098
098
Eighteen Yin Torment Severed Meridian.
Both the Eight Yin Meridian Severance and the Nine Yin Meridian Severance are forms of Meridian Severance Disease, a fatal condition in which yin energy accumulates within the blood meridians, obstructing the proper circulation of qi and leading to an early death.
'The method for confirming the illness is simple.'
Without exception, sufferers develop white hair, their eye color changes, and they cough up blood at the slightest exertion, dying by the eighth or tenth year.
However, most meridian severance diseases are congenital.
'Dokgo Yeon was perfectly healthy as a child.'
If it were a congenital blockage in the blood meridians that brings early death, then Dokgo Yeon, the child of a martial family, could not possibly have survived this long.
If it were a disease of blocked blood meridians, the Murim Alliance Leader Dokgo Ja-yeong would have cleared it with his virile punishing rod long ago.
If the cure were truly a rod virile enough to wash the marrow, Dokgo Ja-yeong would have used it on his own daughter, even at the cost of crippling his martial arts.
But he didn't.
Why? Because she contracted the meridian severance in the year she turned ten, on her birthday.
'Dokgo Yeon fell ill after she was poisoned with the Formless Poison. Before that, she was a lively young girl, perfectly fine.'
Dokgo Yeon contracted an incurable disease at the age of ten.
At a Murim Alliance event, doted upon by many sect leaders, she ate fruit offered by someone and fell ill. Her hair turned white, the color of her irises seeped into her pupils, and she became a patient who coughed up blood several times a day. The woman with the greatest martial talent in the Central Plains was reduced to a sickly invalid. When Dokgo Ja-yeong learned his daughter had been poisoned, he unleashed a bloodbath within the Murim Alliance.
It was the work of the Eldest Prince.
The Eldest Prince colluded with a traitor inside the Murim Alliance to poison Dokgo Yeon.
He was jealous that a child a full ten years his junior possessed greater talent than his own. A truly despicable man, yet when it comes to weaving schemes from the shadows, his skill is second to none in the world.
Ultimately, although Dokgo Ja-yeong brought a bloodbath to the Alliance, he gained nothing.
— Who put you up to this?!
— I-I don't know either! I am truly innocent! I swear on my martial arts, my wife, and my daughter! I've been framed!!
Ultimately, Dokgo Ja-yeong tried every possible way to cure the disease, but no one could figure it out.
— This is a disease I have never seen before.
— It resembles the Nine Yin Severed Meridian, but the symptoms are far more severe.
— This is a new illness. If the Alliance Leader permits, our Ibi-sa medical office would like to examine her....
Every renowned physician was mobilized, but none diagnosed it as the 'Nine Yin Severed Meridian.' Meridian severance is almost always congenital; a case like Dokgo Yeon's, where the meridians were severed due to 'poisoning,' was unprecedented.
— My pride was wounded, and I was determined to save her, but it cannot be done. Even the Divine Physician's Heavenly Rejuvenation Pill I held as a last resort has no effect. It seems only the Divine Physician himself could cure this.
Even a famed doctor from the Imperial Palace who came after hearing rumors of an incurable disease failed to identify the illness and gave up.
The reason Dokgo Ja-yeong reluctantly allowed me inside might well be resignation. Still, he must have harbored a faint hope that the disciple of the Divine Physician might hold a possibility.
Then why does no one in the modern era know of this illness?
'Because it's a disease lost to history since ancient times, of course they don't know.'
The Eighteen Yin Torment Severed Meridian is an illness said to have occurred in the distant, primeval era—a time even older than the records in the Divine Physician's Green Pouch Book.
It bears another original name, and the Green Pouch Book records it as a somewhat 'common' ailment in those days, but for it to appear now, thousands of years later, it is indeed an incurable disease.
'Even the current Divine Physician wouldn't recognize it. It isn't even recorded as a disease in that book.'
Even in the Green Pouch Book, it isn't treated as a disease but as a certain 'phenomenon.' Calling it a disease in the modern age is a bit awkward, so I arbitrarily refer to it as the Eighteen Yin Torment Severed Meridian under the guise of an illness.
'That Eldest Prince fellow really is something else.'
I can't know exactly how the Eldest Prince obtained it, but I cannot let his trickery against Dokgo Yeon stand. I will certainly defeat the Eldest Prince's scheme that left a lovely woman to die.
