Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 76

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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 76
011. A Dog’s Lovesick Gaze (2)
Seol Gae spoke.
“Elder… what do you mean…?”
“Mad dog. You already had no sensation on the first day. Frostbite isn’t rare among beggars, and you had already abandoned your limbs back then. Kekeke… but when the White Dragon Doctor said he could save two of them, I was quite shocked.”
“Elder!”
“What is it, mad dog?”
“Are you planning to give up the Tagu Bong?”
“I’m not just giving up the Tagu Bong. I’m also stepping down as Patriarch.”
Gaebangjoo exhaled heavily, his breath wheezing through the gap of his broken front teeth.
After a moment, he spoke with a sigh.
“Mad dog.”
“What, old man?”
“A pup was crying at the foot of the mountain, begging to be saved. I knew it wasn’t you, but that beast’s cries resembled you so much that my body moved on its own. I realized it was a trap long ago. But it resembled you. For that moment alone, you were my young disciple again.”
“…”
“Even though I am called the all-knowing Gaebangjoo, I cannot understand why you are being swayed by inner demons, mad dog. But this one thing I do know.”
“…”
The old man looked down at his young disciple.
His eyes were clearer than snowflakes.
“It is all due to my lack of virtue.”
Gaebangjoo does not know why Seol Gae has gone mad.
He does not know that he killed his disciple’s parents. But it seemed he had some inkling of it.
“From this day forward, I step down from the position of Patriarch of Gaebang. And I hereby designate Seol Gae as the next Patriarch. Though she wanders far and wide, I trust that this clever child will do well.”
She clenched her teeth.
“Don’t say such ridiculous things! I have no right!”
“Hehehehe.”
The elder simply laughed.
“I have always been clumsy at letting go, despite being Patriarch. Now that I am abandoning the position of Patriarch and losing my limbs one by one, I have achieved great progress. Mad dog, that is what a Patriarch is. To abandon, and to know what must be abandoned—that is the meaning of the word.”
It was a conversation not between grandfather and mad disciple, but between the previous and next Patriarch of Gaebang.
“Do you have something to abandon?”
Seolgyeon clenched her teeth. Blood trickled from between them.
Under that weight, that vastness.
“…”
She could not answer and went outside.
From a distance, a woman’s anguished screams echoed several times. As if pouring out her resentment, and after emptying herself, she returned.
Her eyes were swollen with tears, but her face and limbs were neat, as if she had washed them in ice water.
The Elder asked.
“What has driven you so deeply into inner demons?”
Seol Gae answered.
“I cannot say.”
Faced with her parents’ killer and her master, she ultimately chose silence. The Elder spoke.
“Judging by your nature, this secret isn’t for your sake—it’s for mine. You fear that learning the source of your heart demon would drag me into one as well.”
She deliberately spoke with cold irritation.
“What good would it do the Elder to know?”
“A mad dog. Mad, yet never bites another soul. If you were truly mad, at least your heart would find peace… Tsk, tsk, tsk…”
I considered this.
‘If he learned the truth, the Elder would spend his remaining years drowning in regret.’
No matter how formidable a heterodox faction master might be, their disciples are always their most precious treasure. There exists no master who could remain unbroken after killing their own disciple’s parents.
When he would spend his final years not in peaceful meditation, but in torment, I could not burden him with such a weight. This was the decision my mad self had made.
Seol Gae spoke.
“It’s fine. I’ve decided to let it go.”
Her voice trembled. The Elder smiled with tender affection.
“Your heart demon?”
Seolgyeon ultimately abandoned one thing.
“I’ve let it go.”
I realized she had cast away one of her afflictions.
It had once been everything that comprised her.
Seolgyeon, who had once chased her own tail, had chosen to abandon it.
“Then untie your knot and make your prostrations.”
She untied the waist knot that signified the dog’s tail. Then she performed twelve prostrations.
It represented abandoning twelve afflictions.
Which prostrations held her parents, one could not say. Yet from the very first, she struggled.
At last, when all the prostrations were complete, the Elder spoke.
“Take my knot.”
The knot signifying the Gaebang’s Patriarch was passed to her.
Before she could even speak, I intervened.
“I’m beginning the surgery. Everyone must leave.”
I had promised his life and two of his limbs. Now was the time to keep that promise.
* * *
I exhaled softly.
The Gaebang’s Patriarch.
Even I didn’t know much about him.
In martial arts novels, Gaebang rarely served as more than a narrative device, and since his death came so early in the story, there was scarcely time to learn the details.
“Baek Rin raised his disciple well. There’s no need for regret. If sacrificing two limbs saves a life, what couldn’t be accomplished?”
“Are you certain, Elder?”
“Yes. I’ve wandered the Gangho for so many years—to spend my twilight years cared for by my disciple would be a blessing. What greater fortune exists than to grow old and die peacefully in the world of Dosan Swordforest?”
The Elder smiled faintly, yet with perfect composure.
That composure was so serene that anyone watching might have thought he was heading to bathe rather than undergo amputation.
At such steadiness, I nodded.
