Chapter 28
"That kid. She's not my child."
"Huh?"
Taa-dan—!
It was almost as if tense strings and a piano had suddenly burst into dramatic accompaniment from somewhere nearby.
Calamansi juice dribbled from his gaping mouth, a perfect measure of the shock he’d taken.
Looks like that hit him pretty hard.
But I still had one card left to play.
That little one is bulletproof— no, wait, wrong line.
"Th-then who is she?"
I’d briefly wondered whether I should keep the kid’s identity secret, but decided he ought to know the truth.
Even if I kept my mouth shut now, he’d find out eventually once treatment started. There was no way around it.
"She’s a Monster Demon from Mount Mui."
However many fancy words I piled on, the shock wouldn’t get any smaller, so I kept it short and brutal.
Toot—! Du-du-du-du—!
The harmony of strings and keys rang out again.
"Whaaaat?"
Drip—
Apparently there’d been enough calamansi left in his mouth for the rest to spill out in a stream.
"N-no... what... is... this..."
Heo Injun’s reactions short-circuited so badly at the utterly unimaginable truth that it looked like he might twist both arms in different directions.
Still, the only thing he was trying to ask was simple enough.
If a Monster Demon was supposed to have been put down, why was one in his house?
"Ah, this is what you call 'capturing alive.' It means taking the enemy alive instead of killing them."
Reading the thought on his face, I answered him.
"You crazy-..."
For a moment, Heo Injun lost his reason.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
By the time the morning sun had risen...
"......"
"......"
Chirp-chirp—
Sparrows called from beyond the window, but the room itself was thick with silence.
Geom Mujin and Heo Injun sat facing each other across a small table.
Geom Mujin kept sneaking glances at Heo Injun, who had his eyes closed as if he were sitting on a bed of nails.
Well, given what I’d done, that was only natural.
Here’s the surprising fact of the day: when Geom Mujin drags a Monster Demon into someone else’s house, he also watches the homeowner’s mood very carefully.
Especially when that house is not just anyone’s home, but a physician’s residence—one that sees sick people coming and going, with a young daughter being raised there.
Yeah, I figured an apology was the right move, so I awkwardly said, "......Sorry about this, Doctor Heo. I was in too much of a hurry to ask anyone else for help."
Who knew when I’d find a physician who could treat a monster without flinching while the kid was seconds from kicking the bucket?
"No. There’s no need."
Heo Injun stopped Geom Mujin’s bowing with a wave of his hand.
"I was certainly surprised at first, but I’m all right now. Please don’t bow your head to me, Swordmaster."
Having gathered his thoughts, Heo Injun spoke in a calm voice.
Just as he’d said, he had been shocked by the fact that a Monster Demon had been brought into his inner room.
To someone who wasn’t even a martial artist, a Monster Demon was more dangerous than a tiger or a bear.
Thanks to that, he’d nearly ended up hurling abuse at his benefactor—no, at least still his benefactor—and committing the sin of rudeness.
But on second thought, maybe the situation wasn’t all that dangerous after all.
"I’m sure Swordmaster Geom already took precautions, so nothing disastrous will happen."
"What?"
"Huh?"
"Uh?"
As a stupid sound escaped Geom Mujin’s mouth, an equally stupid sound escaped Heo Injun’s.
If you brought a Monster Demon into someone else’s house, shouldn’t you obviously have taken some kind of precautions?
This was the kind of problem that came from being too strong.
When you’re absurdly powerful, your threshold for sensing danger gets way too high compared to normal people.
"No way..."
"Ah, don’t worry so much. Her body’s in such bad shape that she’s not about to do whatever you’re imagining—"
It took me a beat to understand what he meant, and I started to explain.
"We did just treat that body a moment ago."
"...I’ll at least seal her acupoints."
Geom Mujin, oscillating between benefactor and sworn enemy, gave a sheepish answer.
"Please do."
