The Eldest Daughter of the Sichuan Tang Clan Protects Her Family

Sohwa stepped forward and offered greetings before Hak could make a mistake.
“I am Tang Sohwa, daughter of the Sichuan Branch Head. Though I do not belong to the Sichuan branch, I study medicine under Physician Jin-cheol in the Tang Clan’s Medical Division. By the Branch Head’s order to assist Physician Jin-cheol in examining the patient, I have accompanied them.”
Realizing why his sister had stepped up first, Tang Hak walked forward and cupped his fists to the Branch Head.

“I greet the Shaanxi Branch Head. I am Tang Hak, Little Clan Head of the Tang Clan.”
While greeting the Branch Head, Hak continued,
“By the order of the Sichuan Branch Head, I have brought Physician Jin-cheol and physicians of the Tang Clan’s Medical Division. This is Jin-cheol of the Divine Physician’s troupe.”

“I greet the Shaanxi Branch Head. I am Jin-cheol.”
Jin-cheol cupped his fists and immediately raised his head.
“I hear the condition is critical. May I see the patient?”

“Of course. This way.”
The Branch Head turned his body and led the party toward the hall. The martial men cautiously made way, as if they had never raised their internal energy. Wu So did the same.
Walking behind the Little Clan Head and Jin-cheol, Sohwa cast a sidelong glance at Wu So.
It was not that she had recognized the Shaanxi Branch Head. At this time of her life, she seldom left the Tang estate, and since the Shaanxi Branch Head changed so often, memorizing his appearance was meaningless.

The one she recognized was Wu So. Wu So, Mount Hua Elder who led the Plum Blossom Swordsmen.
Though the Branch Head had not told him to enter, Wu So followed them into the hall.
‘He’s the same as ever.’

A swordsman whose sword is quicker than his words, with a hasty temper—yet, on the other hand, a Daoist of lingering warmth.
Wu So had been the Mount Hua Daoist who came running upon receiving Yeon-a’s letter. Later she would hear that he had ignored the Martial Alliance’s objections and descended to the jaws of death with his disciples to aid Yeon-a.
‘But in this life, I met this martial man even before Yeon-a.’

In her previous life, he had pitied the surviving daughter of the Tang Clan. He and his disciples had stayed to help collect the bodies and had escorted her as far as Anhui.
Wu So had neither reason to show her a sharp expression nor had he ever done so. Thus the Wu So now felt like a different person. Much younger than that Daoist of then, and his aura was keen.
Given his disciple was injured, it was not an attitude she could fail to understand.

Clack.
Upon entering the room, Sohwa narrowed her brow.
Seeing in person the symptoms she had only read about in records, her eyes knit at the strangeness.

The Mount Hua disciple’s skin was blackened like one who had labored all day under the sun, and his lips were parched, turned chalk white.
Jin-cheol, face grave, began to take the pulse. As if to confirm something, he lifted the patient’s eyelids, then moved his hands, pressing thoroughly along the nape of the neck and the area of the abdomen.
“It is strange. There are traces of internal injury, but not the sort that would produce symptoms to this degree.”

“I treated him focusing directly on recovery from internal injuries. Because of that, he may have recovered faintly enough that it is hard to gauge. But seeing that his condition keeps worsening, it cannot have been a major recovery…”
The Branch Head explained the heat he had felt when he swept Myungdan’s qi-blood and the methods of treatment he had used thus far. It seemed he had personally performed a method of treating internal injuries with internal energy on Myungdan.
As he watched the Branch Head, the lines on Wu So’s brow slowly smoothed. It seemed he had withdrawn his distrust of the Branch Head.
But at Jin-cheol’s next words, his brow furrowed even more than before.

“Hm. If you failed to find the problem in the meridian pathways, that is worse. It means it may not be ruptured acupoints but a problem of the organs.”
With a grave expression, Jin-cheol pressed again around the patient’s heart and abdomen.
“When the organs are inflamed, high fever does occur; however, in my opinion there is no issue in the body that would sustain fever to this degree.”

