Becoming the Benefactor of the Emei Sect
Ten days had passed since Hwi-yeom climbed Mount Emei.
And for those ten days, Dang Un-sang had not slept a single night.
He simply could not focus on his work.
I may have sent Hwi-yeom off feeling as if I were cutting out my own guts, all for the sake of appearances… but if—if anything were to happen to him…
Crunch.
A sound like cracking bone rose from Dang Un-sang’s clenched teeth.
I will never let those elders go free. Never!
As if sensing that mood of his, the Elders’ Council had kept completely silent for the past four days.
While the entire Sichuan Dang Family sank into a strange hush, word arrived that a nun of the Emei Sect had come racing down from the mountain. Dang Un-sang bolted from his seat and headed straight for the Reception Hall.
“Hwi-yeom! What has become of Emei?!”
Before even the barest courtesy could be exchanged, Dang Un-sang demanded news of his son’s safety. The Emei nun who had come as messenger smiled brightly.
“The cholera is nearly under control. The Young Family Head said he will need a few more days to finish the cleanup and return only after the patients have regained their strength and risen from their beds, so he sent me ahead.
And here—this is the letter the Young Family Head entrusted to me.”
Dang Un-sang snatched the letter she held out and hurriedly unfolded it. Inside, the detailed record of every treatment performed on the Emei patients was set down in meticulous order by time and date. At the very end was written:
I’ll leave it to Father to decide just how hard to squeeze the Elders’ Council with this as leverage.
— Hwi-yeom
“Ha… hahahaha….”
The tension drained out of him and laughter spilled forth of its own accord.
Dang Un-sang muttered without realizing it.
“You unfilial little brat. Just wait till you get home.”
The cholera at the Emei Sect had been miraculously contained.
Of course, “miraculously” was purely the perspective of this era.
In Hwi-yeom’s eyes, containing it was only natural; the real question was how many lives could be saved. Unfortunately, he had not been able to prevent casualties altogether.
Before and after the Sichuan Dang Family’s medical team arrived, a total of fifty people had died or fallen severely ill—all of them student-nuns and ordinary monks of the Emei Sect.
Even among the martial nuns, whose physiques were robust, several had perished, yet most of those who fell ill managed to pull through by taking the oral rehydration solution and simply refusing to give up.
And most fortunately of all, the Sect Leader of Emei herself, Grandmaster Hye-eun, had survived.
“The Emei Sect will never forget this grace.”
Wiping tears from her wrinkled eyes, Grandmaster Hye-eun spoke to Hwi-yeom from the bed she had just risen from.
Hwi-yeom smiled gently and nodded.
“For a long time now, have not the Dang Family and the Emei Sect stood together as pillars of the Orthodox Path, supporting Sichuan side by side?
That friendship between our two houses will continue long into the future.”
“…Indeed.”
Grandmaster Hye-eun averted her gaze slightly from Hwi-yeom’s smile. There was a guilty corner in her heart.
In truth, the Emei Sect had for years simply watched as the Sichuan Dang Family slowly declined.
And it was not only Emei; the Qingcheng Sect, long bound to them by the same Orthodox fellowship, had done the same.
Though they all claimed to lead the Orthodox Path together, they were also rivals competing for hegemony over the single region of Sichuan.
The Dang Family’s readiness to extend a hand in our crisis was no doubt the result of political calculation… but this child would not know such things.
He must have tried to save us out of pure goodwill alone. How shameful… that I have lived so long as a disciple of the Buddha and still fallen so short. Amitabha, Avalokitesvara…
In reality, the Dang Family’s elders had refused medical aid because of their power struggle with the Family Head. It was Hwi-yeom himself who had insisted on sending support for political advantage—but Grandmaster Hye-eun could not even imagine such a thing.
Looking at his far-too-young face and the pure, radiant smile with which he had clasped her own filth-caked, wrinkled hand, the old nun simply could not conceive of political calculation. That was her innocence.
No—it was not only the old nun’s innocence.
Within the Emei Sect, after witnessing Hwi-yeom’s devotion over the past ten days, whispers had begun among the nuns that he was a saint.
It was not only the disciples of Emei; the Dang Family’s own medical staff felt the same. The oral rehydration method they had first regarded with half-doubt had proven genuinely effective, and the combination of hand-washing with soap plus boiling all drinking water had prevented further infections. That was the reason.
Hwi-yeom, already highly regarded within the Dang Family for his many extraordinary inventions and wisdom far beyond his years, now saw his reputation among the physicians shoot straight upward after this affair.
Grandmaster Hye-eun, who had briefly looked away, turned back to Hwi-yeom with calm, smiling eyes and asked,
“By the way—did you ever discover which well was the source of the contamination?”
“I have a suspicion. One of the wells sits not far from the latrines.”
“Ah, yes. But that well has been in use for over fifty years without a single problem.”
“This is only my conjecture, but I believe fecal poison from the latrines has been slowly seeping into the surrounding groundwater for those fifty years, and this time it finally dissolved into the water itself.
The poison contaminated the nearest groundwater, and people unknowingly drew from the well fed by that water—that is the most likely cause of the disease.”
Naturally, the toilets of this era were pit latrines: deep holes dug into the earth where human waste collected. One of the primary causes of cholera was precisely the contamination of groundwater by human and animal feces. It all fit.
“Ah.”
Hearing that, Grandmaster Hye-eun clapped her palms together.
“Now that you mention it, there was a small earthquake recently. It was after that… that the cholera began to spread.”
“Then it is almost certain. The earthquake cracked the ground, allowing the latrine waste to mix into the groundwater.”
“But fecal matter… so it was not the work of a plague god?”
