A Death Sentence (2)
The middle-aged man reading the letter frowned.
“What is it?”
asked the man standing before him.
With his round, good-natured face, this man was Dae Daero, chief steward of the Jecheon Medical Manor.
The middle-aged man reading the letter was Je Unseong, the Heavenly Physician, who in a mere five years had raised the Jecheon Medical Manor to the rank of foremost medical clan in the Central Plains.
“It’s a conscription order.”
“A conscription order?”
Daero looked at him in puzzlement.
“Are you aware that the remnants of the former Emperor have joined forces with the Four Heavenly Demon Forces and are growing in strength?”
“I’ve heard as much, though I don’t know the scale of them.”
“It seems they’re growing alarmingly fast.”
“Surely they haven’t simply been left alone all this time?”
Daero asked.
“We’ve been sending suppression squads out steadily. But few ever came back alive. So we know almost nothing about the Four Heavenly Demon Forces. The bigger problem is that the martial clans have grown reluctant to join the squads at all.”
“Hence the conscription order.”
“Less a conscription order than a command to ‘lead by example, leaders.’ Something like that.”
“What does the order say?”
“Each clan is to send one child over the age of sixteen.”
“They’re demanding we send the Young Master Cheonryong?”
Daero was startled.
Je Unseong had a single son—Je Cheonryong. Born during the manor’s leanest years, Cheonryong was never someone Je Unseong intended to raise as a physician. He had squeezed out money he didn’t have and sent the boy to study at one of the foremost martial sects instead.
Fortunately, Cheonryong showed exceptional talent for the martial arts and earned recognition. But three years ago, Je Unseong had called his son back to the manor.
He never told anyone why, but Daero knew.
It was because Je Unseong had obtained the Mad Light Divine Art. Once he had it in hand, he quietly began searching for a supreme martial manual to forge his son into an absolute master—and acquired one of staggering caliber.
Cheonryong was currently training in that art in seclusion, and once he completed it, he would ascend to the ranks of the absolute masters. But ignoring the conscription order would earn the imperial family’s displeasure—and the imperial family accounted for two-thirds of the manor’s revenue. No, they were already displeased as it stood.
It was bound to be a tormenting dilemma.
“In fact, the Imperial Guard of the Great Heavenly Kingdom sent official documents before, demanding my son. Back then I politely refused, saying his martial arts were too weak and he’d only be a burden to the squad. But this time……”
“This time they don’t care how weak he is—they just want him sent.”
“Too many people are wriggling out with one excuse after another, so the imperial family is in quite a bind, it seems. They’re even sending an imperial envoy this time.”
“Then why not send the envoy off to the suppression squad instead?”
“My point exactly.”
“But isn’t this a critical time for the Young Master?”
Daero asked.
“It is. Cheonryong is at a crucial stage. One more year of devoted training and he’d be there—but if he goes off to war, he can’t continue his cultivation, and he’ll never reach the highest realm.”
“As I understand it, the Young Master has barely left the estate since childhood, so hardly anyone knows his face. Am I wrong?”
“True. It would be safe to say that outside the family, no one knows him.”
“Then wouldn’t it not have to be the Young Master himself?”
“What do you mean?”
“High officials have been buying people to send in place of their own sons since long ago.”
“So……”
“We pick a suitable Geomseonin and send him instead.”
“A fake son?”
Je Unseong’s eyes widened.
“Not a fake son—an adopted son.”
“Do we have someone suitable?”
“I recommend Geomseonin Number One.”
Knock knock knock!
Just then came the sound of knocking at the door.
“What is it?”
“The Master of the Heavenly Medical Pavilion announces the convening of a Medical Council.”
came Simui’s voice.
“A Medical Council?”
Je Unseong’s and Daero’s eyes widened at the same time.
The Jecheon Medical Manor consisted of five pavilions: the Heavenly Medical Pavilion under the Devil Physician Je Simhak, the Human Medical Pavilion under the Poison Physician Gal Jung-ui, the Earth Medical Pavilion under Yeok Chun, the Death Physician, the Life Pavilion under Je Unseong’s eldest sister, the Divine Hand Je Chunyeong, and the Evil Pavilion under his second sister, the Wicked Empress Je Hayeong. Each pavilion held sixty physicians.
A Medical Council meant all of them gathering together.
“What’s the agenda?”
“The emergence of an Inner Core, they said.”
“An Inner Core?”
Je Unseong shot to his feet.
Creating an Inner Core had been the Jecheon Medical Manor’s long-cherished dream.
No—it was the dream of every physician alive.
