The two of them walked through the rear garden, catching up on everything that had happened. It seemed she would now be staying here full-time until she advanced from an Intermediate to a Senior Physician.

“Hmm, you’ve chosen a difficult path, haven’t you?”

“Because the Pavilion is the best place to learn surgical arts.”

The Department of Surgery didn’t yet have the long history of departments like Acupuncture, Medicine, or Chiropractic therapy. To grow into a Senior Physician in surgery, learning directly here was the best way. But surgery was no easy task. The need to cut into flesh and see a person’s organs was something even modern people struggled with. On top of that, the very act of cutting a person’s flesh was extremely dangerous and required meticulous care.

It wasn’t that medicine, acupuncture, or chiropractic were any different, but a patient dying from their illness after treatment and a patient dying on the operating table were two separate issues. The psychological burden was bound to be on another level.

In some cases, the family of a patient might even hold a grudge and seek revenge.

There were instances where they couldn’t accept a death caused by illness and tried to attack the doctor with a knife. That part was similar in both the modern world and here. The only difference was that here, the other party might have learned martial arts.

I may be the head of the Department of Surgery… but this is truly… a difficult path.

However, Sama Hye’s resolve was unwavering. “I still want to learn surgery, Benefactor.”

Her choice was likely influenced by me. But the one who made the choice was Sama Hye. “I’m going to teach you harshly. Will you be okay with that? I’ll be more demanding of you than anyone else, not less.”

“Yes!”

In return, he decided to feed her well. Weren’t the hallmarks of the Department of Surgery its hellish study intensity and the path of endless gourmet food? Even now, weren’t the physicians who had graduated and become Senior Physicians saying they didn’t miss the Minor Pavilion Master, but they missed the food he cooked?

I’ll have to expand the dormitories for the Junior and Intermediate Physicians now. Some of them are married with children, so maybe it would be good to build something like a… kindergarten in the village. We can have the martial artists guard it.

Not long ago, there had been an incident where someone tried to intimidate a physician by taking their child hostage. No matter the world, wherever humans lived, there were bound to be scumbags. But here, they were scumbags who also knew martial arts, so if they harbored ill intentions, they were capable of anything.

Right. If I build a kindergarten-like facility near the Junior and Intermediate Physician dormitories… and station members of the Martial Force Hall there, it should be safer.

As the White Dragon Medical Pavilion grew, the number of things he had to worry about steadily increased.

Then the problem is what to teach them. The basics will be literacy… and for the older kids… hmm.

Just as his thoughts reached that point, Jin Cheonhee snapped back to reality. It was because Sama Hye was staring at him intently.

“Benefactor. You still can’t pay attention to your surroundings when you’re deep in thought.”

“Ahaha… I guess so.”

He felt embarrassed, as if he had acted foolishly in front of a child.

***

After his conversation with Sama Hye, he went to see Mu-wol. As soon as he brought up the topic, concerns about the budget immediately arose.

“It will be difficult to do right away, Benefactor.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. We are short on manpower as well. However, I agree that we must protect the physicians’ children. I will draft a budget to allocate funds and personnel to that side first. If it’s agreeable, the Pavilion Master will likely approve it as well.”

“Okay.”

“In fact, there was a recent incident at one of the branches where a physician’s child passed away.”

At those words, Jin Cheonhee’s eyes widened slightly. Only then did Mu-wol realize that the report hadn’t reached Jin Cheonhee. He felt he had misspoken, but the water was already spilt. It couldn’t be helped.

“They said a martial artist, holding a grudge because he wasn’t treated first, committed the act. The Martial Force Hall is currently debating whether to kill him or hand him over to the authorities.”

“What does the deceased’s father wish for?”

Mu-wol hesitated, then sighed. “He asked that he not be killed. He said that as a physician who treats people of the martial world, he was prepared for such things to some extent. However, he did ask to be the one to cripple the man’s Danjeon himself.”

“…”

Was it starting to rain? Jin Cheonhee looked out the window. Dark, slate-colored clouds were beginning to shed raindrops one by one.

“My master must have been handling these things behind the scenes until now.”

An attempted kidnapping might reach his ears. But the death of a child was another matter entirely. It seemed his master had taken measures to ensure this document never reached his disciple, worried it might hurt him.

“Yes. But as the workload increased, I have started to take on some of it.”

“How did my master handle these cases?”

“According to the records, he did so in the way of the martial world.”

“You mean he had them beheaded.”

“Yes. This time, the victim’s father specifically requested that we spare his life, so we made an exception, but usually, they are executed, and we refuse to accept their sect as patients. However…”

“…If it’s a wandering martial artist with no powerful backing, it wouldn’t matter.”

Until now, Jin Cheonhee had made a point of handing over villains to the authorities whenever possible. That was born from a confidence in his own strength and the fact that he had no wife or child to be responsible for. But the situations for the other physicians, who had families, were different. Simply sending criminals to the authorities to be judged by the law would not serve as a sufficient example.

I have no intention of being an idealist. I’m not a politician or a philosopher.

If he didn’t make an example of them in the way of the martial world, he couldn’t protect the lives of the physicians.

It was a strange thing. The malice of some humans, unable to win their fight against disease, led them to kill the doctor instead. It was probably because the doctor was weaker than the disease. Most importantly, no matter what kind of example was made, the dead child would not return.

Mu-wol said, “I truly don’t understand it. A doctor is someone who might be responsible for one’s own life, are they not? Even if one doesn’t feel the need to be nice, nothing good can come from drawing a sword.”

