Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 772

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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 772
Traversing space differs fundamentally from transcending time.
A sensation akin to being swept into turbulent currents flowed between my fingers, while incomprehensible knowledge materialized and scattered.
These were the whispers of madness lurking beneath reality—knowledge that would shatter the sanity of any ordinary person merely by knowing of it.
It felt as though I were slipping through something dark and viscous, like witnessing the forbidden Soul Transfer Technique itself.
‘Is this the price of death?’
There was no way to know.
Yet I found myself thinking that acquiring fragments of knowledge, so long as it remained within the bounds of sanity, was not entirely unwelcome.
Did not the same chemical substance become medicine or poison depending on how it was used?
The fault lay not with knowledge itself, but with those who wielded it.
Within that incomprehensible space, I learned more about how to wield this ability.
‘I cannot move too far. The cost would be proportional. Just enough to escape beyond the mountain.’
In some ways, it resembled shamanism.
Could I manage it? I held no certainty. But miscalculate the balance, and I would forfeit much.
In that moment, I traversed space. Crossed, and crossed again.
The rough sea became a river, and the river transformed into a ravine.
Caught in the reverse current, I heard countless whispers.
Yet I could comprehend none of them, and the moment I tried to focus, the thought of madness crashed down upon me.
‘Why is my price so steep?’
An ability that activates only upon death could be viewed inversely as approaching immortality, yet what I would lose afterward remained unknowable.
Then warmth flooded into my solar plexus.
-It’s alright. Everything will be fine.
The jewel brightened, and I felt the mitigation of karmic causality.
-Because the sins you have committed and the good you have accomplished walk together.
Thud—
Someone grasped my hand. It was not merely one hand.
Countless hands seized me, beginning to drag me back toward reality.
The countless bonds I had forged throughout Gangho pulled me back into the world of the living.
“Gasp!”
The first thing I saw was the moon.
A massive moon that filled my entire vision.
The moment I beheld it, my thoughts reached toward a child.
It was not the power of Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong.
It was human instinct itself in its most fundamental form.
What I felt next was cold air.
Outside. Clear wind, not the weight of millions of stone.
And gravity.
I felt my body being pulled downward.
‘I must employ a falling technique….’
But I possessed not a single trace of inner energy.
My broken limbs had returned, but it seemed the inner energy within them had not been revived.
I was dying.
Just as I was closing my eyes, someone hooked the back of my neck and spun me around in their embrace.
“Hyeong… How?”
“Oh, Ha-ryun.”
Thud!
Yeo Ha-ryun descended to the ground.
He had fallen from a dizzying height, yet the sound was as quiet as a feather settling down.
Thanks to that, I felt no impact whatsoever.
Looking around, I saw the Rakshasa’s army and Demonic Sect members.
Countless Demonic Sect members at that.
Among those Demonic Sect members, I could see Ilkana.
‘She said the numbers had decreased, but did they reinforce their ranks in the meantime?’
No matter how much the Demonic Sect harvested masters from the fields, reinforcing their numbers in such a short time was another matter entirely.
‘Ilkana is truly a brilliant strategist.’
Even strategists have fields where they excel and fields where they fall short.
Though Ilkana had some shortcomings in grand strategy and tactics, she was unparalleled in mercenary arts, ambushes, and supply lines.
I thought this might stem from her past involvement with an assassination organization.
Yeo Ha-ryun spoke.
“Rest, Hyeong. Ilkana brought the Demonic Restoration Pills as well. I’ll handle everything.”
Saying so, he placed a pitch-black pill into his mouth and crunched it down.
Feeling his inner energy surge in an instant, Yeo Ha-ryun laughed with savage delight.
An overwhelming sense of exhilaration.
Krrrrgh—
Cheon Sal-seong, having consumed the Demonic Restoration Pill.
The pressure he emanated began to weigh even upon the Governor.
That was not all.
“Alas, brothers. So it ends in bloodshed after all. This is why strategists are the first to die. Open Formation!”
At Ilkana’s command, the Demonic Sect members began to deploy their formation in perfect unison.
The Demonic Sect’s unique formation.
The Black and White Demonic Spirit Formation.
As the Demonic Sect masters deployed the formation according to her orders, the very heavens trembled at the momentum.
Yeo Ha-ryun spoke.
“I shall extinguish every last trace of evil.”
The Governor gripped his weapon against Yeo Ha-ryun.
“Evil? True. We have all abandoned our humanity. Yet, in this mad world, we will do whatever it takes to save our people.”
The Governor’s expression seemed sorrowful, yet I could feel him steeling his resolve once more.
The opponent was the main force of the Demonic Sect.
Now that Yeo Ha-ryun had recovered, it was clear that whoever won would deal a devastating blow.
A tense standoff, ready to ignite at any moment.
At that moment, I burned the single grain of inner energy I had just recovered.
“모두 멈추십시오—-!!”
At my voice, everyone flinched and froze, their killing intent scattering.
A miracle created by merely a single grain, a single grain of inner energy.
