Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 2

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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 2
In an instant, those destined to die and those destined to live were separated.
I managed to treat two additional patients. It was only possible because they all suffered from lacerations.
While treating those two additional patients, the others ultimately breathed their last. I could only gaze upon them with sorrowful eyes.
I thought I’d grown accustomed to it by now, but watching someone die is still an agonizing experience.
Soon I turned my head and surveyed my surroundings. A flag lay rolling across the ground.
“Yunlong Courier Bureau…”
Because I enjoyed martial arts novels, I’d studied traditional medicine quite thoroughly as a hobby.
I could read the characters on the rolling flag well enough.
‘These people all belonged to the Courier Bureau. So this is a robbery scene… Will a rescue team arrive? In martial arts novels, when the Courier Bureau loses goods to bandits or thieves, they send tracking teams for revenge.’
A Courier Bureau was like a delivery company in modern times. However, in this era, security was poor, and encountering bandits or thieves on the road was commonplace.
Those who protected goods, money, and people from such robbers while escorting them were called couriers, and groups of such couriers formed a Courier Bureau.
Most of the people I presumed to be from Yunlong Courier Bureau had already met their end.
From my perspective as a physician, only a few hours had passed since the incident occurred.
‘There’s no asphalt, no streetlights in this world. If I can keep them alive for one day, help should arrive… Can I manage it?’
Night would come soon. As temperatures dropped, those with bleeding wounds would experience rapid hypothermia and ultimately perish.
‘To survive even a little longer, I need to make a fire. I only learned the theory in the military… No. This isn’t the time to hesitate. I have to try something.’
These were lives I’d barely saved. I couldn’t let them die like this. I had to start a fire and raise their body temperature.
I moved between the corpses. I couldn’t see any metal. If bandits had attacked, they would have taken everything of value—it was only natural.
Still searching for anything that might remain, I discovered a sword wedged between the bodies.
‘That might work.’
My child’s body was weak. I grunted as I lifted the corpse and pulled out the sword. Though the blade was chipped and broken in places, it was better suited for starting a fire.
Next, I gathered dried leaves and withered branches and piled them up. Then I grasped a stone and struck it against the chipped blade.
‘Let’s try this. One, two…!’
Sparks flew in a shower.
After repeating the motion several times, the leaves caught fire. I added more twigs and coaxed the flames into a proper blaze.
Then I barely managed to drag the three treated patients closer to the campfire.
There was the middle-aged man I’d treated first and a handsome young man. And a warrior who appeared quite formidable.
The young man had striking features and a face so radiant with beauty it seemed to glow. The warrior was a woman with a large frame and hands covered in scars—the telltale marks of long years wielding a sword.
Both had avoided vital points, which was why I could save them.
‘I’ve administered first aid, but I don’t think that alone will be enough…’
I knew well that simply starting a fire wouldn’t solve everything.
‘Looking at the forest, it seems to be autumn… The temperature will likely drop to around five degrees Celsius soon. Without a tent or shelter, hypothermia is inevitable. Damn it, I need materials to build something…’
I looked around, but finding proper materials seemed difficult. The carriage was destroyed, and I could see the corpse of a horse.
Scraps of cloth lay scattered about, but they were all torn and useless. Still, if I gave up, these people might die.
With that thought, I forced my exhausted body to stand.
‘Mountains
beyond
mountains.’
If only people could spring up after ten minutes of treatment like in movies and dramas.
Reality was far from kind.
Earth
did not.
Even as I grumbled inwardly, I moved with diligence. I gathered a serviceable wooden pole to use as a support, collected scattered cloth scraps, and bound them together haphazardly to fashion something resembling a tent.
By the time I finished everything, the sunset had painted the distant sky. Soon, complete darkness would descend.
“Sigh…”
I dragged the patients into the tent.
The air grew progressively colder. Night comes early in the mountains. The anguished groans of the patients reached my ears.
‘There’s no guarantee these people will survive… Logically, I know it would be wiser to descend the mountain alone before sunset… but…’
For some reason, my feet wouldn’t move.
I continued feeding branches into the fire, ensuring its warmth reached the patients.
Awooooo!
“That startled me.”
I was alarmed by the wolf’s howl echoing from outside, but I quickly composed myself.
“Right. It would be strange if such creatures didn’t exist in this era.”
It was natural for ferocious beasts and wild animals to inhabit the mountains. In modern society, tigers are rare to see, but even two hundred years ago, there was a term for tiger-related calamities.
“If wolves actually appear, that would be a real problem…”
Though the tent was crude, it blocked the air enough to keep the interior reasonably warm.
Gazing at the crackling flames, my chest tightened and a sigh escaped unbidden.
I was an orphan. According to the director of the orphanage, I had been abandoned in a cardboard box left at the orphanage’s entrance one day.
On a cold winter’s day, for reasons unknown, instead of baby clothes, I had been wrapped tightly in a red padded jacket. The director said it took considerable effort to unwrap how tightly I’d been bound.
