Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 1
001. The Protagonist (主人公)
My body felt like it was crumbling apart. My throat was parched. Every muscle ached as though I’d been beaten, and I had no strength whatsoever. My entire frame trembled and tingled as if I were suffering from a severe case of the flu.
“Ugh… Why does everything hurt so much…?”
I groaned as I stirred awake, muttering deliriously through the haze of pain.
“Did I catch the flu? I should take some fever reducer… Huh?”
I forced my eyes open. There’s an old saying that if you listen well to doctors, you’ll live long, but if you live like a doctor, you’ll die young. Society may praise the medical profession as a noble calling, but the reality is that it demands much physical labor.
Having spent years moving my body this way and that, there wasn’t a part of me that didn’t ache.
Jin Cheon-hee, a general surgery professor at a university hospital, groaned as I opened my eyes.
“What… what is this…?”
Upon opening my eyes, I immediately let out a bewildered sound.
Tree branches came into view. A blue sky stretched above, and the air touching my skin was pleasantly warm. It was a forest in late spring, early summer.
“…Was there a forest like this near our camp? It was all desert, wasn’t it?”
I brought my hand to my forehead, furrowing my brow. My memories were confused. Before I could gather my wits, what I’d been doing was hazy.
A sabbatical. I remember going to a remote region for medical volunteer work. My colleague had pestered me so much that I’d been dragged along.
‘Did someone move me here? No… there shouldn’t have been a forest like this near the Medical Aid Camp?’
The country I’d traveled to for volunteer work was ravaged by drought and civil war. I’d struggled greatly treating injured and sick children.
As I recalled the past piece by piece, my vision seemed to grow clearer.
I still couldn’t remember what I’d done last night, but my mind was becoming sharper.
‘Don’t panic.’
Taking a deep breath, strength gradually returned to my body. The pain that had weighed down my entire frame slowly subsided. When I turned my head to look around, even as strength returned, I found I couldn’t move my legs.
“Ha… haha. Is this a dream?”
Sunlight broke through the clouds, illuminating the surroundings. I stood there, my mind blank.
Everything visible around me was corpses.
At the sight, my legs froze as if turned to ice. I tentatively pinched my cheek.
It hurt.
“So it’s not a dream….”
The pain felt vivid against my cheek. At least my legs were moving now, which was a relief. Only then did I have the composure to look around properly.
‘A film set…? No, wait. With a smell of blood this pungent, it can’t be fake.’
Still, as someone who wielded a scalpel, I was quite familiar with the smell of blood. But I couldn’t help my heart trembling slightly. The scene I stood in looked unmistakably like a battlefield.
‘Looking at their faces, rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. They’ve been dead for less than two hours. All the wounds are from sharp blades—cuts and stabs… but why isn’t there a single gunshot wound?’
Moreover, their clothing was strange. No matter how I looked at it, they wore garments straight out of the martial arts novels I enjoyed reading.
As I slowly examined the corpses, I suddenly realized the pain I’d felt in my body had vanished.
‘First. This is reality, not a dream. And I….’
I looked down at my hands.
‘They’re small. A child’s hands.’
My shadow was small too. It was like the body of a child around ten years old.
‘If I’m dreaming of becoming a child in a martial arts world, I could at least make sense of that.’
I clenched my jaw. I was someone who’d clawed my way up from nothing, without parents, crossing countless thresholds. A strong will had sustained me.
There were at least dozens of corpses surrounding me.
Three carriages lay in ruins, and several bodies had been severed clean through at the torso in a single, devastating blow.
‘What kind of blade could possibly sever human bone and muscle in one stroke? What weapon makes this possible?’
I looked down at my blood-stained hands. They were small, delicate—a child’s hands.
‘A child’s body. This feels exactly like those possession scenarios from novels. Is this what they call transmigration?’
I brushed myself off lightly. The unreality of it all paradoxically sharpened my mind.
‘From the clothes I’m wearing, I’m clearly not from a wealthy family. And with nothing of value here except corpses, it seems we were ambushed by bandits or brigands.’
Having reached this conclusion, I exhaled deeply.
‘This is unmistakably… a possession scenario from a novel. Whether it’s time travel or something else, I have no idea. But one thing’s certain—this isn’t Korea.’
Then a memory surfaced.
Rebels burst through the tent, firing weapons. I remember desperately shielding a small child. I don’t know why I did it. The child screamed.
What happened next?
The world turned red. The child cried out in broken language: “Doctor, doctor!”
Darkness consumed everything.
‘So… I clawed my way out of the orphanage, passed the medical entrance exam, became a doctor, earned my professorship. Finally had a decent life, then came here to volunteer and died like that? What kind of cruel joke is this?’
