Chapter 808: The Medical Immortal Who Conquers All Diseases: the Divine Doctor of the Life-and-Death Pill (4)

“You look like you’re helping Lord Physician. If I hand over a miraculous medicine to your side, won’t you pry it apart somehow and try to make the same thing? If you just go around spreading other people’s medicine like that, what Therapist in the world would bother striving to produce prescriptions?”

He was saying if you bought it, you’d make a copy.

Sure, some people would pry it open and try to find the principle behind the effect.

But copying medicine?

“No, what—medicine doesn’t work like tasting something and having the ingredients line up in your head. What kind of bullshit is that?”

Even with a famous master chef’s cooking, it wasn’t easy to figure out the secret just by examining the finished dish.

Cooking still left ingredients in something close to their original shapes, and each kept its own texture, flavor, and aroma, and yet it was hard.

If even cooking was like that, then a prescription?

Medicine left no original form at all. Most ingredients were already processed before you even used them.

Some were dried and ground, some were burned and used as ash, some were juiced and hardened, some used water after boiling things down for a long time......

If you made it into pellets, it was just clumped powder, and decoctions were strained through fine cloth until only the liquid remained.

“AHEM. You can’t try to snatch someone else’s capital, not even on the off chance. Tch—anyway, people with no business ethics......”

What business ethics?

Why was a so-called Therapist putting “business ethics” in his mouth?

Sure, Therapists were merchants who made money selling their art.

But Therapists carried power in themselves.

They learned a difficult skill that held people’s lifelines in their hands, so even if it was dirty and petty, the desperate had no choice but to cling, didn’t they?

“What is this—fine. Then prescribe the medicine. You said you’ll stay about five days, right? Then you can personally confirm the patients take it. Lord Physician won’t even come near you. Sir, that’s fine, right? Yeah. Let’s save people first. Then when you leave, I’ll pay you based on the headcount. Deal?”

“Th-th—no credit! If they swallow the medicine and then pretend they don’t know, what am I supposed to do!”

“What do you take people for. Then I’ll hand the patients ten nyang each, and you can take it directly every time you give them medicine.”

“That—th-that’s no good either! I won’t sell!”

The veins in Qing’s forehead popped—POP POP POP—one after another.

Without realizing it, she clenched and unclenched her fist.

“What the hell—why won’t he sell even when we’re paying?”

“AHEM. Th-that is—right! Don’t you know the saying that life is decreed by Heaven! Birth, aging, sickness, and death depend on Heaven, so isn’t dying of illness also Heaven’s will! A patient suffering and dying to a sickness demon is Heaven’s will, and if they live, that too is Heaven’s will!”

“What—how is that something a Therapist says? Then saving people is going against Heaven’s will—so it’s defying Heaven?”

“That’s right! So if you want to save people, there must be that much sincerity, so Heaven does not get angry! If disease could be cured with gold and silver tossed by someone else’s charity, do you think Heaven would permit such luck! Heaven would be angered and grant an even more wretched death!”

Silence dropped over the crowd.

What kind of bullshit was this?

Qing organized it.

“So people getting sick is all their fate, their fixed destiny, and a Therapist fixing it is defying Heaven?”

“Right!”

“So if you heal someone with money someone else gives, they’ll just get sick again, so they have to show sincerity with their own effort?”

“That’s right!”

“So stop trying pointless tricks and obediently sell your body?”

“Right!”

Taepyeongja shouted proudly—then, ah.

“AHEM. Sell your body—no, not that. I’m saying you must show sincerity to cure the patient. Don’t you know the deed of selling oneself? When you volunteer for slavery just to bury your parents, Heaven is moved. It’s that principle.”

He really seemed to love that story.

Sell oneself, bury one’s father.

About fifteen hundred years ago, they said there lived a man named Dongyeong—poor, but with extreme filial piety.

One day his father died, but because he was poor, he had no money for the funeral.

Dongyeong went to a local rich man and said he would work as his slave and repay it, so please lend him the amount to bury his father—so the dead man received a luxurious ancestral table, and the living man became a slave and fell into misery, they said.

And while that miserable life continued, a sudden, stunning beauty appeared before Dongyeong and pestered him to marry her.

Her relentless, obsessive courtship eventually made Dongyeong accept.