The name Jin Cheon-hee was given to me by the orphanage director, who apparently had quite a fondness for martial arts novels.
Born thus, I gritted my teeth and studied relentlessly. As a result, I was able to gain admission to a mid-tier medical school in Korea, and I worked part-time while securing every available scholarship.
I didn’t lack longing for parents, but I never actively sought them out. Perhaps as I matured, I gradually learned to accept loss.
‘If they haven’t searched for me, what use is there in me searching for them?’
Having no blood relatives always felt like a hole had been bored through my chest. So I lived all the more fiercely to fill that void. I never experienced romance, and had almost no friends.
As I aged, my skills were recognized well enough that I eventually established myself adequately.
It wasn’t until I passed forty that I gained any economic stability, so I had truly lived a difficult life.
“Sigh…”
But how did I end up like this? All the hardship I’d endured collapsed in an instant, leaving me with nothing but emptiness.
Before death, I had lived so desperately, but now I have nothing.
I looked down at my hands.
A child’s hands. Hands that bore no unmarred skin from saving lives.
“That’s what living is.”
From this child’s body emerged the deep sigh of a man in his forties.
Most medical students become military physicians. I had become one, and I used to tell soldiers who came to the military this way:
-Close your eyes. What do you see? Nothing, right? That’s the future of your military service. It will be bleak.
Then I would hold up a bottle of red medicine to an injured soldier and ask:
-What does this look like?
-Disinfectant, sir.
From now on, you’ll become joint medicine.
Joint medicine?
That’s what I thought.
…Of course, it was a joke.
Now my own prospects had grown bleak. How was I supposed to survive going forward?
‘Still, I’m a physician. As long as I’m a doctor, I won’t starve no matter where I go… but I’m worried whether I can adapt to a world this lawless, with bandits roaming about. I’m especially anxious about tonight. By the way, wasn’t it called the Yunlong Courier Bureau? The name is exactly the same as the courier bureau that appeared in a novel I read a few days ago. In Supreme Heavenly Demon, the story begins with an attack on the Yunlong Courier Bureau.’
It
was starting.
For a coincidence, it was quite peculiar. Now that I thought about it, that handsome boy also resembled the description of the Heavenly Demon’s childhood in the novel.
Just as I was kindling the fire.
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud!
A sound that shook the very earth began to reach my ears.
‘What is that sound?’
The noise grew steadily closer.
‘Is that… the sound of hoofbeats?’
It resembled the sound of cavalry charging in movies.
‘What do I do?’
Someone was coming. I couldn’t tell if they were villains or righteous people. I tried to stay calm, but I couldn’t help but panic and waver.
‘Stay composed.’
I picked up the chipped sword.
My entire body screamed in protest after rescuing people all day long.
How long could I endure with a child’s body?
I gritted my teeth.
Jin Cheon-hee stepped outside the makeshift tent. Fortunately, the sun hadn’t completely set yet.
I could see mounted warriors approaching from below and a carriage of distinctive design.
They were all dressed in the kind of attire you’d see in martial arts movies or dramas, with swords hanging from their waists.
One of them was riding while holding a flag, and I could see the characters “Yunlong Courier Bureau” written on it.
Seeing that, Jin Cheon-hee let out a small sigh of relief.
‘The Yunlong Courier Bureau! Phew… thank goodness.’
The tension drained away and my legs trembled. Jin Cheon-hee simply collapsed onto the ground.
Only then did I feel the pain in my arms. I had exhausted this child’s body all day long. It was a natural consequence.
‘Is it because I’m younger? My eyesight is incredibly sharp. Even though they’re quite far away, I can see everything clearly.’
Perhaps because the tension had eased, I observed those approaching with idle thoughts. There were twenty-two mounted riders. One carriage.
The carriage in particular was quite peculiar. Four horses were hitched to it, and the carriage itself was enormous.
It was a single color with not a single ornament, but what caught my attention most was the storage compartments.
Storage compartments densely filled the entire wall surface.
The entire carriage resembled a traditional medicine drawer.
And I had seen a description of such a peculiar carriage before.
‘That looks just like the medical carriage of the White Benevolent Immortal from Supreme Heavenly Demon.’
Supreme Heavenly Demon was a novel I had read completely before my death. It was a novel I enjoyed immensely, and one of the important supporting characters in that novel was a physician called the “White Benevolent Immortal.”
Baek Rin’s Medical Lineage was one of the three greatest physicians under heaven.
She saved Yeo Ha-ryun, the future Heavenly Demon and protagonist of the novel.
After that, there were various episodes between her and Yeo Ha-ryun, but ultimately her chronic illness worsened, and she passed away around the second volume of the novel.
‘Surely this isn’t the world from inside a novel…’
As I chuckled softly at that thought, all the people from the Yunlong Courier Bureau arrived.
Even as they arrived, I remained seated in place without moving.

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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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