Chapter 50: Ultra-Short-Term Military Physician [3] —Clank, clank.
The sound of dujeong-gap striking against each other and the friction of weapons rang out in every direction.
"So they said Eotan-myeon was in chaos."
"Those Japanese bastards. Damn them six times over."
The people nearby peered over.
Most cursed the Japanese raiders, and a few even offered food.
They did not forget to praise Busa Kim Yungil either.
"Busa sir! Please teach those Japanese bastards a lesson!"
Word must have spread somewhat, because from time to time people shouted Shin Rip's name too.
"With General Shin Rip going, what are Japanese raiders worth?"
"General Shin Rip!"
He truly was every bit the famed fierce general whose name shook the whole world.
Once his name started being shouted, all the commoners standing out on the street began chanting it too.
The cheers were so loud it felt as though all of Suwon was shouting.
The soldiers' steps quickened on their own.
Even Kanghyeok could clearly feel the change.
It was enough to make him think that perhaps the origin of all cheering really had begun before war.
It definitely does make you feel a little different.
Even Kanghyeok, who had been riding more like cargo loaded onto a horse, straightened his back.
Yeah, well, what could really happen?
It was not as if an actual Japanese invasion had broken out.
At the very least, there should not have been any invasions worth recording between the Eulmyo Japanese Disturbance and the Imjin War.
Was there?
He was not confident.
Still, seeing Yeoni and Makbong walking on either side of him made him feel reassured.
Compared to Shin Rip's adjutants at the very front, the way they wore their swords did not look much inferior.
They had obviously swung blades a fair amount before.
"We'll be all right, won't we?"
By contrast, Dolseok was a sight to behold.
He was walking plastered right behind Yeoju.
At that rate, he would obviously die before even swinging his sword once.
"If everyone says it'll be all right, then I suppose I have to trust that."
"Those Japanese bastards... those people are really terrifying."
Dolseok muttered with a dark face.
He looked as though he were recalling some past memory.
As far as Kanghyeok knew, he had been born and raised in Suwon, so it made Kanghyeok wonder whether there was some story behind it.
"Have you seen them before?"
"I haven't."
"Then why are you talking like you have?"
"Because everyone says they're terrifying."
"You're scared of everything, I swear..."
As Kanghyeok shook his head, he saw Yeoju's determined face.
Her pale, delicate face was drawn tight in a frown.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Thank you very much for coming with us so willingly."
"No, it's for Elder Changgwon. Of course I had to come."
"Yes. Of all things, Japanese raiders."
Not mere bandits.
Not robbers.
Japanese raiders.
Japanese raiders...
He had once seen photos floating around online.
They had been chestnut-sized little guys holding swords, and at first he had thought it was a school play photo.
So those kinds of people are that frightening?
It was hard to imagine.
Unless they were carrying matchlocks.
Otherwise, it would feel like little kids playing sword-fighting games.
In any case, the distance to Eotan-myeon was still fairly long.
Kanghyeok asked Yeoni, who was keeping pace beside him,
"Have you ever seen Japanese raiders?"
"What? Yes, I have."
"You have? Oh. What were they like?"
"I only saw them from far away, so I do not really know. The village was burning, and people were dead."
"I see..."
The moment he heard the answer, Kanghyeok felt he should not have asked.
A burning village and corpses.
Just imagining it made his legs weaken.
Dolseok, who was following behind them, looked even worse.
His face had turned so pale it looked as though he might throw up at any moment.
"Oh dear."
"Hey, are you okay?"
At that point, Makbong had to pat his back.
For someone built like a mountain, his courage seemed smaller than a bean.
In our group, the women are actually the braver ones.
With Yeoni, that much was understandable given the rough life she had lived.
But Yeoju?
Even though she was a young lady from a yangban household, she carried the bearing of a true man.
Even now, she was walking along just fine with a sword as large as her own body strapped to her back.