“What do you mean by that?”
Jin-cheol answered succinctly.
“It means there is no cause sufficient to produce this fever.”

From behind, Wu So spoke in a voice edged with wrath.

“That makes no sense! You call yourself a divine physician, yet what is this diagnosis worse than some marketplace quack! Are you saying your eyes cannot see Myungdan’s present state? Even I, with no medical knowledge, can tell the boy is suffering from high fever!”
The old physician replied in a calm voice.

“Judging only by symptoms, it looks as though the organs festered, inflammation occurred, and—having eaten spoiled food or poison—the body, to expel the toxins urgently, consumed its fluids and so has dried out thus. Therefore, we could immediately administer a pill to treat inflammation.”
Though the old physician’s voice was even, none took that to be a prescription. The ink-black pupils that held Myungdan slid to Wu So.
“If you give a drug that suppresses inflammation to one whose disease you do not know, on the contrary, sound organs may be harmed. If you rashly prescribe such medicine to a patient whose body is as weak as it is now and side effects arise, we may be left with no recourse at all.”

Facing one of Shaanxi’s foremost martial men, Jin-cheol’s gaze did not waver.
“My teacher taught me to place the patient before one’s own honor. I was never taught to shift risk onto the patient by guessing in order to prove my name. Thus, without knowing the reason, I cannot begin treatment. Give me time to make a diagnosis.”
Wu So closed his mouth as if to hold down his rage.

An unpleasant silence began to flow.
It was then.
“Physician Jin-cheol.”

Jin-cheol’s gaze slid to Sohwa, and at the same time Wu So knit his eyes and glared at her.
She ignored the attention gathering on her and asked,
“May I examine Daoist Myungdan’s meridian pathways?”

Jin-cheol gazed at her steadily. Tang Sohwa had come along saying the symptoms were similar to a poisoning she knew.
Perhaps she might have a method. The records she read daily were the Tang Clan’s secrets handed down over long years; the answer might lie within.
Jin-cheol nodded.

“Go ahead.”
With his permission, Sohwa stepped close to Myungdan. Wu So opened his mouth as if to pour out a complaint at that sight, but then shut it again.
For in the eyes of Jin-cheol—who had stood up to him—there was trust.

Frowning, he again looked at the Tang Clan Head’s daughter.
In that instant, an old memory flashed through Wu So’s mind.
Around three years ago, when the Blood Cult had grown rampant, the details had been shared among the Alliance members.
The tale of the Tang Clan siblings who had nearly died upon meeting the Blood Cult on Mount Emei.

He had heard that the reason the Tang direct line had gone to Mount Emei was to find the divine physician. That the Clan Head’s eldest daughter, who was very interested in medicine, had discovered the Divine Physician’s troupe’s location and gone to verify it.
‘…So that child is the direct line who found the divine physician.’
Wu So, about to vent his anger at Jin-cheol’s irresponsibility, pressed it down.

If she had, at such a young age, found Jin-cheol’s dwelling, then her knowledge was not at a level he could dismiss. Seeing that even Jin-cheol—who had snapped back at him—said nothing, there must be grounds for confidence.
Tang Sohwa quietly stood by Myungdan’s sickbed and carefully examined his body.
A hot heat had been pouring from the patient for some time.

This heat, which ceaselessly tingled the skin, could not be mere body heat. No matter how high a person’s temperature, one cannot feel it at a distance.
Sohwa placed her hand upon Myungdan’s head. Her palm burned as if holding a fire-heated stone. Following the heat, her hand stopped at the Baekhoe-hyeol (Baihui) acupoint.
Sohwa slowly took her hand away to a handspan’s distance.

Though the distance widened, the heat felt just the same as when she had pressed Baekhoe-hyeol.
‘As expected, it is not body heat.’
This heat was internal energy (qi).

Touching the spots that felt particularly hot, Sohwa swept over Myungdan’s whole body.
Acupoints traced out a path. The end of that path led back again to Baekhoe-hyeol, where the heat had first begun.
It was likely the meridian circuit Myungdan had formed.

