I tell the people of Blood Night Palace what I’m thinking.
“Elder Heo. This old manly guy is a rare senior.”
“….”
“I hope things change so that you feel like you can walk out of this place without worrying about the people in here.”
Only then did I look at my protruding belly.
“Had too much. When I came here, I only ate beef jerky. I ate really well.”
The Palace Lord nods.
“I am glad you enjoyed it.”
“I need a room. I thought it wouldn’t be right if I called in a benefactor only to leave first. We sleep, practice, drink, and talk until teacher comes.”
Cheap as ever.
“If I see any suspicious guy when walking around I will treat them as an idiot and punish them.”
Only then did the two who were eating, laugh. It was only now that they got used to me.
Palace Lord nods her head.
“They are important ones, so true.”
I show my fingers to the young lord who is staring at me.
“… I train at finger flicking too.”
I laughed so hard, but since no one laughed apart from me, I stopped.
“… let us leave.”
Moyong Baek who ran at the call of Low-Down Sect’s leader speaks in a cautious tone in front of Heo Gyeom’s residence.
“.. can I come in?”
After a while, Yong-myeong comes with a puzzled face.
“Who are… you?”
Moyong Baek introduces himself.
“A physician called by the Sect Leader of the Low-Down.”
“Sect Leader called you?”
“Yes.”
“And where is he?”
“He only informed me to come here and… he went.”
Yong-myeong looks at Moyong Baek in confusion.
‘Master doesn’t like physicians very much.’
Heo Gyeom’s voice could be heard.
“Bring them”
“Yes. Bringing them in.”
Moyong Baek is guided by Yong-myeong and looks around before he enters a room which was unusually large with a bamboo smell. It was a boring room with no paintings, just things smelling like bamboo.
Moyong Baek bows his head to the old man in a white robe.
“Moyong Baek of Moyong family.”
Heo Gyeom replies, turning away from the window.
“If the Sect Leader sent you, you must be a skilled one.”
Moyong Baek thinks for a moment and then smiles.
“You are right. I did treat a lot of people.”
Heo Gyeom smiles as he holds out his hand.
“You must have gone through a lot to come here.”
Moyong Baek looks around and takes a deep breath.
“I can’t tell so I have to ask but is this bamboo scent coming in from the outside?”
“Yes. Why do you seem surprised?”
“Bamboo is said to bloom flowers once every few decades. It is an unfamiliar scent.”
Heo Gyeom nods.
“Come to think of it, the physician is young. Come sit.”
The two sit across from each other at the long wooden table and look. Moyong Baek asks,
“Senior, may I know your age?”
“I will be 111 years old.”
“I thought you were around 70 but I was wrong about 40 years.”
“Trying to joke?”
“As you said, do you think I should have lowered the age?”
Heo Gyeom laughs out loud and holds his arm out.
“You want to check?”
“Yes.”
Moyong Baek stretches out his hand to check his pulse and touches Heo Gyeom’s palm.
“You are a swordsman?”
“Swordsman?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come here without hearing anything about me?”
Blinking his eyes Moyong Baek replies,
“Sect Leader sent a letter…”
“Sent?’
“And told me to come quickly so I hurried.”
“He helps you?”
“No. he is my patient.”
“Huhuhu.”
“If not a swordsman then blade? Or do you use a spear? This isn’t a normal palm.”
Heo Gyeom replies,
“No. I…”
It wasn’t easy to say what Heo Gyeom was.
There was pride but when he thought about how he almost died, the pride turned to regret. These regrets have increasingly made it tough for him to maintain his calm.
Heo Gyeom speaks to the young guy feeling guilt.
“I have retired.”
Moyong Baek’s eyes widened.
“Ah, I see.’
Moyong Baek touches the palm and next grabs his wrist and inspects him.
“… have you lost internal qi?”
As soon as Heo Gyeom nods, Moyong Baek hurriedly removes his hand. Moyong Baek needed to process what he just heard.
‘He is 111 years old, and he lost his internal qi. How the hell did this man survive until now?’