“Even if a plague god existed, how could it dare violate the sacred halls of the Buddhist path? And how could the works of a plague god be stopped by nothing more than water mixed with salt and sugar?
I believe we merely deified an incomprehensible disease we could not understand. The plague god does not exist.”
At Hwi-yeom’s crisp declaration, Grandmaster Hye-eun laughed.
“Young hero, you are refreshingly direct. Our Emei Sect has received a great grace in this matter, and we must repay it.
I heard from Hye-jeong that you have need of the hot-spring lands our sect holds?”
At last!
Hwi-yeom straightened his posture.
“Yes. I would like a long-term lease—or, if possible, an outright purchase.”
“I have heard the tale, but some of those springs carry such heavy sulfur that they are unfit even for drinking water, and the stench is too foul for bathing as well.
Others we have simply left open so that the common folk nearby may use them for hot baths from time to time.
Is there a reason the Dang Family needs that land?”
As expected of one who led an entire sect, Grandmaster Hye-eun was not simply handing the land over; she wanted to know the reason. Hwi-yeom offered the excuse he had prepared.
“The medicines and poisons produced by the Dang Family require large quantities of sulfur.
And it is not only the sulfur itself we need; we wish to study the spring water in order to isolate substances beneficial or harmful to the human body…
And while we are at it, we thought we might also check whether any iron ore can be found.”
If he spoke only of hot springs and later began mining coal, the Emei Sect might feel they had been deceived. So at the end he casually slipped in the mention of iron ore, as though he held no great expectations.
Grandmaster Hye-eun considered for a moment.
That land is something even we of Emei have long pondered the use of, yet it is unfit for farming and holds no commercial value.
I know of no iron ore there either… The only things of any worth would be a little timber and, yes, as the Dang Family says, some sulfur.
There is little for us to gain by keeping it, and much for the Dang Family to gain. It would be fine to hand it over.
Of course, under ordinary circumstances such a thing would have been unthinkable.
The attachment people of this era felt toward land was beyond imagination.
But Hye-eun did not accurately know the land’s value, and the knowledge that she and her entire sect owed their lives tipped her into this decision.
Nor was the decision born purely of goodwill.
The enormous quantities of firewood, salt, sugar, grain syrup, and honey the Sichuan Dang Family had expended on the treatment, if converted into coin, amounted to no small sum.
By offering worthless land, Grandmaster Hye-eun also hoped to avoid having to pay that debt in silver. And that was precisely Hwi-yeom’s calculation.
“As repayment for this grace, I shall grant the Dang Family the lands of that entire area.”
“Truly?”
Control your face, control your face!
Hwi-yeom clamped down on the corners of his mouth that wanted to twitch upward and bowed his head.
“The Family Head will be truly delighted. Thank you, Sect Leader.”
“Haha. Then I shall have an official document drawn up and sent to the Dang Family.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Having successfully concluded the negotiation, Hwi-yeom was able to leave the Emei Sect with a smile on his face.
When he and the Dang Family medical team prepared to depart, the disciples of Emei, who had grown fond of them over the days, could not hide their regret.
The Dang physicians, equally reluctant, left Mount Emei behind.
“Everyone, you have all worked hard.”
Just before returning to the Dang Family, Hwi-yeom took the exhausted medical staff into the city of Chengdu for a modest celebration.
He rented an entire small inn, poured good baijiu for every physician, and laid generous side dishes on every table.
Even without touching public funds, the income from his patent rights meant Hwi-yeom could easily cover the expense from his own pocket and still have plenty left over.
“You have literally returned alive from the land of the dead. This is the result of every one of us helping and relying on one another, never yielding, and putting our faith into practice.
As Young Family Head of the Sichuan Dang Family, I am proud of you all.
To the boundless future of all of you and of the Sichuan Dang Family!”
“To the future!”
The physicians drank themselves into a pleasant haze.
They kept their intoxication moderate enough to avoid any disgrace, rested thoroughly, and early the next morning returned to the Sichuan Dang Family.
Having received advance word from Ye-eun, whom Hwi-yeom had sent ahead, Dang Un-sang and Eun Seol-ran, along with Elder Bak Chang-eon, came out beyond the main gate to meet them.
“Well done! Truly well done!”
Dang Un-sang laughed loudly at the sight of his son returned safe and the medical team that had not suffered a single casualty.
Eun Seol-ran, seeing her son’s face gaunt from ten days and nights of nursing the sick, finally let her tears fall.
They returned to a fervent welcome from the entire Dang Family.
And the physicians who had made the journey proceeded to recount their exploits before the other doctors and the household.
Pride in having fulfilled a physician’s duty without retreating amid the dying, combined with the camaraderie of having crossed the line of death together, lifted the medical staff’s morale higher than it had ever been.
And the gazes they turned upon Hwi-yeom overflowed with respect and admiration.
For the past ten days, the Hwi-yeom they had watched had been the ideal superior who led by example and never spared himself.
From Hwi-yeom’s own perspective, of course, the money he had poured in was enormous, and both his life and the success or failure of all future enterprises had been on the line, so he had had no choice but to fight with everything he had.
Yet amid this misunderstanding that was not quite a misunderstanding, the Young Family Head’s reputation within the Dang Family was rising ever more dramatically.
And, feeling a sense of crisis at that rising reputation, the elders of the Elders’ Council rushed to criticize Hwi-yeom.
“To spend such a vast sum, to stake the lives of our physicians, and all we gained was that worthless hot-spring land and forest—what is the meaning of this?!”
“We elders are even now running our feet raw trying to improve the Dang Family’s difficult finances!”
“This cannot simply be overlooked, Family Head! What do you intend to do about it?!”