Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 187

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

Chapter 187
As I circulated my inner strength, I felt the Hyeonwon Jeondan melting and being absorbed in my throat.
I drew a deep breath.
Soon, I felt the Five Elements technique in my dantian surging forward with violent intensity.
It wasn’t a deviation into madness. Rather, it was a state perilously close to runaway without crossing that threshold.
My muscles trembled.
My left wrist, which had throbbed with pain threatening to make me lose consciousness throughout the battle, moved fluidly in this moment.
I quickly tore away the bandages.
My left wrist, now reduced to tatters, had already swollen to the size of a fist.
Yet I could feel it moving with greater agility than before.
With the pain gone, I felt as though I could live.
“….”
Before my eyes was Cheonwoo’s back.
Remarkably, Cheonwoo—the youngest and least skilled among us—was defending most effectively.
‘Does Cheonwoo possess martial knowledge at the Elder level?’
That didn’t seem to be the case.
He was simply entering dangerous blind spots without hesitation to protect his brother and buy even a moment of time.
The reason he survived within Jeong Gwang’s rampage must have been his extraordinarily keen eye for reading movements.
Martial arts begin with sight.
If you can see it, you can evade it.
I understood why Elder Gwon Je had chosen Cheonwoo.
I began pouring all my inner strength into the Bingjing Sword.
I didn’t consider the variable of missing.
There was no next time anyway.
To avoid becoming a handful of blood, I had to do whatever it took.
The guidance of Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong, the instinct to survive, and martial knowledge honed through Baekrin Uiseon.
And modern knowledge layered sword qi upon the Bingjing Sword.
Not merely coating the blade with sword qi, but layering it as I had observed it.
It was a process like assembling Lego blocks.
‘Sword qi won’t do. It has to be sword force.’
I recalled sword force that I could immediately understand the structure of.
The Master’s was too difficult.
To create an annotated version, I needed clarification, deconstruction, and reassembly.
These three things were necessary.
The Master’s is hard to even clarify and gets stuck at deconstruction.
Something close at hand, not something distant.
And preferably something whose power I had felt up close just moments ago.
Soon, what formed on the blade of the Bingjing Sword was sword force like thick blood.
It was Geumcheon-gun’s.
Jeong Gwang’s eyes widened upon seeing it.
Even he couldn’t cry out that I was a martial arts thief this time.
As the sword aura completed, my afterimage slid forward smoothly.
Cheonwoo realized through his keen perception that I was ready, and lowered his body accordingly.
I leaped onto Cheonwoo’s shoulders and sprang upward as if performing acrobatics on a vaulting horse.
“Let’s go, brother!”
Jeong Gwang shrieked and threw a punch at the crimson sword aura that had stretched over a zhang in length.
My sword form was the Soqing Sword.
Using that sword aura and that five-element force to unfold the Mudang Sect’s most basic martial art, the Soqing Sword, Jeong Gwang seemed ready to go mad with jealousy.
“What is the difference between you and me?!”
“….”
I had no strength left to answer.
Surging blood foam was consuming my throat.
I deflected Jeong Gwang’s furious strike of a zhang with the Taegeuk Hye Sword.
And finally.
My own interpretation.
Soqing Sword variation.
Five-element Taegeuk Hye Sword–!!!
The Taegeuk was contained within the crimson sword aura. It was a different mystery of the Taegeuk than what Geumcheon-gun had used playfully.
Yet the five-element force was steadily contained within it, making it all the more wondrous.
The sword aura, having gone through the process of deconstruction, dismantling, and reassembly, aligned with my will and severed Jeong Gwang’s arm.
Shing!
Jeong Gwang’s eyes widened. But that too was but a moment.
The sword aura that pierced through finally reached his neck.
‘Ah, so this is how it’s done.’
I glimpsed the end of the Heart Technique. The distant end of the agony of martial knowledge.
Within the boundary between life and death, after torment akin to nirvana, the Heart Technique revealed itself.
I couldn’t dare grasp it, but it seemed possible to deconstruct and reassemble what I had just felt, those fragments of it.
With this, the deconstruction was complete.
In that moment, my blade bent at a different angle.
Kwaaaaaang!
It wasn’t a slash. It was a strike.
The sound that occurred when the Ten-Stage Gold struck rang out from this attack, making my eyes nearly bulge from their sockets in shock.
“크아아아악—!”
Jeong Gwang’s body was driven into the ground over a zhang deep.
The crater I had created resembled a meteor’s impact site.
Dust rose into the air.
The Elders, witnessing a sword like a natural disaster, recalled Mudang Gwon-je.
It was neither the Mudang’s authority nor a sword. Yet if one asked if it truly wasn’t, one couldn’t say otherwise.
‘Is the Jegal Family being revived….’
When the dust settled, what appeared was Jeong Gwang unconscious and me, blood dripping from my mouth in streams.
Jeong Gwang, who had lost consciousness, returned to his original body rather than the swollen form he had taken.
I climbed onto Jeong Gwang’s body and, with trembling hands, pressed the vital points and sealed my dantian.
It was remarkable that I hadn’t collapsed immediately—my resilience in that moment was nothing short of vicious.
Then I tore through the meridians of my limbs, and only then, as if my strength had finally been exhausted, I began to collapse.
Cheonwoo caught me and supported my weight.
“Brother, are you alright?”
….
I still couldn’t respond.
At that moment, fireworks erupted from the sky.
‘A signal flare…?’
It couldn’t be from the Mudang Sect. Then it must be from somewhere else.
My gaze turned toward Geumcheon County. As expected, Geumcheon County was retrieving the Taegeuk Hye Sword.