I stared blankly at the ground for a moment. As a doctor, I’d grown accustomed to seeing corpses.
Perhaps that’s why standing among the dead didn’t frighten me as much as it would an ordinary person.
Or perhaps I was too preoccupied with understanding how I’d died to feel fear.
After collecting my thoughts, I exhaled deeply.
It was a sigh far too weary for a ten-year-old child.
‘Right. I need to focus. I don’t understand what’s happened, but I can’t stay here. If those bandits return, I could die again.’
That’s when I heard it.
“Ugh… ugh… someone… please… help…”
Someone was alive. Following the voice, I found a Bearded Middle-Aged Man convulsing violently on the ground.
He spotted me and his eyes widened.
“You… you there… my wife… my wife… please… I don’t mind if I die… but my wife… she still…”
He thrust a blood-stained pouch toward me.
I didn’t take it. Instead, I reached out and placed my hand on the man’s wound. He stared at me in shock.
As his grip weakened, the pouch fell to the ground. Coins clinked against the earth.
Clink.
Rather than take the money, I pressed my small hands against the man’s injury.
“I’ll stop the bleeding.”
With the practiced precision of someone who’d done this dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, I applied pressure to the vein in a single, decisive motion.
“Ahhhhh!”
The man screamed from the intense pain. I was grateful he had the strength to cry out.
‘Whether this is good luck or bad, I’m not sure. The laceration is extensive, yet miraculously the internal organs are intact. But the wound is too long and he’s lost too much blood. If I don’t suture this soon…’
A long gash ran across his abdomen. It was deep enough to expose his internal organs, but fortunately they remained unharmed.
‘There has to be a way… there must be something.’
I scanned the area frantically. Finding no means to suture the wound, I reached for the pouch the man had tried to give me.
‘Anything. Please, anything.’
Inside the pouch were ancient Chinese coins and a small silk handkerchief, no larger than my middle finger.
They were newborn baby shoes. The warmth radiating from them spoke of how tenderly the man had cradled them.
And there was also a beautiful sewing basket. It looked too ornate to be an ordinary sewing basket, but such details hardly mattered now.
‘I found a needle. But thread… there’s no thread. Then…’
I plucked a strand of hair from the man’s head. Long hair, as befitted this martial arts era. Perfect. I quickly threaded the hair through the needle’s eye and tied it off.
“This will hurt, but you must endure it.”
There was no response. The middle-aged man was slowly losing consciousness. A sign of death approaching.
‘…Is there no other way?’
I made a bold decision and acted.
Thunk.
The needle pierced through flesh and tissue. The middle-aged man let out a faint groan from the depths of his fading consciousness.
But I moved my hands with steady composure.
‘I’d heard stories about using hair for emergency sutures, but I never thought I’d actually do it myself. Without proper sterilization, infection is almost certain. There’s no help for it. Right now, this is all I can do.’
The wound was sutured in moments. Once the bleeding stopped, the man gasped for breath. From what I could see, the emergency treatment was complete.
In truth, I couldn’t have done more even if I’d wanted to.
I wanted to find clean cloth, but there was nothing suitable nearby. So I took whatever fabric I could find and bound the wound with it.
The man muttered something. His words were unclear, spoken as they were from a clouded mind, but he seemed to be offering thanks.
I pressed a pouch of coins into his hand.
‘Live to return these yourself.’
I didn’t believe in heaven. No matter how much one prayed, patients destined to die would die.
But I believed in human will. Understanding the heart of a family man who’d left his pregnant wife at home, I tried to comfort him.
After finishing the treatment, I let out a long sigh and collapsed to the ground.
I couldn’t believe the situation I was in, and having saved a life in such circumstances had drained me completely.
Then a thought suddenly struck me.
‘There might be more people still alive.’
I sprang to my feet. Scanning the surroundings carefully, I found there were indeed several people still clinging to life.
Not many, but a few were still breathing.
‘I can provide emergency treatment, but can I actually save them? Even if I try now, without someone’s help, ultimately…’
I clenched my teeth and stopped that line of thinking.
‘Worry about that later. Right now, I need to save whoever I can.’
I moved my body with urgent purpose.
I had to distinguish between those I could save immediately and those I couldn’t.
‘This person… has already lost too much blood. I can’t save them.’
The first person I examined had their leg severed halfway. The critical issue was that an artery had been cut, and they’d lost far too much blood.
If I could suture quickly and perform a transfusion, they might survive, but that was impossible in this situation.
I turned away with a heavy heart. With proper medical equipment, this patient could certainly be saved, but there was nothing I could do now.
The weight of that reality pressed down on me. But a physician must be cold and rational.
There were other critical patients, and I couldn’t afford to waste a single moment.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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