In the blink of an eye, the line between life and death was drawn.
He was able to save two more people.
Since they were all suffering from heatstroke, it was somewhat manageable.
While he was treating these two, the others eventually stopped breathing.
He could only look at them with a gloomy expression.
He thought he had gotten used to it, but watching people die was still a difficult thing.
He turned his head and surveyed the surroundings.
A flag was rolling on the ground.
"Yunlong Biaoju (Cloud Dragon Escort Agency)..."
He had studied traditional medicine as a hobby because he enjoyed martial arts novels, so he could read the characters on the flag.
"These people were all from the escort agency. So this must be the scene of a robbery... Will help come? In martial arts novels, when an escort agency is robbed by bandits or thieves, they usually send a pursuit team to recover the goods and seek revenge."
An escort agency in this era was like a modern-day courier company.
However, the security in this era was poor, so encountering bandits or thieves on the road was a common occurrence.
Those who protected goods, money, and people from such robbers were called escorts, and the group of such escorts was the escort agency.
Most of the people presumed to be from the Yunlong Biaoju had already met their deaths.
From what he could tell as a doctor, the incident had only happened a few hours ago.
"This is a world without asphalt roads or streetlights. If I can hold out here for a day, help might come... But can I do it?"
Night was approaching.
The temperature would drop, and those who had lost blood would eventually die if their body temperature plummeted.
"If I want to hold out a little longer, I need to start a fire. I only learned the theory in the military, but... No, there's no time to hesitate. I have to try something."
These were lives he had barely saved.
He couldn't let them die like this.
He had to start a fire and raise their body temperature.
He wandered among the corpses.
There was no sign of any metal.
If bandits had attacked, they would have taken anything of value, so it was only natural.
Still, he looked around to see if there was anything left.
He found a sword stuck between the corpses.
"That might work."
The child's body was weak.
He struggled to pull the sword out from between the corpses.
The blade was chipped in several places, but it was better than nothing for starting a fire.
Next, he gathered dry leaves and twigs and piled them up.
He grabbed a stone and struck it against the chipped blade.
"Let's try this. One, two...!"
Clang! Clang!
Sparks flew.
After a few tries, the leaves caught fire.
He added more branches and managed to get a decent fire going.
Then, he dragged the three patients he had treated closer to the fire.
The first was the middle-aged man he had treated earlier, along with a handsome young man and a rather bold-looking warrior.
The young man had a strong impression, with a face so handsome it seemed to glow.
The warrior was a woman, tall and with many scars on her hands, signs of long years wielding a sword.
Both had avoided fatal injuries, which was why he could save them.
"I've done first aid, but this alone won't be enough..."
He knew well that starting a fire wouldn't solve everything.
"Looking at the forest, it seems to be autumn... The temperature will likely drop to around 5 degrees Celsius soon. Without a tent or something, hypothermia is certain. Damn, I need something to make a tent..."
He looked around, but finding proper materials seemed difficult.
The carriage was wrecked, and there were horse corpses scattered about.
Pieces of cloth were lying around, but they were all torn and useless.
Still, if he did nothing, these people would die.
With that thought, he forced his tired body to move.
"One mountain after another..."
How nice would it be if, like in movies or dramas, people just jumped up after ten minutes of treatment?
Reality was not so kind.
Grumbling inwardly, he busied himself.
He found some usable wooden poles and used them as supports, then tied together the scattered pieces of cloth to make a makeshift tent.
By the time he finished, the sun had set in the distance.
It would soon be completely dark.
"Phew..."
He dragged the patients inside the tent.
The air was growing colder.
Nights in the mountains came early.
The patients' pained groans could be heard.
"There's no guarantee these people will survive... Logically, it would be wiser to leave them and descend the mountain alone before nightfall, but..."
For some reason, his feet wouldn't move.
He kept adding branches to the fire to keep the patients warm.
Howl!
"Ah!"
The sound of a wolf howling outside startled him, but he quickly calmed down.
"Right. In this era, it's strange if there aren't any."
Wild beasts and predators were a given in the mountains.
In modern society, tigers were rare, but just 200 years ago, there were even terms like "tiger calamity" (虎患) for the troubles caused by tigers.
"If wolves show up, it'll be a disaster..."
The makeshift tent, though shoddy, blocked the air enough to keep the inside warm.
As he watched the fire burn, a heavy sigh escaped him.
He was an orphan.
According to the director of the orphanage, he had been left in a cardboard box in front of the orphanage one day.
It was a cold winter, and for some reason, instead of baby clothes, he had been wrapped in a red padded jacket.
