The Divine And Demonic Doctor [EN]: Chapter 488

The Divine Doctor of Mount Hua (488)

“Huh? What do you mean? Aren’t those two Uncle Cho Baek and Aunt Han Baek?”

Beom Ryeo-hwa asked, tilting her head in confusion. Beom Gye-wi nodded.

“Yeah, they are, but there’s no need to be close to them.”

“But…”

Beom Ryeo-hwa, unable to continue, looked back and forth between Cho Ak-ryang and Beom Gye-wi, flustered.

Cho Ak-ryang looked at her, dumbfounded.

“Why are you picking a fight as soon as you arrive?”

Han Seol-hwa also glared at Beom Gye-wi.

Because Beom Ryeo-hwa was with them, they were suppressing their usual sharp retorts, but their eyes were already icy.

However, Beom Gye-wi scoffed and glared back at them.

“Hmph! I thought you’d gone on another trip.”

“What?”

“No, I mean, you were supposed to be guarding Doctor Dan, but you two ended up together.”

“What, you son of a…!”

Cho Ak-ryang was speechless with embarrassment.

No matter how he thought about it, a father shouldn’t say such things in front of his daughter.

Beom Gye-wi continued, oblivious to the freezing aura emanating from Han Seol-hwa.

“And that’s not all! Doctor Dan is running all over the Murim [martial arts world] to solve this problem, while you two were blinded by love, ignoring everything, and then you show up at the last minute to take all the credit? What? Picking a fight?”

“You…!”

Unlike Cho Ak-ryang, who was trying to suppress his rising anger, Han Seol-hwa didn’t seem to want to hold back.

“Lord Sa.”

Predicting what would happen next, Sa Mu-sim shook his head.

Then, he smiled kindly at Beom Ryeo-hwa.

“Shall we go over there? There are fire carp in the pond below that waterfall. It’s fun to feed them.”

“Really?”

As Beom Ryeo-hwa readily followed Sa Mu-sim, Han Seol-hwa slowly gathered her inner energy.

However, Beom Gye-wi, without a clue, continued to criticize her.

“Witch, you too. Because of you, the fishermen are crying because they can’t catch any fish in the Yangtze River.”

“What nonsense are you talking about?”

“They say they all froze to death a few months ago because of the mess you made.”

Of course, that couldn’t be true.

No matter how powerful she was, she couldn’t freeze the entire Yangtze River.

He was just picking a fight, saying whatever came to mind.

But as always, there was a natural enemy.

There was someone watching Beom Gye-wi, who was rambling on, with a complicated expression.

It was Byeok Hwa-ryeong.

Cho Ak-ryang glanced at her and smirked.

“If that’s the case, there’s nothing we can do.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

Beom Gye-wi asked absentmindedly, then chuckled at Cho Ak-ryang’s words.

“I was thinking of giving Ryeo-hwa a gift since I got to see her, but it seems my efforts were in vain.”

“Hmph. Who would miss it? Don’t worry. I can teach her. After all, my skills are much better than Cho Hyeong’s crude martial arts…”

Beom Gye-wi’s voice trailed off as he spoke confidently.

Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his side, which gradually intensified.

Sure enough.

He turned his head and saw Byeok Hwa-ryeong smiling brightly.

“Gaga?”

Beom Gye-wi flinched at her smiling face as she pinched his side hard.

“You’re not thinking of passing on that hideous Great Wilderness Tundra to our child, are you?”

“Huh? Th-that’s…”

“She’s still young now, but in a few years, Ryeo-hwa will be at a marriageable age. It wouldn’t look good if she was carrying around a prickly Great Wilderness Tundra, would it?”

Byeok Hwa-ryeong drove the point home, watching Beom Gye-wi swallow hard.

“At least parents shouldn’t block their daughter’s marriage prospects, right? Gaga?”

Like a hawk catching a pheasant, it was exactly as the saying went.

Beom Gye-wi’s shoulders slumped at the sight of his wife’s murderous eyes behind her smile.

“…Alright, my queen.”

“Then you know what to do now, right?”

Beom Gye-wi sighed deeply.

“I’ll do it. I’ll do it…”

Beom Gye-wi gestured for Beom Ryeo-hwa to come over.

“Daughter! Come and greet them! I won’t force you if you don’t want to, but… at least a greeting would be nice.”

As if she had been waiting for those words, Beom Ryeo-hwa stopped and ran over.

“Hehe, Uncle Baek. And Aunt Baek. I’ve really wanted to see you both.”

Cho Ak-ryang and Han Seol-hwa smiled back at Beom Ryeo-hwa, who greeted them with a bright smile.

Facing her innocent smile, like the warm spring sunshine, they felt their icy hearts melt away.

Han Seol-hwa stared at Beom Ryeo-hwa and nodded.

“That’s a relief.”

“Yes? What is?”

“She takes after her mother.”

Beom Gye-wi was momentarily taken aback, but he forced a smile, twitching his eyebrows, as Byeok Hwa-ryeong wrapped her arm around his.

Thus, everyone except Beom Gye-wi had a good time for a while.

They lost track of time listening to Beom Ryeo-hwa’s endless chatter.

After a while, Beom Gye-wi suddenly opened his mouth, taking advantage of the moment when Beom Ryeo-hwa bit into a snack, probably because she was hungry from talking so much.

