Doctor’s Rebirth

Chapter 31

Jin Cheon-hee answered:

“I can only give the same answer as you, Master. I’ll make sure she doesn’t die easily.”

Jin Cheon-hee habitually stretched his hands.

Behind him, only the beast-like howls of the father resonated.

Hospitals are not beautiful. Hospitals are not peaceful.

They were just fighting and fighting.

***

“Ho ho ho, I… I’m sitting here being a surgeon in the martial world.”

Jin Cheon-hee was laughing as if he had lost his mind.

Outside, preparations for the operating room were in full swing. They were washing the entire operating room with strong alcohol and boiling water.

It’s troublesome, but unavoidable.

There were small knives for surgery here too, and while not as good as scalpels, they seemed usable in a pinch.

He had to do it without the help of basic medical equipment from Earth, including the common suction found in any hospital.

And that felt like a big problem.

Still, it had to be done.

Even if conditions were this poor, it wasn’t that there was no chance of success.

“Instead of a scalpel, we use sword qi. Ho ho ho… At least our patient has vital signs, so that’s fortunate…”

There was a reason Jin Cheon-hee was muttering as if dejected.

The patient had a liver laceration, commonly called a liver rupture.

With the renowned internal injury technique, the liver was mashed like tofu, and there was a perforation in the large intestine.

Perforation means a hole in an internal organ, which will naturally lead to death if left untreated.

Because food will leak out of the intestine causing peritonitis, and blood will pool in the peritoneal cavity causing hemoperitoneum.

[TL/N: Hemoperitoneum is bleeding within your peritoneal cavity, the space that contains your abdominal and pelvic organs.]

Strangely, due to the characteristics of the internal injury technique, the ribs were intact. It’s quite bizarre.

In fact, this patient should have died long ago.

To Jin Cheon-hee as a doctor, it was eerie that she had survived in this state for 15 days.

‘How on earth is she still alive? Is it because of that inner power and spirit medicine? But why can’t inner power and spirit medicine fix a torn liver?’

Jin Cheon-hee sighed and rubbed his face dry.

Then he thought about the laws that govern this world.

Qi.

‘Qi is really omnipotent, truly omnipotent. It seems to act as an antibiotic, and it maintains life too. She should be in a state of hypotension due to internal bleeding, but somehow it’s managing that without ventricular tachycardia. Wow… If modern medicine had qigong treatment, we could even save cancer patients. It’s amazing. Really amazing.’

In this world, martial artists run on water and create fire with their fingers. Their skin can become as hard as steel.

It’s said that when one reaches the ultimate realm of the sword, aging stops and one becomes younger for a moment.

They call it “returning to youth” here.

‘I’ll have to perform the surgery keeping true qi in mind, but there are many other things needed besides that. There’s too much lacking.’

First is securing blood.

In this place without blood type kits, he used a primitive method.

He took a little blood from both father and daughter to check their antibody reactions.

Fortunately, they were compatible without antibody reactions.

‘While transfusion between relatives is rarely done in modern medicine…’

It’s because of Graft versus Host Disease (GVHD).

It means the parent’s white blood cells survive in the child’s body and divide on their own. And then those divided white blood cells start to attack the child’s body, recognizing it as an enemy.

So it’s only used in unavoidable cases. For example, when someone who needs a transfusion has a rare blood type. It’s only used in such desperate situations.

In that case, a process to destroy lymphocytes in advance is necessary.

‘But radiation treatment is impossible in this era. Usually, the probability of reaching that point is low.’

Jin Cheon-hee was lost in thought.

‘But if we don’t do a transfusion, the child will die 100%.’

There was no choice.

When told that blood was needed, the Phantom Archer said to take as much as needed, even if it killed him.

He didn’t ask why it needed to be drawn or what it would be used for. Normally, one might shout “This is dark magic!”, but he just asked to save his daughter.

So Jin Cheon-hee had to devise a means to supply the daughter with blood drawn from him on the spot.

‘What on earth does Yoo Ho do?’

Yoo Ho’s mysterious ability.

Trusting in that, when asked to make an IV line for blood transfusion, he made it in less than half a shichen (1 hour).

Actually, that was more surprising, but it wasn’t the time to worry about that.

Because the patient was in front of him.

Using that, he connected the Phantom Archer’s body to his daughter’s body. He made it so that blood would go directly from the Phantom Archer’s body to his daughter’s.

This too is extremely primitive, but now wasn’t the time to be picky about this and that.

Jin Cheon-hee quietly took a deep breath.

‘Incision is half the battle.’

Surgery starts with visibility and ends with visibility.

If you can secure visibility, you’re halfway there.

‘I’ll perform a posterolateral thoracotomy with the patient turned to the side.’

Raise the arm to fix it and cut the muscle along the scapula.

‘If I cut through the intercostal space, I can secure visibility.’

But the question is what to cut with.

To cut cleanly without modern instruments…

‘Since I’m in the martial world anyway, can I cut with sword energy and then reattach? Perhaps this might be much cleaner and have a better prognosis than modern medicine.’

Jin Cheon-hee wanted to use everything he could use since he had come to the martial world anyway.

‘The Living Sword isn’t called that for nothing.’

The smile was only momentary, and Jin Cheon-hee’s expression darkened again.

‘In any case, once the body is opened, there’s no going back.’

