?
"Ha... hahaha...!"
The more he laughed, the wider the wound in his chest opened, but he didn’t care.
In fact, he wanted to bleed himself dry like this and follow after his daughter.
The road would be too lonely for such a small child to walk alone.
"Daddy, too... will... soon...."
Jingle-
Then, through the rain, he heard the clatter of metal.
"Well now. You planning to just die like that?"
"...Who....."
With his vision fading, the man looked toward the sound.
There stood a figure holding a monk’s staff.
His face hidden by a bamboo hat and a black cloak, he approached with the staff’s rings chiming softly.
"Who I am doesn’t matter. What matters right now is that you’re committing a sin."
"A sin...? What are you talking about....."
If a physician couldn’t save his daughter, then yes, maybe it was a sin of some sort.
"Revenge."
Jingle-
The rings on the staff clinked again.
"!?"
Unlike what he had thought, the bamboo-hatted man’s words referred to something else entirely.
"And you call yourself a father, planning to die without avenging your child? What greater sin is there than that?"
Jingle-
"......"
Each time the bamboo-hatted man shook his staff, the ember he had been forcing himself to ignore caught fire.
"Those bastards will keep living just fine even after you and your daughter are dead. They probably won’t even know what they did."
The man was right.
"Your deaths would be no different from a pardon for those bastards."
Those hypocrites would never even realize they had killed someone, not if they died themselves.
They needed punishment.
Punishment that would never be erased for all eternity!
"Can you really accept that?"
Every word the bamboo-hatted figure threw at him was like fuel on a fire.
"If you mean to take revenge, follow me. I’ll show you the way."
"......"
As the ember in his chest became a flame, he struggled to his feet.
Then he stuck needles into his own body to staunch the bleeding.
Crack! Crack!
The man dug into the earth with his bare hands.
His nails cracked, tore, and filled with soil and rainwater, but his hands never stopped.
With those ruined hands, he dug a grave and laid his daughter’s body inside it.
This was a place she had often played, so it wasn’t a bad resting place.
"Sleep well...."
He would finish what he had to do as a father, and then follow after her.
After covering the grave with soil, the man stepped toward the bamboo-hatted figure.
From now on, things would happen that he could never show his daughter.
And still, he chose to walk that road.
What he had buried just now was not merely his daughter’s corpse.
Along with it, he had buried the heart of a human being.
"What do I need to do?"
The man—Heo Injun—asked the bamboo-hatted figure.
It was the moment a new demon was born.
* * *
The Poison Demon was not originally from the Demon Cult.
He was an executive the remnants of the cult had recruited from outside.
In other words, he wasn’t someone who moved out of faith in the cult or loyalty to it.
The driving force that moved him was resentment, and if that could be resolved, then everything would be solved.
In the training yard built separately behind Heo's Medical Clinic.
"Uncle Mujin! I’m starting now~"
Holding a wooden sword, Heo Yul called out brightly.
"Yeah, let’s see how hard you’ve been training."
"Okay! Six Meridians Vitalizing Flow Sword first form, New Millennium!"
Taking her opening stance, Heo Yul shouted as she moved.
Whoosh-! Fwoosh-!
She swung the wooden sword with all her heart, eager to show the results of her hard work.
"Haah!"
She really hadn’t been lying about practicing; her forms were crisp and precise.
"Thanks to the martial art Sword Senior created for her, Yul’s recovery has been incredibly fast."
Six Meridians Vitalizing Flow Sword.
It was the rehabilitation-and-self-defense martial art I’d created for Heo Yul.
"It’s nothing much. It only stimulates the meridians and gets the whole body’s vitality flowing."
I hadn’t exactly handed her some divine art like Bodhidharma’s Muscle-Tendon Changing Classic.
"Yes, well, because of that she’s been flying around day and night... haha..."
There was a deep exhaustion in his laughter.
I ignored it and watched Heo Yul instead.
