Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 882
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Chapter 882
Whoooosh—
The sound of bamboo clashing echoed in the distance. The two of us listened to the silence that sound created for a long while.
Eventually, Yoo Ho opened his mouth.
“Your earthen soldiers are being sold in all directions. And the Geumho Divine Elixir is saving many lives.”
“….”
“What you’ve brought about—I merely provided a portion of it. By deceiving the heavens.”
“How?”
“I cannot speak of that. Unless you realized it yourself. Because it’s forbidden.”
Yoo Ho’s eyes opened slightly.
His Demon Eyes stirred the surrounding air once before returning to narrow slits.
“Well, let’s say it was thanks to the heavenly principles being disrupted.”
“And the external interference?”
“After deceiving the heavens, I merely did some cleanup. So.”
Yoo Ho threw something.
Thunk—
I caught it.
It was an earthen soldier. And it had something resembling a clock attached to its base.
“We don’t have clocks like this. It seems to be technology from a Western Continent alchemist. Yoo Ho, you’ve traveled to the Western Continent?”
Did that even make sense distance-wise?
Even Hwang-gu would find that difficult.
Yoo Ho neither confirmed nor denied it.
“Alchemy, created through forbidden methods. When you need to turn back time—if it’s just one day, it will prevent permanent loss.”
Lost fingers never return a second time.
If we turn back one day, it would prevent permanent loss up to that point.
It was an incredible object.
An earthen soldier on top, a clock on the bottom.
Perhaps because it assists the supernatural ability to manipulate time.
‘I’ll need to carry this in my spatial pouch or something.’
It was quite bulky.
“Did you create this by deceiving causality as well?”
“Rather than deceived, it’s an ancient me■….”
At that moment.
With a sound like a pop, Yoo Ho’s arm burst.
No blood sprayed.
Only bone and flesh scattered about, all of it surreal like a third-rate horror film.
My mind froze at the sudden occurrence.
“Y-Yoo Ho?”
Even with one arm burst, Yoo Ho remained composed.
“From here on, I’m bound by the prohibition. Come to think of it, the fact that I could do this much was largely because the heavenly principles were disrupted and I could intervene.”
Soon after, flames bloomed from Yoo Ho’s severed shoulder, and in an instant, a new arm grew back on its own and was restored.
As the new arm sprouted, the severed arm fragment burned away and disappeared.
“What are you talking about? Did you think I would die just because my human form became a bit distorted?”
“….”
“Don’t worry. Even if you sever my head, another one will grow back.”
Is the form of Yoo Ho before my eyes some kind of ‘puppet’? Perhaps the real body exists elsewhere.
“As expected, after visiting the ruins and meeting ‘her’, you’ve come to understand many things. It’s similar. Of course, it’s not the correct answer.”
“Does Master know about this fact?”
“Yes, from the beginning.”
“….”
“Are you afraid?”
Why was it?
This creature’s question stung in a peculiar way.
I had a premonition that if I admitted my fear to him now, we would never return to our previous relationship.
That’s the kind of person Yoo Ho was.
He would draw the line a bit more indifferently and distance himself.
I spoke.
“Yeah, yeah.”
However, the Doctor had already tasted the abyss.
One might say I had tasted what I experienced in the ruins.
She had been friendly toward me, and though it sounded mad, she was relatively benevolent.
But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t terrifying.
When a finger strokes an ant, that isn’t without fear.
An overwhelming difference in power is violence itself.
‘If I hadn’t known.’
If I had never met her at all.
If I had never directly experienced that world where even human lives are toyed with.
I thought I might have been less afraid if I hadn’t been able to gauge Yoo Ho’s level of power itself.
Suppressing my fear again and again, I finally spoke.
“Hey, Yoo Ho. With power like this, you couldn’t save Master?”
“….”
Whoooosh—
The sound of bamboo echoes.
Suddenly, it felt like the sound of celebratory applause.
The venerable one commanded his sole priestess.
“Yeon-ju, finish it.”
“Ah, yes. Yes!”
I nodded and plucked the strings.
A good day, a good night.