A spirit beast that had lived for thousands, even tens of thousands of years absorbed the various energies of the world—the Qi of Heaven, the Qi of Earth, and beyond—and those energies, once drawn into its body, gathered in one place and formed a small sphere. That sphere, made of every manner of energy, was called an Inner Core, and it held an efficacy surpassing any spirit core in existence.
If a martial artist could swallow and dissolve an Inner Core, he would become an absolute master wielding centuries of internal force in an instant; an ordinary person would live long and free of illness.
The countless medical clans scattered across the Central Plains all yearned to create one. Whoever managed it would be seated on a cushion of gold.
The reason the Jecheon Medical Manor had spent fortunes recruiting Geomseonin and feeding them every manner of drug was precisely to refine an Inner Core. And now, at last, one had been made—how could he not be thrilled?
“Who was it?”
Je Unseong asked as he headed out.
“Geomseonin Number One, they say.”
“Number One?”
Je Unseong’s face twisted slightly.
“Tell them I’m coming.”
After a long moment of deep thought, Je Unseong made his way to the grand assembly hall.
Every physician of the Jecheon Medical Manor was already gathered there. At the center of the hall stood a platform three feet high.
It looked about the size of a bed.
The platform was covered with white cloth, bulging slightly as if something beneath it were covered.
As Je Unseong entered, the physicians parted to either side and cleared a path. He walked inward. Around the platform stood five people.
The five pavilion masters—the pillars of the Jecheon Medical Manor.
“Have you seen it?”
Je Unseong asked the pavilion masters.
“We haven’t yet.”
replied a tall beauty with a body as solidly built as any man’s. She was Je Hayeong, the Wicked Empress, Master of the Evil Pavilion.
“……”
Je Unseong looked at Je Simhak.
“Shouldn’t you look first, Elder Brother?”
Je Simhak said.
“I don’t mind looking first…… but let’s look together.”
“I would ask that you acknowledge that I was the one who established this achievement before the cloth is drawn.”
Je Simhak said, looking at Je Unseong.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Je Hayeong asked.
“He seems unwilling to admit that the Inner Core exists thanks to the Thousand Poison Demonic Pill I administered. Am I right?”
Je Simhak shot back.
“An Inner Core doesn’t form overnight, you know.”
“Of course it doesn’t appear out of nowhere. But without the Thousand Poison Demonic Pill, we would never have known an Inner Core was growing in this fellow’s dantian. That is entirely my achievement.”
“Have you forgotten that Geomseonin bodies are examined once a month?”
Je Hayeong did not yield either.
“Let us see the Inner Core.”
Je Unseong interjected before the two could argue further.
“As you wish.”
Je Simhak swept back the cloth covering the face. The person lying on the platform was Jin Yigang.
“You mean it’s not a Living Core but a Dead Core?”
Je Unseong frowned—Jin Yigang lay utterly motionless, as if dead. An Inner Core yielded its greatest effect only when excised from a living body. And Jin Yigang looked for all the world like a corpse.
“No. He’s still alive.”
“Is he? Remove the rest of the cloth.”
“Now! I shall unveil the Inner Core. Observe closely.”
This time Je Simhak drew the cloth back slowly.
Jin Yigang’s body was revealed. He was completely naked, wearing not even a loincloth.
“The Inner Core is within the dantian……”
Every gaze turned at once to Jin Yigang’s dantian.
“Huh?”
“Ah!”
“That’s—”
“Good heavens……”
Gasps of astonishment rose from all around.
Across Jin Yigang’s dantian, black lines had spread like a spider’s web. Looking as though drawn in ink, they were bulging, protruding blood vessels.
The physicians looked at one another.
“Allow me to take his pulse.”
An old man with a face as long as a horse’s stepped up to Jin Yigang’s dantian. He was Gal Jung-ui, the Poison Physician, Master of the Human Medical Pavilion. True to his epithet, Gal Jung-ui was a grandmaster of poisons. He pressed his palm against Jin Yigang’s dantian.
“Hmm!”
Gal Jung-ui let out a groan.
“What is it?”
“Poison has spread outward.”
Gal Jung-ui answered.
“Then……”
“I do sense a core in the dantian. About the size of an adult’s fist.”
“You mean a tumor, not an Inner Core?”
Je Unseong’s face twisted. The difference between an Inner Core and a mere core was enormous. An Inner Core was a spirit core formed from the energies of elixirs; a core meant a tumor—a growth. And growths came in two kinds.
There were simple growths called fluid cysts, and there were malignant tumors that could not be treated. A malignant tumor visible to the naked eye meant a fatal condition—life measured in mere months.
“One cannot say whether it is an Inner Core or a tumor.”
Gal Jung-ui took a step back.
Je Simhak, the manor’s second-in-command, was insisting it was an Inner Core—he could hardly flatly contradict him.