The fact that Heo Injun let this slide so easily proved he really was a good man.
Honestly, if the person in question hadn’t been Geom Mujin, he probably would’ve grabbed a handful of coarse salt and thrown the whole lot of us out.
"Still, this is astonishing. So that girl is a Monster Demon."
Once the conversation settled, Heo Injun turned to look at the child lying down.
Separate from the danger, her existence itself was astonishing.
He’d seen Monster Demons a few times before.
They weren’t alive—just corpses of beasts that martial artists had dragged in to brag about their hunts—but every one of them had looked like a monster.
It had been hard to believe that any of them had once been human.
And yet the Monster Demon lying in his study now looked, no matter how he examined her, like a person.
Even more, she looked about the same age as his own daughter.
"This is my first time seeing one like that too."
Heo Injun might have been shocked, but he still couldn’t compare to what I was feeling.
A vampire-type Monster Demon was one thing, but a Monster Demon that retained a human form hadn’t existed even during the great war between the righteous and the demonic factions.
That included the original storyline, of course.
"So that’s why you brought her alive. To get information out of her?"
"...It wasn’t only that."
At first, that had been the bigger reason. By the middle, though, I’d mostly just wanted to save her because I wanted to save her.
"She’s in recovery now, but she won’t be getting up anytime soon. Until then, I’ll keep an eye on her progress here in my study."
There was no way I could leave a Monster Demon among ordinary patients, so this was the only choice.
"Then I’ll stay here too. If anything goes wrong, I’ll be able to respond immediately."
"In that case, I’ll also feel re—"
Tap, tap.
Someone knocked on the door from outside.
Sensing it, I realized there was more than one person there.
"Master. Are you awake?"
"Mm, is that Gujong?"
"Yes, Master. We’ve come to offer our morning respects. May we enter?"
Rustle—
I quietly erased my presence and hid behind the folding screen in the room.
"...Come in."
Seeing Geom Mujin hide, Heo Injun granted permission.
The door opened, and more than a dozen young physicians filed inside.
Or were they young, really?
The ones at the back looked genuinely youthful, but the physicians in front all had faces that seemed worn down by life.
Especially that physician named Gujong; with the dark circles under his eyes, he looked even older.
That wasn’t just a worn-out face—that was the face of a slave whose life had been mortgaged away. And weirdly enough, it looked familiar.
Where have I seen a face like that before?
"Master, I hope you passed the night in peace."
As Gujong bowed, the other physicians followed suit.
"Yes. Thanks to you all, I did."
"Janghan, who had gone back to his hometown, has returned."
One physician with bandages wrapped around his arm stepped forward and offered a greeting.
"May your body be healthy and your energy long-lasting."
"Did you manage your affairs in your hometown well?"
"...Yes, Master. Thanks to your concern, I returned without mishap."
"Then how did you injure your hand?"
"Ah, I slipped on a mountain road on the way back and got a small cut. It’s nothing serious, so please don’t worry."
"For a martial artist, the hand is a treasure. For a physician too, the hand is a treasure, so be careful."
Heo Injun exchanged a few warm words with his disciples.
I’d had quasi-master-disciple relationships before too, but they’d all been dark-side flavored in one way or another, so this was surprisingly refreshing.
"Now that Janghan is back, tonight I’ll check on the progress of your assignments. The senior disciples should prepare once the clinic’s business hours are over."
"...Yes."
The senior disciples—the physicians with the worn-out faces—looked visibly darker at that.
"The junior disciples will take an exam tomorrow, so the senior disciples should prepare test papers and bring them to me before the assignment review."
"....Yes."
The seniors’ faces grew even gloomier.
With that, they left the room.
Thud—!
When the door shut, I peered out from behind the folding screen.
"Must have been hard hiding there."
"By the way, Doctor Heo. Are those your disciples too?"
Geom Mujin asked with a tilt of his head.
They were the physicians working in the clinic earlier—were they all disciples?