Yoo Ho savored the music I played, the dishes I prepared, and the wine for a long time.
It was the ancient way humans honored the sacred.
Yoo Ho thought to himself.
‘Yeon-ju is trembling.’
He pretended to be strong, wielding such power yet asking why I couldn’t even save my Master, but he couldn’t hide that fear.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t know that world.
He already understood it painfully from experience.
Yet still, this foolish human moved forward.
“The price… I think that would be nice.”
“Hmm?”
“Let’s have moments like this once every fortnight.”
Food and wine, music.
The moon and a pavilion.
Bamboo.
For saving one arm, it was a fair exchange.
“Oh, Yoo Ho. Do you like it?”
The sacred one answered the hesitant human.
“That’s all you can offer anyway.”
“…Well, that’s true, but… it’s not as though Yoo Ho needs money.”
“Play.”
“Yes!”
Jin Cheon-hee continued plucking the strings, playing the instrument.
Yoo Ho watched for a long while, then gazed up at the moon.
‘It’s bright.’
It was a full moon.
Suddenly, Jin Cheon-hee, still plucking the strings, asked.
“Yoo Ho… so what exactly are you?”
He mustered courage and spoke.
Yoo Ho answered.
“You already said it before, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean by that…?”
Yoo Ho cut off Jin Cheon-hee’s words and spoke.
“Yoo Ho is a person.”
“…!”
At those words, Jin Cheon-hee’s eyes widened again.
Soon, only silence continued between the two people.
Only the sound of bamboo in the night filled all around them.
Ding—
Jin Cheon-hee silently began plucking the strings again.
It was the most wondrous and strange.
The elegance of two ‘people’.
* * *
After that, Yoo Ho and I maintained a distant relationship.
I would occasionally play the zither while Yoo Ho enjoyed wine and appetizers—that was the extent of our time together.
Yet despite this, the two of us never grew closer than before.
Only during those moments was there an exception.
On such days.
Baekrin Medical Guild’s Training Ground.
Today, I had brought a desk to a corner of the training ground and was attending to my duties.
It was an odd sight, but the Medical Guild had grown quite accustomed to such scenes—wasn’t this relatively tame compared to my other eccentric behaviors?
In the center of the training ground, Cheonwoo was engaged in a tug-of-war with Hwang-gu.
“Aaahhhhh! Hyeong, how am I supposed to play tug-of-war with a dog?!”
“Hehe! This is all training too—shouldn’t you play with him sincerely?”
Indeed.
The sight of a massive dog the size of an ox playing tug-of-war with a martial artist was truly a spectacle.
Woof♥
Hwang-gu was pulling a rope made from twisted white silk with his snout, while Cheonwoo resisted being dragged by applying the principles of the Thousand-Pound Anchor technique.
A bizarre external martial arts training.
Cheonwoo felt his life slipping away.
‘I’m going to die playing with this dog.’
Unlike the dying martial artist, Hwang-gu’s tail wagged vigorously.
His tail moved so fast it seemed to leave afterimages—’Huh, is that an afterimage?’
It was truly a dance of pure joy.
In a way, it made sense.
When playing with ordinary humans, he had to hold back his strength.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t so much that Hwang-gu was playing as that he was letting them play with him.
But here on this training ground, he could unleash his full power and play—no wonder he was having so much fun!
“Hyeong. I’m dying. I’m really going to die like this!”
Hwang-gu had already revealed his true size completely.
His size already surpassed even the great tigers called Mountain Lords, making anyone who saw him think, ‘M-monster! But… it’s so cute?’
Right now, Hwang-gu’s tail seemed to multiply into twelve as he played.
Hwang-gu’s genuine playtime!
It was only natural that Cheonwoo’s entire body glistened with sweat as he was dragged around by such a beast.
“You won’t die. Cheonwoo, it’s fine. Enjoy it too. Hwang-gu seems to be having a blast. Aww, so adorable.”
To my eyes, my cute Hwang-gu was playing, making him even more endearing—but for Cheonwoo, it was a taste of death.
