Chapter 376

A sea of people.

There was no other way to describe the scene.

Word had spread that the Sleeping Dragon of Shanxi—or rather, the Blazing Fire Divine Dragon, Jin Taekyung—and the Huashan Divine Dragon, Cheongpung, were leaving, drawing people in like clouds.

Not only martial artists, but fearless commoners as well, had come out to see them off. The crowd stretched farther and farther, an endless tail that could not be counted.

“Safe travels, Blazing Fire Divine Dragon!”

“The martial world of Sichuan will never forget you!”

“It’s a snake with horns! The Huashan Divine Dragon has a snake with horns!”

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

“The Fire King! The Fire King is holding the snake and trying to set it on fire!”

The murmuring noise gradually faded as the procession moved farther away.

On a deserted hilltop, a boy sat on a tree stump watching it all. He suddenly spoke.

“We’ve come a long way.”

“We certainly have. It’s tiring.”

At the sight of the old disciple plopping down on the grass with ragged breaths, the boy, Mungyeong, muttered,

“…We really have come a long way.”

He was not talking about distance. Mungyeong was talking about the years they had traveled through.

“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. That exceptionally hot summer.”

It was the year the civil war over the imperial throne ended and a new emperor ascended.

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

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

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

“Yes. It was truly an age of turmoil.”

Death bred more death, and soon it devoured the entire continent.

A young carpenter surnamed Dong could not escape the dark shadow that hung over the land, either.

“I still think about those days from time to time.”

The decades had changed more than just the landscape. The young carpenter who had lost his beloved wife and two children to the epidemic had since become an old physician.

“I wonder whether I could have saved my family if I’d been just a little faster. If I’d found you sooner.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Yes.”

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

“I will for as long as there is breath in my body.”

It had been only a single day.

By the time the carpenter, dragging along his plague-stricken body, brought back the nameless old physician who had been staying in the slash-and-burn settlers’ village, everything was already too late.

He wept for an entire day, then dug a pit in which to bury his family. Afterward, he made one request of the physician he had brought.

“Bury me with them. That was what I asked.”

Mungyeong answered in his blunt voice.

“And so I slapped you across the face.”

“It hurt. Enough to make me want to die.”

It had hurt. Not because of pain that threatened his life, but because he could no longer see his beloved wife and children.

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

Mungyeong shook his head.

“I merely held out my hand. You were the one who chose to take it and stand.”

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

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 birth, aging, sickness, and death ordained by heaven.

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

“I remember it differently. I remember you beckoning me to follow you, Master.”

Thus, the young carpenter who had lost his family found a new goal, while the old physician who traveled the world caring for helpless, impoverished patients gained a new disciple.

It was only much later that Dongbong—the carpenter, by then a physician himself—learned his master’s true identity.

“Slaughter Saint… It is a truly terrifying sobriquet. That was the first time you felt like a stranger to me, Master.”

Mungyeong gazed into the distance, his gaze emotionless.

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

“Why didn’t you leave?”

“Did you think I would leave you?”

“I have taken countless lives over the years. I was nothing more than an ugly slaughter demon hiding my past. I would have understood if you had left.”

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

A moment later, the old disciple continued quietly.

“The Divine Physician. My master is known as the Divine Physician. You are not someone who would 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, taking countless lives with his own hands, whether they belonged to the orthodox faction, the unorthodox faction, or the Demonic Cult. And every one of those people had had a reason they deserved to die.

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

If the army of the Demonic Cult invading the Central Plains had not killed and destroyed indiscriminately, and if the greatest assassin under heaven had not stepped forward to kill those infamous demon heads because he could no longer stand by and watch, he could never have been called the Slaughter Saint.

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

The sobriquet Slaughter Saint was merely absolution granted by the orthodox faction that now ruled Murim—and praise for a man of great strength.

Mungyeong had always been Mungyeong, yet people neither knew nor cared to know the truth hidden beneath the surface.

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

“It is all in the past. I wished to leave Murim, so I became a physician as I had intended. And I will remain one.”

Mungyeong slowly rose to his feet. By then, the long procession that had left the Sichuan Tang Clan had disappeared into the distance.

“Let’s head down. There are patients waiting for us.”

He had just started walking, his voice dry, when—

“A great war will break out soon.”

Mungyeong stopped dead. Behind him, the old disciple continued.

“The same thing that happened back then will happen again. Countless people will die or be injured. People who have lost their parents or children will be everywhere, and the screams and deaths will never end.”

“…I suppose I’ll be very busy. I should make preparations.”

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

“I do not want to know.”

“Master.”

