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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Discernment
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On the road back to Chengdu. With every step he took, the heavy bundle of herbs swayed around his waist, getting in the way.
But Dang Mujin paid it no mind, lost in deep thought. The topic was naturally the vision he'd seen earlier that day.
'Was that really just a dream?'
A dream was the closest thing to it. But could he really describe that experience with such a common, flimsy word as "dream"? And yet, at the same time, nothing else fit.
That dream had been impossibly long—hard to put into words. It wasn't so much a dream as it was one person's entire life.
If it had just been long, he might have written it off as a strange dream induced by that weird mushroom. But there were plenty of other odd things about it.
Dreams are usually sloppy affairs.
When you're in one, everything feels perfectly reasonable.
But look back after waking, and it's a mess. Hardly anything makes sense from start to finish.
You never know why the you in the dream is in a certain place, or how you ended up in that situation—it's just one baffling scene after another.
But today's dream had been different.
From the moment it began to the instant he woke, every single moment had a reason behind it.
The "me" in the dream had a clear goal and acted to achieve it.
The other dwarves he encountered in the dream were the same. They didn't feel like mere dream characters—they felt like real, living people.
'Dwarves or whatever—there's no way something like that exists in the world.'
But aside from that, every piece fit together perfectly.
If such a world existed, it could absolutely happen. And it felt like a life that could truly exist.
Dang Mujin reflected on the memory again. The emotions he'd felt in the dream were still vivid even now.
The joy of becoming an apprentice at the Iron Maul Forge.
The frustration of ruining a precious metal by messing up the fire control.
The satisfaction of forging his first proper sword. Could he really dismiss experiences like that as "just a dream"?
Dang Mujin looked down at his hands. They weren't the thick, callused hands of a dwarf, but the slender, elongated fingers of a human.
'Was it really just a simple hallucination? I have no idea what happened.'
Dang Mujin let out a deep sigh and looked ahead.
He had already entered the outskirts of Chengdu. People were walking toward their various destinations.
One person in particular caught his eye. A monk wearing a monastic robe over his traveler's jacket.
'As the monks say, there's reincarnation.'
You might be human in this life but an animal in the next. Or even if human now, you could have been an animal in a past life.
So, could I have been a dwarf in a previous life?
If you're trapped in the wheel of six realms and reincarnation, you might live a life like that once or twice.
Lost in such idle thoughts, time flew by.
It didn't feel like he'd walked far, but the sun had already set, and Dang Mujin arrived at the clinic.
As usual, he was about to take the bundle to the storeroom and sort the herbs when he sensed a small commotion and stopped in his tracks.
The treatment room door opened, and two men emerged. One was Dang Mujin's father, Dang Jesun, and the other appeared to be the patient.
The patient grumbled in a voice thick with irritation.
"They said the best physician in Chengdu was here. All just empty rumors."
"My apologies."
"If I'd known it'd be like this, I wouldn't have bothered coming."
Dang Jesun bowed and scraped before the patient. But the man seemed thoroughly displeased, grumbling for a while longer before finally leaving.
Both Dang Jesun and Dang Mujin were used to situations like this.
Patients being difficult with physicians wasn't a new occurrence. Patients were in pain, and pain makes even ordinary people sensitive.
Sensitive people lash out at the slightest dissatisfaction. Naturally, the ones who faced that irritation most were the physicians caring for them.
Dang Mujin watched the patient's retreating back.
His clothing marked him as an official, though his exact rank was unclear. From his bearing and attire, he was no lowly clerk—that much could be guessed.
As Dang Mujin approached Dang Jesun, his father wore an awkward expression.
It was a familiar situation, but not one he wanted to show his son.
"You're back. Good work."
"Father. Why was that patient acting like that? He was excessively rude."
"The Coordinating Lieutenant Adjutant came in complaining of a stiff shoulder and got acupuncture, but it seems the needles hurt a lot."
"It hurt? He must be quite the whiner."
Dang Mujin had learned acupuncture as part of the medicine from Dang Jesun. You couldn't learn acupuncture without experiencing it yourself, so Dang Mujin had been stuck with his father's needles at least a few hundred times.
From the perspective of someone who'd endured needles to the point of boredom, Dang Jesun's acupuncture skills were better than most physicians', never worse.
Not only were the effects excellent, but the pain was minimal. Among countless patients, very few ever complained that the needles hurt.
Even young children took them without crying, so there was no need for further explanation.
