Dan Seol-young found life in Luoyang to be quite enjoyable.
She loved the bustling crowds and the endless array of sights to see every day.
Working as an assistant carpenter, wielding a plane and chisel to shape and refine wood, suited her well.
But what she cherished most was the evenings spent with Tang Mu-jin after a day’s work.
Not long ago, evenings for Dan Seol-young were merely a time to stave off hunger and lie in bed alone, waiting for sleep to come.
It was a time to dwell on loneliness and the endless road ahead. It had been that way since she was a child, up until last summer.
Yet, in just a few months, what she once dreaded had become her favorite time of day. Life is full of surprises.
“What should we eat tonight?”
As Dan Seol-young pondered this on her way back to the inn, she noticed Tang Mu-jin anxiously packing and unpacking his belongings.
Her eyes narrowed in curiosity.
”…What are you doing?”
“I have a bad feeling.”
Tang Mu-jin explained the situation to her. A renowned healer had been murdered, and he was worried that their mentor might be caught up in the trouble.
Dan Seol-young hadn’t been with their mentor for long, but from what she had seen, Tang Mu-jin’s concerns seemed excessive.
Their mentor was someone who could subdue a top martial artist like Bai Chuseo with ease and dispatch a few black-clad foes as if it were a warm-up.
“Isn’t that old man more likely to cause trouble than to fall victim to it?”
“True. But something he said before we parted ways has been bothering me.”
Dan Seol-young set aside her preconceptions and reconsidered. The conversation had been unusually long that day.
And the black-clad attackers who had targeted their mentor specifically.
Yes, it wasn’t just a matter of unfounded worry.
“What do you think is going on?”
“He said he had personal business to attend to. I think it might have been related to the healer.”
Tang Mu-jin drew a crude map on the ground. It was uncharacteristically clumsy for him.
To the southwest was Sichuan, to the southeast Anhui, and above them, Luoyang. He drew a line connecting Anhui and Luoyang.
“Looking back, ever since we took the boat down the Yangtze, we’ve been moving northwest. I thought it was just because we were heading to Luoyang.”
He extended the line past Luoyang, marking a new destination: Fengxiang.
“The healer lived in Fengxiang. If we keep moving in the direction we’ve been going, we’ll reach Fengxiang. Maybe our mentor planned to go there all along.”
It was a plausible theory. Dan Seol-young nodded.
“Hmm. And then?”
“I think he went to meet the healer, and then those black-clad people or others who dislike him showed up to cause trouble. In the chaos, the healer was killed.”
“Did you hear anything about our mentor being injured?”
“No, but we haven’t heard that he’s safe either. It’s worrying.”
Dan Seol-young looked at Tang Mu-jin intently.
His theory was full of holes. She doubted there was any connection between the healer’s death and their mentor.
Their mentor was not someone who couldn’t take care of himself. He was cunning and strong.
But she also knew that such worries wouldn’t be put to rest until they were proven unfounded.
Dan Seol-young gave Tang Mu-jin a hearty slap on the back, enough to make a sound. His eyes lost some of their anxiety, regaining their usual sharpness.
Tang Mu-jin grumbled.
“Why’d you hit me?”
“What are you fretting about? Go tell the doctor you’re taking a break and let’s go check it out. Better to see for ourselves than to stew in worry.”
“What about you?”
“Of course, I’m coming with you. Were you planning to leave me behind?”
Even if Tang Mu-jin’s theory was wrong, it didn’t matter. It might be cold and tough, but they could treat it as a little adventure together.
Dan Seol-young smiled confidently, as always.
They would have preferred to join a caravan passing through Fengxiang, but that would have meant waiting at least five days in Luoyang. So, they set off immediately.
A few days later, they arrived at a small clearing halfway up a gentle mountain, guided by a local they had hired with three coins. It was a desolate spot.
“This is where the healer lived.”
”…But there’s nothing here? I heard there was a half-burned house.”
“The villagers tore it down. It’s best to dismantle a house where something ominous happened. It wasn’t in any condition to be repaired.”
Tang Mu-jin scratched his head.
“Was there any fighting around here?”
“No one saw anything like that. It’s not deep in the mountains, but it’s far enough from the village that no one would know if something happened.”
Tang Mu-jin surveyed the area. There were no signs of a struggle. As he had suspected, it seemed their mentor hadn’t been involved in any fight.
In hindsight, the assumption that their mentor had gone to see the healer might have been wrong. The overlap in direction and timing could easily be a coincidence.
“If you want to visit the healer’s grave, just follow the path that way.”
“Got it.”
The guide left, and Tang Mu-jin and Dan Seol-young headed toward the healer’s grave.
There were two graves, one well-tended and the other freshly dug with raw earth exposed. The scene was quiet and peaceful.
Dan Seol-young spoke.
“Are we heading back now?”
“Um… no. Let’s go a bit further.”
“Further? To where?”
“Since we’re here, I want to visit Huizhou.”
Before leaving, their mentor had mentioned burying two medical books under a walnut tree in Huizhou.
Just as they had reached Fengxiang by continuing in the direction they had been traveling from the Yangtze to Luoyang, a few more days in the same direction would bring them to Huizhou.
Tang Mu-jin added.
“It’d be strange to turn back now. We might even run into our mentor lounging around in Huizhou.”
