Episode 316: The Wooden Tablet

“Do you smell blood?” Dang Mujin asked, glancing around.

Hong Geolgae shrugged. “Not really. I don’t notice anything.”

Dang Mujin scanned the area. Seolhwa tilted her head, seemingly oblivious to any scent, while Namgung Myung and Hyun Gong were too engrossed in their conversation to pay attention.

‘Maybe I’m imagining things,’ he thought. The scent wasn’t overpowering, just a faint whiff of blood.

Hong Geolgae added, “Maybe my sense of smell isn’t great. Could be someone slaughtering a cow nearby.”

“If that were the case, people would be flocking to watch,” Dang Mujin replied. In a small village like this, a cow being slaughtered would draw a crowd.

Yet, the villagers merely cast sidelong glances at Dang Mujin and his group, rather than rushing off to any spectacle.

Dang Mujin observed the villagers. Their expressions were far from welcoming. There were few women, and most of the men were in their prime, not children or the elderly. They seemed accustomed to weapons, barely reacting to the group’s armed presence, only keeping a wary distance.

Approaching a man with a nose as large as a child’s fist, Dang Mujin asked, “Excuse me, may I ask you something?”

”…What is it?” The man’s tone was less than friendly, but Dang Mujin pressed on.

“Two elderly physicians visited Suksong recently, didn’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

The man’s lack of interest was evident. Dang Mujin, annoyed, persisted, “In a village this small, surely you’d notice outsiders.”

“I said I don’t know. You think Suksong is the only village around here? They probably went somewhere else.”

Dang Mujin hadn’t considered that. Embarrassed, he stepped back, and the man with the large nose quickly distanced himself.

Returning to his group, Dang Mujin said, “We might have to search nearby villages to find the physicians.”

Hyun Gong replied, “That’s unexpected. I thought we’d find them here.”

“Why’s that?” Dang Mujin asked.

“Remember the physician we met on the way to Namgung’s house? He mentioned this village had rough people and many injuries. The villagers’ harsh looks made me think the physicians would be here.”

Dang Mujin agreed with Hyun Gong’s reasoning. However, it seemed futile to keep questioning the uncooperative villagers. Still, he asked a few more people about the physicians, but received only dismissive answers.

As time passed with no leads, the sun began to set. With no other choice, Dang Mujin’s group decided to find a place to stay for the night. They weren’t keen on camping out, but also didn’t want to impose on the unfriendly villagers. In such villages, there were usually empty houses available.

After some searching, they found a suitable vacant house. “Let’s stay here tonight,” Dang Mujin suggested.

As soon as he spoke, Hong Geolgae and Namgung Myung raced inside, claiming the best spots to lie down. Seolhwa followed them in.

Dang Mujin and Hyun Gong exchanged a resigned look and sighed. Someone had to handle the practical matters.

The two of them began searching for firewood around the house, though they didn’t expect to find much. Anything valuable in an empty house would have been taken by neighbors long ago.

In the kitchen, they discovered something unusual: three hearths. One large and two small. A typical house would have only one, maybe two if the family was large.

“Was this a physician’s house?” Dang Mujin speculated, noting the small hearths likely used for brewing herbal medicine.

Hyun Gong agreed. “I thought so too. I smelled dried herbs when we came in.”

“Then shouldn’t the physicians be here?” Dang Mujin wondered.

“Not necessarily. They could have moved to another village,” Hyun Gong reminded him.

“Right,” Dang Mujin conceded, continuing to search the kitchen and the crumbling storage shed, but found nothing of value.

Not wanting to handle all the chores alone, Dang Mujin returned to the room where his friends were lounging. He decided to rouse Hong Geolgae by giving him a firm kick in the side. Hong Geolgae rolled over, clutching his side, and grumbled as he got up.

“Why’d you kick me?”

“Go find some firewood.”

“Why me?”

Namgung Myung subtly revealed his bandaged wound. “Namgung’s still recovering, and Seolhwa… well, you know.”

Grumbling, Hong Geolgae got up. But as he opened the door, the chilly air of late autumn transitioning to early winter swept in. No one wanted to wander in the cold evening air.

So Hong Geolgae did something unconventional. “Step aside,” he said.

