Chapter 376

A sea of people.

There was no other way to describe the scene.

Word had spread that the Sleeping Dragon of Shanxi—no, the Blazing Flame Divine Dragon Jin Taekyung—and the Huashan Divine Dragon Cheongpung were leaving, and people had gathered like clouds.

Not only martial artists but fearless ordinary citizens had come to see them off. The crowd stretched on endlessly, one person after another, too many to count.

“Safe travels, Blazing Flame Divine Dragon!”

“Sichuan Murim will never forget you!”

“It has horns! The Huashan Divine Dragon has a horned snake!”

“Whoa! The snake just did a flip in midair!”

“Fire King! The Fire King grabbed the snake and is trying to roast it!”

The murmuring noise gradually faded into the distance as the procession moved away.

On a deserted hill, a boy sat on a tree stump watching the entire scene. Then he suddenly spoke.

“We’ve come a long way.”

“Indeed. I’m getting tired.”

His elderly Disciple dropped heavily onto the grass, breathing hard. Mungyeong murmured,

“…We truly have come a long way.”

He wasn’t talking about distance. Mungyeong was speaking of the years they had traveled together.

“Do you remember when we first met?”

“How could I forget?”

The old Disciple wiped the sweat from his brow as though the scorching sun of that day were beating down on him once more.

“The first year of Hongwu.¹ That unusually hot summer.”

It was the year the civil war over the imperial throne ended and a new Son of Heaven ascended.

The young, ambitious emperor changed the era name and sought to enact reforms, but the people, exhausted by the long civil war, were too weary to heed the Son of Heaven’s will and take part.

“Rebellions broke out across the land, and bandits ran rampant.”

“Drought came, and swarms of locusts swept across the plains. The corpses of government soldiers and rebels lay everywhere, and epidemics raged.”

“Yes. It was truly a time of chaos.”

Death begot more death, and before long, it swallowed the continent whole.

A young carpenter surnamed Dong could not escape the dark shadow cast over the land.

“Even now, I sometimes think back to those days.”

The passing decades had changed more than mountains and rivers. The young carpenter who had lost his beloved wife and two children to the epidemic had grown into an old physician.

“I wonder whether I might have saved my family if I had been a little faster. If I had found you sooner.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Yes.”

Sitting on a hill close to the heavens and gazing at wisps of cloud drifting by, the old physician’s eyes became those of the young carpenter once more.

“I will regret it for as long as I draw breath.”

He had been only one day too late.

By the time the carpenter dragged his plague-stricken body to the slash-and-burn settlement and returned with the nameless old physician staying there, it was already over.

He cried for an entire day, then dug a grave for his family. Afterward, he made a single request of the physician he had brought back.

“Please bury me with them. That was what I asked.”

Mungyeong replied bluntly.

“And so I slapped you across the face.”

“It hurt. So much that I wanted to die.”

It hurt. The pain had nothing to do with his life hanging in the balance. It came from knowing he would never see his beloved wife and children again.

“You were the one who helped me back to my feet, Master.”

Mungyeong shook his head.

“I only held out my hand. You chose to take it and rise.”

“I had to live. I had something I needed to do.”

By all rights, the carpenter should have died from the epidemic as well.

But the physician cured him with medical arts unlike anything he had ever seen. For the first time, the carpenter realized that even a mere human could alter the cycle of birth, aging, sickness, and death ordained by Heaven.

“I can still see it clearly. You kneeling before me and begging me to accept you as my Disciple.”

“That differs from what this Disciple remembers. I remember you beckoning for me to follow.”

The young carpenter who had lost his family found a new goal, while the old physician who roamed the land tending to poor and helpless patients gained a new Disciple.

It was only many years later that the carpenter, now a physician named Dong Feng, learned his Master’s true identity.

“The Slaughter Saint… A truly terrifying sobriquet. That was the first time you seemed like a stranger to me, Master.”

Mungyeong gazed impassively into the distance.

What he was about to ask was something he had never once asked his Disciple.

“Why did you not leave?”

“Did you think I would leave you, Master?”

“I have taken more lives than I can count. I was nothing but a hideous Killing Ghost who concealed his past. I would have understood if you had left.”

“Perhaps I might have. But I knew all too well what kind of man you were, Master.”

The next words came softly.

“The Divine Physician. My Master is the man known as the Divine Physician. You would never kill without reason.”

“…!”

Mungyeong’s eyes trembled.

It was a truth he had never told anyone—and one no one had ever been willing to acknowledge.

He had lived as an assassin and personally taken countless lives from the orthodox faction, the unorthodox faction, and the Demonic Cult alike. Every one of them had given him reason to kill them.

A Great Hero of the orthodox faction, renowned for his fairness and integrity, had made a pastime of raping and murdering women. A master of the unorthodox faction had slaughtered an entire village for amusement.

Had the Demonic Cult’s invading armies not killed and destroyed indiscriminately throughout the Central Plains, and had the greatest assassin under Heaven not finally stepped forward to kill its notorious fiends, he could never have become known as the Slaughter Saint.

“If I had not fought the Demonic Cult, the entire world would have pointed fingers at me. Just as it always had.”

The title of Slaughter Saint was merely absolution granted by the orthodox faction once it became the master of Murim—and praise for a powerful man.

Though Mungyeong had always been Mungyeong, people neither knew nor tried to learn the truth hidden behind him.

“Why did you never tell anyone?”

“It is all in the past. I wished to leave Murim, and I became a physician as I intended. That is how I will continue to live.”

Mungyeong slowly rose. By then, the long procession from the Sichuan Tang Clan had already vanished into the distance.