“What will you say if you meet him?”
“I’ll just say I came for a visit. Saying I was worried would be weird.”
“Alright. Let’s go. No reason not to visit Huizhou now that we’re this close.”
Dan Seol-young agreed readily.
Tang Mu-jin felt a sense of relief and looked at Dan Seol-young.
Despite setting out on a journey based on vague guesses and intuition, Dan Seol-young had followed him without complaint, even in the cold weather.
Tang Mu-jin felt a pang of guilt, which Dan Seol-young quickly picked up on.
She smiled.
“What? Feeling guilty now?”
“A little.”
Dan Seol-young glanced around. The snowy mountain path was deserted except for the two of them.
She extended her left hand to Tang Mu-jin.
“Then warm my hand. It’s freezing.”
Tang Mu-jin wrapped her hand in his, feeling its softness and roughness.
They walked slowly along the deserted snowy path, chatting about nothing in particular.
They caught a caravan heading to Huizhou, paid the fare, and climbed onto a wagon pulled by a packhorse. The ride was bumpy, but comfort was the least of their concerns.
Huizhou wasn’t a large city, but it was a stopover for traders from the Western Regions.
They learned this from the traders they met on the way to Huizhou.
“What brings you young folks to Huizhou?” a trader asked.
“We heard there’s an unusual walnut tree there. Thought we’d take a look.”
“A walnut tree? There’s a big one, but it’s not much of a sight.”
“Still, since we’re here, we might as well see it.”
The trader looked at Dan Seol-young and Tang Mu-jin, then nodded.
“Doesn’t seem like you need much to entertain you.”
The traders referred to them as a young couple. Despite their protests, the traders persisted with the teasing, suggesting they might become a couple someday.
Each time, Tang Mu-jin would glance at Dan Seol-young, who wore an inscrutable expression.
But she didn’t seem displeased.
As the wagon rattled along, Tang Mu-jin pondered why their mentor had chosen the walnut tree in Huizhou as a meeting place. The answer was simple: it must be his hometown.
After parting ways with the caravan, Tang Mu-jin wandered through Huizhou, asking if anyone knew their mentor. After questioning half a dozen people, an elderly man recognized the name.
“Yi Chong? That was the name of a kid who left the village ages ago.”
“That’s him. Have you seen him recently?”
The old man shook his head.
“No, I haven’t heard of him coming back.”
“Do you know where he used to live?”
“His house? It’s gone. He set it on fire the day he left. Almost burned down my place too, the rascal…”
As is often the case with elderly storytellers lost in reminiscence, the old man’s tale showed no signs of ending anytime soon. With a polite nod of thanks, Dang Mujin excused himself and left.
There was no need to ask about the largest walnut tree in the village. A gentle hill lay just outside the village, and atop it stood a solitary, towering tree.
The two of them made their way up the hill. In front of the walnut tree were two mounds, one large and the other smaller.
“His wife and daughter, perhaps,” Dang Mujin mused.
He gently brushed the snow off the graves. It was winter, and the graves were covered with dry, yellowed grass.
Yet the grass wasn’t overly long, and there were no signs of wild animals having disturbed the graves. Someone must have tended to them recently.
Dang Mujin cleared the snow between the graves and the walnut tree. There were traces of soil having been disturbed. Using his scabbard and hands, he dug into the frozen ground.
After a short while, a yellowed book emerged from the earth. Dan Seol-young knelt down to pick it up.
“Looks like the old man was here,” she remarked.
Contrary to the mysterious tale of there being two books, only one was found.
Dang Mujin dusted off the cover and checked the title. “The Book of Ten Thousand Illnesses.”
He opened it to examine the contents.
Like other medical texts, it detailed symptoms and treatments, but it wasn’t a book meant to teach medicine to the uninitiated.
The text was complex, requiring the reader to be well-versed in other medical classics like the “Golden Chamber” and the “Treatise on Cold Damage” to fully understand it. Even for Dang Mujin, it was no easy read.
He flipped through the pages slowly.
The handwriting changed in places, suggesting contributions from multiple authors. Each time the script changed, a name was noted, presumably of the contributor: Yang Jun, Yang So-jong, Yang Tae-gok, and others.
“I’ll have to read this thoroughly later,” he thought.
As he was about to tuck the book away, his fingers detected something unusual. The last few pages were stiff, not turning smoothly. It wasn’t just the cold making the pages rigid.
He examined the final page. A dark stain, about the size of half a palm, marred the paper, making it rough and unyielding.
It seemed as if it had been wet recently and then dried.
Dang Mujin sniffed the stain.
Amidst the earthy scent and the musty smell of old paper, there was a faint, metallic tang. Subtle, yet impossible to ignore.
“What’s up? Something strange?” Dan Seol-young asked.
“Huh? No, just enjoying the smell of old paper,” he replied, deflecting her question.
Taking a deep breath, he pondered, “It can’t be what I’m thinking, can it?”
Instead of putting the book away, he flipped it over and examined it from the back.
At the last change in handwriting, the name of the contributor was written.
Yang Heun. The same name as the murdered physician.
A book bearing the name of the slain physician. A bloodstain on its pages.
Dang Mujin understood the situation.
And he realized who the mysterious figure was seeking.