Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 477
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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 477
“Ugh…. Save me… Please save me…. Save….”
Crack—
“Ahhhhhhh!”
“Does it hurt terribly?”
“Save me. Great Hero…. Save….”
This time I seized his other arm and snapped it.
Only then did he realize that it wasn’t a blade or my fist breaking his arm—it was a thin bamboo rod.
I couldn’t explain exactly how the bamboo rod cleanly fractured only the bone without piercing through his body, but I remained composed throughout.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?”
After asking the same question a third time, he finally answered me.
“Yes. It hurts terribly.”
“Right, so if you do this to children, they would hurt terribly too, wouldn’t they?”
Saying so, I grasped his other leg and twisted it again.
Crack-crack!
“Ahhh, ahhh! Just kill me. Kill me!”
“Kill you? This is education. I’ll repeat this until you learn that breaking a young child’s arm causes pain.”
“Kill meeeee!”
“You have spirit. Not a bad attitude.”
Crack!
Bone-breaking discipline.
I asked the Black Soil Dragon if it hurt while methodically fracturing each of his limbs.
Even the Black Soil Dragon, whose poison had risen and who begged for death, finally began pleading for his life.
“Great Hero…. I didn’t know. I didn’t know breaking an arm would hurt this much.”
“I’m still a Doctor, so I broke them cleanly for you. But children are different. It could cause permanent disability. Even if it heals, it might heal incorrectly, and they’d live their whole lives in pain.”
“Great Hero…. Sob…. I am… a cripple…. Great Hero….”
“Have you learned that breaking bones causes pain?”
“I have….”
Crack-crack!
As I fractured his finger joints last, the Black Soil Dragon foamed at the mouth and lost consciousness.
I used the bamboo rod like a needle and pressed an acupoint.
He jolted awake as if struck by lightning.
“Gasp! G… Great Hero?”
“Haha, you’re awake.”
The Black Soil Dragon couldn’t produce any sound.
The one before him was the Veiled Madman.
He realized that neither fainting nor suicide would work in front of me.
Between his legs, urine was already leaking from fear, and even his tongue was paralyzed—no words came out.
This time, neither words of pain nor promises to never do wrong again emerged.
Only agony and agony.
Only the deep-rooted trauma that would linger remained.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
“…It seems you’ve learned sufficiently. I’m relieved. Then shall I collect the treatment fee?”
“By treatment fee, you mean….”
“All that money you earned by breaking the children’s arms—I’ll charge it all as treatment fees.”
“That money is my entire fortune….”
“Yes. If you give it to me, I’ll treat them with it. Of course, you’ll also need to release the orphans you’ve been keeping locked up.”
When he hesitated, I picked up the rod again, saying I’d give him another lesson. He spoke urgently.
“I’ll give it! Right now! You brats! Take it all out! All of it!”
* * *
Unexpected wealth piled high in the courtyard.
Watching the riches accumulate like a mountain despite the shabby exterior, I asked blankly.
“This…. You gathered all of this…?”
“Well…. We’re among the very lowest of the low, so we know nothing. The Alliance…. Hehehehe….”
“Y-yes, that’s right. The very bottom.”
So these alley thugs, whom one might hesitate to even call petty evil, had accumulated this much.
Then how much more wealth must all the greater evils above them be hoarding?
‘At this rate, an entire village could eat their fill for years with this money.’
Food wasn’t the issue.
Even after paying for the treatment of the orphans who had been held captive and supporting these children until they became adults, money would remain.
‘This… is money earned by the blade.’
The most dilapidated corner of the back alleys on the outskirts of Hangzhou.
Standing in this den of street thugs where few had even cultivated inner strength, the world felt turned upside down.
Now I understood.
Why the righteous sects could be so hypocritical while still calling themselves “righteous.”
‘Because they know how far they could go if they started earning money this way. They do too.’
Simply by not doing such things, they earned the title of “righteous.”
‘So this is what martial prowess in Gangho truly is. This is what the dark path was.’
Until now, I had only dealt with the occasional bandits who rushed at me, warning them never to do it again.
Of course, in the process my body sustained temporary or permanent damage, but that was merely repaying those who attacked me in kind.
Only now did I realize how many common people these thugs tormented and how much gold they could accumulate from the blood and sweat of those people.
Then Man Seon appeared behind me.
“I found the ledger. Patriarch!”
Man Seon’s fishing rod pierced through the ledger and tossed it to me.
Thud—
I caught the ledger and flipped it open, my blue eyes missing nothing as I committed every number to memory.
“For someone at the bottom level, you’re quite meticulous. That means there must be people above you managing your operations.”
Petty evil can run rampant only because greater evil turns a blind eye.
The blood of common people that petty evil has gathered now flows upward.
Greater evil receives that money and creates even more evil.
“Ugh… I won’t report this matter upward, I swear!”
“Don’t spout nonsense. If you don’t send the tribute, I’ll simply send someone to investigate what happened here anyway.”
At those words, the Black Soil Dragon clamped his mouth shut like a clam.
‘If I say this…’
In that moment, my cold gaze pierced through him.
With a coldness that seemed to bore into a man’s very heart, the Black Soil Dragon finally spoke through tears.
“Spare me, Great Hero. Spare me, please. Waahhh…”
“Here’s what we’ll do. You need only choose one of two options. First, I simply abandon you here and take your wealth with me. In that case, you’ll be left here with broken limbs. If you have any reputation, someone might care for you. You’ll suffer lifelong aftereffects, but perhaps your superiors might find your loyalty endearing and let you live.”
Of course, that would never happen.