The strangest thing is that he had no other special health problems. Moyong Baek stared at Heo Gyeom.
‘Did he try to take his own life?’
Heo Gyeom asks as the young physician is trying to figure his health out.
“How is the condition?”
Moyong Baek responds.
“Hmm, you have taken wonderful care of your health senior. It is difficult for one to maintain health as such. It seems like you have also been taking a lot of care for your mental health. If only Low-Down Sect Leader can calm himself down like senior does, his madness would be buried in no time.”
Heo Gyeom laughs.
“It won’t happen. The way we live is different. Or the mindset of ours is different. I am only calm because I have been trained to keep my composure. There was no special method for it.”
“Is that so? Well, if Low-Down Sect Leader comes to learn under you, he wouldn’t be able to stand it for even ten days and run away. It is a martial art that you have to train from the heart, but that man’s temperament wouldn’t let it happen.”
Heo Gyeom laughs.
“Just the thought of it makes me laugh.”
Moyong Baek also laughs without saying anything.
Heo Gyeom, who is looking at Moyong Baek’s expression, asks,
“Is there any other reason for the young physician to constantly mention the Low-Down Sect Leader?”
“That is just the truth.”
“Let me hear about it.”
While inspecting the wooden table in the center, he touches the slightly tilted spot with his hand.
“The table is split.”
“It has been a long time….”
“Senior, that man has a broken heart just like this table. Madness of his comes and goes. What’s unusual about him is that he doesn’t have much of a heart of gold. He doesn’t think about hiding it, covering it, or trying to fill the gap in character. However, I am aware of where his wound is. I know how big his wound is. And I’m also aware when it pains him the most. I am looking at his wounds objectively to some extent. Such is the attitude of the Low-Down Sect Leader who is dealing with wounds on his heart.”
“Hmmm.”
“The guy is living with a hard heart.”
Heo Gyeom asks,
“Then what about me?”
Moyong Baek says,
“Thanks to how you maintain your calmness and composure, there is no such thing. Even if there were, you would have filled the wounds without a trace. Because it was a high level of maintenance, no traces would have remained.”
Heo Gyeom nods.
Moyong Baek says with a thin smile.
“But senior, by nature, everyone has wounds on their heart. Conversely, a person whose heart is never wounded is far from being a human heart. Perhaps senior….”
Moyong Baek points to the wooden table.
“Recently, it seems that there is a crack in your heart. You must have had a lot of worries. In the past you handled them amazingly, but now the wound might have widened up.”
Heo Gyeom stares blankly at the crack on the wooden table.
“… your heart must have feared the Cult Leader.”
“Cult Leader like Demon Cult leader?”
“Right”
“Because the martial art is strong?”
“No. If you put it in how us physicians say, that person would never have a crack in his heart.”
“Right. As far as I know, was that person always like this?”
“There was a certain softness, but it seems that even that has been removed.”
Moyong Baek nods.
“Then there is no way that senior, who was able to lie so much, should be afraid of death. You must be concerned for those who will have to stay back.”
“Must be because I am getting too old.”
“Not exactly in that way.”
“Why so?”
Moyong Baek looks at Heo Gyeom.
“… senior, you didn’t just retire from being an assassin because you didn’t want to hold the weapons or lost your skills. You have let go of the thought to kill and that is why you retired from that field. The heart of a high-level assassin has no crack but that of a retired one does have cracks. It is because you have finally returned away from the killing part of life and are able to show compassion. It took a long time.”
Heo Gyeom looks at the table.
Moyong Baek says,
“You have a crack in your heart and so does the Low-Down Sect Leader. And now, my senior, you too have recognized it. In the past you would have covered it with the mindset of killing again, but now this is just….”
“Please say it.”
“It is a burnout”
Heo Gyeom says with confusion,
“Burnout?”
“Yes, to some extent you have similar symptoms with Low-Down Sect Leader. It comes and goes for him. However, for senior, you seem to have deep mental control of your mind compared to him, so you cope better. I will have to inform the Sect Leader about the situation of senior….”
