Chapter 4

“Don’t speak yet. Your throat can’t have fully healed.”

It was a voice he had heard before, low and gentle, sweeping over him like a crisp autumn breeze.

Cool mountain wind drifted in behind the figure at the doorway, sending a cascade of pure white hair fluttering in the draft. When the man stepped inside, he moved with such effortless grace that he seemed to glide.

“Sa-yeong, Sa-hyeon. Once you finish wrapping his hands, go down and fetch whatever you’d like to eat for dinner,” he instructed softly. “I will handle the rest.”

“Yes, Master!”

The cheerful chattering from moments ago vanished as if it had never existed. The young boy and girl hastily finished the bandages, then scurried out.

After a brief glance at their retreating backs, the white-haired man approached Cheon-oh and knelt beside the bed.

Up close, even his eyebrows and eyelashes shimmered with a pristine, snowy whiteness. His expression was faint, but his features were impeccably neat, and his light brown eyes held a deep tranquility. Just being near him seemed to banish stray thoughts, leaving the mind oddly clear.

“Sit up and drink this,” he murmured, offering a bowl filled with a translucent, reddish-brown liquid. “It will soothe your throat.”

Supported by the man’s gentle hands, Cheon-oh hesitantly accepted the bowl, the lukewarm heat seeping into his palms. Half doubtful, he took a small sip. A faint, lingering sweetness coated his tongue.

As Cheon-oh slowly drank the medicinal decoction, the man pulled back the quilt to expose the boy’s legs, carefully rolling his trousers up to his thighs. Just as the two children had mentioned earlier, his shins and knees had already been treated with the same meticulous care as his hands.

While tending to the remaining wounds with practiced ease, the man introduced himself. “My name is Cho Yoon. As you can see, I am a practitioner of medicine, and this is my home on Mount Dumang. You suffered severe trauma to both your mind and body, which caused you to lose consciousness. As it was inappropriate to leave you where you were, I brought you here.” He paused, gaze steady. “Once you are fully healed, tell me where you wish to go. If you have nowhere else, you are welcome to stay here.”

Hurt? Why?

The moment the question crossed his mind, memories struck him like lightning.

The agonizing screams that had echoed endlessly while he cowered in the pitch-black underground. The blistering heat of the inferno licking through the cracks in the floorboards. The horrific massacre he had witnessed after emerging, after obediently counting to one hundred thousand.

His heart began to pound in a frantic, violent rhythm, so fierce it felt as though it might burst. The sensation of blood draining from his fingertips and toes washed over him with terrifying clarity. His mind seized, locking into rigid paralysis, while a jagged, thorn-like lump swelled at the back of his ruined throat.

There was no way he could have forgotten.

The fact that his mind had blocked it out until now felt like an endless, unforgivable sin.

Before the tide of emotion could swallow him whole, warm hands covered his pitch-black eyes and pulled him into a firm embrace. Cheon-oh curled into a tight ball against the man’s chest, trembling violently. He tried to raise an arm to clutch at the stranger’s robes, but a much larger hand gently enveloped his smaller one, careful not to aggravate the injuries.

He wanted to thrash and scream until his lungs gave out. He wanted to sob until he lost consciousness all over again.

Yet his vocal cords were ruined, and his body was held in a gentle but immovable grip. He couldn’t shed a single tear. He couldn’t even draw a proper breath.

He was lost, drowning in a sea of despair.

Then the man’s voice drifted down, settling over him like the first soft snowfall of winter.

“The reason the tears will not fall is because your body has completely exhausted its energy. Weeping takes a tremendous toll on the spirit,” Cho Yoon murmured, rhythmically stroking the boy’s trembling back. “But once you finally let it out, it will carve a path through the weight inside you. So recover your strength first. Then you can cry. You can tear at my clothes, scream, and thrash all you want. We can figure out what comes next after that.”

As Cheon-oh gasped out dry, jagged sobs, Cho Yoon held him closer. “It must be agonizing, so do not force yourself to think of anything right now. No one will ever blame you.”

Strangely, those gentle words seemed to seep straight into his soul. For a brief moment, it felt as though he didn’t have to carry the burden of his memories, and as though no one would condemn him for surviving.

More than that, it felt as if this man would protect him like this forever. No matter what horrors awaited, this stranger would hold him close and make sure everything would be all right.

And if the nightmares returned, he would wake him.

Exhaustion won. Cheon-oh slipped away from reality and fell back into deep sleep. He would never know that, after his body went limp in those arms, Cho Yoon personally spoon-fed him warm rice gruel to keep him alive.

***

“M-Master, who exactly… is that kid?”

“Where on earth did you pick him up? His whole aura is super creepy!”

The two disciples, as chirpy as mountain birds, cautiously trailed behind Cho Yoon as he descended the rugged mountain path with his hands clasped behind his back.

“You may ask him yourself when he awakens,” Cho Yoon replied smoothly. “It is incredibly impolite to gossip about someone’s circumstances when they are not present to defend themselves.”

“B-but you said he wouldn’t be able to speak for at least half a month!” Sa-hyeon protested.

“Yeah! And whenever we check on him, he just clamps his mouth shut and stares at us with these dead, fish-like eyes!” Sa-yeong added indignantly. “He never even answers us! Doesn’t he realize we were the ones cleaning him and changing his clothes while he was unconscious? Talk about ungrateful!”

“He endured a horrific tragedy at a very tender age. I ask that you show him some understanding,” Cho Yoon said, his voice softening as he patted their heads. “Once he fully recovers, I am certain he will be running around this mountain calling out your names.”