The director had struggled to untie the tightly knotted bundle.
His name, Jin Cheon-hee, was given by the director, who was also a fan of martial arts novels.
He had grown up clenching his teeth and studying hard.
That's how he managed to get into a mid-tier medical school in Korea, working part-time and earning scholarships along the way.
It wasn't that he didn't miss having parents, but he never actively sought them out.
As he grew older, he gradually learned to let go.
"If they didn't come looking for me, what's the point of me looking for them?"
The fact that he had no blood relatives always left a hole in his heart.
To fill it, he lived fiercely.
He had never been in a relationship and had almost no friends.
By the time he reached his forties, he had finally gained some financial stability, but it had been a hard life.
"Sigh..."
But how had he ended up like this? All the hardships he had endured seemed to collapse at once, leaving him feeling hollow.
Before he died, he had struggled so hard to live, but now he had nothing.
Jin Cheon-hee looked down at his hands.
The hands of a child.
Hands that were battered from trying to save lives.
"That's just how life is."
A deep sigh from a 40-year-old man escaped the child's body.
Most medical students became military doctors.
He had also become one and would often tell the soldiers:
"Close your eyes. What do you see? Nothing, right? That's the future of your military life. It's bleak."
Then he would hold up a bottle of red medicine and say:
"What does this look like?"
"Disinfectant."
"From now on, it's joint medicine."
"Joint medicine?"
"That's what you should think."
Of course, it was a joke.
Now, he himself felt bleak.
What was he supposed to do now? How was he supposed to live?
"But I'm a doctor. As a doctor, I won't starve to death no matter where I go... But this world is so chaotic, with bandits roaming around. I'm worried if I can adapt. I'm worried about tonight, for starters. By the way, was it Yunlong Biaoju? That's the same name as the escort agency in the novel I read a few days ago. In 'Supreme Demon Lord,' the story starts with an attack on Yunlong Biaoju."
It was quite a strange coincidence.
Come to think of it, that handsome young man also resembled the description of the demon lord as a child in the novel.
As he was tending the fire...
Thud! Thud! Thud!
A sound that shook the ground began to echo.
"What's that sound?"
The sound was getting closer.
"Is that... the sound of hooves?"
It resembled the sound of cavalry in movies.
"What should I do?"
Someone was coming.
It was impossible to tell if they were friend or foe.
He tried to stay calm, but he couldn't help but panic.
"Stay calm."
He picked up the chipped sword.
His whole body screamed in pain after a day of rescuing people.
How long could he last in a child's body?
He clenched his teeth.
Jin Cheon-hee stepped out of the makeshift tent.
Fortunately, the sun hadn't completely set yet.
He could see a group of riders and a uniquely shaped carriage coming up from below.
They were dressed like characters from martial arts movies or dramas, all with swords at their waists.
One of them was holding a flag as they rode, and on the flag, the characters for Yunlong Biaoju were clearly written.
Seeing this, Jin Cheon-hee let out a small sigh of relief.
"Yunlong Biaoju! Whew... Thank goodness."
The tension drained from his body, and his legs trembled.
Jin Cheon-hee sat down on the spot.
Only then did he feel the pain in his arms.
He had pushed the child's body to its limits all day.
It was only natural.
"Maybe because I'm young, my eyesight is really good. I can see everything clearly even from a distance."
Perhaps because the tension had eased, he found himself thinking odd thoughts as he observed the approaching group.
There were twenty-two riders and one carriage.
The carriage, in particular, was strange.
It was pulled by four horses and was massive.
It was a single color with no decorations, but what stood out the most were the cabinets.
The cabinets were packed tightly against the walls.
The entire carriage looked like a traditional medicine cabinet.
And Jin Cheon-hee had seen a description of such a unique carriage before.
"That looks just like the medical carriage of Bai Lin, the Divine Physician, from 'Supreme Demon Lord.'"
'Supreme Demon Lord' was a novel Jin Cheon-hee had read to completion before he died.
It was a very entertaining novel, and one of the important supporting characters was a physician named Bai Lin.
Bai Lin was one of the three great physicians in the world.
In the novel, he saves the life of the future demon lord, Yeo Ha-ryun.
After that, he had various episodes with Yeo Ha-ryun, but ultimately, his chronic illness worsened, and he passed away around the second volume of the novel.
"Surely this isn't the world of the novel...?"
As he chuckled at the thought, the people from Yunlong Biaoju arrived.
Jin Cheon-hee remained seated, unmoving, until they reached him.