“…You’re right.”

You don’t even have to look as far as the martial world. It was the same on Earth. Jin Cheonhee himself knew how patients would assault the person inserting an IV or drawing their blood. Hadn’t he heard endless stories during his fledgling days about how middle-aged patients in the emergency room would curse out the medical staff?

“Humans are not such rational creatures.”

The vast majority of people would say that such behavior is incomprehensible. Because that’s common sense. But among them, there were certainly people who believed that even if someone was treating them, if they were made to wait, they deserved to be met with violence. The only difference was that in the martial world, that violence was expressed with a sword.

“I have some money I’ve saved up. For now, let’s use that for the budget.”

“You’re going to use your personal funds?”

Mu-wol’s eyes widened slightly at his words.

“Yes, yes. It’s fine. I have a lot of money~ I’m rich!”

Jin Cheonhee deliberately laughed cheerfully. In the distance, a faint flash of light streaked across the sky. A moment later, the sound of thunder rumbled.

They kill doctors, and they kill doctors’ families, too.

He had understood with his head why a medical pavilion, whose main job was to treat people, invested a massive budget into its Martial Force Hall every year. Today, he felt it with his heart.

***

Time passed again.

Jin Cheonhee cleared a portion of the land intended for the Martial Training City and prepared it for the physicians’ families to stay. It turned out to be something like a company town for people in the same profession, but the physicians seemed to welcome it. In an agrarian society, weren’t your front, side, and back neighbors all in the same line of work anyway? The fact that it was safer than before seemed to be what they liked most.

It was a project that was eating up a considerable amount of the budget, what with having to purchase more land and recruit more personnel, so Jin Cheonhee decided to grind himself out.

“I need to earn more money! Right. As expected… Monopoly… ah, no, the Blue Jade Makjang[1] Drama Edition!”

Didn’t scandalous soap operas always sell the best?

The new Blue Jade game, which depicted the journey of a lowly palace maid becoming the empress, was a festival of over-the-top drama that gave no thought to game balance. Among the events one would experience while climbing from the bottom were ‘Poison the Noble Consort’s Tea’ and ‘Put a Needle in the Favorite Concubine’s Shoe’. The Golden Key cards included ‘Get Caught Cheating’, ‘Falsely Claim to Be Pregnant’, and ‘Try to Poison the Emperor and Become the Regent Myself’.

To appeal to a more diverse customer base, he prepared a box containing eight different portraits, allowing players to choose the gender and age of the opposing emperor. Once the emperor was decided, the remaining seven portraits would be assigned to roles like the guard you’ll have an affair with, an official, a rich merchant from a neighboring country, the empress consort, the favorite concubine, the prime minister, and so on, who would all participate in the scandalous drama. In any case, if you were going to win against other players in this festival of insanity and claim the emperor, wasn’t it better if he had a face that suited your taste?

Jin Cheonhee fully activated his brain, recalling the countless American seasonal dramas and Korean cable dramas he had watched. The result of that was this.

“You’re insane… Are you really going to release this?”

The Black Ice Poison Dragon, Gongsun Hyeon, upon hearing Jin Cheonhee’s plan, was so flabbergasted that he stormed out of the Gongsun Merchant Guild and rushed all the way to the White Dragon Medical Pavilion.

Jin Cheonhee asked, “Do you think I’ll get arrested for slandering the imperial family with this?”

“No… you’ve set it in a fictional country, and His Majesty is a liberal person, so you won’t get arrested for something like this. But who in their right mind would buy such utter trash… wait, no…”

Although this was a Confucian society with swords, wasn’t Jin Ping Mei, a famously erotic novel from what would be the 17th century on Earth, a bestseller behind the scenes? Humans are fundamentally honest when it comes to trashy drama. The myths of ancient Egypt, Greece, and various other cultures proved it.

I think mine is less scandalous than Jin Ping Mei, though?

Ximen Qing, the protagonist of Jin Ping Mei, was an extraordinary bastard who would be remembered in human history; that guy didn’t discriminate between men and women, between species, or between the living and the dead.

Doesn’t the protagonist of Jin Ping Mei kick the bucket at the end from an aphrodisiac overdose? This should be less trashy than that.

It was a cable drama, but he had kept it within the bounds of a TV-15 cable drama. Healthy poisoning, healthy putting tacks in shoes, healthy having an affair with a eunuch, and then getting a healthy dose of caning and being sent to the Cold Palace.

“Do you think it won’t sell?”

“Ugh…”

The Black Ice Poison Dragon hesitated, unsure what to do with this spicy, trashy flavor (feat. cable TV), before finally saying, “I have never sold a product like this before, so it’s difficult to predict. Let’s not call it Blue Jade; let’s call it Red Jade, and we should hide the creator’s identity.”

“My title already has ‘Mad’ in it, so it should be fine…”

“…I’m… I’m not fine! I’m telling you, I’m not okay!”

Was it that bad?

Am I about to unleash a poison upon the martial world?

Isn’t a true makjang drama one that runs full-speed-ahead with no brakes? Even at the hospital, the wards would go quiet whenever a cable drama was on.

Well, whatever. If it fails, I’ll just make a new version of Blue Jade.

And so, the Black Ice Poison Dragon, Gongsun Hyeon, decided to release ‘Red Jade’. It was a new venture started without any idea of what kind of reaction it would cause.

…And it became a massive, super hit.