Dang Mujin and Hyun Gong moved out of the way, but Hong Geolgae wasn’t heading outside. Instead, he planted his feet firmly and swung his arms in a wide arc, aiming at the wooden floor outside the room.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Dang Mujin exclaimed.

“Dragon’s Roar,” Hong Geolgae announced, using his martial arts to smash the floorboards.

“What are you doing? You can’t just use the floor as firewood, even if it’s an empty house!”

“Sometimes the solution is right under your nose,” Hong Geolgae replied smugly, gathering the broken floorboards.

Though they now had plenty of dry wood, it was far from a normal solution. Dang Mujin thought, ‘Tonight, I’ll make sure he pays for this.’

As Hong Geolgae collected the wood, something caught Dang Mujin’s eye beneath the floorboards: a small wooden tablet, a mokgan.

Hong Geolgae’s confidence grew. “See? I told you! I wasn’t just after the floorboards. I was after this mokgan.”

“Using a mokgan as firewood is even worse than the floorboards,” Dang Mujin scolded.

“If it were a paper book, I wouldn’t. But it’s just a mokgan. It’s probably nothing important.”

Despite his excuses, Dang Mujin decided to check the mokgan. Such tablets usually contained trivial information, but occasionally, they held something valuable.

Brushing off the dust, Dang Mujin read the contents. “It’s a medical text.”

“Even if it is, it’s probably not worth much. A poor physician wouldn’t have anything valuable to write,” Hong Geolgae scoffed.

“Let’s see,” Dang Mujin replied, knowing that while most medical texts were similar, some contained unique insights or family secrets. Such knowledge could be useful, especially if tested on someone as robust as Hong Geolgae.

As he read, Dang Mujin found both plausible and absurd entries. Just as he was about to decide whether to use the mokgan as firewood, he noticed something peculiar: writing on the back of the tablet.

“What is that?”

“You’ll have to read it to find out. Just wait.”

Dang Mujin began to read the writing on the back of the bamboo slip.

[…Life is unpredictable, and Lady Yeohye offered to teach me medicine. She even gave me this slip, so I vowed to cut back on sleep to master the art.]

[While Physician Shim was away, Lady Yeohye tended to the patients. She spoke loudly enough for me to hear from outside, diagnosing their ailments. I was thrilled when my conclusions matched hers about half the time.]

[It was a quiet day with no patients except for one woman with a severe cough. Watching Lady Yeohye from a distance, the day slipped away.]

Unlike the large, neat characters on the front, the writing on the back was small yet vigorous. Clearly, someone else had written it.

The content was entirely different too. It read more like a diary than a medical text.

Yet Dang Mujin found it surprisingly engaging.

The writer seemed to harbor a subtle affection for this Lady Yeohye.

The bamboo slip offered the guilty pleasure of peeking into someone else’s diary and witnessing their budding romance.

Dang Mujin read on, mentally offering advice on love.

“You should have been more assertive here. If a man misses his chance, even a promising relationship can slip away.”

“Still hesitating? How frustrating…”

After finishing the diary on the back, Dang Mujin set the bamboo slip down, feeling inexplicably satisfied.

Looking around, he noticed Namgung Myung, Hyun Gong, and even Seolhwa engrossed in the diary on the back of the slip. The anonymous man’s diary and his innocent crush were now public knowledge. Only Hong Geolgae was absent, likely out gathering firewood.

Just as he was about to stand, Dang Mujin felt a strange sensation.

He picked up the bamboo slip again.

Unfamiliar content. A stranger’s story. A tale about someone unknown.

Even the setting was a place he had never visited before.

Yet somehow, the slip felt familiar.

“What is this?”

Dang Mujin asked his friends.

“Namgung Myung, Hyun Gong.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t this bamboo slip feel familiar to you?”

“Good thing you noticed. You’re as clueless as someone I know.”

”…”

Neither Namgung Myung nor Hyun Gong seemed to share the sense of déjà vu or familiarity that Dang Mujin felt.

After much pondering, Dang Mujin finally realized what felt so familiar.

The handwriting was oddly recognizable.

“Where have I seen this handwriting before?”

Despite racking his brain, Dang Mujin couldn’t recall where he had seen it. He had read too many books over the years.

That night, when everyone else was asleep, Dang Mujin got up, still trying to remember where he had seen that handwriting.

It was identical to the handwriting in the medical texts he had subscribed to.