Another subordinate would take the Soggakju’s position.
The underworld demands repayment for wrongs suffered.
No—it demands repayment exceeding what was endured.
Failure to do so invites ridicule from others, and one cannot survive in this world any longer.
Yet with his abilities, he could never retaliate against me.
In such cases, his superiors would view his failure to commit suicide with contempt and order another subordinate to execute him, and this position would pass to yet another. He would simply become ant food and be done with.
If there were grudges, he wouldn’t even die cleanly.
“W-what is the second option, Great Hero?”
“You inform on your superiors to me and receive inpatient treatment at Baekrin Uiseon. You’ll lose all your wealth as treatment fees and lose your inner strength, but you won’t suffer aftereffects that prevent farming. By the time you’re discharged, you’ll be able to make a fresh start.”
“How could I possibly make a fresh start?”
“By then, the provincial governor will have changed. Because I will change the provincial governor.”
My blue eyes looked down at him.
“Just once. If you don’t speak, I’ll find out myself. It’ll simply be more troublesome, but there’s nothing I cannot do.”
“…”
This was a kind of test.
In truth, I could simply do as I pleased without going this far.
However, if this man wasn’t a Hyeolseonggyo member, I wanted to see if he at least had the potential to start anew.
How long did he hesitate?
The Black Soil Dragon spoke with an expression of complete resignation.
“…The Red Wine Gang. It’s the Red Wine Gang.”
His pleading tone vanished, replaced by casual speech.
He had made peace with death.
Having said this, he squeezed his eyes shut.
Seeing this, I understood.
‘Ah, so that’s it. He thinks now that I know who his superiors are, I’ll kill him since he’s no longer useful.’
Is this how the underworld operates?
How did Sama Hyeon survive in such a place?
And what did my Master hope his disciple would realize within all this?
I nodded.
“Tell me more.”
Tell me more.
“Hongju Bang has many skilled masters. The Veiled Madman… even if you are Ilgwang… even if Baekrin Uiseon is thriving… you’re not actually planning to wage war against Hongju Bang, are you?”
“If we eliminate Hongju Bang, there will surely be something above it.”
“Above petty evil lies greater evil, and above greater evil lies even more vast wickedness. Creatures like us never truly vanish. Krkrkrk. That’s simply how it is.”
He said that much, then stretched his neck out long.
It was his way of saying he had confessed everything—now cut his throat.
Instead of slitting his neck, I ordered Cheonwoo to release the children.
The children, freed one by one, stumbled out into the night.
Beneath the moon, children with broken bodies in various places limped forward.
Children who knew pain, hunger, and never the warmth of human touch—they had forgotten how to smile.
Among them was the boy with the broken arm.
“That’s right. I promised to show you how delicious the second candied fruit skewer is.”
If they learned that indulging their hunger a little more could keep their limbs intact…
Then that would be enough.
Suddenly, the boy with the broken arm spotted me.
“Huh?”
The children looked around.
Corpses piled high and fallen adults scattered about.
Even the boss whose limbs were grotesquely twisted from bone-breaking techniques.
I gazed up at the moon.
‘I still don’t understand what righteousness truly is, but yes—to pull someone from a pit, I must be willing to get mud on myself as well.’
If it could be done with merely a single blade…
Then that was enough.
So I left the Black Soil Dragon faction’s Mun-ju behind and had Man Seon handle the cleanup.
Then I gathered the children.
First, it seemed best to feed them rice porridge.
‘I’ll take their pulses after they’ve eaten.’
Then.
“Gaaahhh!”
When I turned around, the boy with the broken arm was stabbing Mun-ju’s throat.
What the child gripped was a common short blade, the kind seen anywhere.
Had he pulled it from the pocket of a fallen lackey? Or had he hidden it away, waiting for this very day?
With one arm, the boy repeated “Die, die, die!” as he stabbed him.
Blood flowed, drenching the ground.
The pooling crimson followed the grooves like a snake, slow and deliberate.
The dead man’s body convulsed with each blade strike. The child—the child did not stop stabbing.
It was the hell of Gangho itself.
The child was far too young, and what he had endured was something even adults would struggle to bear.
No name, no human rights, no survival, no sustenance.
A child stripped of everything had devoted himself entirely to killing.
A faint glimmer of exhilaration seemed to pass, and a slight smile lingered at the corners of the child’s mouth.
‘That’s right. Even a child can kill someone.’
There was no need to wait long for Silver Circle.
All the children here had Silver Circle under the Black Soil Dragon.
Everyone gazed at the boy with the broken arm with envious eyes.
It was the Gangho.
I took the short blade from the child’s arm.
The child squeezed his eyes shut.
Did he resign himself to punishment for having killed someone?
“You didn’t need to stain your hands like this.”
Truth be told, I don’t know. What is right.
Whether it’s correct to punish this child, or if I should tell him never to kill again.
But whether it’s even possible to live in this Gangho without people killing people.
The world spun round and round.
The child’s pupils dilated with fear.
Naturally, he braced himself to be struck on the cheek. It was a habit ingrained in his body.
So instead, I decided to embrace him.
There weren’t many words I could offer.
What should I say to him?
“It’s alright. It’s all over. It’s all over now. Let’s go back.”
I don’t know where we should go back to.
But the child I held began to cry, and the other children burst into tears as well.
The child’s tears and blood seeped into my blue robes.
One hell ended today.
Among the countless hells in Hangzhou, it was the smallest one.
That was the last day of the Black Dragon Faction in the back alleys of Hangzhou.
The moon shone, blood shone, and gold shone.
But none of it was as vivid as the faces of the crying children.
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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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