No wonder they kept calling him Teacher and Master.
"Some are the disciples I’ve taught from before, and some are newer additions."
Even before Yul got sick, he had been teaching aspiring physicians.
"After Swordmaster Geom saved Yul and I reopened the clinic, the old disciples returned, and a whole new crowd came seeking instruction."
Heo Injun accepted them all.
And unlike before, when things had been rather haphazard, he’d made the whole operation surprisingly systematic.
"The newly accepted disciples are called medical students, while the ones who were studying before are called medical graduate students to distinguish them."
Medical students receive four years of instruction, and if they want, they move on to the advanced course as medical graduate students.
Medical graduate student means an “advanced” student who has completed four years of training.
I felt a chill crawl up my spine at that title.
"And because the advanced course is so difficult, I decided to grant the medical graduate students certain privileges."
"Privileges?"
"Yes. In fact, I was inspired by something you told me before, Swordmaster Geom."
Inspired by me? What the hell was he talking about now?
"You said that in your homeland, people called graduate students receive certificates proving they’ve earned a master’s or doctorate when they graduate, didn’t you?"
Heo Injun smiled faintly.
"I don’t really know what master’s and doctorate mean, but I’ve decided to give a certificate of my own to any medical graduate student who passes their assignments and graduates."
That’s just a graduate student, isn’t it!
No wonder they reminded me of the graduate students I’d run into by chance back when I was in college!
I was horrified inside.
In this era, people rarely traveled far from their hometowns compared to the modern world, and the profession of physician didn’t exactly have a stellar reputation either.
Most people in this age’s Central Plains barbarians stayed in the town where they were born and died there, and Jiangsu Province was no different.
If you became a physician in Jiangsu, you’d end up opening a clinic and making a living in that same town.
In that sense, Heo Injun’s certificate was incredibly tempting.
His reputation as a physician in Jiangsu was towering.
If a man like that put out a certificate reading, This physician was trained for many years under Heo Injun of Hoback Village.
Bang!
and hung it up when opening a clinic, that was on a completely different level from opening shop as some no-name hack physician.
"...But what’s this assignment thing?"
"It’s this."
Heo Injun took a small pill from his robes.
"It’s called the Saeundan."
It meant “master’s kindness pill,” and yet somehow that only made me more uneasy.
"The assignment is to take this Saeundan and neutralize it."
"Neutralize it? Don’t tell me that means it’s poison."
"It isn’t instantly fatal—its effects are delayed, so it acts gradually. It’ll be fine."
Of course it would. Otherwise this would just be murder by poison.
The Saeundan was a medicine infused with a master’s desire to raise his disciples’ achievements, even if he had to use poison to do it.
No wonder the medical graduate students looked so miserable.
"If you can neutralize the poison—no, the Saeundan—whether through acupuncture or decoction, then you graduate."
He almost called it poison out loud just now, didn’t he?
It might sound harsh, but it wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
Some of the things he taught were likely secret techniques.
It was an age without even the concept of copyright.
You had to protect your own hidden arts from freeloaders yourself.
Viewed that way, Heo Injun’s method was a kind of safeguard.
Granted, it was a pretty heterodox safeguard.
Maybe that was because this was Jiangsu, where the heterodox factions held so much sway.
"Haha, this is actually one of the things I made while working on Yul’s treatment. I’m glad I found another use for it."
"Haha, what, were you planning to spread poison through the sect and make them cough up pills or something?"
When Geom Mujin joked like that, Heo Injun wore an awkward expression.
"......"
"...That was a joke, right?"
Heo Injun never actually denied it.
"...Doctor Heo. Don’t ever say that the medical student system was inspired by me, got it?"
"Pardon? Why not? If Swordmaster Geom allows it, then as a graduation speech I could—"
"No, don’t!"
What the hell, this is insane.
If word got out, the medical graduate students might file an assassination request against me with the assassination hall.