Doctor’s Rebirth

Chapter 33

Thud–

“Master…?”

It’s heavy. Like cotton soaked in water. It didn’t seem like a joke.

Jin Cheon-hee shook the body pressing down on him.

Yoo Ho said:

“Master! Wake up! Master!”

Zhuge Rin had lost consciousness.

***

It was cold and painful. It felt as if an ice blade would tear his heart to shreds.

-Since you won’t live long anyway, why don’t you think about how to live instead?

That was the conclusion the family head had reached after examining Zhuge Rin’s pulse.

When he first felt this pain, young Zhuge Rin screamed at the top of his lungs to be saved. But no one in the Zhuge family could cure that pain.

A maid handed him a medicine made from opium with trembling hands.

It was highly addictive but worked better than anything for pain.

Young Zhuge Rin calmly accepted the drug usually given to terminal patients.

Even his parents didn’t stop him.

Zhuge Rin was a child who would disappear soon. It was meant to make his passing a little more comfortable.

But the drug didn’t work at all.

The pain tearing at his heart continued.

Even after studying medicine and training his body, even after overcoming his meridian deficiency and starting to accumulate true qi, the pain continued.

There was only one time when it didn’t hurt.

When his family met with disaster, and all his blood relatives died.

Only once, when he swore revenge among those ashes.

Ironically, Zhuge Rin with the Nine Yin Meridian Obstruction, who was expected to die first, had become the last survivor of the Zhuge family.

The pain never became familiar. He just learned how to endure it.

The young Zhuge Rin who used to howl like a beast had now become a withered old tree preparing for death.

Once twisted, his sensibilities became even more uncontrollably twisted due to his genius.

‘Perhaps that’s why that child looked so radiant. Because he had what I didn’t.’

Since he never had it to begin with, there was no room for emotions like jealousy.

He was just captivated by a light he saw for the first time.

Even so, knowing he could never have it himself, he thought it was closer to a feeling of admiration.

‘It hurts less today.’

Perhaps because of that, Zhuge Rin felt the pain ease more than usual in his dazed state.

***

Zhuge Rin woke up half a day later.

When he opened his eyes, he felt a soft touch on his hand.

Turning his gaze, he saw a young child holding his hand tightly with small fern-like hands.

Everything around was filled with warmth. It felt like the sensation of soaking in a hot spring, but even warmer than that.

“Master, you’re awake.”

“Is that Yoo Ho?”

“Yes! It’s me!”

Zhuge Rin’s eyes turn to Jin Cheon-hee.

“Why is Hee here?”

Yoo Ho looked at Jin Cheon-hee lying next to Zhuge Rin with a disapproving expression and said:

“He stubbornly insisted with the ridiculous excuse of practicing the Five-Elemental Cultivation Technique. But Master, this incident is all because of this young master…”

Yoo Ho couldn’t continue speaking.

Because Zhuge Rin raised his hand to stop his words and looked down at Jin Cheon-hee.

Zhuge Rin gazed steadily at Jin Cheon-hee’s sleeping face with affectionate eyes.

It’s like pouring water into the sea with a dipper.

Flowing in that small Five Elements True Qi probably wouldn’t have made much difference.

Still, the pain was alleviated, probably because it constantly boosted the broken balance in his body.

‘This time, I used a lot of Fire, Metal, and Wood Qi?’

The Five-Elemental Divine Technique, the higher martial art of the Five-Elemental Cultivation Technique that Zhuge Rin is learning, uses mutual generation and restraint, so balance is important.

For a normal user of the Five-Elemental Divine Technique, they wouldn’t collapse like this even if they used true qi unevenly.

If it were such an imperfect martial art, it wouldn’t be called a divine technique.

It’s dangerous because it’s Zhuge Rin.

Because the balance of the Five Elements True Qi is suppressing Zhuge Rin’s illness.

While cultivating, Zhuge Rin felt an energy similar to his own but slightly different. It was a very small energy, pure because it had just begun.

He laid his young disciple on his bed.

“Master?”

“Shh. Be quiet.”

Then he concentrated while holding Jin Cheon-hee’s hand.

Inside Jin Cheon-hee, there was a lack of inner power equal to what he had used on Zhuge Rin.

The balance was broken, but it was a bean-sized balance. It was nothing compared to his master’s.

Zhuge Rin infused his true qi into his disciple.

He smiled contentedly after confirming that the sleeping Jin Cheon-hee’s expression became peaceful.

For the first time in a long while, Zhuge Rin thought he wanted to live.

He thought it would be nice if he could watch his disciple grow up and make his debut in the martial world.

***

Jin Cheon-hee opened his eyes to an unfamiliar but warm sensation.

Master was gently stroking the head of his one and only disciple.

“Are you awake?”

Is this what it would feel like to have parents?

Jin Cheon-hee thought blankly like that for a moment before shaking his head.

The place he had been was an orphanage. These days it’s starting to be called a childcare center, but back then, the term orphanage was more familiar.

There were children who didn’t know who their parents were, but there were also children who came despite knowing who their parents were.

They became friends to each other, but there always seemed to be a hole in a corner of their hearts.

It was a strange thirst that couldn’t be quenched.

“Are you alright, Master?”

“You must have been very surprised when I suddenly collapsed.”

It wasn’t just being surprised. His mind went blank.

Until now, he had watched countless patients’ lives and deaths up close. But nowhere among them was the death of family.

Zhuge Rin was the first person Jin Cheon-hee had felt that way about in his life.