But unexpectedly, Dang Jesun's expression was subtle.
"No. It doesn't seem like that."
"Pardon?"
"I lost my needle case a while back and got a new set of needles, but they're thicker than the previous ones."
"The needles are thicker?"
"Yes. While inserting them, blood beaded up."
"May I see the new needles?"
Dang Jesun took the needle case from his bosom and handed it to Dang Mujin. It was densely packed with needles the length of one to one-and-a-half fingers.
Dang Mujin examined them. He'd been buried in medical texts lately, so it had been quite a while since he'd inspected needles this closely.
As Dang Jesun said, compared to the old ones, these were at least twice as thick.
But that was because the previous needles had been exceptional, not because these were overly thick.
Objectively speaking, the needles Dang Jesun showed him now were still much finer and better than what a quack physician would use.
Normally, Dang Mujin would have said, 'He's not a child—what kind of grown man complains about needles this fine? He's just a whiner,' and moved on.
But not this time. Looking at these needles, an inexplicable surge of irritation rose within him.
'Selling something this crude as acupuncture needles?'
How to put it. It felt like watching a clueless quack peddle worthless roots as a cure-all for exorbitant prices.
"Is this... an acupuncture needle?"
"What else would it be, if not a needle?"
Dang Mujin examined them again. The biggest issue was, of course, the thickness. It was normal for something like this to hurt going into the skin.
But even beyond the thickness, there were problems. Things he wouldn't have noticed before now grated on him.
The lengths were all over the place. Even needles for the same purpose varied from long to short.
The cross-sections weren't even round but square-ish. He could understand that. Making such thin needles perfectly round was incredibly difficult. Dang Jesun's old needles had been flat too.
"By any chance... how many days ago did you get these needles?"
"It was the day you went to pick up the herbs, so about half a month ago."
These needles, less than a month old, were already starting to bend slightly. And he surely hadn't handled them roughly. Definitely strange.
Faint marks from late hammering on the sides of needles that should have been fully tempered and heated were visible too.
To a physician, that might not be a flaw, but to a blacksmith, it was irksome. Skill or no, blacksmiths wanted their work perfect.
Blacksmiths treated their creations like children. You didn't just patch up a shoddy piece and sell it—you remade it from scratch.
In other words, things like this shouldn't have been in Dang Jesun's needle case.
'A guy with no skill who doesn't even want to work properly—cutting corners like this is what you get.'
At that moment, Dang Jesun reached out and took back the needle case.
"Don't worry about it. It's my fault for lacking skill. I'll just have to refine my practice."
"But—"
"Enough."
Dang Jesun cleared his throat a couple of times and disappeared into the clinic.
Dang Mujin soon returned to his room as well. And only then did he feel the belated strangeness. Dang Mujin wasn't familiar with blacksmithing—he'd never even held a hammer.
'How did I spot that the needles were poorly made?'
Until recently, to Dang Mujin, needles were just thin bits of metal.
Whether they were slightly bent, flat in cross-section, made from impure scrap iron, or hastily hammered into shape afterward—it was all beyond his concern.
No, not just concern—he had no way to even recognize it. Dang Mujin didn't know blacksmithing. He was a physician's apprentice, a complete outsider to metallurgy, ignorant of how needles were made. To him, a good needle was simply a thin one.
But today was different. Not only could he tell they were crudely made, but he felt an unbearable frustration and irritation.
'It feels like I really lived as a dwarf blacksmith.'
But that was impossible. The dream had lasted at most two hours. Far too short to learn anything.
It was probably all just illusion. No, definitely an illusion. He'd gotten suspicious, so perfectly fine needles looked off. That had to be it.
Yet deep in Dang Mujin's heart, doubt bubbled up.
It was too specific and clear to dismiss as mere illusion. He could even guess the blacksmith's skill level.
Dang Mujin lay down to sleep. But he couldn't shake the thoughts of the dream, the forge, and the needles.
Dang Mujin forcibly emptied his mind.
'There's no point agonizing over it now. I'll know everything tomorrow when I go to the forge.'
Tomorrow, watching the blacksmith at work would clear it up.
The blacksmith's work would surely differ from the dream. A dwarf blacksmith was almost certainly nonsense—an hallucination from that bizarre mushroom.
Once it was clear it was all illusion, these stray thoughts would stop plaguing him. Conviction was the surest way to dispel delusion.
Dang Mujin closed his eyes and muttered again. Right. He had to go to the forge tomorrow.