Finding it strange, Sohwa narrowed her brow.
Along the cleaned meridians, internal energy was circulating of its own accord.

Unconscious, Myungdan could not operate true energy by himself, and no one was performing a true energy guide on him now.

Yet some unknown internal energy lingered alone, ransacking Myungdan’s body.
‘…Is such a thing even possible?’
Turning the thought over, she spoke only after a long while.

“Daoist Myungdan’s high fever does not seem to be due to internal injury.”
“You mean there is another cause?”
When Jin-cheol asked, Sohwa nodded.

“Yes. As you said, Physician, it is not that he is producing heat in response to inflammation or poison, but that his body temperature seems elevated by the heat within the meridians.”
The Branch Head sighed.
“Are you speaking of deviation of cultivation? I too feared that and examined Myungdan’s qi-blood, but there was no damage—sound. There was no blockage in the flow. I myself examined Myungdan’s meridians only a few hours ago; I am certain.”

But with uncertain eyes, the Branch Head stared at the red handprint left on Myungdan’s nape.
Sohwa’s gaze, too, fell there.
The acupoint where the hottest heat remained.

“Yes, Daoist’s meridian pathways are intact. However—”
Sohwa placed her hand # Nоvеlight # upon Myungdan’s nape.
Following where the heat was felt, she moved her hand and spoke.

“There are spots on Daoist’s body where the body temperature is especially high; if you connect them, they return to Baekhoe-hyeol. It is likely the circuit Daoist Myungdan uses.”
Silence fell at those words.
Even Wu So, who knew Mount Hua’s internal cultivation method, and the Branch Head, who had personally surveyed Myungdan’s meridians, kept their mouths shut.

Over that quiet, Sohwa laid her voice.
“This is only a surmise.”
Her hand moved slowly.

“It seems the heat circulating along the meridians has seeped into the organs.”
As she pressed Myungdan’s acupoints, Sohwa swept the heart beside one, then the chest where the lungs lay beside another channel, and then the area of the liver.
At that motion, Jin-cheol’s expression hardened. They coincided with the organs in which he had suspected inflammation.

Sohwa spoke her thoughts calmly.
“Heated organs then reheat the meridians and transfer their heat.”
With her hand, she traced Myungdan’s meridian circuit.

“The heat that has seeped into the meridians makes a Small Heavenly Circuit on its own, then jumps back to the organs; the heated organs again transfer heat to the channels, repeating this cycle.”
Sohwa recalled the autopsy record of the Wudang Sect Head Disciple she had read in her previous life.
The record had noted that the blood vessels were dried and shriveled, with those nearer the organs more grievously damaged.

She had studied that record long with Tang Hae-han. And she had reached a conclusion similar to Jin-cheol’s now.
Death by desiccation from high fever due to organ damage.
But she had not discovered what had damaged the organs.

In the Oral Transmission Pavilion she had sought poisons that produced a similar reaction and labored to make antidotes, but she had never fully reproduced the reaction of the autopsy record.
Facing a living patient now, Sohwa realized why she had failed to find such a poison in the Oral Transmission Pavilion.
‘Of course. What raised the temperature was not organ damage, but heat itself.’

Meeting the hypothesis she had considered least likely, Sohwa spoke in a dark voice.
“It seems that rather than organ damage raising the body temperature, someone injected heat itself into Daoist’s body.”
The Branch Head knit his eyes.

“If it is heat, do you mean he was struck by Yeolyanggong (Scorching Yang Art)?”
Sohwa shook her head.
“It is similar to Yeolyanggong, but different. Yeolyanggong burns the meridians outright and utterly ruins the qi-blood, whereas this heat does not damage the channels. As if it were body heat, it soaks into the body, then returns to the meridians to circulate again and again, damaging the organs.”

At that moment, the Branch Head’s grave voice cut off Sohwa’s train of thought.
“You say the heat mimics body heat… Are you speaking of the Heat Art of Taeyang Palace?”