With my hot, rigid instrument.
"Did you not hear me? Engaging in dual cultivation with me is the only 'medical procedure' that can save you."
So, without any preamble, I boldly declared the treatment method to the woman standing before me, Dokgo Yeon.
Lee Si-a and Sagong Hee, standing on either side, looked on slack-jawed, unable to hide their shock. Clearly, they hadn't expected me to propose intercourse so brazenly.
"........."
Slowly closing her eyes, Dokgo Yeon's face flushed red and pale by turns as she swallowed her fury. Just in case she slapped me, I gauged in advance whether her palm would fly from the left or the right.
'Since she'll have to withdraw her Protective Qi Aura first.'
If taking a slap on the cheek was the price for having Dokgo Yeon, I was confident I could take a slap every time. I waited for Dokgo Yeon to speak.
"...Please, come inside first."
"........."
I braced for a slap; this was unexpected. I stood there nervously before the white-haired, violet-eyed Dokgo Yeon as she calmly turned and headed toward the inner quarters.
'What's this? Getting angry should be the normal reaction.'
The next Murim Alliance Leader I knew was someone who flew into a fiery rage at injustice.
As a pursuer of righteousness, it wouldn't have been strange for her to draw her sword on a physician who claimed that the 'only cure' was having sexual intercourse with a man.
"Physician Mubung."
Dokgo Yeon looked up at me, her voice grave and subdued. As she turned back, holding the villa's door handle, her eyes held nothing but deep resignation, sorrow, and despair.
"Is that truly the only way to cure my illness?"
"It is. It is a disease even the Heavenly Rejuvenation Pill cannot cure."
There is no method to calm the twisted qi meridians other than my internal energy. Dokgo Yeon's white eyebrows trembled faintly.
"...First, come inside."
Creeeak.
Following Dokgo Yeon, I stepped proudly on my own two feet into the Dokgo Clan's villa, <Wuling Island Garden>.
* * *
"Alliance Leader, this is an abuse of power."
"Silence."
Jegal Gil, the Murim Alliance's Strategist, was inwardly infuriated by Dokgo Ja-yeong's refusal to even pretend to listen.
"Do you have any idea how deep the people's discontent runs? There's an uproar over the Alliance Leader abusing his authority to keep Physician Mubung as his personal physician."
"Treating him? Mind your words. I merely created an environment where the physician can focus a little more on his treatment."
"But that's...."
Jegal Gil was speechless at the spot where Dokgo Ja-yeong had dragged a chair, a desk, and even a bed to set up camp—right at the bridge's entrance, the only path to the villa.
"Must you really go this far?"
"Of course!"
There was a small guard post beside the bridge, but Dokgo Ja-yeong's determination to keep an all-day vigil was both understandable and extreme.
"Are you that desperate to drive away everyone seeking the physician?"
"Strategist, it is not about driving them away. It is about preventing riffraff from seeking Physician Mubung out of mere curiosity."
The Alliance Leader glared at the people who appeared near the bridge one by one, radiating his internal energy. Under the Alliance Leader's overwhelming aura, three-tenths of them gulped and stepped back, while four-tenths clicked their tongues and slipped away.
"This is overstepping your authority!"
"As if the Alliance Leader's daughter is the only patient!"
"Is this not too much!"
The remaining three-tenths—those with gravely ill family or friends, just like the Alliance Leader—ignored his rough manner and instead stepped forward.
"Alliance Leader! There is a saying, fellow sufferers pity one another!"
"We, too, have reasons we must meet Physician Mubung!"
"Open the Dugu Nine Swords Formation!!"
The very reason the Alliance Leader had knelt to Mubung, begging him to enter the villa, was to drive these people away.
"Enough! Is the physician not currently treating my Yeon! Quiet!"
He'd thought that even every double-hour of the day might not be enough to treat Dokgo Yeon. Driven by that belief, he could only shout angrily at those trying to steal Mubung's time, tears brimming in his eyes.
"If there is truly one among you with an incurable disease like my daughter's, I will gladly open the way! But not all of you have such an illness, do you! Shall I expose all your truths?!"
"Ugh...!!"
"Th-That's a threat!!"
"Keh-heh, a man who can't get it up and another caught with his pants down—how noisy you are."
A foul stench, thick with grime, spread everywhere with that voice. The protesters groaned as the hawk-nosed old man appeared.