Everyone stared at me in astonishment.
It was a decent peace.
I descended from Ha-ryun’s embrace.
“Ha-ryun. To you, are these people evil?”
“Evil and hypocritical. They refuse to face their own sins at all.”
They fled, and fled, and fled to a place.
That place was the Island of Oblivion.
It was a flower of evil that Ha-ryun could not tolerate.
I spoke to the Governor.
“Governor. Your priority must be keeping the people of the castle alive, yes?”
“That is correct.”
I took a deep breath.
“Then let us do this.”
“Hmm?”
“Reclaim the memories of the night.”
“…What do you mean…?!”
I looked at the moon.
The full moon was like the round back of a child’s head.
The Lord’s Son had resisted the shaman’s spell.
The child himself was not even aware that he was resisting the spell.
Moreover, all the Rakshasa did not attack the Governor’s son.
Even in their mindless state, they avoided him.
Though the child’s body was no different from an ordinary person.
“All spells move by law, cause, and condition. You were using your own son as a wedge to erase the memories of the castle’s people.”
“…How could you possibly…?!”
The Governor’s eyes widened.
“I had no certainty at first. But it was far too anomalous. When Baekcheon-gun showed me his memories and detonated the soul fragments he had gathered for his self-destruction, I realized it. Where had the child’s soul fragments gone?”
Baekcheon-gun alone had not taken that child’s soul fragments.
That was strange.
The remaining person was wandering through the hell of night alone, was he not?
The Governor clenched his teeth.
“Remarkable deduction. Yes, your words are not wrong. But now that man Baekcheon-gun has fled, and if the spell is undone and the villagers regain their memories of the night, then that child… what will become of that child?”
“Since it functioned as the wedge of the spell, it will disappear now.”
I do not know how the child was kept alive in the first place.
At the very least, it was done in a way different from the others—not using a Rakshasa egg, but through Baekcheon-gun’s own unique method.
‘This is the part that was omitted from the memories he showed me.’
That person had not lied, but neither had he told the complete truth.
It was a cunning trap.
On the surface, it appeared as though the child had been saved by feeding him Rakshasa eggs, yet the actual scene of feeding never appeared.
What would have happened if I had never met the child, if I had not engaged in genuine conversation with him, if I had merely wandered about with an outsider’s perspective?
‘Baekcheon-gun. Setting traps until the very end.’
Yet I had grasped the true nature of this matter.
It was not simply due to some extraordinary technique like the Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong.
It was merely the trivial kindness one person shares with another.
The unremarkable warmth seen in everyday life.
That was it. The child who could not become a Rakshasa, the child who could not descend into madness like the others.
Because he remained pure and untainted, he could become a balm for others’ suffering.
I reached the truth thanks to that small kindness.
Dalgona and a single warm word, an embrace—these unlocked the truth.
‘The Governor must have loved his son.’
Even if it was affection twisted by madness in a burning world.
That is why he had to become the sole witness to this city, not a murderer.
And the Governor himself must have occasionally fallen into the shamanic magic the child created, forgetting himself in the process.
Pain is pain, after all.
If I had not touched the temple as I did this time, such a daily existence would have continued.
I laughed weakly.
“But it is true that a child who should have died lived longer. And above all… you forced sacrifice for the sake of adults, did you not?”
The child lived and witnessed hell.
He had to survive it alone, in his right mind.
“That is….”
I cut myself off.
“…Please do not speak of a cow’s sacrifice for the greater good. I have grown weary of such words now, you see? I carry too many unpleasant memories.”
I wiped my face with a withered hand.
In the moonlight, the young man’s gaunt face was laid bare.
“At the very least, you should have spoken to the child before forcing him. Given him the choice.”
“A young child. What could such a small mind possibly understand?”
“He understood well enough how deep hell truly is.”
Eeeeeee—
In that moment, a ringing pierced the air.
I felt goosebumps crawl up the back of my neck.
The time of reckoning had come.
Last time, it took my pinky finger. What would it take this time?
‘This time it is space, so it should take less.’
My mind reasoned thus, yet the fear did not dissipate.
It was unavoidable. This, at least, was human instinct.
And in that moment, the ringing ceased.
The reckoning begins.
Cough.
I spat out blood-tinged phlegm.
My throat itched unbearably, and I coughed again—cough, cough.
I watched as the blood I expelled scattered and vanished the moment it touched the ground.
I understood instinctively.
‘Ah, this reckoning is through blood loss.’
It wasn’t life-threatening.
After all, my body was thoroughly coated in nourishing energy from the Precious Jade, so I could survive even if I bled enough to kill an ordinary person.
A world that science cannot explain.
Cough!
My body collapsed.
Yeo Ha-ryun urgently caught me.
Consciousness slipped away.
At the edge of that darkness, I thought:
‘Thank goodness. At least I’m not losing any limbs, so Master won’t find out.’
As long as Master doesn’t know, that’s all that matters.
* * *
When I opened my eyes, I was in the bedroom.
