Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 181

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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 181
Hands appeared and vanished like stars, tracing a trajectory of agony.
Crack—
The Masked Persons finally cried out in pain.
“Krraaagh!”
I spoke.
“I’d like to shatter all their limbs, but there’s no time for that… And you know, after clashing blades with them, I understand now….”
I smiled wickedly.
That smile was like that of a demon itself.
“…You’re definitely from the Bloodline Bridge.”
Four Masked Persons flew backward simultaneously.
Hwang-gu, resonating with his master’s fury, completely shattered the man’s legs and then destroyed his other arm as well.
Now walking was impossible, and wielding a sword was out of the question.
Yet I felt no guilt. I knew how the Bloodline Bridge captured people and performed their rituals.
My concern lay with the hermits of the Mudang Sect.
Though corrupted, many were still good people, and even the corrupted ones were nothing compared to the Bloodline Bridge.
“Let’s go, Hwang-gu. We have far to travel.”
Yelp!
Hwang-gu immediately bolted after me.
My sleeve billowed taut for just an instant.
Boom—
As if I had never been there in the first place, my form vanished. Then, moments later, my figure appeared over a zhang away in the empty air.
An oddly swift movement technique.
The eye could not follow it.
The only being capable of pursuing me was Hwang-gu.
Yelp!
Hwang-gu read his master’s movements, pulse, and scent.
Following the explosive speed and irregular afterimages, Hwang-gu ran in close pursuit.
Fire demon.
His master’s fur bristled as if standing on end, brimming with fury.
‘Kill.’
Hwang-gu unleashed his primal nature for the first time in a long while.
* * *
The air thick with the smell of burning flesh and corpses, blades and exhilaration—it was as if I had returned to a battlefield on Earth in my past life.
Humans killed each other for different reasons, but that smell was always the same.
I could search for survivors and repel enemies instead of succumbing to war PTSD, thanks to the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong’s function.
Operating the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong with more internal energy than usual, it could push the maddened modern-day physician Jin Cheon-hee to a corner of my mind.
Whether the modern consciousness screamed or retched, my brain’s function continued to calmly assess the situation and instruct what needed to be done next.
“Kh… kugh… My disciple… I have a disciple.”
A deep scar remained on the hermit’s chest.
The wound carved deep into the ribs was brutal.
In wartime emergency triage, such patients were deprioritized.
Because they could not be saved.
I found the child among the rubble. But it was a corpse long dead.
The Hermit seemed to have waited for someone who could help, believing his disciple might still be alive.
When I turned back, tears streamed down the Hermit’s eyes.
“Did you find him?”
“…Yes, I found him.”
“Thank you… thank you…”
With those words, the Hermit released his final breath.
It was the only thing the master, who had endured with all his strength, could do for his disciple.
To ask for help.
“…”
I closed his eyes.
Though I lacked the strength to properly collect the bodies, I could at least place the disciple’s corpse beside his master.
The master wore a faint smile, clinging to that final hope—that his disciple had lived.
They too carried that scent from before. The smell of war.
I moved again.
Time was gold. No—time was life.
Not a moment could be wasted.
* * *
From Noeji, I learned the numbers and formations of the Bloodline Bridge.
Hearing this account made it hard to breathe.
Because the number of Bloodline Bridge fanatics mobilized for the surprise assault on the Mudang Sect was staggering.
Their count exceeded several hundred. And that was only what was visible—including those hidden from sight, their total surely exceeded a thousand.
‘Do they intend to annihilate the Mudang Sect entirely? About a thousand martial artists train on Mudang Mountain. These are the elite gathered to kill them.’
Naturally, to face a thousand opponents required mobilizing an equal number of warriors.
No matter how grotesque the Bloodline Bridge’s sorcery, the power of numbers was absolute.
Thud, thud!—Master, a moving corpse.
Hwang-gu immediately recognized the familiar scent from before and warned me.
I too sensed the enemy slightly later than Hwang-gu, through my broadly dispersed qi perception.
A corpse rose from among the pavilion’s ruins.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A corpse demon.
Judging by the rigid limbs and flesh hardened like metal, it was a Donggang corpse demon.
The lowest rank among Bloodline Bridge corpse demons, yet a demonic creature that ordinary martial artists struggle to overcome.
Even if an enemy, if it were a living human, one could sense their qi, feel their pain, observe their sluggish movements—but not with this.
One of the Gangho’s natural predators.
‘Heh, I don’t even think about my thesis anymore.’
I observed my withering inner self and organized my thoughts.
‘Why the Bloodline Bridge targets the Mudang is irrelevant. At this moment, the Bloodline Bridge and the Mudang Sect’s forces are either comparable, or the Mudang Sect will be overwhelmed.’
I must not waver. Instead, I need to continue thinking with cold clarity.
My frigid rationality kept constructing worst-case scenarios.
‘Gwon Je is present, and the Mudang Sect elders are masters at the transcendent and transformation realms. The Bloodline Bridge couldn’t have come without knowing this—they must have brought elite forces to counter them. Tsk, the situation is dire.’