Still pouting, Sa-yeong and Sa-hyeon quickly melted under their master’s affection and fell into step beside him. Despite the initial awkwardness, the siblings had clearly grown closer to Cho Yoon over the past few days while nursing the same critically injured patient.

Smiling fondly at his disciples, Cho Yoon dangled his final piece of bait.

“Speaking of his recovery, he will need Yunpyehwan and some chicken broth to rebuild his strength. Head to the village and purchase four plump chickens. You may use the leftover coin to buy yourselves some snacks.”

“Snacks!” The children’s eyes instantly sparkled as they looked up at him.

Pulling a small coin pouch from his robes, Cho Yoon placed it securely into Sa-yeong’s palm and began his customary drill.

“If you are pickpocketed?”

“We let it go and come straight home!” they chorused.

“If an adult tries to pick a fight?”

“We ignore them and walk away!”

“If a stranger attempts to drag you off?”

“We bite their fingers or strike their vitals and run!”

“And lastly?”

“We will be careful and return without a single scratch, Master!” the siblings yelled, bowing deeply before darting down the mountain trail like loosed arrows.

Watching from a distance, Cho Yoon lifted a hand in a small wave as they waved back. Though their figures quickly vanished beyond the tree line, his heightened senses easily tracked their descent. Chuckling at their energetic antics, he resumed his own walk.

Sa-yeong and Sa-hyeon were the eleven- and nine-year-old disciples of the Immortal Healer, Cho Yoon. After losing their parents and wandering the harsh streets, the siblings had been taken in by the legendary healer three years ago.

A fact Jeong Hayoon had only discovered after arriving at this estate a few days prior.

Everything is working out fine. No, it’s not fine at all. Is there really no way to just download all these memories at once? Waiting for a specific situation to trigger them is incredibly stressful. Although… having nearly two hundred years of memories shoved into my brain all at once might cause its own problems.

“Ah, Manbyeongcho (rhododendron),” Cho Yoon muttered, eyes locking onto a massive shrub that resembled an azalea tree. “Incredibly versatile. It treats everything from fevers and pain to kidney weakness. It lacks toxicity, so it is safe to consume in large quantities.”

The moment he saw the plant, its medicinal properties and applications unfurled in his mind as naturally as if he had spent decades studying them. He could have sworn he hadn’t known a single thing about the shrub before laying eyes on it.

Cho Yoon’s encyclopedic knowledge surfaced only when prompted by specific triggers. He had to think about treating a symptom for the correct formula to manifest, and he had to physically see or touch an object to recall the memories tied to it.

The mechanism kept his mind from becoming a tangled mess of conflicting identities, but it also led to deeply embarrassing moments.

“It would have been wonderful to know I was already a single father to two kids the second I woke up in that inn,” Cho Yoon grumbled. “Do you have any idea how much work goes into raising children?”

Despite his complaints, his hands moved with practiced efficiency, plucking pristine, bug-free rhododendron leaves and tucking them into his wide sleeves.

Jeong Hayoon first opened his eyes in Cho Yoon’s body inside a shabby, rundown inn.

The moment he wondered, Where am I?, the name Cheongmyeong Inn on Mount Woonhan popped into his head. When he pondered, Why am I here?, an exhaustive list of the mountain’s rare medicinal herbs flooded his mind. Only after processing those disparate facts did Jeong Hayoon’s modern consciousness fully awaken.

Surprisingly, he hadn’t panicked.

Perhaps because the modern web novel market was saturated with transmigration plots that began exactly like this, he accepted his new reality with bizarre calm. Sitting dazed on the inn’s stiff bed, Hayoon fumbled through his predecessor’s memories. Within moments, the tragedy unfolding near the inn, and the original novel’s characters involved in it, collided with his modern knowledge and overwhelmed him.

The village nestled beneath Mount Woonhan, long protected by the Seomun Clan, was consumed by panic. Everyone feared the inferno destroying their overlords would spread to ordinary commoners.

Even on the day the original Cho Yoon arrived, the atmosphere had been chaotic.

Had the true Immortal Healer been in control, he would have dismissed the massacre as none of his concern and left. Jeong Hayoon, newly awakened in this world, had far too much modern empathy to walk away.

Half doubting he was truly inside the world of The Returned Hero, Hayoon ventured toward the burning estate. Then he found Joo Cheon-oh standing amid the ruins, driving a decisive wedge into his denial.

Desperately searching his newly acquired memories for a safe place to treat a critically injured child, the name Estate of Deep Mists, his secluded home on Mount Dumang, surfaced.

But the sheer panic he felt upon arriving, only to be ambushed by two strange children screaming “Master!”, froze him in place.

“One traumatized kid is already a massive headache…”

Childcare was never easy.

Children did not simply raise themselves if left alone. As a modern educator, Jeong Hayoon understood all too well how much proper upbringing mattered. Yet he had suddenly become a single father to three children, and the crushing weight of that responsibility bore down on his shoulders. The original Cho Yoon might have eased the burden by acting like an aloof immortal, but from Hayoon’s perspective, the man had essentially been neglecting his wards.

But right now, there was a more pressing issue.

“…I need to head back. You can never leave a young child alone for too long.”

Though he had ensured Cheon-oh was sleeping soundly before stepping out, the golden rule of childcare was to never drop your guard. With his wide sleeves satisfyingly stuffed with herbs, Cho Yoon turned back and began ascending the mountain path. The treacherous terrain of Mount Dumang felt as familiar and welcoming as his own home.

Which, technically, it was.