Chapter 71: He Also Did Beauty Treatments [2] The house the Busa had provided was so large that it was hard to find anything nearby worth comparing it to.
Though it still was not as large as Ryu Seong-ryong's house.
"Even a house this big feels crowded when there are a lot of people in it."
Yeoju muttered as she sat in the daecheong.
Her voice was thick with drowsiness, which made sense after she had eaten her fill of pufferfish.
"Mm, right. We've got a lot of new family members."
Kanghyeok, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her, looked just as sleepy.
The pufferfish had turned out to be more filling than expected.
Even though they had given one fish to the band of thieves.
"The family training is a little rough, though."
"That's the only way they listen."
Pyeonsu had been dragged off by Yi Hangbok, but the rest had fallen completely into Kanghyeok's hands.
A few among them had tried to resist.
They had only ended up getting beaten by Yeoni and Makbong.
Even now, the ones who still had some temper left were shouting at the top of their lungs.
"Do you think we're just common thugs? Haven't you heard who's backing us?"
At times like this, Dolseok stepped forward.
"I heard. But you don't know who we are either, do you?"
"Mm."
"The gentleman sitting over there is Lord Baek Kanghyeok. The man who was with him earlier was Yi Hangbok, Left Assistant Minister of Rites. And the man standing over there preparing medicine is a servant from the household of the Minister of Rites."
Maybe because his memory was so good, he was excellent at rattling things off one by one.
"So just take the beating. You're the ones who attacked first."
"No matter what, this is still—!"
"Hey now, why are you acting like this when we said we'd even treat you if you just stayed still?"
"Treat us? After beating us? You call that thing a medical tool?"
The man pointed at the items Kanghyeok had been taking out one by one.
Saline, syringes, even pufferfish poison. Any one of them looked suspicious on its own, and all together they looked even worse.
On top of that, the person humming to himself while sorting through them did not look like a decent man at first glance.
"Ah, this bastard talks too much."
That vulgar way of speaking was completely at odds with his appearance.
"Tell him to come over here."
He crooked his fingers in a swaggering gesture.
They said Lim Kkeokjeong, who had been serving as the magistrate of Yangju until recently, had gone to Hanyang and pretended to be a nobleman.
That was enough to make the man wonder if this one might also be a bandit.
"Yes, Young Master."
At one wave of Kanghyeok's hand, Makbong and Dolseok dragged the man away.
Seeing him up close, it was even clearer that he was no ordinary person.
First of all, he was too big.
What kind of nobleman has feet like that?
His feet were so huge that, exaggerating a little, it felt like someone could stand on top of his leather shoes.
"Hey."
He had lowered his gaze to look at the man's feet when a deep voice suddenly came from above.
Almost automatically, he looked up and saw Kanghyeok staring straight down at him.
He's definitely the sort who toys with life and death.
The man shrank back under that utterly mistaken impression. In truth, it was not entirely wrong.
Kanghyeok really had saved more than a few people who should by all rights have died.
But the direction of the man's misunderstanding was completely the opposite, and things unfolded quite comfortably.
"You're not answering."
Kanghyeok casually placed a hand on the man's shoulder.
There was an unmistakable weight in it.
"Ugh… Yes."
He was the kind of person who made honorifics come out naturally.
"Your leg hurts, right?"
"Yes, yes."
"I'll fix it, so let's try one thing."
"Pardon?"
"I said let's try one thing."
He had no idea what that thing was.
But if he said no, it felt like he would die.
"Uh… yes, yes."
"Good. You said it."
"Uh…"
Kanghyeok took his hand off the man's shoulder and called Dolseok and Dorikkae over.
"Move this one to a room first. Makbong and Yeoni, keep the others under control."
"Yes, Young Master."
Dolseok carried the man with the injured leg into a room together with Dorikkae.
Dorikkae had not become the leader of a band of thieves for nothing, so he had a fair amount of strength.
