Doctor’s Rebirth

Chapter 2:

The people who would die and those who would live were divided in an instant.

He was able to treat two more people. They were people who had suffered lacerations, so it was a somewhat possible task.

As he treated this two, the others eventually stopped breathing. He could only watch them with a gloomy gaze.

He thought he had gotten used to it, but it was still difficult for him to see people die.

He eventually turned his head and looked around. There was a flag rolling on the ground.

“The Cloud Dragon Escort Bureau…”

Since he liked martial arts novels, he also studied traditional Chinese medicine as a hobby.

He could read the characters on the rolling flag.

“All these people were from the Escort Bureau. Then this must be the site where they were robbed… Where is the rescue team? In martial arts novels, if goods are stolen from the Escort Bureau, they would send a tracking squad to exact revenge.”

The Escort Bureau was like a courier company in modern times. However, in this era, encountering bandits or thieves while traveling on the road was a common occurrence due to poor public safety.

The people who protected the goods, money, and people from such robbers were called escorts or bodyguards, and their group was called the Escort Bureau.

The people who seemed to be from the Cloud Dragon Escort Bureau had mostly met their deaths by now.

In my Doctor’s opinion, only a few hours had passed since the incident occurred.

“This is a world without asphalt or streetlights. Will people come running to help if we can hold out for a day? Can we do it?”

Night was coming. The temperature was dropping, and those with bleeding wounds will eventually die if their body temperature drops rapidly.

“To endure even a little more, we have to light a fire. Although I only learned theory in the military… No, this is not the time to hesitate. We have to do something.”

These were the lives he barely saved. He couldn’t just let them die like this. He had to light a fire and raise their body temperatures.

He walked around among the corpses, but he couldn’t see anything metallic. If bandits attacked, they would have taken everything valuable, so it was not surprising.

Still, he looked around for something useful and found a knife stuck between two bodies.

“Maybe this will do?”

The child’s body was weak. He struggled to pull out the knife which was chipped at various spots. Although the blade was worn out, it was better than nothing for lighting a fire.

He then gathered some dry leaves and branches and held the knife with chipped edges over them.

“Okay. One, two…!”

SFX: Kagagagak!

A spark flew out. After repeating it several times, the leaves caught on fire. He then added more branches and increased the flames.

Then, he barely dragged his three surviving patients to the fire.

They were; the old man he first treated, a boy with a strong impression and a handsome face that shone, and a quite impressive-looking samurai with scars on her hands from holding a sword for a long time.

He could save them because they were not hit in any vital spots.

“I did emergency treatment, but this is not enough…”

He knew that lighting a fire was not a complete solution.

“It seems it is autumn by the look of the forest… The temperature will drop by up to five degrees soon. If we don’t make a tent or something, hypothermia is inevitable. Damn it, what do we need to make a tent?”

He looked around, but it seemed difficult to find suitable materials. The carriage was shattered, and he saw the corpses of their horses.

Although there were scraps of cloth scattered around, they were all torn and useless. But if he did nothing, they would die.

With that thought, he lifted his tired body.

“It’s a mountain beyond the mountain.”

It would be so great if people could just jump up after a 10-minute treatment like in movies or dramas.

But reality was not so rosy.

While grumbling to himself, he worked diligently. He brought a usable piece of wood to use as a support and bundled up some scattered pieces of cloth to make a makeshift tent.

After finishing all of that, he noticed that the sun had set far away. It would soon be completely dark.

“Heh….”

He dragged the patients into the tent.

The air was getting colder. The night in the mountains came early. The moans of pain from the patients were heard.

“I don’t even have a guarantee that these people will survive…. I know in my head that it’s wise to go down the mountain alone before the sun sets, but….”

Why was it that his feet wouldn’t budge?

He continued to put branches into the fire to keep the patients warm.

SFX: Aooooo!

“Scared me.”

He was startled by the sound of a wolf’s howl from outside, but quickly calmed down.

“Yeah. It would be strange if there was nothing like this in this era.”

It was natural for there to be predators and beasts in the mountains. Tigers were hard to see in modern society. Even 200 years ago, when modern society was just beginning to take shape, there was a saying about “hwan-hwan” (虎患 – bad things that happened to tigers).

“If a wolf comes out, it’ll be a big problem….”

Although it was a shoddy tent, it blocked the air and made the inside warm.

As he looked at the campfire he had set up, his chest felt tight and he let out a sigh.

He was an orphan. According to the director of the orphanage, he was abandoned in front of the orphanage one day,in a cardboard box.

In the cold winter, for some reason, they had put him in a red padded jacket instead of baby clothes. It was said that they had a hard time unraveling it because it was wrapped so tightly.