"Sect Leader...!"
"Yes, the Beggar King. Now go back to your places. Don't bother the Alliance Leader needlessly. Or... shall I tell them more about you?"
"Tch...! But...!"
Under the Beggar Sect Leader's pressure, the martial artists cautiously retreated. Yet a very few still held their ground, fuming, so the Sect Leader pointed his pipe at them.
"That young man from the Mount Hua Sect, stay. I've heard all about your aged mother. But that illness—even without the Divine Physician, it can be cured by spending a fortune to hire a physician just one tier below him. Alliance Leader, what say you?"
"......I will purchase and send my medicinal ingredients."
"Alliance Leader!! Thank you!!"
After an unsightly farce, all the martial artists gathered before the bridge dispersed as if losing interest. Those who were truly desperate among those who came to see Physician Mubung could be counted on one hand.
"I proclaim to all gathered here! The Dokgo Clan pledges to aid in healing the ailments you suffer! However! Give us just four days! Grant some time to my Yeon!"
The Murim Alliance Leader had already taken measures, such as sending medicinal ingredients to those desperate souls likely to seek Mubung. With the added promise of support in the name of the Dokgo Clan, the discontent could be somewhat suppressed.
"Look here, Go Ja-yeong."
"It's Dokgo. Dokgo Ja-yeong."
"Whatever! No matter how much it's for your daughter... haa. Alliance Leader, you went a bit too far this time."
"I know. Hmph."
Only at the scolding of the Beggar Sect Leader, a friend who had cooperated with the Alliance Leader since youth, did the Alliance Leader withdraw his killing intent. But his will to guard the bridge remained unchanged.
"But no one may cross here. Until my Yeon's illness is healed... no, at least until I know how many years Yeon has left to live, no one shall pass through here."
Dokgo Ja-yeong glared fiercely and shouted.
"This is the command of the Murim Alliance Leader. All of you, step back. Let no one interfere with Physician Mubung's treatment. If you don't like it... you try being the Alliance Leader."
Faced with the Alliance Leader's blustering threat, no one dared even think of challenging Dokgo Ja-yeong. Who else could possibly take on the role of Alliance Leader when everyone else had refused it?
"Alliance Leader, do you truly believe Physician Mubung can cure Yeon's illness?"
"Of course. I saw the purity in his eyes. And I could feel it."
Dokgo Ja-yeong was brimming with conviction.
"A pure and intense will to cure my daughter!"
* * *
"It feels as if he's planning to violate me under the pretense of treatment...."
Dokgo Yeon sat alone in a chair, vacantly staring at the ceiling. The coughing had thankfully subsided, and no blood came up, but she had nearly coughed up blood for real at Physician Mubung's words.
— If you are not treated before the tenth year after contracting the disease, you will die.
— Fortunately, you passed the eighth year safely, so now it is the tenth. Frankly, you could die as soon as tomorrow.
— To treat you, I need to release the pressure points throughout your body.
— But the Eighteen Yin Torment Severed Meridian won't be solved just by pressing points from the outside.
— Unless I directly touch the place where the blood meridians are most tangled, the deepest part of a woman, it will be meaningless.
— In that sense, I propose sexual intercourse with you for the purpose of medical treatment.
"...To speak of matters between a man and a woman so casually."
Dokgo Yeon's fist trembled. Ever since the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, she had heard rumors and inwardly looked forward to meeting Physician Mubung; the reality was the worst.
Even if he was a man her father had allowed inside the Dugu Nine Swords Formation, rude was rude.
"But still...."
Dokgo Yeon pressed her hand firmly against her chest. The seething pain inside was beyond description, and the agony was hard to endure.
"........."
First, she needed time to think. Embarrassing as it was, she was debating whether to explain the situation to her father and seek counsel.
Ahng, aahng, haaah....
You carry a great deal of fatigue.
Th-that's good.... Physician....
"......Gulp."
Hearing heated breaths from somewhere, Dokgo Yeon opened the door. It was late evening; after the meal, the three guests had each retired to their rooms.
There was absolutely no reason for a woman's voice to be heard from Mubung's room.
Aaaahng...!!
"........."
Through the crack of the slightly opened door.
There unfolded a feast of bare flesh the likes of which Dokgo Yeon had never once beheld in her life.