The problem was that he did not know how to use it properly.
"Brother, should I leave him like this?"
"No. Why would you put his head by the door? Turn him around, turn him around."
"Yes, yes."
It turned out Dorikkae was actually one year younger than Dolseok.
Just from his face, Kanghyeok had believed he was well over thirty.
But in fact, the fellow was not even twenty yet.
"Good. Leave him like that."
"Yes, Brother."
The two of them dropped the man with the injured leg onto the mat.
His leg must have hit something, because a groan slipped out.
"Urgh."
"What a baby. Earlier, when you were hitting me, you looked ready to kill."
Dolseok rubbed at the bruises on his back.
Touching them made the pain flare up, and that made him angry.
"Damn it. I ought to just—"
"What kind of treatment is it to promise to heal someone, then hit him again?"
"What kind? This kind, bastard."
"Ow!"
By now, Dolseok's knowledge of anatomy had grown quite a bit.
He knew where to hit someone so it hurt without causing major damage.
Places like the Adam's apple, or the inside of the elbow.
"Ugh…"
Kanghyeok only entered once pain-filled groans had started spilling from the man's mouth.
"Dorikkae, go out and help Makbong."
"Yes, Young Master."
"Dolseok, let's take a look at his leg together."
"Yes."
With practiced hands, Dolseok used scissors to cut away the man's trousers.
They were already soaked in blood and torn in several places, so the man did not complain.
His leg had apparently scraped across the ground when he fell, and the wound looked fairly bad.
"What do you think?"
"Mm."
As usual, Dolseok did not answer rashly.
Instead, he carefully examined the man's wound.
There had been a lot of bleeding, but there was no place that had really been torn open.
Compared with the other leg, the injured one was not severely swollen either.
Most importantly, there was no major restriction in movement.
"It looks like the abrasion is just fairly severe."
"Right. It doesn't look fractured?"
"No. I think he may have a sprain in the ankle, but it doesn't seem broken."
"Hm."
Kanghyeok was a doctor from after the invention of the X-ray.
Because of that, he had never properly trained in physical examination for fractures or cracks.
When one image could tell you the answer, why would you bother hurting the patient?
He had only encountered it in books.
Well… the shin looks fine for now.
There might still be a fracture somewhere in the ankle.
It was a joint where several small bones came together.
There was a good chance the diagnosis might not be certain.
Eh, he's not some great historical figure.
As long as they wrapped it in bandages and kept him from moving, most fractures would heal well enough.
There was no obvious displacement visible to the naked eye anyway.
"Good. Then let's treat the leg."
"Yes."
"Let's disinfect it first. Mix some boiled water with disinfectant."
"Here it is."
Dolseok held out a basin of water he had already boiled.
Steam was still rising faintly from it.
"Good. If it's cold, the patient suffers."
Kanghyeok soaked a large piece of gauze and began scrubbing the patient's leg.
The groan that burst out was even more pained than when Dolseok had been hitting him.
"Ugh… ugh… hot…"
"Ah, it's going to hurt a bit. There's a ton of grit in here."
As Dolseok held the man down, he remembered the anesthetic Kanghyeok had developed.
"Young Master, if we give him that medicine, he'll sleep deeply. Should I bring it?"
"Hm? No, no. Hey, do you know how annoying it is to catch toads? Just hold him."
"Ah, yes. He looked like he was in too much pain."
"Even if it hurts, he has to bear it. This much is bearable."
In modern times they scrubbed out asphalt from wounds too, so sand was nothing by comparison.
Kanghyeok rubbed the gauze harder, recalling his days as an intern in the emergency room.
He scrubbed so forcefully that even the places where a scab had already formed and the bleeding had stopped began to bleed again.
"Ugh…"
"Now we're done cleaning it. Let's disinfect it. Disinfect."
After the water came Betadine.
Naturally, it hurt even more.
