Chapter 149 |
Day by day, the training became more difficult, and his control over inner energy became more delicate.
As the seasons changed several times, Jin Cheon-hee realized that even by modern age reckoning, he had become an adult.
‘They must have grown a lot too.’
Jin Cheon-hee read the letters sent by his siblings while drinking warm sweet rice wine.
The marten, rabbit, and wolf scarves had each gone to their owners, and it seemed everyone was using them well.
And as expected, Jin Cheon-woo and Sama Hyeon left arrogant replies saying that while they didn’t know what kind of guy this Yeo Ha-ryoon was, they would test whether he had the right to say such things themselves.
He thought Cheon-woo might say such things due to developing competitiveness while training at the Wudang Sect, but Sama Hyeon was unexpected.
‘I thought he was a rational kid. Looks like his blood boiled in a strange place.’
Couldn’t they be good friends even if not brothers?
It’s like a cape in modern terms, worn over clothes to block the cold.
Jin Cheon-woo had caught this, he said.
He said he had hunted down a white tiger that was eating civilians in the mountains.
He was so surprised when the courier brought it.
He said he wanted his brother to use what was left, but there was going to be too much fur left over.
Jin Cheon-hee reinforced the needle using Wind Cloud Technique and Void Grasping Technique.
‘If I’m not careful, this could break.’
Even regular deerskin is incredibly tough for inserting needles.
Originally, he would need to use special needles, but that would defeat the purpose of training, so he had to handle everything with just a quilt-sewing needle.
‘I wonder if mixing in fire energy would damage the fur.’
Eventually, Jin Cheon-hee began to do everything from cutting to processing.
***
More time passed like that.
“Hee. About that game you invented recently. It’s been well-received by the patients at the pavilion.”
“Is that so?”
Tak-
Zhuge Rin and Jin Cheon-hee sat facing each other over a square Go board.
Zhuge Rin held white stones, while Jin Cheon-hee held black stones.
Of course, “holding” here wasn’t in the physical sense, but in terms of inner energy.
When he first agreed to play Go with his master, Jin Cheon-hee expected to be utterly crushed. But once they actually started, it was surprisingly manageable.
What started with a three-stone handicap was now down to just a two-stone handicap.
This was because his inner force control and situation judgment speed had started to grow rapidly.
Tak-
‘At first, even placing a stone where I wanted was difficult.’
Perhaps it was because the blood of game-obsessed South Korea flowed through him.
This suited Jin Cheon-hee’s temperament better than simply distinguishing between brown and white rice.
From his master’s perspective, he also enjoyed playing Go with his disciple.
“About Cheongok.”
“Ah, yes.”
Cheongok[2], a game board created by adapting modern Mon*poly to the martial world situation.
“I made it to keep patients still in their beds, but it seems to be well-received.”
“That’s how it turned out.”
If modern Mon*poly is a game about buying land, building buildings, and making money, Cheongok can be said to be about making money by creating branch offices or affiliated dojos in the martial world.
It’s similar, but instead of a desert island, there’s imprisonment in the thunder prison and closed-door training.
Even family members don’t listen in the martial world, so there’s no way they’d listen to a doctor.
Unless they were in a situation where they could barely get up due to illness, they would try to discharge themselves and go drink alcohol anyway.
Since there are many cases where patients who look fine on the outside still need to be monitored, it’s not easy to keep them from drinking alcohol or using knives in the ward.
That’s why Cheongok, the martial world Mon*poly, was created.
In this era where gambling, drinking, and Go are representative adult pastimes, the response was sensational when a new form of entertainment appeared.
While there were similar things to Mon*poly in this era, they didn’t have the systematic balance of well-worn modern board games, and the element of chance cards decided by luck ignited the hearts of adult martial artists.
Here, instead of chance cards, they’re called “Opportunity Cards.”
An 80-year-old sect leader who was saying he would immediately go out and avenge this grudge of being stabbed in the stomach by evil sect bastards, ended up staying in the hospital peacefully for a whole week after learning Cheongok once.
Whether they resolve their grudges outside or not, Cheongok was a savior in the current situation where absolute rest was necessary in the medical pavilion.
“Many merchant groups want to buy Cheongok.”
“I thought they would just make similar ones.”
In an era without intellectual property rights, he thought anyone would copy and spread it around.
His master replied.
“That’s true, but… merchants also need to visit the medical pavilion when they’re sick. And many sect leaders said they wanted to experience that taste again.”
Hmm… it seems they all want to play a round.
Tak-
He didn’t expect a board game to be this well-received.
‘Since it’s come to this. Should I introduce something like Hai Gai to the martial world too?’
It might help with martial arts training… or it might not.
At least someone is bound to get hurt.
‘Hmm. Let’s introduce that later.’
No need to see unnecessary bloodshed.
His master placed his next move.
Tak-
“And there are merchant groups who want to buy ondol too.”
“Ondol?”
“The martial artists who experienced ondol at the medical pavilion want to install it in their own homes too. If anything, this move is late.”
“I wish soap would spread this much too.”
Tak-
“Hahaha, don’t be too impatient.”
Ironically, the soap he most wanted to distribute was sluggish in reception, while things like ondol and board games were being distributed first, which he never imagined.
‘Right. Hand washing can be bothersome.’
