Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 14 - Versed in Both Literature and Martial Arts

Chapter 14 – Versed in Both Literature and Martial Arts

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The Divine Physician’s disciple, Seo-baek, was tipping a wine cup for the first time in a long while. The moon was yellow and the sky was black. Beneath it, his face was flushed from sitting with his drink.

“Ah, this is good.”

Unlike his master who could drink his weight in liquor, he, being an ordinary man, had a low tolerance. His master had departed today.

His master’s expression just before leaving lingered in his mind.

It was a face familiar to him. When they first met, his master had a face that was chasing something.

‘Or was it that he was being chased?’

Seo-baek knew people who made such expressions. They were people with ghosts of the past clinging to their backs, those crushed under unbearable grief. They were pitiful, wretched people.

A man with great medical skills, formidable martial arts, and firm conviction was precisely his master. Yet when such a man occasionally showed a look as if he might crumble, Seo-baek cursed himself.

What good was it to have cultivated such high mastery in medicine? He could not even drive out the terrible disease that had grown in his master’s heart.

[Child, you have the same name as me. What a curious fate. I will teach you medicine.]

His father, who had lost his life to martial artists, was a physician. Physicians were inherently easy targets in the martial world.

They killed him for treating their enemy, killed him for having seen their face, killed him for knowing they were injured.

Martial artists wore out the thresholds of clinics coming and going, yet showed no hesitation in taking the lives of physicians.

When he was holding his father’s corpse and crying, his master appeared. At that time, he was a boy learning medicine from his father, but he wanted to become a martial artist, not a physician.

[I want to become a martial artist. Are you not also a master of formidable martial arts? Please, please teach me martial arts.]

But the Divine Physician refused outright.

[If I had taught you martial arts, you would have become a murderous being. And would you then have slaughtered everyone who looked like an evildoer? Or would you have established your own laws and executed all who violated them? That is how one becomes a killing ghost.]

[Then you are telling me to become a powerless physician! If I meet those kinds of people again, am I to simply lie sprawled on the cold ground and die like my father did?! I would rather become a killing ghost!]

[Child, child.]

The Divine Physician bent down to meet the young Seo-baek’s eyes.

[You must become a different person from those who killed your family. Become a physician who treats high officials and the powerful, so that even martial artists cannot easily target you.]

And so now. Every night he swallowed his rage. He felt like running away, running out to find any martial artist and stabbing them to death with a knife, and he endured that urge thousands of times.

There were even times he had to directly treat martial artists. Each time, he ground his teeth until they ached, and all his molars were worn flat.

He clung to medicine and saved people. By saving people, he suppressed his anger. Even on nights when rage scraped at his esophagus, he forced himself to sleep.

Saving Lives.

It was an effective medicine for thirst for revenge.

There were people who shed tears and expressed gratitude to him. There was even a martial artist who insisting on repaying the favor, settled near the clinic and volunteered to be a guard.

His All-Living Clinic became recognized in Sichuan, no, in all the Central Plains, and sometimes even relatives of the imperial family secretly visited this place.

Having established himself like this, his master left. The disease in Seo-baek’s heart was cured, but his master harbored a far larger and more vicious abscess in his own heart.

He had been quite glad to see his face after a long time. Even living in the same Sichuan, he rarely showed himself.

But a young man with a boyish face was with him. He was a disciple, one to be taught martial arts, he said.

Seo-baek had lied on the day they first met. He said he had never wanted to learn martial arts. That he had no interest in killing techniques. The truth was completely different.

[Please, teach me martial arts.]

He had shed tears of rage and clung to his trouser leg, but his master had refused.

[Child, I will only teach you medicine.]

That warm yet resolute voice was engraved in Seo-baek’s mind like a seal.

Yet he had decided to teach martial arts. What was going on?

When he asked, his master said this.

[If I had taught you martial arts, you would have become a killing ghost. And that boy is someone who will become a killing ghost if I do not teach him martial arts. That was the decisive reason.]

