At this moment, the core that truly formed the Chrono Ruin, laid the foundation of the demonic realm, and twisted reality... revealed itself before Ji Jue.
Its origin was an incurable Disease of Immortality. Its foundation was countless despairing patients suffering eternal torment. And what was forged in the end through the sacrifice of everything was a singular devotion to salvation that never surrendered, not even when death loomed.
Powerless doctors had exhausted everything they had, sparing not even their own souls, offering their final prayers and supplications to the world.
Greeting Ascension.
Even if all else was lost, so long as this single resolve endured, they would never abandon a patient. They would never betray their oath. They would never permit toxic and tainted things to linger upon this world!
Even if the thing about to spread poison and pollution had become themselves.
That look of utter resolve was right before Ji Jue's eyes.
"..."
Ji Jue stood dazed, at a loss for words.
The doctor's face twitched. Bathed in the crimson rain, it looked as if he were weeping, yet also like a wry, self-deprecating smile.
"I'm not a good doctor."
His lips trembled, whispering in exhaustion. "I... I can't remember... So many things, I just can't remember. Who am I? Everyone... what happened to everyone...?"
"They're sick. Everyone is sick. I'm sick too."
"I didn't know how to save myself, and I didn't know how to save them... It's all... my fault..."
"What... what has everyone turned into?"
He struggled to lift his head, wanting to look around, but he found no sign of salvation or recovery—only wails, fleshly tumors, and the falling blood-rain, submerging the hospital as it steadily collapsed and dissolved.
And so, realization slowly dawned upon him. "In the end, I couldn't save a single person, could I?"
Rumble!
A cracking sound came from above the dome of heaven.
Yet it also seemed to come from the fissures across his own body.
A shimmering light emerged, winding around the Pith of Vile Folly that had turned into a sharp blade, as if using his own blood to cleanse the venomous corruption, slowly seeping into it.
And then, at long last, he let go.
He looked toward the young man before him.
"The final training for the residents... is over."
The doctor's silhouette flickered, as though about to shatter alongside the world, but he did not care in the slightest. He merely raised his hands and unclasped his ID badge from his neck.
Cupping it reverently in his hands, he hung it around Ji Jue's neck, smoothing a small crease on the young man's collar with utmost care and deliberation.
"I don't know who you are... but I know what you said was the truth... I know..."
The aging doctor gave one last smile.
Looking at the finest newcomer he had ever trained, he told him:
"You must be a good doctor..."
In that split second, frozen in shock, Ji Jue reached out on pure instinct, as if trying to hold onto that dispersing phantom.
Yet those very hands, capable of shaping all the wonders of the world, failed to retain anything at all. Once again, he grasped only empty air.
Only scattering motes of light spilled from his fingertips, swaying gently as they soared toward the heavens.
In the haze of his senses, it seemed as though someone laughed.
One final hand reached out.
And gently patted his shoulder.
"..."
Ji Jue fell silent. He lowered his head, looking at the ID badge resting against his chest and the strange, razor-sharp bone relic in his grip. With the crimson and pitch-black hues entirely shed, it gleamed with the crystalline brilliance of pure glass.
A badge of pride; a tool used to save the afflicted.
They had entrusted the only treasures they had left into his hands.
Yet, what was the point?
"I was lying to you," Ji Jue whispered softly.
It had just been casual talk, an act he put on—pretending to empathize, mimicking a merciful savior with pitch-perfect delivery.
You fell for it, didn't you?!
It was all acting. I knew how to fake tears to swindle pocket money when I was four years old.
Anyone who buys it is a fool.
Yet every single time, it had never failed. There had always been someone who smiled helplessly, taking him by the hand to lead him toward the glittering shop display.
Back then, the sky had been azure. A summer breeze drifted through the shade of the trees, sunlight bathed the earth, and everything was as wonderful as a fairytale.
He closed his eyes and silently cursed.
And cursed again.
Until he heard stumbling footsteps approaching from the distance.
"Tong Hua."
Staggering across the ruins, Tong Hua paused slightly and looked up at the silhouette standing tall amidst the blood-rain. She heard his voice:
"Go prepare isolation and protective measures."
"Huh?"
Tong Hua was bewildered.
"Did I not make myself clear?"
Ji Jue turned around, the ID badge fluttering against his white coat as he repeated, "Don't just stand there gaping, and don't make the patients wait any longer... They aren't liars, and neither am I!"
He said, "Prep for surgery."
In that instant, all wailing within the rain of blood ceased abruptly. Behind the thinning downpour, vague shadows seemed to take shape.
