The Relief Journey
The Medicine Hall was, quite literally, the place that oversaw the Zhongnan Sect’s medical arts and pill refinement in their entirety.
It healed the sect’s own disciples injured during missions or training, of course. From time to time it also treated outside guests and secular disciples. And it was responsible for refining all manner of spiritual medicines, including the Qi Building Pill.
To say it held the life of the sect in its hands was no exaggeration.
As a natural consequence, even the menial work of the Medicine Hall was overwhelming. Cleaning the sickrooms was only the beginning; there was laundry of the cloths used for patients and treatment, the sorting of medicinal ingredients, and more. The range of duties was considerable. With patient care and pill refinement already straining their capacity, there was simply no strength left for those countless small chores.
So the main mountain regularly supplied personnel to handle the Medicine Hall’s menial labor. Cheonhwa himself had worked there during his days as an entry-level disciple.
Back then, what I mostly did was sort medicinal ingredients.
Without knowledge, medicinal ingredients all looked more or less the same. Yet Cheonhwa could classify them with practiced skill—a technique he had picked up by chance during his years as an orphan of the remote wilderness.
The Head of the Medicine Hall even praised me for it once, rare as that was.
In truth, calling it praise was a stretch. She had demanded to know why he was wasting himself on the martial path when herb gathering was clearly his true calling. Cheonhwa had chosen to take it as a compliment that he would have done well as an herb gatherer too.
Around the time I worked in the Medicine Hall, I often saw the Head leave the main mountain with her physicians in tow.
Danwon, Head of the Medicine Hall, would frequently descend the mountain to treat the people of Shaanxi Province. They called it relief service—or a relief journey.
But to think the departure for the relief journey was today.
He had heard from Okwon Jinin in advance that they would be going out for relief work. He had never imagined, however, that he would be leaving the moment he set foot in the Medicine Hall. He had expected the preparations to take time; that guess had been neatly overturned. Instead he had been abruptly swept into the procession just as they finished packing and were about to leave the mountain.
At the Medicine Hall Head’s scolding, Cheonhwa made ready at once and joined the column. The fact that she had waited rather than leaving without him could, he supposed, be counted as Danwon’s own form of consideration.
Cheonhwa was given the role of escorting the physicians on the relief journey. Most of those taking part were second- and third-generation disciples. Including Danwon herself, they numbered only ten. Among them were faces he knew.
“Junior Sister Yeonhwa?”
At Cheonhwa’s call, Yeonhwa turned her head. Instead of her familiar martial robes she wore the neat attire of a physician. Only then did Cheonhwa recall that she worked in the Medicine Hall to learn the medical arts.
“Junior Brother Cheonhwa, why are you here?”
“The Head of the Medicine Hall called for me.”
Yeonhwa tilted her head at the answer, unable to grasp why Danwon had specifically brought him along. Still, traveling with Cheonhwa after so long was not unwelcome. A faint smile touched her lips.
“I’ll be counting on you during the relief journey.”
“Likewise. I’ll be counting on you as well.”
And so the relief journey began.
They headed east of Zhongnan Mountain. The itinerary would take them through Lantian County, then Zhashui County and Shanyang County, all the way to Danfeng County where Shang Mountain stood.
The pace toward Danfeng County was so deliberate one might have doubted these were physicians who had learned martial arts. The reason was simple: whenever Danwon entered a village, she stayed for a stretch of days and treated the people.
Standing guard, Cheonhwa watched the scenes unfold.
“Could it be—are you the Strange Doctor Fairy?”
“That’s what they call me, yes.”
“At last the Strange Doctor Fairy has come to our village!”
In every village they stopped, the people recognized Danwon at once and welcomed her with open arms. A renowned physician of a great sect had come on a house call—what else could one expect?
Danwon would seek out the local magistrate or village chief, explain her purpose, and borrow a suitable place. If the village had a clinic, she went there and paid a fee for the use of the space. Now and then a local physician demanded something other than coin.
“So you don’t need the fee—you simply want to watch the treatment from the side?”
“Yes. Would that be possible?”
“What’s so difficult about that? Watch all you like. No—I’ll teach you outright, so watch and learn. Once I leave, treating the people here is your job.”
Danwon did not begrudge teaching secret prescriptions to the local physicians in the least. She herself was merely a passing traveler; looking after the villagers’ health day to day was the duty of the physician who lived among them. Those who received her teaching were moved to tears of gratitude.
“To share such precious knowledge with me—I am truly grateful!”
“If you’re grateful, treat the villagers well. Don’t go strutting about saying you learned from me. If I ever hear such talk, I’ll come back and break your arms and legs so you can never practice medicine again.”
“I-I will keep that firmly in mind.”
At Danwon’s iron-edged warning, the physician nodded furiously, face pale.
She doesn’t hold back on her encouragement, does she.
Cheonhwa watched the exchange with unexpected warmth. The words were rough, but their meaning was always the same: advance with a humble heart. Having endured Danwon’s scoldings every time he relied on the Medicine Hall as an entry-level disciple, he could interpret this much without difficulty.