His name, Jin Cheon-hee, was given by the director of the orphanage, who also loved martial arts novels.

He was born with a fierce determination to study. So he was able to get himself into a mid-level medical school in Korea, and got all the scholarships he could get while working part-time.

Although he does miss my parents’ embrace, he didn’t actively search for it, perhaps because he learnt to give up gradually as he grew older and his resolve grew thicker.

‘Why bother looking for them when they aren’t searching for me over there?’

Feeling like there was a hole in his chest from not having any close relatives, he lived his life more desperately. He never had a chance to date and was almost friendless.

As he aged and his skills were somewhat recognized, he managed to find a decent place for himself, but it was only when he had reached his forties that he finally gained some financial stability.

“Sigh…”

‘How did I end up like this? All the hard work I’ve done so far has crumbled in an instant, leaving me feeling empty.’

He looked down at his own hands, hands that were childlike and inexperienced, without any calluses from saving lives.

“That’s what living is like.”

A deep sigh of a 40-something adult escaped from the child’s body.

Most of those who go to medical school become military surgeons. He had become a military surgeon himself and had even said to soldiers who came to the army:

“Close your eyes. What do you see? Nothing? That’s the future of your military life. It’ll be bleak.”

Then he would tell the wounded soldiers as he gave them a red pill:

“What does this look like to you?”

“Disinfectant.”

“From now on, it will become joint medicine.”

“Joint medicine?”

“That’s right.”

…Of course, it was a joke.

Now he had become the bleak one. What will he do to survive in this harsh world?

‘I’m still a doctor. Even if I go anywhere, I won’t starve to death. But I’m worried about adapting to this lawless world where bandits roam around. I’m worried about tonight and beyond. By the way, was it the Cloud Dragon Escort Bureau that was on that flag? It’s the same name as in the novel I read a few days ago. If I remember correctly, the story starts with an attack on the Cloud Dragon Escort Bureau.’

It was quite a strange coincidence. Come to think of it, that handsome boy was somewhat similar to the description of the Demon King in the novel when he was young.

While he was lighting the fire.

SFX: Thump, thump, thump!

The sound of the ground rumbling could be heard.

“What is that sound?”

The sound was getting closer.

“This… is the sound of horse hooves?”

It was similar to the sound of cavalry riding in a movie.

“What should I do?”

Someone was coming. It was a situation where it was uncertain whether it was a bad person or a good person. He tried to stay calm, but he could only fluster around in confusion.

“Stay calm.”

He picked up the chipped knife.

His whole body was screaming from rescuing people all day long.

How much could he endure with a child’s body?

He gritted his teeth.

Jin Cheon-hee went out of the shoddy tent. Fortunately, the sun hadn’t completely set yet.

He could see a group of riders on horseback and a unique carriage coming up from below.

They were all dressed like in a martial arts movie or drama, and they all had swords at their waists.

One of them was riding with a flag, and he could see the words ‘Cloud Dragon Escort Bureau’ written on the flag.

As he looked at it, Jin Cheon-hee let out a small sigh of relief.

“The Cloud Dragon Escort Bureau! Ha… thank goodness.”

His tension was released, and his legs wobbled. Jin Cheon-hee sat down where he was.

It was only then that he felt the pain in his arm. He had exposed a child’s body to the scorching sun all day long. It was a natural result.

“Is my eyesight getting better because I’m getting younger? I can see everything even though it’s quite far away.”

Was it because the tension was released? He observed the people coming towards him with strange thoughts. There were twenty-two people on horseback and one carriage.

Especially the carriage was strange. It had four horses tied to it and was huge.

It had a monochromatic colour and had no accessories, but the most noticeable thing was the storage cabinets.

The storage cabinets filled the entire wall of the carriage.

The whole carriage was like a medicine drawer.

And Jin Cheon-hee had seen a description of such a unique carriage.

“That looks just like the medical carriage of Baek Rin Eui-seon from the novel ‘The Supreme Demon King.’ ”

The Supreme Demon King was a novel that Jin Cheon-hee had read all the way to the end before he died. It was a very interesting novel, and one of the important supporting characters in the novel was a doctor called Baek Rin Eui-seon.

Baek Rin Eui-seon is one of the three Great Doctors in the world.

He saves the protagonist of the novel, Yeo Ha-ryun, the future Demon King.

There were various episodes with Yeo Ha-ryun afterwards, but eventually he succumbed to his illness and passed away around the second volume of the novel.

‘Surely, this isn’t the world from the novel…’

While thinking that and smirking, all the people from the Cloud Dragon Escort Bureau had arrived.

Jin Cheon-hee had remained seated in that spot without moving until they arrived.