Master had said. The moment the knife touches the flesh, the inner power maintaining the body will drop dramatically.

Right now, she’s barely hanging on with spirit medicine, inner power, and her father’s true qi, but once the chest is opened, the vital signs will drop significantly.

Meanwhile, Zhuge Rin’s job is to buy time somehow using battle formations.

However, it’s important to settle things within that time because we don’t know how long he can hold out.

Jin Cheon-hee closed his eyes and slowly moved his fingers.

In his mind, the liver, spleen, arteries, and veins that Master had drawn naturally appeared.

He missed the CT scans from Earth.

Those times when he could turn and look at them from all angles before surgery…

‘I miss… medical imaging.’

Someday, Jin Cheon-hee too will be able to perform human medical imaging like his master Zhuge Rin.

Even so, he was still a novice.

Even if the Five-Elemental Cultivation Technique activated the brain, that fact remained unchanged.

After grumbling like that for a moment, Jin Cheon-hee began to train his image by constantly recalling the patient’s interior.

He had to be fast. And he had to be accurate. And he was somewhat confident in that aspect.

In the past, he had been quite recognized for his skills in surgical operations.

The experiences he gained from volunteering in remote areas also enhanced Jin Cheon-hee’s surgical skills.

And now he had learned martial arts. His five senses were incomparably enhanced compared to the past.

‘I can do it.’

Jin Cheon-hee’s eyes sparkled.

***

Finally, all preparations were complete.

Jin Cheon-hee was tightly wrapped from head to toe in cloth so that not a single hair would show.

Master, Yoo Ho, and all the medical pavilion members were also wearing the same clothes.

Jin Cheon-hee smiled a little, thinking they looked like masked villains in white clothes.

“Hee-ya.”

“Yes, Master.”

“I’ve been watching you, and you deliberately smile when under pressure.”

Those words made him feel caught, as if his inner thoughts had been exposed.

Jin Cheon-hee said:

“But don’t our outfits look kind of funny?”

A senior colleague once said. To the patient, there’s only the doctor.

If the doctor looks like death, the patient truly has nowhere to place their trust.

It was a senior who eventually left, unable to endure the politics of a university hospital. But those words remained with Jin Cheon-hee.

He said it’s just right to be a bit shameless to the point where it’s slightly annoying.

So that while thinking ‘That doctor is a bit annoying’, they can also believe ‘He must be good since he’s so confident’.

Yoo Ho said:

“This is because we’re in a hurry now. Next time, I’ll make it properly.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Jin Cheon-hee did some light stretching.

Master said:

“I’ve set up the inside of the operating room to be maintained by battle formations. Fire purification technique works at the entrance, so surround yourself with Water Qi.”

Master went inside.

Small blue flames swept over Master’s body.

It was surprising, but more than that, the thought that came to mind was ‘An automatic sterilizer is convenient.’

Those old days (?) of struggling to put on gloves flashed by like a panorama.

Jin Cheon-hee surrounded himself with Water Qi. Then he followed Master inside.

Fire Qi swept over his body.

The inside of the operating room wasn’t like what Jin Cheon-hee knew.

Battle formations were drawn on the floor using arrays, and the surgical gowns worn by the medical pavilion members were those of the martial world.

However, only the patient lying there was exactly the same as on Earth, making Jin Cheon-hee smile bitterly.

‘You said I force a smile when I feel pressure.’

It had become a habit now, so he couldn’t help it.

“I’ve already relayed your surgical plan to the medical pavilion members. I had them all memorize it, but in the end, you’ll have to be the one doing it.”

Anxiety was visible in the eyes of the medical pavilion members.

Small height, small body.

A child.

But they didn’t utter any common complaints or words of concern.

This must mean that Jin Cheon-hee’s master Zhuge Rin’s control over the organization was excellent.

Jin Cheon-hee answered:

“Well, it’s not like that’s a difficult task…”

It was better for the lead surgeon to be a bit shameless.

Jin Cheon-hee continued:

“Let’s finish this quickly. And then let’s eat something delicious.”

Saying that, he picked up the small knife for surgery.

“Open the chest.”

A red line was drawn over the patient’s solar plexus.

There was no turning back now.

***

‘This is a treatment method that involves cutting open the body. This treatment called surgery needs to keep breath in the body until it’s finished, but the doctors of our pavilion aren’t internal energy masters of that level. So we need you. Are you prepared to endure anything to save your daughter?’

The Phantom Archer answered that he would do anything to Divine Doctor Baek Rin’s words. And now the Phantom Archer is here.

Operating room.

In this bizarre place he’s seeing for the first time in his life, the Phantom Archer is tightly holding his daughter’s wrist while trying to steady his trembling body.

To sustain his daughter’s life, he is in the middle of infusing his primal true qi.

Performing a blood transfusion while simultaneously infusing primal true qi was no ordinary feat, but he was accomplishing it with extreme concentration.

The power of qi is tremendous.

It can even temporarily keep a dying person breathing.

Divine Doctor Baek Rin had explained to the Phantom Archer that all the doctors of White Dragon Medical Pavilion learned the Five Elements True Qi for this reason.

Internal qi is needed to use needles most effectively, and Five Elements True Qi was one of the fundamental methods that allowed doctors to treat patients more effectively.

It was also the reason why White Dragon Medical Pavilion was among the Three Great Medical Pavilions in the world.