There is no one who can aid the Mudang Sect at this moment.
This isn’t an era of roads and automobiles; by the time reinforcements arrived, the Mudang Sect would already be ashes.
Then.
‘The answer is to reduce the Bloodline Bridge’s lower-tier forces myself. To do that….’
I knew from experience how terrifying overwhelming numbers could be.
Numbers are ultimately power. Reducing the enemy’s headcount by even one would be the greatest support I could provide to the Mudang Sect.
‘What can change the tide of battle? Terrain, fortune, and people. These three things.’
Fortune was chosen by them. The terrain had been consumed by the flame demon’s influence, arranged in their favor.
What favored the Mudang was people.
Yet even that was difficult to confidently claim as superior.
My thoughts extended along the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong.
Hypotheses branched like tree limbs, advancing through the veins of logic like a labyrinth.
The conclusions I reached narrowed to three possibilities, and the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong eliminated two of them.
The time consumed to reach this conclusion was barely three seconds.
‘Formation arrays.’
The optimal conclusion guided my thoughts forward.
The Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong began retrieving the countless formation arrays of the Jegal Family I had learned.
If the previous moment was a tree of logic, this was a sewer of memory.
Hundreds of thoughts spread like spider webs through my recollections.
Meanwhile, the Dual Thought Technique dominated my body as I wielded the Frost Blade.
Kaang!
The Frost Blade severed Donggang-si’s body without even needing blade energy.
An achievement different from before.
The hand of a martial artist who had consumed fragments of the Heart Demon butchered the corpses with the most efficient speed.
The Frost Blade, boring through the cartilage of the spine, sliced straight through the neck.
Along the shoulder blade, it tore through tendons deeply.
Crack!
The Frost Blade’s edge, showing no mercy even to rotted fluids, carved through everything visible, creating absolute death.
The time it took for an entire group of corpses to perish was barely half a moment.
I gazed down at the corpses with emotionless, impassive eyes.
To judge whether they had truly ceased moving.
“….”
Soon after, I turned my head and vanished into the darkness like mist.
A formation array vast enough to encompass all of Mudang Mountain.
Even now, my thoughts continued refining the plan, concretizing it, and reshaping it anew.
At the end of it all, I simply carried out my task.
* * *
A formation array refers to the manipulation of the world’s natural qi by regularly arranging objects imbued with energy across the ground, thereby creating extraordinary phenomena.
Its foundation rests not in martial arts but in geomancy, and its principles differ from those of sorcery.
Because of this, mastering formation arrays operates on an entirely different system than learning spellcraft, to the point where a distinct profession called formation masters existed.
Even in this world governed by the principles of yin-yang and the five elements, the formation arrays of Zhuge Liang from the Three Kingdoms era remain the most renowned.
Thus, the Jegal Family is revered as the preeminent house in the mastery of formation arrays.
Jegalling, their direct descendant, was the inheritor of all the Jegal Family’s knowledge of formation patterns and techniques.
And that Jegalling had transmitted a considerable level of formation array knowledge to his own disciple—not everything, but substantial nonetheless.
In this world where yin-yang and the five elements govern all movement, and where humans awaken to the Dao to become immortals, the terror of formation arrays bore no comparison to anything in modern Earth.
Woof! – Master. Enemy.
“As expected, my opponent possesses at least some knowledge of formation arrays.”
A formation array enveloping the entirety of the Mudang Sect.
To defend it, enemies were positioned at every crucial point.
The fact that they held their positions without directly attacking the Mudang Sect suggested a tactical choice.
They hadn’t anticipated the variable that was me, so they must have seized these positions first to dismantle the Mudang Sect’s existing formation array.
“It must be Jeong Gwang after all.”
The logic I reached through the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong had identified the culprit without a shred of evidence.
‘A sect as prominent as the Mudang Sect would never have failed to install a defensive formation array. Yet enemies are positioned at the very axis points of the formation pattern? In the end, this must be an insider—and one of elder rank at that.’
If the nameless hermit from the novel were Jeong Gwang, it meant he had sold information to the Bloodline Bridge that he had previously sold to the Demonic Sect.
At that time, the Demonic Sect was before Yeo Ha-ryun had established his position, so in a sense, the situation was no different from being subordinate to the Bloodline Bridge.
The reason for committing now a betrayal he would perform years later was easy enough to surmise.
‘Desperation.’
The Dual Thought Technique, which had seemed within my grasp mere moments ago, had ultimately slipped through my fingers, and that desperation had driven him to act hastily.
I received information from Hwang-gu regarding the state of the formation array and the distribution of enemies.
Using that information, the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong began reconstructing the formation array anew.
‘The preservation is in good condition, so there’s no need to create something from nothing.’
Simply reactivating the formation patterns already present on Mudang Mountain would prove considerably helpful.
I retrieved the geomancy compass from the medicine pouch strapped to my back.
Clink—
The first principle of formation arrays is direction; the second is terrain; the third is water veins.
After returning the geomancy compass to its place, I immediately identified the location that would serve as the formation’s greatest axis and launched myself toward it.

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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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