“Well, time’s up. Ugh…”
Geumcheon County clicked his tongue.
Without missing that moment, Elder Gwon Je threw a punch.
I raised the sword to block the attack, but couldn’t completely stop it.
Crash!
The fist struck the mask directly.
Crack—
“Ouch, Elder. That really hurts.”
Part of the mask shattered and fell away.
Only half of a face remained visible.
Upon seeing that face, my eyes widened involuntarily.
It was a familiar face.
“Everyone, let’s go!”
Whiiiiit—
At the high-pitched whistle, both the corpses and the surviving Bloodline Bridge disciples simultaneously ceased their movements. Soon they began retreating rapidly.
Jang Mun-in shouted loudly.
“Don’t pursue them! Hold your positions!”
The Mudang Sect had already suffered considerable damage.
If we recklessly pursued them beyond the sect grounds, an enemy trap would surely be waiting.
It was a wise judgment.
Geumcheon County winked at me.
“See you next time, cutie~”
But my body had gone rigid at the sight of Geumcheon County’s face, unable to move.
“Gasp, cough…”
Blood foam rose up again.
Maintaining my breathing alone required considerable effort.
* * *
As soon as the Bloodline Bridge retreated, Jang Mun-in approached Jeong Gwang’s side.
“Can you release the blood seal? Since I’ve closed the dantian and severed the meridians in all four limbs, it should be safe.”
“He could still go berserk from demonic energy.”
“That’s fine. I’ll manage it somehow.”
Jang Mun-in gazed at Jeong Gwang with sorrowful eyes.
Could what the two of them had shared truly be called affection?
The master-disciple bond in Gangho ran deeper than blood relations.
Until now, he had thought Jeong Gwang was merely lost after losing his arm.
It was not loss. It was corruption.
Watching Jang Mun-in’s hollow eyes, I exhaled slowly.
‘Besides, even if he wanted to go berserk, the Bloodline wouldn’t permit it right after consuming the Demonic Blood Pill.’
When the Bloodline grants power to induce berserk state, it is a form of contract.
One gains immense strength temporarily, but death is inevitable shortly after, and one’s soul becomes eternally enslaved to the Bloodline in the afterlife.
In short, it is a fraudulent contract absurdly favorable to one side.
And the Bloodline does not make just anyone its servant.
It bestows its blessing only upon those talented enough to become its retainers.
Jeong Gwang, who had not been brainwashed by the Bloodline Bridge since childhood and had only just consumed the Demonic Blood Pill, could never enter such a fraudulent contract.
Even if he did, the probability that the Bloodline—possessing such tremendous martial talent and loyalty to the Bloodline Bridge—would accept him as a retainer approached zero.
‘….’
Bitter as it was, that was reality.
With Cheonwoo’s support, I approached Jeong Gwang and released the blood seal.
“Kugh, krrgh… Kraaaagh!”
From the Demonic Blood Pill’s side effects, he immediately convulsed in agony.
It resembled the thrashing of a caterpillar.
Jang Mun-in approached his disciple and crouched down.
“Why did you do it?”
A question laden with profound meaning.
Jang Mun-in posed it against all the years they had shared.
Jeong Gwang looked at Jang Mun-in.
Whatever answer he gave, his death was already certain.
The only question was whether he would die without pain or in agony. Nothing more.
No matter how accomplished a Daoist one became, the sin of setting fire to the Mudang Sect—as precious as blood relatives—and killing fellow disciples, senior brothers, and younger students who shared meals together could never be washed away.
“Kugh, krkrkr… Do you truly not know, Senior Brother?”
In this moment, Jeong Gwang released everything.
Jang Mun-in answered.
“I do not know. I have cherished my disciple. Before losing my arm and after—this heart has never changed.”
“… I hate you. I hate you so much, Senior Brother.”
“You hate me.”
“I hated you from the first moment I saw you. I hated that you mastered the Taecheongsan Suryeok in merely a month when I had practiced for over a hundred days. All the masters and the previous elders favored only you. I hated you for possessing everything I could never have.”
“Yet you managed to stay by my side all the same.”
“Because I was young then. I did not know that feeling was jealousy, nor did I know it would burn me so completely.”
“It must have been painful every time you saw me.”
“Do you know this? Not once… not a single time… have I ever wanted to refrain from killing my martial brother. Yet I could not do it. Even now, in the end, I could not thrust the blade.”
“…How regrettable.”
In that moment, black blood surged up from Jeong Gwang’s lips.
He had begun to send his qi and blood into runaway.
Of course, with his dantian shattered and his meridians severed, sending his qi and blood into runaway could only result in death.
That was precisely what Jeong Gwang desired.
He wished to take his own life.
Jang Mun-in watched him with hollow eyes.
“I loved being your disciple. I loved that you smiled at me. I loved it from the moment you called me martial brother. I never knew that would cause such torment… never knew…”
Jang Mun-in gazed at Jeong Gwang thus.
Grasping the severed arm, he spoke these words.
“I am sorry for my inadequacy.”
“…Until the very end… damn it…! My martial brother…!”
Jeong Gwang’s body twisted in an unnatural direction. A beast’s cry escaped him, brief and anguished. After the agony subsided, all strength drained from Jeong Gwang’s form.
His eyes could no longer hold any light.
“…Sleep well.”
Jang Mun-in closed the eyes of his inadequate disciple.
At that same moment, a thick clot of blood welled up and dripped from Jang Mun-in’s lips.
The Elder who witnessed this cried out.
“Demonic deviation, demonic deviation!”
Unable to endure the betrayal of the disciple he had regarded as his own flesh and blood, he succumbed to demonic deviation.
In this weakened state, demonic deviation meant death.

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