Danwon’s peculiar ways did not end there.
Once, while treating a shabby-looking patient, she finished the work only for the man to hesitate and stammer,
“Um… the truth is, I have no money right now.”
“I was wondering why you were so restless. So it was because you had no money.”
Danwon gave a hollow laugh and waved him off as if shooing him out of the way.
“I’ll collect the fee on the return trip. Clear out. I’ve got the next patient waiting.”
“I-Is that really all right?”
“What? Want me to break the hand I just treated again?”
“N-No! Thank you for treating me. I will never forget this kindness!”
The patient bowed again and again in gratitude and left.
In this manner Danwon treated every patient who came without discrimination. Even those without money she sent away with a word that she would collect payment on the way back. Whether she could actually collect it did not seem to matter to her. As long as she could treat the patient, that was enough.
“Cheonhwa, come here a moment.”
“You called for me, Head of the Medicine Hall.”
“Looking at the patients who have come so far—have you noticed anything strange?”
At Danwon’s question, Cheonhwa reviewed the faces he had seen while standing guard. Cuts, stab wounds, abrasions, contusions—there had been an unusually large number of trauma patients.
“There seemed to be an especially large number of trauma patients.”
“Right. And those were the ones most often unable to pay. Something must have happened. Go investigate.”
“Me, ma’am?”
“Yes. With the fame of winning the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering and resolving the Hubei Province jiangshi incident, people will tell you the stories they’ve been hiding.”
“Don’t tell me that’s why you brought me along?”
“It’s one of several reasons. People like me and the others here don’t exactly get much conversation out of them.”
Cheonhwa had to admit she had a point. Danwon started with yelling; peaceful dialogue was a distant prospect. Yeonhwa was the opposite—shy, or rather, she simply had little fondness for conversation. As for the other physicians, the fact that they were Danwon’s disciples explained everything.
No need to think further. It’s a well-known fact that the people of the Medicine Hall have no gift for words.
Receiving Danwon’s order, Cheonhwa set out to investigate. Just as she had said, his reputation proved useful for gathering information.
“I am Cheonhwa of the Zhongnan Sect.”
“Cheonhwa of the Zhongnan Sect—don’t tell me, the Flash Sword Dragon?”
“Yes. I’m also known by that title. If it’s all right, may I hear your story?”
“Oh my, of course it’s all right! I’ll answer anything I know!”
Simply revealing his identity earned him warm responses, and people actively shared what they knew. Thanks to that, Cheonhwa obtained the information he needed and returned before long.
“Recently it seems there was a clash between Black Path factions in this area.”
“If it had been an ordinary struggle over interests, people wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“Yes. The conflict itself turned violent, causing collateral damage to the surroundings, which in turn hurt business. Using the shortfall in tribute money as an excuse, the Black Path factions beat people and extorted coin.”
“In a small town without even a proper government office, official intervention couldn’t be expected. At the very least a righteous or neutral sect with roots in the village should have stepped in—what happened there?”
“They tried to suppress them but failed. Quite a few were killed or injured.”
“So there are patients, then. I’ll have to make house calls later. Now the important part—what about the ringleaders?”
Danwon’s eyes flashed as she asked. If the source of the injuries was the Black Path, her look said she meant to root them out completely.
Fortunately or not, there was no need for Danwon to act.
“From what I confirmed, they appear to have fled.”
“Fled?”
“Yes. I checked their base, but it was empty. They must have heard somewhere that we would be stopping here and fled at once.”
“Tsk. Sharp as always, those Black Path types…”
Danwon clicked her tongue in dissatisfaction. Curious, Cheonhwa asked,
“What would you have done if the Black Path faction had still been there?”
“What do you mean, what would I do? Break their arms and legs so they can never do the same again, and destroy their dantians so they can’t use martial arts either.”
“You don’t speak of killing them.”
“You’re stating the obvious. I’m a physician. My job is to save people. Not kill them.”
Danwon said it calmly. Through those words Cheonhwa understood something clearly.
Danwon defined her identity not as a martial artist of the murim, but as a physician. In other words, it was not a martial artist who had learned medicine—it was a physician who had learned martial arts. That was why she could so easily speak of destroying a dantian, which was as precious as life itself to a martial artist.
Ordinary people of the murim would simply kill their opponent rather than destroy only the dantian and leave them alive.
From the victim’s perspective, death might even have been preferable.
But knowing the Medicine Hall Head’s temperament, she would never let them die.
A martial artist whose dantian was destroyed could easily perish from twisted qi and blood if things went wrong. But the woman before him was thoroughly versed in medical arts; she could prevent even that. Thus she would force the offender to live out the rest of their days as something less than an ordinary person who had never learned martial arts.
So that’s why her title is Strange Doctor Fairy.
She valued human life and treated people without regard to circumstance or person. Some praised such deeds as those of a fairy. At the same time, for anything that harmed people she would mobilize both martial arts and medicine until death seemed the kinder fate. Some feared such acts and called her strange.
Thus—Strange Doctor Fairy.
There could be no title more fitting for Danwon, Head of the Medicine Hall.