Behind Cheonwoo, Sama Hyeon was dodging while spinning his body like a pinwheel through the bizarre mechanical device I had coerced Yoo Ho into creating.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Ominous metal objects attacking from all directions.
He couldn’t evade them while simply standing upright, so he had to remain airborne, lightly stepping on or batting away the metal objects with his hands.
His limbs moved violently, far beyond normal joint range, stimulating every muscle fiber with tingling sensation.
“Hyeon-a. How are you managing?”
“Surprisingly entertaining~”
I smile as I watch Sama Hyeon practice the Hyeon Geuk Tae Bo.
‘He certainly learns quickly.’
Meanwhile, Sama Hyeon was thinking to himself.
‘Did I overplay the pitiful act with my brother?’
As the minor sect leader of Hao-mun, Sama Hyeon now had access to the martial arts of the five sects under Hao-mun’s umbrella.
This was possible because it was Hao-mun’s tradition, and my brother roughly knew about it.
My brother thought that Hao-mun simply didn’t have decent footwork techniques, so the boy was suffering.
That was because the expression on Sama Hyeon’s face back then had seemed somewhat pitiful.
But.
‘The truth is, we do have them.’
The reason he hadn’t learned them was that among Hao-mun’s lightness techniques, there were surprisingly few that matched well with the Golden Divine Art.
Moreover, learning more would essentially mean cultivating more demonic arts, carrying the risk of twisted qi and blood or madness later on.
The Golden Divine Art is so stable that it’s strange it’s classified as a heterodox technique.
The Heavenly Transformation Sword Thousand Perfection Art does carry the risk of potential madness, but it’s still nothing compared to other demonic arts.
In his later years, Sama Hyeon wanted to live happily with his loved ones, not die coughing blood from qi deviation in some cave.
Demonic arts are like filthy food that kills you while eating.
If you grab something to eat just because you’re hungry now, you know the future with your loved ones will only grow more distant.
Why earn money, why cultivate martial arts?
To spend a peaceful later life in this Gangho.
Because I know how difficult that is.
‘As long as my brother and Hye-a are here, I won’t do such things.’
In the end, I prioritized cultivating the Golden Divine Art and the Heavenly Transformation Sword Thousand Perfection Art, and afterward focused on learning poison techniques.
It was because of the bitter memories from the Oh Dok-mun incident.
Because my brother is included in my precious later years.
‘Thanks to that, when it comes to poison techniques, I’ve reached a level where I won’t die anywhere now.’
In that situation, learning lightness techniques with low risk from my brother was quite a great opportunity.
Perhaps it was thanks to playing the pitiful act.
My brother casually threw this incredible martial art to his younger brother.
‘It seems Hao-mun is treating me as if I’m doing a kind of closed-door cultivation.’
In fact, Sama Hyeon was growing stronger at a terrifyingly rapid pace.
Even having reached the absolute realm of Hwagyeong, the gap within it is vast.
How could one who has trained as a Hwagyeong master for decades be the same as one who has just reached Hwagyeong?
But now.
Sama Hyeon was already growing enough to close that gap and more.
Moreover, while he was currently training in Hyeon Geuk Tae Bo, the Thousand Li Divine Step had already reached the eighth level of achievement from constantly leaping and moving with Jin Cheon-hee.
Now, when it came to long-distance rapid movement, he had become among the elite in Gangho.
As the two brothers devoted themselves to training.
I handled administrative duties with a serious expression.
Administrative work is important.
If left unaddressed, problems don’t disappear—they accumulate.
And when they pile up and pile up.
Everything can explode later.
‘Oh, that can’t happen, Human.’
Which is why I had surrendered every single day off and was processing work like a beast of burden.
If I were actually a cow, I’d be plowing ten thousand acres of land at this pace alone.
“Hmm?”
In that moment.
My expression froze rigid.
A sign that something serious had surfaced!
My gaze had stopped on a particular section of the report.
The words written there read like this.
[Infant Mortality Report]
It contained investigation results on how children were dying.