The Chrono Ruin, teetering on the verge of collapse, seemed to find its pillar once more.
Clinging to breath, refusing destruction!
Nothing was over yet.
There was still a doctor here!
***
Ten minutes later, a gurney was dug out from the rubble of the operating rooms and wheeled before Ji Jue, fully equipped with a myriad of surgical tools.
The flattest patch among the ruins had become an operating table. A dried-up, massive tumor the size of a car had been rolled onto a dust cloth serving as a sterile drape.
Upon undulating faces, hollow eyes shed tears, gazing blankly at the doctor—at the doctors—before them.
Their lips opened and closed soundlessly.
They had lost even the strength to pray or call out.
"Let's consider your preoperative prep complete."
Ji Jue reached out and stroked their faces. "Cooperate a little. It's everyone's first time here. It's my first time being a doctor, and it'll be your first time being cured—and your first time dying."
He said, "I promise."
Perhaps he would never make a good doctor in this lifetime.
Ji Jue knew this all too well.
He lacked patience and so-called benevolence. He looked down on fools and idiots, couldn't help but scowl at people who brought trouble upon themselves, and had no intention of endlessly extending a helping hand to patients again and again.
Seeing someone courting their own doom, he would stand aside with a sneer and watch the show. Out of all his skills, the only ones remotely adjacent to medicine were 'hopeless,' 'wait for death,' and 'farewell.'
To come out of nowhere and tell someone to be a good doctor?
How were such dying words any different from a curse?!
Urging people to study medicine was practically begging for a lightning strike!
Besides, he was cruising smoothly along the path of an artisan. Skill, authority, and wealth would be his with a wave of his hand in the future; his prospects were bright as hell.
Could people stop messing up someone else's life plans for once?
So... consider this an occasional guest appearance.
You lot better not expect too much.
"You crave death, don't you?"
Ji Jue gripped the bone knife tightly. "This essence birthed by you happens to align perfectly with your wish."
Despair denying hope, a longing for death after denying life, tempered by the doctors' final mercy—what manifested in the end was this blade as lucid and pristine as colored glass.
Faint wisps of blood seemed to drift across its surface. Under the catalyst of Non-Offensive, fragments of bone fractured and disintegrated one after another, reduced to drifting ash through the dismantling of the Dissociation Art.
Without hesitation, he stripped away numerous essences, lavishly squandering a power that originally held boundless possibilities.
There was not the slightest hindrance; it was as though the essence itself was cooperating with Ji Jue's refinement, smooth and effortless as flowing water.
In the end, what appeared in Ji Jue's grip was a slightly curved bone knife barely forty centimeters long. Its form resembled a scalpel, yet its proportions were far more exaggerated than standard instruments.
A transparent, ethereal blade extended along its edge, magnificent as a dream.
Just like the dream of salvation itself.
From the moment he lifted the knife, Ji Jue couldn't help but recall a past conversation with Professor Ye.
"Teacher, if Masterwork Nature and Primacy of Mind work together, can they really excise a soul?"
At the time, Professor Ye had told him: "Theoretically, the possibility exists."
Now, he wanted to ask one more thing: "Director Qian, can a doctor truly save a patient?"
Regrettably, no one answered.
Yet from the unseen depths, an unequivocal reply seemed to resound.
Telling him—
—*Absolutely!*
A doctor could save patients. A doctor would save patients.
This time, the doctor would definitely save the patients!
In that split second, Ji Jue raised his head.
He looked toward the shattered firmament. Above the dome of heaven, a faint mirage seemed to emerge, so elusive, like a phantom city... It looked like a pale structure, so colossal that it seemed to fill the entire sky.
Though bathed in boundless radiance, it held not the slightest warmth or mercy.
The garden of ultimate bliss at life's end, the entity denying life and death itself—the Great Calamity: White Manor—revealed itself here.
Looking down with cold detachment.
Mocking the overambitious challenger—and challengers!
And so, in that very instant, Ji Jue made his first incision into the patient before him without a shred of hesitation.
The doctor had begun the surgery!
***
Anesthesia: omitted.
Disinfection: omitted.
Condition diagnosis and analysis: omitted!
With the heavily protected Tong Hua providing detection and readings, Ji Jue swung his blade, slicing open the flesh before him...
A doctor would save the patient; a doctor would do everything in his power to kill the patient!
In a flash, crimson erupted like a cataract. Innumerable writhing organs and limbs spilled outward from the breach like a waterfall, spreading, squirming, and wailing.