No matter how much they told her to leave the sword behind, she refused to listen.
"She doesn't even listen to her father. Do you think she'd listen to you, Young Master?"
That answer was so perfectly true that Kanghyeok had nothing to say.
Well, if she insists on making things hard for herself...
Maybe because she had spent so much time walking around lately, she was not even staggering.
Kanghyeok put aside his useless worries and looked ahead.
"Huh."
Someone pointed ahead of him.
Then everyone lost their words.
Black smoke was rising in the distance.
Since it was in exactly the direction they were headed, it had to be somewhere in Eotan-myeon.
Feeling urgency seize him, Kanghyeok rode past the soldiers toward the Busa.
As it happened, the Busa and Shin Rip were already talking about it.
"It seems they're burning the village."
The Busa spoke with bitterness.
Shin Rip replied with a smug air,
"Didn't I tell you it was right to come early?"
"That may be so. But it still looks quite far away."
As the Busa said, the smoke was rising from a considerable distance.
Even if they kept walking from here, it would still take several more hours.
"For now, it would be better to go a little farther and make camp."
"Make camp? Why not strike them immediately?"
"As a rule, fighting at night disadvantages both friend and foe. And the soldiers are tired too."
When Kanghyeok turned to look behind him, there were indeed quite a few tired soldiers.
Still, in the Busa's eyes, they did not look too exhausted to fight.
"If it's night, wouldn't that actually favor us?"
"And why would that be?"
"My soldiers were all born and raised in Suwon. They know the terrain well, so they can fight at night as though it were day."
"Hmm."
Listening from the side, Kanghyeok found himself nodding without thinking.
Of course, he did not know a damn thing about military strategy, but even to an outsider it sounded plausible.
He vaguely felt that something similar had appeared in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Records of Chu and Han that he had read until the pages wore thin.
Though those had all been comics drawn by artist Go U-yeong.
But Shin Rip did not bend his opinion.
"No. Look ahead."
"I am looking."
"The smoke is not rising from just one or two villages. That means their numbers are not small. If we launch a night raid, we could end up in disaster."
That sounded plausible too.
In the end, the Busa deferred to the famous general.
"Very well. For now, let's do as you say. But tomorrow, we move as soon as dawn breaks."
"Of course. Everyone's already itching for it as it is."
Shin Rip looked at the officers standing to either side of him and laughed heartily.
His voice was so booming that it felt as though it might reach even the smoking villages.
"Then we'd better go just a little farther. There's a village nearby."
"Let's go."
The Busa might have been a corrupt official, but separately from that, he was also a fairly good local magistrate.
He skimmed what he wanted, but never let the people's livelihoods collapse.
And because he often went around in disguise, he knew the terrain very well.
Not long after, just as he had said, a village appeared.
Though it no longer felt right to call it a village.
"This is..."
Kanghyeok covered his nose with his sleeve.
Even before they reached the entrance, the smell of burning was overpowering.
There was another smell mixed into it too, and Kanghyeok quickly recognized it.
The smell of burning flesh...
When performing surgery, blood was inevitable.
In the old days, they had stopped bleeding by pressing or tying it off, but these days it was different.
Now they could simply cauterize with electricity.
It was exactly that smell.
Sure enough, there were half-burned corpses gathered in the clearing.
"Bastards."
Makbong, who had hurried over after him, muttered the curse under his breath.
They really had killed indiscriminately before leaving.
That was obvious from the way the bodies of both children and adults lay scattered around.
"Check for hopae. Anyone without one, gather them separately and bury them."
"Yes, sir."
The Busa issued the order with a grim face.
The soldiers obeying his command did not look much different.
Some grieved, some were enraged.
There were some who felt fear too, but it did not last long.
"O-over there!"
Dolseok, who had been the most terrified of all, suddenly screamed.
Three Japanese raiders burst out from a house with half-collapsed stone walls.
Looking inside, a woman lay there bleeding.