I still understand only superficially what martial prowess means to a martial artist.
What troubled me more than the loss of martial prowess was the reality that the body would bear permanent damage, a disability that would haunt the rest of their life. Yet if it meant saving their life, there was no other choice.
The Bangju spoke of the same thing. Still, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of it all.
The sorrow that would befall the family of someone destined to live with disability was no ordinary grief.
It had been the same in my past life.
“Teacher! Our child… our child is performing in a competition soon. They have to perform in the competition, but… the piano… Teacher! Please, our child has devoted their entire life to just this one thing.”
A thirty-year-old child. To their parents, still as young as six.
A lifetime devoted to the piano ended in that single moment.
The unconscious child lay in bed, and the decision rested with the parents. They chose life because their child’s existence was precious, yet the guilt of having blocked their daughter’s future would weigh upon them forever.
Though it was not their fault.
“Oh, you fool! What were you thinking, rushing in like that! What, with legs that won’t move at all! Who were you trying to save! Waaahhhhh!”
The father, watching the firefighter’s lower body paralysis from the fire scene, collapsed and lost all sense.
He had saved countless lives, but paid the price with his legs. Life was cruel and long.
Jin Cheon-hee had been there.
“Anything, just tell me anything. I’ll do whatever you need, just speak.”
A formidable woman and the next successor of Gaebang.
She spoke with her heart wrung tight.
But I, a doctor, could not answer her plea.
People are like vessels. Once broken, it was impossible to restore them completely to their original state.
Sometimes it felt like a bargain with death itself.
Trading the side effects of medicine to save a life, or surrendering a limb to preserve existence.
“Yes. Still, I must do this. I am a doctor.”
Life is long and cruel, but one must live for those rare moments of sunlight that warm the skin.
Though I cannot know what the patient will reach at that end, until then I must give less and preserve their life.
I looked toward the Gaebangjoo.
“I will strike the vital point.”
I extended my hand and struck the vital point. Thanks to the medicinal decoction administered beforehand, merely channeling a thread of inner energy caused them to lose consciousness and collapse.
I sealed the senses by striking the acupoints and prepared for surgery.
The blackened, necrotic limb came into view.
Then I suddenly stopped.
“Is this truly the best option?”
Losing martial prowess, so be it. But must the limb truly be severed? Is this really the only way?
Anger suddenly surged within me.
This world called the Martial Arts World of Gangho. I learned martial arts and new medical techniques. Yet the scope of what I can do remains so limited?
Why can I not treat my patients more thoroughly?
Why can I not…
That was when it happened.
Whooooom–
The Five Elements Divine Skill. Five streams of energy began to rotate rapidly within me. Yet I did not notice it.
Among them, the fire energy surged greatly.
The fire energy, more potent than the others, rose powerfully in response to my anger.
That rage surged toward my mind, igniting into a roaring inferno fueled by the scorching anger.
Demonic Possession!
In a situation where anyone watching would cry out that disaster had struck, I suddenly found myself thinking.
‘Is my ability really just this limited? No, it can’t be! I can do more. There must be a way. A method. Yes, there has to be a method!’
My utterly frigid rationality danced alongside the fury. As the scorching rage and ice-cold reason merged, my vital energy surged in harmony with the qi of wrath.
The Five Elements Divine Skill erupted in an instant. And I plunged deep into myself.
The energy flowed through the meridians in a heartbeat. I completed the Minor Circulation and immediately began the Major Circulation. The five energies converged into one, then scattered again.
In a span of mere moments.
In that instant, the Five Elements Divine Skill swelled tremendously.
The energies that had been weaker than the vital and wrathful qi naturally gathered, achieving balance, and the Five Elements Divine Skill instantly took on perfect form.
And in that moment.
A brilliant light flashed in my eyes. My body had turned crimson, yet I felt nothing of my own condition.
I was completely absorbed in the task before me.
The doctors watching also swallowed hard. They had sensed that something extraordinary was unfolding.
‘There it was. There was a way!’
I reached out and placed my hand on the frostbitten area. As energy flowed, it transmitted vivid information about the patient’s body to me.
Sensation through energy. Qi-sensing is an entirely new perception, different from the five ordinary senses.
Through that sensation, I felt every detail of the Patriarch’s right hand and left foot.
‘I’ve seen this before in my past life. The story of someone who climbed Mount Everest and suffered frostbite on their feet. Everyone said to amputate, but a renowned physician of herbal medicine saved the foot using acupuncture and moxibustion. At the time, I thought it was merely a remarkable tale, but I can do this too.’
My hands moved like lightning.
‘The nerve cells have almost completely died. But if I use the Five Elements Divine Skill to invigorate the innate qi, I can maximize regenerative capacity. Like a lizard regrowing its tail, if I rebuild the body anew… if I reconnect the dead blood vessels and restore circulation….’
It was like a state of complete absorption. In an instant, needles were densely embedded across the entire right foot and left hand.
“The finest needle.”
At my word, the doctor standing by as my assistant handed me the shortest needle.
I continued driving needles into the body.

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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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