Chapter 1 – I Died During Surgery… and Now I’m the Patient?!
Wu Zhou, Deputy Director of the ER, jolted awake from unconsciousness to the sound of someone frantically spping him.
“Little Gret! Little Gret!”
The voice kept shouting as the sps continued. Wu Zhou barely managed to open his eyes—only to be greeted by pure darkness. The guy yelling wasn’t giving up either. When the sps didn’t work, he grabbed Wu Zhou’s shoulders and started shaking him violently.
“Little Gret, wake up! Are you alright?!”
His head bobbed back and forth with the force of the shaking. That’s when he realized—he was lying face down, his whole face practically buried in dirt. The moment he inhaled, a wave of metallic blood, gritty soil, and God-knows-what-else rushed up his nose.
Cough cough cough cough!
He reflexively arched his back and hacked like a man choking on gravel, mentally screaming:
Who the hell id me down like this?! Do they not know a comatose patient should never be prone?! What if I vomited? I could’ve aspirated and died!
He was already pnning disciplinary drills.
Ten rounds of emergency response simution!
No—twenty!
His professional instincts kicked in hard. Even half-conscious, he was roasting the hell out of the imaginary nurses, interns, and residents who dared to handle him like a rag doll. When he finally stopped coughing and looked up, teary-eyed, one gnce around left him completely dumbstruck.
Where was the surgical mp?
The operating table?
The gurney?
Where were the nurses in white coats darting around with swift footsteps?
Where... was the hospital?
Gone was the ER building. Gone were the clean, sterile minar-flow ORs. Instead, what stood before him was a squat, crumbling hut with stone walls and a thatched roof. Mud filled the cracks between the rocks like someone tried to fix a leak with their bare hands. At the base of the wall was a half-circle pit ringed by rocks, the inside just bare earth with a few strands of withered grass.
What the hell is this pce?!
Wasn’t I in the middle of emergency surgery?!
Wu Zhou’s mind buzzed like an overloaded circuit. His body nearly gave out again. He remembered starting his shift at 9 a.m., going nonstop all the way until 4 a.m. the next day. He’d just finished a major trauma case—splenectomy, liver repair, intestinal resection—the works. After confirming no active bleeding, he told the assistants to close up, and then... bcked out.
“Little Gret, are you okay?!”
Wu Zhou stiffly turned his head. His eyes slowly adjusted to the light.
The man shaking him was a huge red-haired foreigner with sharp features and deep-set eyes. He wore what looked like a burp vest—no sleeves, muscles on full dispy—and held a bow in one hand.
Calling it a “vest” was generous. It was basically a rectangle of cloth folded in half with two armholes cut out and a rough hole for the head. The neckline and sleeve edges were fraying, the entire thing stained to the point of no return.
Honestly? Even the gauze they used in the OR looked more durable.
Wu Zhou looked down at himself.
Same burp. Same vest. Same... wait, were his shoes even worse? One toe was definitely sticking out.
His vision dimmed again. He genuinely wanted to pass out this time.
Why did you throw me into this pce?! I saved that trauma patient, didn’t I?! At least before I colpsed, vitals were stable! The surgery was a success!
Take me back!
I’ve got a mass casualty emergency to handle!
But as, no god answered his inner cries.
Still, a mass casualty emergency did arrive—just ten paces away, someone screamed in panic:
“Help—someone help!”
“Captain! Captain!”
“Oh no—his guts are spilling out!”
Wu Zhou instantly snapped back to reality.
Just like every time he heard a call for help, his training took over. No hesitation.
He bolted toward the screams without thinking.
“ON MY WAY!”
But someone got there before him—either they were faster, or just closer.
Panting heavily, Wu Zhou sprinted halfway to the scene… only to see a figure already kneeling beside the wounded man, head bowed, mumbling something under their breath.
Suddenly, a beam of white light burst from the figure’s csped hands, shining straight down onto the injured man’s body.
Within that light, the gory wound began to visibly heal before his very eyes.
Wu Zhou skidded to a halt.
What did I just see?
A time-pse of wound healing?
A live demo of particle beams accelerating tissue regeneration?
What the hell kind of nonsense was that—a single fsh of white light and the injury just started healing?!
Wait a second... that thing—
That was a Healing Spell!
Two sets of memories fired off in his mind at once. One came from Wu Zhou himself—an encyclopedic recall of all the games, novels, and anime he'd devoured over the years. The other came from the body he now inhabited. But both memories came to the same conclusion:
Healing Magic—a divine ability that channels the power of the gods to treat injuries. Even the weakest healing spell could close up small wounds in an instant. At the highest level? It could even bring someone back from the dead.
So this person casting the healing spell… they were a Cleric?
Wu Zhou gnced over.
Kneeling beside the wounded man was a young cleric dressed in the best clothes he’d seen in this bizarre world so far: a light brown linen robe that swept the ground in the front and covered the calves in the back. The cuffs and colr were neatly stitched, and a deep brown thread traced a shield-shaped emblem across the chest.
Emmmm…
So spellcasters really do sit higher on the social dder...
Wu Zhou muttered inwardly, then shifted his attention to the injured man.
He looked about forty, broad and muscur, with shaggy brown hair, matching eyes, and a wild beard. His gear was clearly better than the others’—he even had leather armor. Too bad it hadn’t saved him.
A massive gash had been torn across his abdomen, splitting the leather. A thick mass of intestines spilled out, glistening and red with blood.
By comparison, the bleeding from his arms and legs almost looked minor.
The man was half-sitting, slumped against a tree stump, his eyes barely open—on the verge of passing out. Kneeling beside him was a younger man who looked somewhat simir, maybe a younger brother or son. The young man trembled, eyes filled with hope as he stared at the wound.
That horrifying gash, its edges jagged and torn like something had ripped it open, was now squirming and twitching, slowly pulling itself together. The flesh contracted. The wound narrowed. The bleeding slowed...
Wu Zhou’s eyes lit up.
This world’s healing spells were no joke—instant effects, clean results. If only he had something like that in the OR back home...
But before he could finish the thought—
The white light... disappeared.
Only a tiny section of the wound had healed. The rest of the torn-open abdomen still gaped wide, with exposed intestines hanging out like a butcher’s dispy.
Wu Zhou: “…”
Cleric: “…”
The young man next to the patient paled instantly. Still cupping the spilled intestines in both hands, he looked up desperately. The cleric muttered another chant, over and over, trying again and again—but no white light appeared.
Finally, the young man broke.
“Again! Please, just one more! The Captain’s hurt bad!”
“I... I can’t!” the cleric cried. He was barely fifteen or sixteen, face flushed red with panic and tears brimming in his eyes. Being shouted at only made it worse—his freckles looked like they were ready to jump off his skin.
“I’m just an apprentice! I-I can’t heal something this bad…”
The younger man’s hope instantly colpsed. His head dropped. His hands trembled as he tried to shove the intestines back into the wound—
“STOP!”
Wu Zhou shouted.
The moment he did, he froze—something was off. The words he spoke weren’t in Chinese. Not English either. In fact, not any nguage he had ever learned…
And yet somehow, he understood everyone. And they understood him.
What the hell is going on?
Confused as he was, one look at the dying man was enough to push all that aside.
Someone’s hurt. That means it’s go-time.
Didn’t matter if the sky was falling, the ground colpsing, the sun exploding, or the whole world was isekai’d—first things first: save the damn patient.
He barked out orders again:
“Don’t shove it back in! Is there a clean bowl nearby?!”
“No? Then just hold it! Stay still!”