If many children died from malnutrition, we’d supply food to that region and monitor the situation; if they died from abuse, we’d arrest the parents for investigation and station guards to manage local security.
This type of investigation was routine in Baekrin County, and through this method, we were saving children’s lives.
Some areas had even entered special management due to plague outbreaks.
But this report listed the cause as ‘Unknown Wasting Disease.’
“There’s no actual illness, but they keep having diarrhea, waste away, and die…?”
According to the doctors’ notes below, children born naturally weak have never lived long after birth since ancient times.
Heaven’s determined lifespan is no more than that.
Such children are simply born from time to time.
When humans cannot find a cause, they inevitably turn to Heaven.
‘Hmm, there was a previous report listed as unknown wasting disease, so I sent it back for further investigation… and the related report came with it…. Oh, it did arrive.’
The investigation team’s report also stated the child had no illness and no disabilities in the limbs.
They simply kept having diarrhea until they died.
But they also added that this was originally how things were.
Everyone said this was just how it was.
‘How it originally was?’
If I hadn’t been running administration this strictly, it would be easy to overlook.
In this world, children are naturally born in great numbers and naturally die in great numbers.
Some starve to death, others die from illness.
Sometimes they die from parental violence, sometimes from eating food they shouldn’t, or simply from suffocating when rolling over.
Even in our country, don’t we celebrate when a baby survives a hundred days?
Because so many die.
Back then, it was difficult to survive even a hundred days.
That’s why we celebrate.
‘Though it’s said to be ancient history now, in Gangho it remains reality.’
And I had also received a report that one of these children bearing such a curse was admitted to Baekrin Medical Guild this time.
‘It has arrived.’
My eyes began to tint with a deep blue hue.
The color shifted like shallow southern waves, then gradually transformed into the dark blue reminiscent of a cold northern sea, before sinking into the depths of an abyss.
My pupils, which had cycled through various shades within the spectrum of blue, darkened once more and returned to their original color.
“Ah… Finally… Yes. The time has come.”
The final piece needed to save the newborn.
I started to rise, then paused for a moment.
‘Am I ready?’
I counted off on my fingers one by one before pushing myself up.
‘Yes. If it’s now, it’s possible.’
I shot to my feet.
At that moment, Sama Hyeon successfully escaped from the mechanical apparatus and came crashing down in front of me with a whoosh.
He was covered in bruises from being struck in various places, but they were fading visibly at an incredible speed.
Such was the remarkable effect of the Heavenly Dragon Art.
“Brother, is this external energy cultivation or footwork training?”
“Both. It’s good, isn’t it?”
Sama Hyeon smiled languidly.
“Sigh… If it weren’t for the Heavenly Dragon Art, I would’ve gotten seriously injured~”
Though he must be exhausted, Sama Hyeon strangely smiles all the harder as the difficulty increases.
There’s even a hint of madness in that laughter.
And Sama Hyeon’s words are true.
It doesn’t make the skin indestructible like the Diamond Body, nor does it rapidly restore inner energy.
Since it has little use beyond wound treatment, it’s not particularly attractive to martial artists in the Gangho.
But now.
‘Isn’t our Jihadol’s Heavenly Dragon Art making a comeback?!’
Those who know its true power are reassessing its value.
“By the way, what’s going on that you look so serious?”
“Something came up. Or rather, the conditions have finally aligned for me to move to the next stage.”
As I answered, I organized the documents.
“Brother, where are you going?”
And Cheonwoo finally snatched the rope from his tug-of-war with Hwang-gu and threw it far away.
Woof!
Hwang-gu bounded off far into the distance chasing the rope.
Watching Hwang-gu’s retreating figure, Cheonwoo threw both arms up in the air.
It was a victory pose.
Those arms seemed to say with his entire body: ‘Finally Cheonwoo is free. I can go anywhere.’
Seeing Cheonwoo like that, I felt a pang of regret in my heart, but I hid my true feelings and spoke.
“Yeah. Something came up.”
“A patient?”
“Yes. A patient. The time has finally come.”
“What time?”
I rushed immediately toward the ward master overseeing the hospital room where the infant was admitted.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————