Seo-baek observed Ju-seong. He was a man who, like himself, had lost family to martial artists. Anger toward martial artists who leaned on their power to oppress the powerless, the same as those who had killed his family.

He felt a sense of kinship.

But Ju-seong was different from him. He might chew on his anger, but that anger did not spread indiscriminately. Though not yet a martial artist, he was like a refined sword.

Unlike how he himself had harbored anger even when eating, studying medicine, and treating patients.

Ju-seong’s anger was docile like a sword stored in its scabbard, and therefore sharper.

Seo-baek could not know whether it was right to teach him martial arts. But one thing was certain. His master had seen something in Ju-seong.

‘A killing ghost whispering wicked words in his ear, yet also possessing the will to suppress it?’

Seo-baek looked up at the moon. What thoughts did that thing affixed to the sky have as it watched over all creation? Where did the fates of all things flow?

He, a mere commoner, could only sit in his place and do his best each and every day.

“I will await your return, Master.”

He poured his resentment and regret into a fragrant cup of wine and downed it in one gulp.

* * *

The Divine Physician’s residence was in western Sichuan. Leaving Chengdu and driving the carriage, as the terrain rose, the weather became noticeably cooler.

Of course, cool as it was, this was still Sichuan, so it remained muggy all the same.

Ju-seong had spent most of his life in southern China, so he was used to the heat. The only discomfort was the awkward journey with Wol-hyang.

He sat beside Wol-hyang, whose complexion looked poor, and asked. Her face, lit by the campfire, looked pale.

“Miss, are you alright? You look very unwell.”

“Not particularly good. Tell me an amusing story to help me forget my troubles, Young Hero.”

“Very well. Long, long ago, in a place called Flower Fruit Mountain in the Eastern Divine Continent, there lived a monkey…”

Wol-hyang pursed her lips and cut him off.

“Do you think I do not know Journey to the West? Something else.”

“Hmm, then, once upon a time, in a place called Pei County in Jiangsu Province, there lived a man named Liu Bang…”

“I have been taught history until I am sick of it. I probably know more details than you, Young Hero.”

“Then what do you want?”

Wol-hyang rested her chin on her knees, raising only her eyes to stare intently at Ju-seong. She was asking him to tell a story that only Ju-seong in all the world could tell.

“…Ha, very well.”

Ju-seong deliberated over his words for a moment and then spoke.

“Once, in a troupe of traveling performers wandering the south, there lived a boy. Because one star shone particularly red on the night he was born, his name was…”

Only then, as if satisfied, Wol-hyang stopped interjecting and began listening attentively.

Ju-seong was a storyteller, but trying to tell his own story was not easy. When selling stories as a clown, he could hide his face behind others’ narratives.

But when laying out his own life as is, no one can wear a mask.

The Divine Physician, whether or not he was listening to Ju-seong’s story, leaned obliquely against the bundle with a vacant gaze watching the flames.

He simply stared endlessly, as if pouring the resentment knotted in his chest into the fire.

Before he knew it, Wol-hyang had fallen asleep with her small head resting against Ju-seong’s shoulder.

He stayed motionless until his body grew stiff, and only after her breathing became steady did he lay her down and go to lie down himself.

All the stars in the sky seemed like people.

‘When a person dies, does their star fall? Or when a person dies, do they become a star and rise up?’

He hoped it was the latter.

Then every night, he could meet eyes with those he could not meet.

* * *

The Divine Physician’s house was in the mountains. It was not extremely deep in the mountains, but about half a day’s distance from the nearby village. If a martial artist set his mind to travel, it was a distance he could make the round trip in about one hour.

“Is this your residence, Master?”

“Yes. Is it not nice?”

“More than I expected… I had imagined something like a worn-out thatched hut with a straw roof.”

“I have told you many times, you have read too many martial arts serials. I am not in dire straits, so why would I live miserably in a shabby house?”

The Divine Physician’s house was a modest quadrangle courtyard. A total of four buildings surrounded the courtyard in the middle.

This was originally an architectural style common in the cold northern regions.