But then this woman—her hands were incredible.

One moment she was catching silkworms on the mountain and raising them, and the next she was producing silk like crazy.

Silk multiplying like a miracle.

So within a month, she sold silk and repaid Dongyeong’s entire debt—and then, before the now-free Dongyeong, the woman declared:

I am, in truth, the Jade Emperor’s daughter.

Your filial piety was admirable, so I helped you. Keep that filial piety forever—ah, right, you don’t have parents to be filial to anymore, that’s true—anyway, you’re free now. Live well.

And then she flew away, leaving only Dongyeong behind, staring up at the sky, all alone.

What was the lesson of this tale?

If you want to get a beauty, first sell your body.

Then Heaven will be moved and send one down to you.

Want to move Heaven?

Then first sell your body.

And that wasn’t only for men.

Even in Qing’s homeland, wasn’t there that famous filial daughter, Sim Cheong—aside from the even more famous Qing, Seomun Cheong?

Anyway.

By now, Qing had the shape of it.

This bastard—being a Therapist, a shaman, a merchant—those were all side jobs.

His real profession was human trafficking.

Ten gold taels was just an excuse from the start, and he wanted to get them to sign papers, take them away, and sell them as slaves.

Qing didn’t know much about trafficking, but it looked like the price per head was more than ten gold taels.

Qing let out a deep breath.

It was almost superhuman patience.

If the medicine didn’t actually work, she would’ve just—

“Fine. I’ll pay twenty gold taels.”

“Did you not hear me? Even if someone else pays the medicine price for you, it brings impurity.”

“Thirty gold taels.”

“Thirty, forty—one hundred per head—and it still won’t work, so know that. Hah. You think money solves everything. You need sincerity. Sincerity.”

TAP. TAP—SNAP!

Inside the face veil, Qing smiled white.

It was a vicious smile, her mouth splitting wide, the corners of her lips stretching to her ears.

You bastard. Death sentence.

“Kek...... You’re truly refusing the offered wine and insisting on drinking the punishment wine.”

All of a sudden, Qing had a great realization.

Ah. So this is why everyone says offered-wine, punishment-wine.

It fits your mouth perfectly. It really does.

Qing let her momentum rise.

A dreadful hallucination, like black, roiling lines filling the entire world.

Even though her face was hidden by the veil, it looked as if a pair of round, blood-red eyes and a mouth torn wide were showing through.

“Eek—s-sir! Sir!”

Taepyeongja shrieked and fell on his ass.

BAM!

Even after slamming his backside hard, he didn’t even notice the pain—he scrambled backward, SCRITCH SCRITCH SCRITCH, and hid behind the martial artist standing behind him.

The middle-aged martial artist let out a deep sigh, then stepped forward with a reluctant expression.

“......Stop.”

Qing rarely stopped just because someone told her to stop.

But she did stop anyway.

Because the middle-aged martial artist’s good karma—barely, almost none at all—still glowed a faint blue.

“Don’t take it too regretfully. I don’t like this man either, but I received a favor and promised to escort him. I owe the saving of a close friend’s life. If a wanderer has no faith, he is no different from a bandit. I promised a life with the price of my own life—shouldn’t I keep it?”

“Senior. That man is using medical art as a hostage to exploit helpless commoners, and on top of that he’s trying to sell them off. He is a shameless villain.”

“Cough. His sales tactics are dirty, but he’s not a scammer. The medicine is real. I’ve watched my patients rise from their beds with his prescription.”

“But—”

“Listen. He isn’t selling fake goods, and putting a price on goods is the seller’s choice, isn’t it? If you don’t like it, it’s right not to buy it. Even if the price is vicious, how can you force him? A so-called Therapist taking massive profit off prescriptions is hateful, but it’s not breaking state law.”

The middle-aged martial artist wasn’t wrong.

The problem of medicine prices and morality—back in Qing’s homeland, weren’t there pharmaceutical companies so horrific even demons would click their tongues?

But legally, there was no problem.

Because law couldn’t force morality.

Or because it wasn’t that they alone ate the money wrung out in blood and tears—they shared it broadly with the ones who made the laws.

But state law?

I’m a martial artist.

Martial artists don’t follow state law.

If you had to name it, it was the crime of being unbearable.