“I am a physician. Though I broke the promise I made to myself and took lives when I had no other choice, I will never make that mistake again.”

Mungyeong continued slowly.

“Fighting is their duty, and treating the sick is ours. In my heart, I left Murim long ago.”

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

“…!”

Mungyeong was at a loss for words.

It was a question he himself had carried for a long time. If he had wanted to leave the Murim because he hated killing, then it should have been right for him to abandon martial arts as well—the means by which he killed.

Yet his martial arts had advanced even further. It was proof that he had been unable to let go of his attachment to them.

Why was that?

The old disciple’s voice broke through his brief reverie.

“You can treat hundreds, even thousands, of patients, Master. At the same time, you are capable of saving tens of thousands of lives.”

“…”

“Please prevent the coming war—not as the Slaughter Saint, but as the Divine Physician. This disciple will care for the patients here.”

Mungyeong suddenly lifted his head and looked at the sky.

It was clear and blue. Seven days and nights earlier, when the Sichuan Tang Clan had been dyed in blood, the sky had been filled with dark clouds.

“The sky is clear.”

In his blunt voice, he resumed his halted steps.

“I should go check on the patients. Take your time coming down.”

As he descended the hill, Dongbong’s voice scattered behind him.

“The Hour of the Dog. They said they would depart from Chengdu’s western port then.¹”

“Pointless. The Murim is not where I belong.”

Yet as the old disciple watched his master’s back recede into the distance, a faint smile formed on his lips.

“Please… be well.”

Whoooosh.

A wind blew from somewhere, sweeping between the two men.

“What are you looking at so intently?”

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

“Nothing. Just in case.”

“Then what are you looking at?”

“You little pest. Why are you interrogating me like this? If I say it’s nothing, take it as nothing.”

Hyuk Mujin gave me a knowing smile.

“I actually know why you’re acting that way, Squad Leader.”

“…?”

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

Since when was this guy so perceptive?

As I wondered about it, he whispered,

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

“…”

“She is pretty, that’s for sure. She looks like the daughter of a fairly wealthy family. If you give me permission, Squad Leader, I could quietly go over there as your right-hand man and arrange a separate—”

“Mujin.”

“Yes? Ah, do you prefer meeting women naturally? If so…”

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

“…!”

“Stop talking nonsense and keep lying there. And don’t puke later because you get seasick.”

“…Yes, sir.”

As Hyuk Mujin quietly shrank in on himself, Gung Gibang snickered.

“What a fool. It’s not the fourth woman on the right, but the third on the left. Anyone can see she’s much prettier. Your eyes must be crooked.”

“Want me to make them crooked for real?”

“…Sorry.”

“Let’s live like human beings. Like human beings.”

With a sigh, I shook my head and gave the crowd gathered like clouds one last sweeping look.

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

No. That’s not what this is about.

Damn it. Those idiots wouldn’t shut up about them, and now I can’t stop looking.

Just then, a towering, bronze-skinned man approached me.

“Hey there, junior. No, not junior. Young Hero Jin. No, Great Hero.”

What is this, buffering?

I offered a solution to the boatman Mu Song, who was switching forms of address at lightning speed.

“Just call me junior.”

“Ahem. Th-That would be all right?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? You used to do it just fine.”

“Even so, you’ve accomplished such a great thing.”

He had a point. I had gone from a local rising martial artist known as the Sleeping Dragon of Shanxi to a nationwide celebrity.

“And Great Hero Jeok doesn’t seem to like me very much, either…”

“It’s fine. He never liked water much in the first place.”

Where Mu Song kept glancing, Jeok Cheongang stood with a face twisted in fury.

Right beside him, Jin Wikyung was examining some bamboo slips whose contents I could not identify, while Cheongpung was teaching Mimi a new trick.

“Mimi, ride the waves!”

Sssrik—splaash!

…Was that thing a water snake?

Mu Song, whose attention had been stolen for a moment by the rare spectacle, finally spoke with a sour expression.

“In any case, preparations for departure are complete. When should we set sail?”

“What time is it now?”

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

“…Hmm.”

“Is someone else coming?”

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

“No. No one.”

“Then we can depart.”

“Let’s do that.”

“Very well.”

Mu Song raised one hand high, and the water bandits, who had already finished all their preparations, moved in perfect unison.

The people gathered to see us off were waving in our direction when—

“Wait! Just a moment!”

“Stop! Stop!”

The bow of the fast ship rocked as it was about to pull away from the port.

Far in the distance, I spotted a boy pushing his way through the crowd and let out a quiet laugh.

“Let’s take one more passenger.”