Within the shriveled mass of flesh, countless fresh sprouts were already regrowing at this moment. Brief decline could not extinguish aberrant life; the Disease of Immortality remained rampant.
Ji Jue could easily have repeated his old trick—grafting himself into it and using the power of his wristwatch to drain all the pollution and corruption dry. But the cost was that everything other than himself would be utterly eradicated. Along with it, the patients' consciousnesses and souls would be blended forever with the corruption, siphoned off to who knew where, never to find release.
Yet what he aimed to do now was completely sever their consciousnesses and souls—already merged deep within the flesh—from this immortal vessel!
Indeed, just as Professor Ye had demanded.
To excise the spirit from the mortal shell!
No need to tiptoe around for fear of damaging the vessel, no need to hesitate or look back... This time, under the sweep of the Non-Offensive hand, the spreading flesh was effortlessly brought into order. And then, the bone knife in his hand fell.
That clear, translucent edge seemed poised between the illusory and the tangible, simultaneously severing flesh and soul where they were entangled. The despair of burnt-out hope and the death craved by life were harmonized by Mercy, dissecting the labyrinthine connections between the two with consummate ease.
Even more important was a certain guidance welling up from instinct.
"Three tenths inward. After removing the growth, cut from the flank."
"The bony overgrowths and organs aren't the priority; set them aside, don't mind them."
"The nerves, lymphatics, and viscera in this section are tangled together. Seal them off for now; tissue regenerated after resection will only be more chaotic."
"Compared to disordered flesh, the intermingling among souls is the key."
The moment the blade moved, hallucinatory voices seemed to echo in his heart, integrating into his instincts to provide guidance—some familiar, some foreign, yet all sounding like things he had heard before.
Back in the hospital's conference room...
In a brief daze, Ji Jue looked up and glanced across from him. In the empty air, phantoms seemed to materialize; doctors looked at him, smiling, offering instruction and encouragement.
With the scalpel as a medium, this repository of knowledge and experience channeled into Ji Jue's movements without the slightest hitch or hesitation.
The wailing paused for a fleeting moment.
In that sudden dead silence, Ji Jue's hands plunged into the chaotic flesh. The bone knife darted about, excising every clinging adhesion with fluid grace, separating and dissolving the boundaries between souls.
Meanwhile, his other hand, wrapped in the Non-Offensive matrix, reached out and clenched hard, refusing to let that tiny soul and consciousness slip past his fingers.
This time, he finally caught it.
"Out... with you!"
Blood surged; severed limbs squirmed.
The flawless resonance between Primacy of Mind and Masterwork Nature allowed a mortal body of flesh to act directly upon the soul. Sealing, severing, and then reconstructing.
In just an instant, he finally grasped the vital strand among the countless tangled threads.
Wrench!
A piercing cry rang out, right in Ji Jue's hands!
A small scrap of flesh squirmed, trailing a rotting umbilical cord as it was completely extracted from the tumor. Its underdeveloped limbs twitched, and upon its indistinct face, the very first tear since its birth finally fell.
An infant.
"Never thought that even now, I'd still be doing obstetrics work," Ji Jue chuckled self-deprecatingly. He reached out and gently wiped the spoiled amniotic fluid from its face. The crying grew louder and clearer as the child greedily drew breath, shouting, weeping.
Those dark, bead-like eyes moved with all their might, finally fixing upon Ji Jue.
Its lips parted for a brief moment.
Almost like an expression of thanks—a smile of relief.
Then, it rapidly withered, shattered, turned into flying ash, and blew toward the far horizon.
Leaving behind only a lump of mutated, shriveled flesh, which Ji Jue tossed into the waste bin.
It had been born, and it had welcomed death.
Meanwhile, a thread of spiritus light broke free from the taint of the White Manor, soaring freely toward a place evil corruption could never reach.
"Patient Number One: cured."
Ji Jue murmured softly to himself. In the hallucinations ringing in his ears, he seemed to hear wild cheers and jubilant shouts. The blessings resting upon the scalpel flared with light, growing ever more dazzling!
*Crack!*
High in the sky, another fissure appeared, crisscrossing like iron bars, making the projection of the White Manor appear ever more ethereal and distant.
Yet on the other side of the firmament, an ascending presence, its grand image beyond form, slowly emerged, looking down in response to the call. Then, swaying stars like sparks of fire converged faintly in one place, silently burning like kindling of the Celestial Furnace... while on the opposite side, the ocular flames within the Furnace of Stagnant Rot burned low.
And down upon the earth, the surgery continued.
Everything was only just beginning.
Chapter 172