“By the way, where’s Doctor Dan?”

“He’s talking with Lady Tak.”

“Lady Tak?”

“Cheon-ui [Tak Yeo-sang’s title]. Recently, the two of them have been spending a lot of time together.”

“Didn’t you say the treatment was over?”

“It ended a long time ago.”

“Then why?”

“Lately, they’ve been sharing their opinions on medicine and formations. It’ll be over soon, so be patient and wait.”

Beom Gye-wi, who secretly didn’t like Tak Yeo-sang, grumbled with a sullen face.

“I don’t like her at all.”

“Stop it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t even think about bringing that up in front of Doctor Dan.”

At Cho Ak-ryang’s words, Beom Gye-wi belatedly realized his mistake.

“Doctor Dan will be thirty in just three years. Unless you want him to die an old bachelor, keep your mouth shut.”

“Tch. Who said anything?”

Beom Gye-wi, feeling awkward, cleared his throat, staring at the sky for no reason.

Meanwhile, at the same time.

Dan Ak-seon was sitting across from Tak Yeo-sang at a tea table.

However, there was an awkward silence between them.

How much time had passed?

Just as the hot tea had cooled, Tak Yeo-sang spoke first.

“At first, he wasn’t so obsessively fixated on me.”

After starting like that, Tak Yeo-sang moistened her lips with a sip of tea and let out a soft sigh.

“But there’s a reason why demonic arts are called demonic arts.”

After learning the Northern Profound Art, Sa Jong-ak had changed so much that he was unrecognizable.

“No matter how much I regret it now, I can’t deny that all this tragedy happened because of me. But even if I knew all this, if I could go back to that time, I would make the same choice.”

Dan Ak-seon, who had been listening silently until then, smiled bitterly.

“I would have thought about it a lot too. As a doctor, I’ve experienced several times the situation where I couldn’t help patients who were dying. But you were too hasty.”

“But…”

Dan Ak-seon raised his hand to stop Tak Yeo-sang’s words.

“There’s a mental art called the Iron Soul Demonic Heart Art. It’s a kind of supreme art that only the Heavenly Demon has mastered for generations.”

Tak Yeo-sang briefly showed a look of doubt, but her eyes wavered at Dan Ak-seon’s next words.

“It’s not a great martial art in itself. It’s just a study of the mind and will. Like the Marrow Washing Classic that supports the Muscle Change Classic of Shaolin [a famous Buddhist monastery known for its martial arts].”

The Heavenly Demon, although he had mastered demonic arts, had a dignity and attitude befitting a great master.

But Sa Jong-ak was not like that.

Intoxicated with power, he craved even greater power, and eventually, he was swallowed by that power, abandoning his dignity and conscience as a human being and becoming a slave to the Northern Profound Art.

“Even within the Demonic Sect, only the Heavenly Demon has mastered the Northern Profound Art because it is such a dangerous martial art. Learning the Northern Profound Art without a complete mental foundation is like putting gunpowder in the hands of a child who likes to play with fire.”

“I… I didn’t know that.”

“Then you should have been more careful.”

Tak Yeo-sang bit her lip and finally lowered her head. Dan Ak-seon felt sorry for her, but he didn’t stop because there was something he had to say.

“Doctor Tak, and I, we are doctors. Right?”

“…?”

“Who do you think are the most hated people among those of us in the medical profession?”

“I wonder? Quack doctors?”

Even after saying that, Tak Yeo-sang realized her mistake.

There was no way that Dan Ak-seon would want such a trivial answer.

But unexpectedly, Dan Ak-seon nodded.

“That’s right.”

In fact, Dan Ak-seon had prepared different answers in advance, depending on the answer she gave.

Dan Ak-seon asked Tak Yeo-sang, who was flustered, again.

“If a doctor rashly treated a patient with a treatment method that he didn’t know well… and the patient died as a result, what would you say?”

“Well…”

Tak Yeo-sang frowned, about to answer absentmindedly.

“Are you saying that I’m a quack?”

“What’s the difference?”

Even if it was something else, she was furious at the word quack.

“You!”

“You clearly said it yourself just now. That you didn’t know that.”

“…!”

Tak Yeo-sang, who had nothing to say, fiddled with the teacup.

Dan Ak-seon continued to speak to her.

“I know. That there was no other way at the time to save those people. But as the person who created the monster called Sa Jong-ak, you can’t avoid that responsibility.”

“…”

“As doctors, we always have to make choices. And we can’t always be right. We just keep trying to make the right decisions. But that doesn’t give us absolution.”

At those words, Tak Yeo-sang felt like she had been hit on the head with a huge hammer.

“I… I…”

She couldn’t speak for a while.

A tear that flowed down Tak Yeo-sang’s cheek fell onto the teacup.

The Dan Ak-seon in front of her was an incredible master who had even defeated the terrifying Sa Jong-ak.

But he didn’t reveal his martial arts to threaten or intimidate her, and he didn’t even scold her.

He was just calmly pointing out her reasons for guilt, one by one, accurately.

But that calm voice felt more painful than being beaten outright.

Since she had come to her senses, had there ever been anyone who had reprimanded her so thoroughly?

Once the dam burst, the tears couldn’t stop.

“Hic.”

A sob escaped her lips.