A style built to block the fierce winter wind. Ju-seong thought this house resembled its owner.

The blue tiles covered with moss exuded an elegant charm.

“Now, disciple.”

“Yes, Master.”

“I have been away from my residence for almost half a year.”

“I see.”

“Clean it.”

When moving into a house, cleaning was naturally required.

Ju-seong began dusting off the quadrangle and scrubbing the floors. Wol-hyang approached, saying she would help, but in her condition, it was impossible, so he turned her away.

“Miss, please just sit still in the carriage. That is helping.”

Having said that, he shouted at the Divine Physician who was lying sprawled on a sun-warmed rock.

“Master, should I throw away these dried herbs?”

“Leave them be.”

“Master, the smoked meat hanging in the kitchen seems to have gone bad. I will throw it out.”

“You fool, what do you mean gone bad! The smoked meat I made by treating it with medicinal fragrance lasts a year easily!”

“Master. Should I clean the medicinal storage room too?”

“That is… hmm… Just leave it for now.”

“Master.”

“Damn it! Fine, I will help too.”

Ju-seong grinned at the sight of his master rolling up his sleeves and approaching.

“Is it not a wonderful scene to see master and disciple sweating together?”

Ju-seong managed to get the Divine Physician to join the cleaning too. With a martial arts master’s hands added, the cleaning of the quadrangle was finished within one hour.

One of the four buildings making up the quadrangle was used as a medicinal storage and kitchen.

Ju-seong, the Divine Physician, and Wol-hyang each chose one building and went in. After unpacking, Ju-seong looked around at the surrounding scenery.

A cool breeze and the moist scent of earth gently soothed his nose.

‘Is this not a perfect place for a reclusive master to hide away and raise a disciple?’

The mountain’s energy seemed auspicious, so it felt like natural qi would be abundant too.

He looked forward to training here.

Without seeing all the dirty things in the world, without getting entangled with such-and-such human crowds, he only had to hole up here and grow stronger.

And from the next day, hell began.

“Disciple, studying is about staying power.”

“I have heard that saying before, but…”

When studying, you must firmly plant your rear and sit with persistence, was the meaning. But the Divine Physician seemed to have misinterpreted its meaning.

He was having him read books while in the horse stance. Ju-seong asked while sweating like rain.

“Master, could we not do the book study separately from the physical training?”

“You want to do nothing for the two hours you are in horse stance? Just do horse stance and nothing else? Tsk, you lack earnestness. Those lacking earnestness need motivation. Add sandbags.”

The Divine Physician brought sandbags and tied them to Ju-seong’s waist.

Sweat poured down like summer monsoon rain. Ju-seong felt the book in his hand weigh as heavy as a thousand catties.

Meanwhile, he also had to memorize this thing where white is paper and black is letters.

Ju-seong began laughing like a madman. If you cannot avoid it, you must enjoy it.

“Uwahahaha!”

The Divine Physician seemed to find Ju-seong’s laughter uplifting and laughed along.

“You are that happy? Yes, laugh!”

“Hahahaha!”

“Gulgulgul!”

The warm laughter of the two master and disciple brightened the morning of the quadrangle.

Book study was not Ju-seong’s aptitude. But since it was something he would need for his future life in the martial world, he decided to learn it as if his life depended on it.

Following the Divine Physician’s policy, he read books while doing physical training. Normally, he would have rested while eating and relieving himself.

But book study was different from martial arts training. He could do it at the dining table, in the outhouse, anytime at all.

The Divine Physician’s original intent was to have him do book study while in the horse stance to train Ju-seong’s concentration.

But when he went a step further and did not let go of the book all day long, even the one who had assigned it stuck out his tongue.

“He is truly madman of a different class. I did not mean for you to go that far…”

Ju-seong bared his teeth in a grin.

“There is a saying like this too, is there not? In your twenties, be mad about studying.”

As he sprouted strange nonsense, it was quite a sight to see the disciple tying another sandbag to his waist while not letting go of his book.

The dumbfounded Divine Physician clicked his tongue.