It was obvious what they had been doing and how they had gotten separated from the main force.
"You animals!"
At Shin Rip's shout, the officers under him struck their horses' flanks.
Then they cut off the heads of the two trailing behind with a single sweep of their swords.
The one in front took a blow across the shoulder and blood gushed out, but his feet did not stop.
—Whiiiish
One of the officers behind loosed an arrow and struck the opposite shoulder.
But the Japanese raider only staggered briefly and kept fleeing.
It was near dusk, and the place he fled into was thick with brush, making it hard to drive horses through.
The officer who had only hit his shoulder came back and asked,
"Shall we pursue him?"
Shin Rip thought briefly, then shook his head.
"No, leave it. He won't make it far before he dies."
"Yes, General."
In Shin Rip's eyes, the raider's injuries must have looked severe.
Will he really die?
Kanghyeok, on the other hand, was doubtful.
The way the man had run like lightning made it seem unlikely he would die so easily. Still, Kanghyeok did not open his mouth.
Shin Rip was the sort who even brushed aside the Busa's opinions, so would he listen to a mere physician like Kanghyeok?
And I don't know jack shit about it either.
Surely Shin Rip knew far more about warfare.
The stories Kanghyeok had heard on the way about Shin Rip's prowess had truly been impressive.
Especially his skill in handling cavalry.
And the martial skill of the officers he had just seen was tremendous too.
How easy was it to cut off a person's head in one blow?
No one knew better than Kanghyeok, as a doctor.
The bones are thick too, but they sliced right through.
Up close, it looked almost as though the necks had been sawn through.
Perhaps because Kanghyeok found that sight strange, Shin Rip came over.
"You don't seem afraid."
"Ah, yes. Their skill is extraordinary."
"Well, naturally. They've been with me since my days in the north. Any one of them could handle ten Japanese raiders."
"I believe it."
"You should rest too. Tomorrow will be busy."
"Yes, General."
By then, the soldiers were already using the surrounding houses to set up camp.
Naturally, that was far easier than starting from nothing on bare ground.
Not long after, a solid-looking encampment was complete.
"This way, Young Master."
"Ah, all right."
"Yes. We managed to get you assigned a room."
"Good."
It did feel unsettling, since people had died here.
But still, to be able to lie down on bedding in a warm ondol room on a battlefield—
wasn't that an extraordinary luxury?
Kanghyeok went inside without complaint.
"Hm? Where's Makbong?"
"Dolseok was having such a hard time that he took him outside for a little air."
"I see. And Yeoju?"
"She went with him too. She won't be feeling well."
"They can wander around like that?"
"We aren't soldiers. The Busa permitted it. They'll just be walking along the wall."
"I see. I wonder if Yeoju's father is safe."
Kanghyeok looked out toward the clearing where the corpses had been gathered.
If every village they passed was in this state, then it seemed unlikely Changgwon would have escaped unharmed.
Yeoni must have been thinking the same thing, because she kept her words to herself.
There was no need to deliberately say something bad.
"Then let's get some rest first."
"Yes. I'll stay outside."
Ordinarily, they would have been given two rooms.
One for Yeoni and one for Yeoju.
That was impossible on a battlefield.
The fact that they had received even one was already special treatment.
Kanghyeok caught Yeoni as she was about to step outside.
"Why bother making things hard on yourself? Stay inside."
"What? But…"
"Why, are you worried I'll do something strange? I'm not Makbong."
"That's true, but…"
"They'll all come in eventually anyway. Rest first."
With that, Kanghyeok flopped down onto the bedding.
He had come from Chiljangsa to the government office, and from the government office to Eotan-myeon, hadn't he?
—Rumble, snore.
A kind of exhaustion too deep for words washed over him, and he soon fell asleep.
Only Yeoni lay in the corner, feeling vaguely unsettled.
She could not fall asleep at all, so she looked outside—and something seemed strange.
Did the torch go out?
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