“Would an Inner Core sprawl about like spider silk like that?”
Je Unseong asked again.
“I believe not.”
“So it may not be an Inner Core.”
“That is my personal opinion.”
“Pavilion Master Je, examine it once more.”
“Yes.”
Je Simhak pressed his palm to Jin Yigang’s dantian.
With his eyes squeezed shut, he examined the core growing there.
“In my judgment, it is certainly an Inner Core. The poison is only on the surface.”
“Then doesn’t that make it a poison core?”
asked a woman shorter than Je Hayeong, with a soft, warm face. She was Je Chunyeong, the Divine Hand, Master of the Life Pavilion and Je Hayeong’s elder sister.
“A poison core?”
Je Simhak turned to her.
“Every poison fed to Number One over the past five years, taken together, would be enough to kill every man and beast in our city and still have some left over. At that dosage, wouldn’t it be hardly surprising if a poison core formed?”
Je Chunyeong said.
“We fed him elixirs in similar measure.”
Je Simhak said.
“According to medical theory, poison accumulates in the body, while the energies of elixirs are mostly expelled. That is what the texts say, is it not?”
“So what is the pavilion masters’ conclusion?”
Je Unseong asked again.
“My conclusion is a poison core.”
“Rather than argue, let us cut it open.”
said Yeok Chun, the Death Physician, Master of the Earth Medical Pavilion.
The hunchbacked Yeok Chun had earned his epithet through countless clinical experiments performed on his own body. The scars on his face and his crooked back were said to be products of those experiments as well, though he never spoke of it, so none could be certain.
“If it truly is an Inner Core, we would commit the folly of slitting open the hen to get at the egg.”
Je Unseong said. It was accepted doctrine that an immature Inner Core, wrongly extracted, was worth less than an ordinary elixir. And even if it were mature, cutting it from a corpse would make it a Dead Core; and if it were no Inner Core at all, they would have to worry about poisoning instead. In his view, slitting open the dantian was not a good option.
“I oppose cutting him open as well.”
“As do I.”
Je Hayeong and Je Chunyeong made their opposition to the blade unmistakably clear.
“Then what would you have us do?”
Je Simhak asked.
“May I make a suggestion?”
Je Hayeong raised her hand slightly.
“Speak.”
“The three hundred physicians gathered here are experts in the healing arts. Let each of them take his pulse, then state his own opinion—is it an Inner Core, a tumor, or a poison core? Whichever answer wins the most votes, we follow.”
“What say you?”
Je Unseong asked, looking at Je Simhak.
“We are physicians. When the pulse is in doubt, it must be confirmed with one’s own eyes.”
Je Simhak would not bend.
Nor was he alone—some of the physicians agreed with him as well.
“Very well. Let us cut it open.”
Je Unseong reluctantly nodded.
Preparations for the surgery began at once. First, Jin Yigang was fed an anesthetic powder so he would feel no pain.
The operation itself fell to Yeok Chun, the Death Physician.
Yeok Chun took up the surgical knife and stood before Jin Yigang.
Before setting the blade, he first looked at Je Unseong. Their eyes met.
—Number One must not die.
Je Unseong said in a transmitted whisper.
—Why not?
—I have need of him.
—Need of him, you say……
—I’ll tell you later.
—Understood.
Yeok Chun nodded, then slit open the dantian.
“Ugh!”
A groan burst from him at once.
“What is it?”
Je Simhak asked.
“Look at this.”
Yeok Chun held up his surgical knife. The blade, once silver, had turned pitch black.
“That’s……”
“My knife is forged of ten-thousand-year dark iron. And that thing is not an Inner Core—it has the form of a tumor.”
Yeok Chun pointed at Jin Yigang’s dantian.
Though only a shallow cut had been made, even the slit portion was pitch black.
“Anyone who wishes to confirm it, come and see.”
Yeok Chun stanched the bleeding, wiped the blade, and stepped aside. The physicians nearby all crowded in to examine Jin Yigang’s dantian.
And the core within it was judged to be a malignant tumor.
“Son of a—!”
Jin Yigang cursed as he stared up at the Thousand Martial Statues.
He had truly lived his hardest.
For twenty years he had studied like a madman.
When top marks got him thrown out like a stray dog, he had eaten like a madman instead—poison and elixirs alike, no distinction made.
Granted, at first he had swallowed the prospect of death down gulp after gulp. But no matter how much poison he drank, he wouldn’t die. So he had resolved to actually live for once.
And now they tell him it’s a malignant tumor.
A death sentence with less than a year left to live.
“AAAAAAAARGH!”
Jin Yigang charged into the Thousand Martial Statues with a roar.