That little spitfire of a girl had already been dead in the original story.
Her death was what turned Heo Injun, who had been nothing more than a skilled physician, into the Poison Demon.
"Sword Senior. Thank you again."
Heo Injun, watching Heo Yul the same way I was, offered what had to be his umpteenth thank-you.
"You say that every time you see me."
"No amount of thanks would be enough. If it weren’t for Sword Senior, Yul would have died from Meridian Severance Syndrome."
Even in the original story, the illness that took Heo Yul’s life was Meridian Severance Syndrome.
It wasn’t one of the four major types like the Nine Yin Meridian Severance, but it was still a dangerous disease.
The abnormally grown yin energy inside her body had put Heo Yul’s life at risk.
Heo Injun had poured in all his knowledge and experience to treat her with needles and medicine, but it hadn’t been enough.
To cure Heo Yul’s Meridian Severance Syndrome, he needed a divine elixir that could harmonize with the enormous yin energy inside her body.
What, you’re asking why he didn’t just make one himself since he was a renowned physician?
Because divine elixirs aren’t something you can just decide to make, and medicine and alchemy are different fields.
Being good at medicine doesn’t mean you’re good at alchemy too.
And the reverse is true as well.
If it weren’t, then the greatest divine physician in the world would have come from Shaolin, the place famous for making Great Reversal Pills.
Anyway, in his efforts to save his daughter, Heo Injun had gone from sect to sect, but the results were poor.
Divine elixirs were the equivalent of a sect’s life savings, on par with its secret manuals.
’And not only was it unlikely they’d sell something like that, the timing was terrible too.’
When he had gone around begging, the Orthodox-Demonic War had only recently ended.
The sects were busy enough trying to recover from the damage of war.
So when he went around demanding divine elixirs, there was no way he was going to get a warm reception.
’Still, stabbing a civilian with a sword was definitely crossing the line.’
In the end, unable to obtain the elixir, he lost his daughter.
And with the grief and rage of that loss, he became the Poison Demon.
’That was the flow of the original story.’
The Heo father and daughter of this world had taken a different path.
Because someone had appeared who could obtain a divine elixir for them.
Stop the birth of the Poison Demon with one elixir of divine medicine—not mine?
That was absolute lucky-Biki-tier stuff.
When rumors began spreading that some madman had gone to the Wudang Sect to obtain a divine elixir, I approached him.
-Got it. Wait here.
-Pardon? Uh, hey—!
That day, the Wudang Sect was hit by a sudden Sword Tyrant-shaped thunderbolt.
That thunderbolt would later be remembered by the name Wudang Death Strike.
Ever since then, for some reason, my reputation had gotten a bit worse, but that had to be my imagination.
For the record, people said I broke through the Taiji Thirty-Two Sword Formation and stole the Taecheong Shindan, but the truth was a little different.
There was a fight, sure, but I never even saw the sword formation itself.
I’d been kind of looking forward to it, too.
What happened there that day was... well, let’s save that for next time.
-H-How in the world did you...?
-It was handed over from inside.
-What?
The look on Heo Injun’s face when he saw me bring back the Taecheong Shindan drenched in blood had been priceless.
It was understandable. Some black-haired Sword Tyrant had solved a problem no one could figure out in a single cut.
That was how I became Heo Injun’s benefactor.
"Yul’s been growing better and better every day thanks to Sword Senior, so it’s only natural that I thank you every time."
Heo Injun smiled as he watched Heo Yul swing her wooden sword with all her might.
"...I see."
The gratitude of a man who had once been the most vicious Poison Demon—or rather, of the man who had been the Poison Demon—was oddly unsettling.
I toyed with the Jamsungdan in my pocket.
Heo Injun, who had broken free of the Poison Demon’s fate.
Heo Yul, who was doing better than fine and running around like crazy.
It was clear that this was not a situation in which Jamsungdan could be made.