Heo Gyeom hurriedly raises his hand.
“Ah, do not tell him.”
“Uh?”
Heo Gyeom says with a complicated expression.
“I can handle this much. Low-Down Sect leader is handling it, and if I cannot do it….”
“Senior, that man is an odd one so he will not be enduring this in the right way at all. At that time, he was having pain like a stomach burn. But it is bad for you.”
“Ah, because he has a temper around you?”
“Yes, senior. He is pretty ill-tempered, so I need to be careful around the man and act accordingly. Still, seeing that he called me in a hurry means he is quite worried about you. Until I got here I couldn’t figure out if I was seeing a patient or someone he kidnapped. How did you even become friends with such an ill-tempered man?”
Heo Gyeom smiles.
“I don’t know. He is a real man, I like it.”
“It looks like he had killed a hundred bandits not too long back. Someone asked me to make medicine, so I went to visit him, and it was for a beat patient who was laying in the scorching sun. Whether you want to be treated or not, that man is quite vicious.”
“Ah, weren’t the physician and Sect Leader close?”
Moyong Baek nods.
“Before being close as acquaintances, he was my patient. We are friends but his temper is still bad, so I make sure to cover my words politely. I can get beaten too.”
Heo Gyeom, who tried to be patient, eventually smiles.
“Right.”
Moyong Baek lightly holds the man’s hand like before and says,
“Senior, this is also a disease, and it is one which comes up suddenly and then disappears like it never happened. You are doing good and well. That man is also enduring it, so we shouldn’t lose this easily to it.”
Heo Gyeom nods.
“I will win it.”
“Actually, there is no need for medicine or concoction. So, I will leave.”
When Heo Gyeom tries to get up, Moyong Baek supports him.
“You can see me off from here. You worked hard listening to the words of mine.”
Heo Gyeom nods.
“Thank you”
“Yes, then.”
Moyong Baek makes eye contact with Heo Gyeom and bows his head and walks out.
Yong-myeong, who was waiting outside, gets up.
“You are leaving?”
Moyong Baek answers back.
“It can be a little difficult, especially during the hot summers. If he is having a hard time in summer, he might feel a bit sicklier due to this. As a result, disciple should learn how to soak plums and then offer them to your master often. Since you are learning martial arts, which needs a lot of time, eating together would be nice too.”
Yong-myeong lowers his head.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Yes, then.”
Moyong Baek leaves the place to go back the way he came from and looks at the top of a large tree.
“… Sect Leader?”
After a while came a rustling sound and Low-Down Sect Leader landed on the ground.
“Done?”
“Yes. Why did you climb the tree?”
He looks around and says,
“I tried to imitate assassins. This is weirdly fun.”
“… you always have fun.”
“I tend to try at all times. Well, it looks like the spies of the Demon Cult are planted around.”
“I see.”
Low-Down Sect Leader holds out his hand as if he wants to walk.
“Let’s take a walk. How was senior?”
Moyong Baek lowers his voice and says,
“Burnout.”
“Uh? Well, that is good.”
“His life force seems weakened, and he doesn’t seem to be eating well.”
“Um, then how?”
“Plums stimulate appetite so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Low-Down Sect Leader nods.
“As expected of our Moyong! You must have had a lot of trouble coming here in a hurry. There will be more instances like this, so you should hurry up and find a disciple….”
Moyong Baek stops walking.
“Uh?”
“Why are you so surprised?”
“You will call me more?”
To which he answers calmly.
“Isn’t it important to save lives? If I had learned medicine, why would I call you? I could just do the treatments myself. But I couldn’t so you came from the horse drawn carriage. And I ran from the Black Rabbit Union all the way here on my two legs while chewing on beef jerky. Let’s go.”
Moyong Baek, speechless, mumbles.
“Yes.”
Low-Down Sect Leader mumbled as he walked with hands behind his back.
“Shall I try the plums too?”
Moyong baek says,
“Have alcohol.”
“Right. Let’s go get a drink.”
“…”
Moyong Baek is taken away without saying anything else.