He became stiff as a stone and couldn’t do anything.

Even the medical knowledge he knew was useless. He couldn’t think of anything.

All Zhuge Rin had shown until now was a strong, calm, truly lofty appearance of the world’s finest.

He didn’t realize that he too was a sick person.

Jin Cheon-hee spoke honestly:

“I was very surprised. Master, I was really worried.”

Zhuge Rin smiled slightly.

“The human heart is truly fickle. I’m sorry for making you worry, but seeing you worry about me like this also makes me happy…”

He seemed to understand why sometimes high-ranking elders of sects pretend to be sick in front of their disciples.

When they’re eighty or ninety, they complain about aching bones, loss of appetite, saying they’ll soon meet their ascended senior brothers, worrying their disciples, and then they come to White Dragon Medical Pavilion asking to play along.

Then when their disciples aren’t around, they practice cultivation, sending out sword energy streams with steady steps.

Saying they can’t get old like this, they must somehow reach a realm and return to youth once before they go.

Yoo Ho used to grumble that people really become foolish when they get old, but now Zhuge Rin understood that feeling too.

So this is what it’s like to have a disciple, he thought quietly.

At that moment, a cough came from Zhuge Rin’s mouth. The cough grew larger and larger.

When he took his hand away from his mouth, dark red blood had seeped out.

Jin Cheon-hee called for Yoo Ho in surprise.

“Yoo Ho! Master is…!”

Before he could finish speaking, Yoo Ho opened the door. Then he took out a spirit medicine from the drawer at the head of the bed.

“He seemed to be getting better for a while… Oh my.”

Yoo Ho sighed and handed over the medicine.

Seeing this, Jin Cheon-hee realized that this wasn’t a one-time occurrence.

‘The situation was actually more serious than what was shown in the novel.’

He had been complacent. Master was a supporting character who disappeared early on.

Heavenly Demon Yeo Ha-ryoon only met Master when he was in a state to meet people.

‘Novels… aren’t encyclopedias.’

Readers end up following the protagonist’s perspective.

No matter how great Master was, he was still a supporting character in the end. There was no reason to devote many pages to him.

“It’s… it’s alright.”

Master swallowed the spirit medicine and slowly cultivated.

His rough breathing gradually returned to normal.

“Phew.”

Yoo Ho sighed and rubbed his chest.

Jin Cheon-hee said:

“How’s your condition?”

“I’m fine.”

“You said I’m a doctor before being your disciple. Everyone in this medical pavilion knows there’s nothing more foolish than hiding an illness.”

“…”

Zhuge Rin let out a small sigh.

‘Even those elders who pretended to be sick would hide their illness when they were really sick. I didn’t want to understand that feeling too…’

But it eventually comes to light. There were many cases where illnesses that could have been cured if spoken about early were hidden until the very end and couldn’t be cured.

Humans are truly bundles of contradictions.

Zhuge Rin held out his wrist.

“Let’s take this opportunity to learn pulse diagnosis.”

“You’ve taught me the theory.”

“But it’s your first time doing it directly, right?”

“Yes.”

“You and I use the same type of true qi, so even if you make a mistake, there’s almost no chance of a major accident. There’s no better practice partner than this.”

Jin Cheon-hee grasped his master’s wrist.

It was the strong, firm arm of a martial artist. It was strange how unusually cold it was.

“Close your eyes and flow your inner power according to the incantation I’m about to recite. You must not open your eyes or speak in the middle.”

Master slowly recited the incantation.

Jin Cheon-hee sent his inner power while operating the Five-Elemental Cultivation Technique according to the incantation.

‘Ultra, ultrasound…?’

He could feel Master’s interior. It was like a poor-quality ultrasound.

Jin Cheon-hee’s inner power moved along Master’s qi meridians.

It seemed that as his understanding deepened, this feeling would become clearer and clearer.

‘So this is pulse diagnosis through qi. This is what it meant for qi perception to develop.’

And he reached the end.

‘It’s really serious. Even I can feel how bad it is.’

Jin Cheon-hee gathered his qi following Master’s incantation.

Jin Cheon-hee’s inner power that had circulated returned inside him.

After finishing the pulse diagnosis, Jin Cheon-hee slowly opened his eyes.

Master smiled bitterly.

“How is it?”

“It’s worse than I thought.”

“Yes. You observed accurately.”

Jin Cheon-hee’s fists clenched.

“I’ll definitely cure it.”

“I thought you’d be scared, but instead your determination has strengthened.”

“I will definitely cure it.”

The disciple’s voice congealed in the cold heart.

Feeling that warmth, Master nodded.

“Alright. Let’s try our best together.”

***

Arc 5: Destroying Evil, and Anguish

A day later.

Zhuge Rin and Jin Cheon-hee visited the patient room.

On the bed, the Phantom Archer’s daughter Wang Gak-yeon was lying down recuperating, and the Phantom Archer was nursing her.

“Thank you! Divine Doctor Baek Rin! Young Hero Jin!”

The Phantom Archer made a deep bow towards the two.

Behind him, the patient, his daughter Wang Gak-yeon, sighed.

The first thing her eyes saw when she regained consciousness was her father’s face, with half his hair turned white.

He was a mess of tears and snot, hugging his daughter and wailing ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ in loud sobs, and she couldn’t understand what was going on.

When she said it hurt because he was hugging her too tightly, the Phantom Archer was startled and let go of his daughter, running to a corner. But he was still crying.

Wang Gak-yeon slowly circulated the true qi inside her body.