Even on Earth, how difficult was it to teach kids to wash their hands?
Here, the targets aren’t even kids, but adults.
Jin Cheon-hee’s soap distribution business failed spectacularly like that.
Fortunately, it was a business conducted with Jin Cheon-hee’s pocket money, and it barely survived thanks to purchases from the medical pavilion branches and clinics.
Still, the fact that the loss was painful was true, so Jin Cheon-hee shed tears in secret.
‘Ugh, it can’t be helped. Since it’s come to this, let’s sell Cheongok and ondol.’
Jin Cheon-hee said this.
“I’ll do it. Which merchant groups said they would do it?”
“Hmm. There are many. I’ll have Yoo Ho organize and send you the list. Come to think of it, among them are the Putuo Merchant Group affiliated with Putuo Escort Agency and the Namgoong Merchant Group.”
Jin Cheon-hee’s brow furrowed.
“To the places that also sell soap…”
“Hohoho, Hee. Isn’t the immediate future more important than such things?”
Interpreting his master’s words, it would be ‘Give up on something that won’t sell anyway, and just cover your losses.’
Jin Cheon-hee clutched his aching heart.
***
More time passed again.
Jin Cheon-hee spent every day busy.
He continues with surgical operations and their transmission, as well as additional medical studies.
In particular, he was trying to create a new antibiotic, which was a race against time.
Streptomycin.
This antibiotic, which is effective against tuberculosis, known as the “white plague,” is one of the representative antibiotics extracted from the soil.
It was discovered after Dr. Selman Abraham Waksman and his disciples researched ten thousand soil microbial cultures, noting the fact that tuberculosis is quickly destroyed in soil.
In the research, they found that streptomycin among them was helpful, but since they had already used up that strain in experiments, they had to grow it again from the beginning.
Thus, he won the Nobel Prize after hellish grinding work.
Such experiments require randomly trying and discarding with one idea until reaching the desired result.
Fortunately, Jin Cheon-hee knew that to extract streptomycin, he needed to extract something called Streptomyces griseus, which belongs to the order Actinomycetales.
He also knew what it looked like and how it worked.
Additionally, he had studied how to change the acidity when cultivating, what to do if charcoal needs to be used, that a temperature around 35 degrees Celsius is good, and various other necessary factors.
However, the efficiency is low, resulting in over 50% loss.
According to recent papers, there’s a method to increase cultivation efficiency by using a small amount of penicillin.
But knowing and doing are separate issues.
Hellish grinding work of actinomycetes cultivation and isolation experiments is needed.
‘Roughly about ten thousand plates…?’
Extracting streptomycin will require different efforts than penicillin.
‘Plus, since the penicillin here acted a bit differently from over there, something might be different this time too.’
This work, which sometimes goes wrong even with modern scientific technology, has to be done in the martial world by praying over cultivation plates.
In that process, he ground down himself and Yoo Ho.
Jin Cheon-hee wasn’t lonely.
Because Yoo Ho was an excellent lab assistant.
In this era without doctoral degrees, there was no chance of Yoo Ho running away.
And Jin Cheon-hee had one last conscience.
The microscope.
Jin Cheon-hee is pushing forward with developing a primitive microscope by grinding down Yoo Ho.
It’s the Leeuwenhoek microscope made around 1600.
At that time, the key was how small you could make the glass bead. The smaller the glass bead, the higher the magnification.
Jin Cheon-hee also didn’t stop grinding Yoo Ho until he made the smallest possible bead.
Yoo Ho shouted, “Die, young master!”
And Jin Cheon-hee loved such a Yoo Ho.
To the extent that if asked which among yellow cows and black cows works the best, he could answer that Yoo Ho works the best.
Although it’s a primitive form of microscope, it boasted enough magnification to observe red blood cells.
It’s a bit insufficient to observe actinomycetes. But with the current technology, this is the limit line that has been raised to the soul.
The next step is to complement it by using inner energy or improving the lens.
‘It’s amazing, Yoo Ho is.’
For some reason he won’t tell even if his mouth is torn, Yoo Ho’s ability to handle fire far exceeded the range of what humans can do and was skillful.
It’s amazing even to Jin Cheon-hee how that’s possible.
“The unit price will go up a lot, young master. And mass production will be impossible.”
Factory production is inevitable for mass production. However, even for Yoo Ho, there are time and limitations to lens processing technology.
“Making one will be the end of it.”
“That’s fine. I’m grateful even if only one is completed anyway.”
Yoo Ho can make things reasonably well if he knows the principle and structure of one thing.
Of course, he can’t make things that require petroleum chemical refining like plastic, but he could make things with glass, iron, and wood.
‘It’s enough to make ghosts wail, but… it’s okay. Yoo Ho, my private slave.’
Jin Cheon-hee looked at Yoo Ho with a feeling like a building owner with 100 million in his chest.
He felt proud.
And Yoo Ho relieved this overwork by upgrading the wooden dummies. And those wooden dummies mercilessly beat Jin Cheon-hee when the die slipped.
Beating in the name of acupoint strikes and external martial arts training!
Thwack, thwackthwackthwack!
“Agh, aaaagh! Agh! That Yoo Ho bastard really… urgh!”
The fiery beatings continued every night.
It was a crazy relationship.