“Let us go down. There are patients waiting for us.”

He spoke in a dry voice and had just taken a step when his Disciple spoke.

“A great war will break out soon.”

Mungyeong stopped dead. Behind him, his elderly Disciple continued.

“What happened back then will happen again. Countless people will die or be wounded. There will be no end to those who lose their parents and children, nor to the screams and death.”

“…We will be very busy. I should make preparations.”

“You know what I am trying to say, Master.”

“I do not wish to know.”

“Master.”

“I am a physician. Though I broke the promise I made to myself and was forced to kill, I will not make the same mistake again.”

Mungyeong continued slowly.

“Fighting is their responsibility, and treating the sick is ours. My heart left Murim long ago.”

“Then why have you never abandoned your martial arts?”

“…!”

Mungyeong was left speechless.

It was a question he himself had harbored for years. If he had wanted to leave Murim because he hated killing, then he should also have abandoned martial arts—the means by which he killed.

Yet his martial arts had advanced even further. Proof that he had been unable to relinquish his attachment to them.

Why?

His elderly Disciple’s voice broke through his brief reverie.

“You can treat hundreds, even thousands of patients, Master. But you are also a man capable of saving tens of thousands of lives at once.”

“…”

“Please prevent this war as the Divine Physician, not the Slaughter Saint. This Disciple will remain here and care for the patients.”

Mungyeong suddenly raised his head and looked at the sky.

Clear and blue.

Seven days earlier, when the Sichuan Tang Clan had been stained with blood, that sky had been filled with dark clouds.

“The sky is clear.”

With those blunt words, Mungyeong resumed walking.

“I should tend to the patients. Take your time coming down.”

Dong Feng’s voice drifted after him as he descended the hill.

“The Hour of the Dog.² They said the ship would depart from Chengdu’s western harbor.”

“Pointless. Murim is not where I belong.”

Yet a faint smile touched the old Disciple’s lips as he watched his Master’s back recede into the distance.

“Please… remain in good health.”

Whoooosh.

A wind blew from somewhere, sweeping between them.

“What are you looking at so intently?”

At Hyuk Mujin’s question, I turned away from the crowd surrounding the harbor.

“Nothing. Just checking, in case.”

“In case of what?”

“You little pest, why are you prying into everything? If I say it’s nothing, just accept that it’s nothing.”

Hyuk Mujin gave me a knowing smile.

“I already know why you’re doing it, Captain.”

“…?”

I froze. How the hell did he know? Even Cheongpung hadn’t heard the conversation between the Divine Physician and me.

Was this guy always this perceptive?

Just as I was wondering, he whispered,

“Weren’t you looking at the Young Lady standing fourth from the right in the front row?”

“…”

“She certainly is pretty. She looks like the daughter of a wealthy family too. If you permit it, Captain, I could go over as your right-hand man and discreetly arrange somewhere private for the two of you…”

“Mujin.”

“Yes? Ah, do you prefer meeting naturally? In that case…”

“Do you want to sink to the bottom of the Yangtze?”

“…!”

“Stop spouting bullshit and keep lying there. And don’t start puking later because you’re seasick.”

“…Yes, sir.”

As Hyuk Mujin quietly shrank into himself, Gung Gibang snickered.

“You idiot. It wasn’t the fourth from the right. It was the third woman from the left. Anyone can see she is much prettier. Your eyes are screwed up.”

“Want me to screw up your eyes for you?”

“…Sorry.”

“Let’s try to live like decent human beings. Decent human beings.”

Sighing, I shook my head and swept my gaze over the cloud-like crowd one last time.

They were both definitely pretty, but the third woman from the left was more my type—

No. That wasn’t the point.

Damn it. Those bastards kept going on about it, so now I keep looking at her.

As I was thinking that, a huge man with a copper-colored complexion approached me and spoke.

“Hey, Junior. No, not Junior. Young Hero Jin. No, Great Hero.”

What is this, buffering?

The man cycling through forms of address at lightning speed was Ship-Fire Boy³ Mu Song. I offered him a solution.

“Just call me Junior.”

“Ahem. Would that really be all right?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? You had no trouble doing it before.”

“Still, you have accomplished something extraordinary.”

Fair enough. I had gone from a regional young prodigy known as the Sleeping Dragon of Shanxi to a nationally famous figure.

“And Great Hero Jeok does not seem particularly fond of me…”

“It’s fine. He’s never liked water much to begin with.”

Where Mu Song was glancing, Jeok Cheongang stood with his face twisted in fury.

Beside him, Jin Wikyung was examining some bamboo slip whose purpose I couldn’t make out, while Cheongpung taught Mimi a new trick.

“Mimi, ride the waves!”

Sssrik, shaaaash!

Was that a water snake?

Distracted for a moment by the rare spectacle, Mu Song finally spoke with an awkward expression.

“Anyway, everything is ready. When should we depart?”

“What time is it?”

“The Hour of the Dog you mentioned has already passed. It would be best to leave before it grows any darker.”

“…Hmm.”

“Are we waiting for someone else?”

I considered Mu Song’s question for a moment, then shook my head.

“No. No one.”

“Then we can depart.”

“Let’s do that.”

“Understood.”

Mu Song raised one hand high, and the river pirates, already fully prepared, moved in perfect unison.

Just as the people gathered to see us off began waving—

“Wait! Wait just a moment!”

“Stop! Stop!”

The bow of the swift ship shuddered as it began pulling away from the harbor.

Far off in the distance, I spotted a boy forcing his way through the crowd. I let out a short laugh.

“Let’s take one more person aboard before we go.”