I had confirmed that with my own eyes, so there was no doubt about it.
But right now, there was Jamsungdan sitting in my pocket.
I’d wondered if Heo Injun was deceiving me, but the smile he’d just shown hadn’t contained even the slightest trace of falsehood.
"Hey, Heo physician."
"Yes, Sword Senior."
I held out the Jamsungdan to him.
The flow of the original story had not changed.
But that doesn’t mean nothing has changed.
The direction of the current might be the same, but the people living within that current had clearly changed.
Watching this father and daughter, I realized that.
"It looks like medicine, but what exactly is this?"
"It’s called Jamsungdan. A divine elixir that’s been traded in the underworld lately. Could you take a look at it for me?"
I was having the original creator of Jamsungdan, the Poison Demon, examine a Jamsungdan.
It was a method that could never even be attempted in the original story.
"Understood."
Heo Injun pricked the pill with a thin needle, then lightly licked the needle with his tongue.
"Hmm... what an interesting medicine. It forcibly awakens latent potential, numbs pain, and even slightly boosts internal energy."
Heo Injun’s brow furrowed.
"But there’s a component mixed in that induces addiction. I recommend throwing it away."
"You can figure that out just by licking it once with your tongue?"
I knew from the original story, sure, but this was the first time Heo Injun was seeing the medicine today.
Was he seriously trying to pull one over on me?
"Since my daughter became ill, I’ve had to reach into all sorts of places to treat her."
After Heo Yul fell ill, Heo Injun hadn’t simply gone around visiting sects.
Although he hadn’t been able to obtain a divine elixir because of his circumstances, he had studied divine elixirs and alchemy.
Thanks to that, he had acquired a fair amount of knowledge and understanding.
"Could you make an antidote, by any chance?"
Geom Mujin asked.
The original Poison Demon hadn’t made an antidote for Jamsungdan.
He’d created it for the purpose of destroying the martial world—what need would he have had for an antidote?
But if an antidote could be made, then it might throw ash in the Demon Cult’s gears.
"To be blunt, I can’t say for certain that I can make one. This is a type of medicine I’ve never seen before."
"...I see."
A sigh escaped my mouth.
No matter that they were the same person, there were too many differences between the Poison Demon and Heo Injun.
The experiences, motives, knowledge—everything was different.
So if I suddenly asked him to make an antidote, of course it would be difficult for him.
"But if Sword Senior needs an antidote, then this Heo will find a way to make one."
"You just said you couldn’t say for certain."
"Not being able to say I can make it doesn’t mean I can’t make it."
A glint appeared in Heo Injun’s eyes.
"Besides, if I refuse a request from my benefactor, how could I call myself a man?"
He looked pleased to be able to repay even a little of the debt he owed Geom Mujin, and his face was reassuring.
"Fine. Then I’ll leave it to you."
"Yes, leave it to me."
We nodded at each other.
"Hey! Uncle Mujin! You weren’t even watching me!"
Heo Yul puffed out her cheeks in protest.
"I was watching, you little brat. The transition from fourth form to fifth was awkward. Take a little power out of your left leg and twist your waist more."
"Eh! H-How did you know!? I thought you were just talking with my dad the whole time?"
When I pointed out the flaw, Heo Yul gasped in surprise.
"Adults might look like they aren’t watching, but they’re always watching. Isn’t that right, Heo physician?"
"Absolutely."
"Uuugh...."
Just as Heo Injun and I were laughing heartily—
"Physician!"
A young doctor came running up in a panic.
"What is it?"
"A large number of injured martial artists have arrived!"
"Understood. I’ll be there shortly, so sort the serious cases from the minor ones."
"Yes, sir!"
The doctor ran off again.
"A large number of injured martial artists? Did a brawl break out or something?"
"Ah... well."
Heo Injun said with an awkward look.
"I don’t know the details either, but word is that a Goema appeared recently."
"What?"