Even after Kanghyeok had finished wrapping the bandage, the man kept groaning.
Kanghyeok patted him on the shoulder and said,
"You really do exaggerate."
"Exaggerate? That's unfair."
"Anyway, the treatment's done now, so shall we move on to the 'one thing' I mentioned earlier?"
"Right now?"
"No point dragging it out."
After all, he was one of the men who had already attacked once.
Kanghyeok had no intention of showing mercy.
"Dolseok, where did we put the pufferfish liver?"
"Right here."
At the mention of pufferfish liver, the man's face turned pale.
He might be lowborn, but he was also the sort who often got called to banquet houses.
He had eaten pufferfish a few times before.
From what he had overheard back then, if you ate the poison wrong, you died on the spot.
He had forgotten where exactly the poison was said to be, but now he remembered.
"You're not planning to make me eat that, are you?"
"Hm? No. I'm not feeding it to you."
"Then why…?"
"Ah, damn, this bastard really does talk too much. Dolseok."
"Yes."
Dolseok rolled up his sleeves and stood.
He was holding something, and when the man looked closely, he saw it was an iron Dorikkae.
Whoosh.
He swung it a few times, then brought it down.
"Aaagh!"
The man took the blow to the shoulder and tumbled aside with a scream.
In the meantime, Kanghyeok squeezed poison from the liver into the saline.
The translucent yellow liquid slowly dissolved into the clear, transparent solution.
It's definitely a deadly poison.
He knew it was even more toxic than the poison used in Botox.
The problem was that there was no way to know exactly how toxic it was.
If he injected it wrong, the man might really die.
And this isn't Suwon…
He could not just go around killing people recklessly in Hanyang.
"Hmm."
"Young Master, what is it?"
"Let's tie him up for now, then go to the market with me for a moment."
"The market?"
"Yeah."
"Yes, understood."
Dolseok tied the man up tightly, then followed Kanghyeok out of the room.
Makbong, Yeoni, and Dorikkae were all busy tying up the rest of the men as well.
Kanghyeok hurried past them and said,
"I'm going to buy something, so wait here."
"Yes, Young Master."
Kanghyeok quickened his pace, and Dolseok barely managed to catch up behind him.
"Young Master, where are you rushing off to all of a sudden?"
"Ah. I don't want to deal with a corpse."
"A corpse? Then that thing really could kill him?"
"Yeah. It could."
"Uh…"
Training in martial arts and studying medicine did not change one's nature.
For the first time in a while, Dolseok put on a coward's face and began whining.
"Then shouldn't we just let him go?"
"No, no. We just have to make sure he doesn't die."
"Ah. So there's an antidote!"
If it was Kanghyeok, then surely he would know how to counter even pufferfish poison.
At least, that was what Dolseok believed.
But Kanghyeok only shook his head firmly.
"No. There isn't."
Not only in Joseon, but even in modern times, there was no antidote for pufferfish poison.
That was how potent and terrifying it was.
They said it was far more toxic than cyanide itself, which said enough.
"Then…?"
"There's another way."
Even without an antidote, if someone who had ingested pufferfish poison reached a hospital quickly enough, they could still be saved.
All you had to do was deal with the fact that the respiratory muscles became paralyzed and the person could no longer breathe.
They just had to hold on until the liver slowly detoxified it and function returned.
"Another way?"
"Yeah. First, let's go look at some meat."
"What? Why would a butcher—"
"If I said let's go, then go. Why do you talk so much?"
"Yes, yes."
If this were Suwon, it would have been hard to simply find beef in the market.
But Hanyang was a little different. Goods and merchandise from all over were piled up everywhere.
"There we go, right there."
Kanghyeok found a butcher's stall without much difficulty.
As soon as he stepped inside, the owner greeted him warmly.
"You've come."
"Yeah. Mm."
"Is there something you're looking for…?"
"Well, um. I'd like to buy some bull testicles."
"What?"
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