‘Hmm, I see. Even if you die and come back to life, your body doesn’t heal completely.’
I don’t know what determines what recovers and what doesn’t, but at least I’m alive, so that’s fortunate.
The reckoning has ended—no more blood-tinged coughs.
I suppose this is the price of dying and returning to life.
At least my limbs are still intact.
‘I managed to stop the Blood Fiend Technique somehow.’
We might have to fight again, but… well, I’ll think about that when the time comes.
‘I won’t be able to move for a while until I recover.’
That’s what I thought.
Yeo Ha-ryun was relieved seeing my condition.
It seemed he would personally care for me for some time.
Yeo Ha-ryun handled Demonic Sect matters while keeping watch at my side whenever he could.
How much time had passed like this?
I suddenly sensed a presence while sleeping and opened my eyes to find a child standing there.
Ha-ryun must have stepped away for a moment.
“Hello.”
“Yeah, hello, Hyeong.”
The child’s expression looked strangely relieved.
“You finally heard the truth from the adults.”
“Yeah. They were all so cowardly. They apologized and only then told me the story.”
“…I see.”
The child reached out and grasped the hand I offered.
“Hyeong, you know? It’s actually a secret, but I had such terrible nightmares that there were nights I couldn’t sleep at all.”
“What kind of dreams?”
“Dreams where I was so hungry but had no strength. Then the hunger disappeared. And because moving felt like a bother, I just kept lying there. Lying there, and lying there, and lying there until I fell asleep. It’s really scary, you know? It’s scary, but I don’t want to move my body.”
“….”
“…Actually, it wasn’t just a dream, was it?”
The child’s eyes filled with tears.
“Probably not.”
“The memory of dying is so vivid, but I wanted to believe I hadn’t died. So this life now was a bonus. You said it yourself, didn’t you? A heaven that’s like hell.”
A cruel world.
“Yes.”
“It was a nightmare that felt like a good dream.”
“But there were parts of it that were a good dream, weren’t there?”
“There were. Though the adults felt terribly sorry about it.”
I nodded.
“Jasi said I’d already grown quite weak to be used as a wedge for shamanism. He said there’s no such thing as eternal shamanism anyway. I had limits to what I could handle alone from the start. So, well.”
The child raised his hand. Something shimmered behind it.
Like translucent glass.
“It used to happen sometimes anyway, but it’s ending faster now that Baekcheon-gun is gone. It stings a little now, but it’ll hurt more later, he said. Before my soul gets completely corrupted, something has to be done. After saying that, Jasi fell asleep again.”
“I see….”
“Mother cried, saying she’d paid the price for a lie. That everyone bought sweet dreams by clinging to just one child.”
One pure young child.
Of course, that created quite a remarkable miracle, but it would have been insufficient to make all the village people forget their memories every single day.
Surely Baekcheon-gun’s power must have been necessary at intervals.
“…Thank you. For finding the truth.”
“Don’t mention it.”
At the place we finally reached, there was nothing glittering.
But the child knew it was time to end the adventure.
The child who had been carrying heaven alone decided to set it down now.
“So what do I do now? Just stab my chest with a sword and pull out my organs and shake them around?”
“…You’ve really seen a lot of things you shouldn’t have.”
It’s a truly terrible place for children’s education.
Especially a heaven that a child must support alone.
I spoke.
“There are shamans who use shamanism that way, but I don’t think I’ll need to do that.”
Saying so, I stepped back and opened the blanket.
“Let’s sleep together. I’ll be your pillow.”
“That’s enough?”
“Yes.”
“You really are different from other shamans, Hyeong.”
At those words, I let out a soft chuckle.
“Right. According to Jasi, the child possesses an innate talent in shamanism—or something like that. He even called it divine blood from the start.”
“Mm.”
The child lay down beside me.
Then he closed his eyes.
Since sleep wouldn’t come easily, I began telling him a fairy tale.
“Once upon a time, on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, there lived a monkey… and his name was Sun Wukong…”
The child listened to Sun Wukong’s adventures.
Would the monkey eventually reach the Western Lands?
Were the scriptures he received there truly worth so much?
I couldn’t know.
I couldn’t know, yet the child’s eyes sparkled with wonder.
Sun Wukong continued his adventures, pressing ever westward.
He fought with others, made mistakes from time to time, and moved forward once more.
Covered in wounds, after countless battles, he finally arrived in Tianzhu.
The outcome didn’t matter.
Satisfied by the joyful adventure, the child had already fallen asleep, breathing softly and steadily.
In this cruel world, the young warrior’s adventure had finally come to an end.
The child’s form grew increasingly transparent, then more transparent still.
As the curse lifted, I felt the child’s soul being set free.
A nightmare that felt like a beautiful dream.
The sound of the nightmare ending. The sound of the child’s adventure reaching its destination.
I stopped the story.
“Sleep well.”
The child’s form turned to ash and vanished, scattering away.
In the empty bed, I wept for a long time—a very long time.
It was.
A heaven that was hell.

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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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