One of the best things about the Central Plains was exactly this: an environment where privately destroying a bastard who deserved it was praised as chivalry.

“Senior, to save a patient, their family sells their body? The one who sells their body becomes a low slave and suffers, and will the patient truly feel relieved that they recovered by selling their own family? The patient and their family will shed tears of blood in grief.”

“Cough.”

“I clearly offered money, and honestly, even if commoners sold their bodies, who would pay thirty gold taels? And yet he uses that sophistry to the very end to keep selling people. This isn’t about seeking profit—it’s the outflow of a filthy nature. If he doesn’t take others’ grief as his own joy, how could he be like this?”

“Mm.”

“You spoke of faith, but faith is something kept between people. Human faith is not owed to that filthy beast.”

“Even if he’s a villain who deserves death, if you received a favor, you must repay it. If you evaluate the other side and keep or break it as suits your advantage, how could you call that faith? My faith is that. So don’t take it too regretfully—withdraw.”

As he spoke, the middle-aged man drew his saber and held it out.

A faint reddish haze riding the blade—weak, but unmistakable starlight that stabbed at people’s hearts.

Saber aura.

No, what—

Now even a drug peddler’s bodyguard is using aura?

It was then.

“Just a moment. I’m the junior named Jegal Ihyeon of the Jegal Family. Who might you be, senior?”

“Jegal Ihyeon—Fanatic Brain? Cough. I’m Ojeokhwan.”

Qing hesitated briefly.

Three, two, one.

Mm. If he can use aura, he’s probably famous, right?

“Ojeokhwan!” “Tiger-Slaying Saber!” “Tiger-Slaying Saber!”

Qing let out a huge sigh of relief as her friends’ voices stabbed into her ears alongside the shouts.

Thank god—he really was famous.

Qing tilted her head slightly.

As if on cue, Jegal Ihyeon—the walking commentary—leaned in with a whisper.

‘Noona, that is the Tiger-Slaying Saber, Hero Ojeokhwan. It’s known he has reached the supreme pinnacle, and......’

Tiger-Slaying Saber Ojeokhwan.

They said that while Ojeokhwan was traveling, a couple in a village treated him kindly—but the next day, news flew in that their child had been mauled by a great tiger.

So Ojeokhwan swore he would repay that kindness by avenging the child—and for a full year, he tracked it down, and in the end killed the great tiger.

That was why he was called Tiger-Slaying Saber—a saber traveler who cut down the great tiger.

Hearing it, he did seem like a man qualified to put “faith” in his mouth.

It even explained why he had built good karma—only one point, but precious.

Qing raised her clasped-fist salute.

“So you were the Tiger-Slaying Saber, hero. This junior of the martial world, Seomun Cheong, greets you.”

“Ah. Um. Was it Heavenly Flower Sword?”

Ojeokhwan looked troubled.

Heavenly Flower Sword?

She’d heard the Martial Alliance called that the brightest rising star—belonging to the male-forbidden secret sect, the Priestess Order, the disciple of the greatest woman under heaven, a prodigy who shattered the youngest supreme-pinnacle record, and so on.

“Peng Daesan.”

“......Tang Nanna.”

The introductions only made it worse.

Why were the children of the Five Great Families wandering around in a pack out in some borderland like this?

Sure, friends had to match levels to be friends—if you were the Five Great Families, you’d naturally run with each other, but why here?

Still—faith was faith.

Even to a criminal so vile as to make heaven and people rage, if you received a favor, shouldn’t you repay it?

It wasn’t some grand ideology.

A martial artist who didn’t keep faith was no different from a roadside bandit—worse, nothing but a more dangerous killing demon.

So he didn’t want to turn his entire life so far into the life of a bandit-killer.

Ojeokhwan steeled himself.

As he had done until now: Taepyeongja saved his friend’s life, so he would repay it by saving Taepyeongja’s life.

And so Ojeokhwan opened his mouth.

“......Even a man like this—spare his life. If you promise that, I won’t stop you anymore.”

“Uh, is it okay if we beat him until he vomits up the prescription, and then cut off his wrists so he can’t use medical art to commit atrocities anywhere else?”

Ojeokhwan nodded.

In the end, he saved a life with the price of a life—hadn’t he done enough?