The fluorescent lights above the operating table buzzed faintly, their white glare reflecting off stainless steel instruments. Dr. Shen Liang's hands never wavered, even as sweat gathered at his temples beneath the surgical mask.
"Scalpel."
The nurse pressed it into his palm without hesitation.
He made a precise incision, the familiar resistance of skin yielding beneath his blade. The beeping of the heart monitor echoed steadily, anchoring him in the rhythm of life and death.
The young woman on the table had been in a car accident, her ribs shattered, lungs filling with blood. For anyone else, it would have been hopeless, but for Shen Liang, it was simply another night on the knife's edge.
"Retractor."
As the metal arms widened the surgical field, Shen Liang bent lower, eyes narrowing. His world shrank to a tunnel: the patient's failing body and the task of keeping it alive. Every stitch, every clamp, every flick of his wrist was as familiar as breathing.
He didn't notice the commotion outside until the doors slammed open.
"Doctor Shen! Step away!"
Two men in black stormed in, pistols glinting under the operating lights. Behind them, another gurney was wheeled in, on it, a man drenched in blood, a tattoo of a dragon coiled around his neck. He was a gangster boss.
The lead thug shoved the nurse aside, pointing his gun at Shen Liang.
"Save him first and forget about the girl."
Shen Liang didn't even flinch and his scalpel never paused.
"She's on the brink of death and if I stop now, she dies. Wait for your turn."
The thug snarled. "She's a nobody. Our boss....."
The monitor spiked. The girl's heartbeat fluttered, then dropped dangerously low. Shen Liang barked orders, moving with ferocious speed. His voice was calm but sharp as steel.
"Epinephrine. Now!"
The nurse thrust a syringe into his hand. He drove it into the girl's chest, and the monitor faltered, then steadied, her heartbeat finding its rhythm once more.
The gangster's face twisted in distortion. "You bastard!"
The gun suddenly went off.
Pain lanced through Shen Liang's abdomen. His knees buckled, the scalpel clattering to the floor. Blood soaked his white coat. His vision blurred, but he still forced his hand back onto the girl's wound, pressing down as the world tilted sideways.
He fell, and the last thing he heard was the steady beep-beep of the heart monitor.
He had saved the girl and she would live, but he wouldn't.
And darkness swallowed him whole.
---
The stench of iron and rot filled his nose.
Shen Liang gasped awake, coughing dirt from his throat. His hands fumbled across grass slick with blood. Around him lay bodies, men in armor, weapons scattered, arrows jutting from corpses. The sky overhead burned red with smoke and fire.
"This… isn't the ER." His voice rasped eyes wandering in panic.
Before he could rise, a hand grabbed his sleeve. A soldier in dented armor, face pale as wax, stared up at him with desperate eyes.
"D-Doctor… help… me…"
Shen Liang froze. Doctor? No—how could this stranger know?
Then a cold voice chimed in his skull:
[Patient critical. Left lung collapsed. Cardiac tamponade detected. Estimated survival: three minutes. Recommend emergency thoracotomy.]
Shen Liang's heart pounded. The voice was cold, mechanical, almost inhuman, yet every word it spoke was exact, clinical, and undeniably medical.
His gaze dropped. The soldier's chest was caved in, blood bubbling at the lips. His surgical instincts screamed at him, without immediate intervention, the man was as good as dead.
"But I have no tools…"
{ Improvisation required. Materials detected: dagger, leather strap, metal fragments. Now you can proceed }
His fingers closed around a fallen dagger. The balance was crude compared to a scalpel, but the edge gleamed. He tore the soldier's breastplate open, then cut fast and sure. Blood sprayed out, hot and metallic, but Shen Liang's hands never shook.
"Clamp....no, I need… damn it, leather." He ripped a strap from the soldier's armor, twisting it into a makeshift clamp. His fingers found the pericardium, slitting it open to release the pressure around the heart.
The soldier convulsed. Then, he breathed. Weak, ragged, but alive.
Shen Liang exhaled, sweat dripping into his eyes. He had saved a life. Again.
A low growl cut through the air.
He spun around. From the shadow of the treeline emerged a beast, wolf-like, yet twisted, its hulking frame towering twice the size of a horse. Black saliva dripped from its jagged fangs as its feral, ravenous eyes fixed on him.
Shen Liang staggered to his feet, a dagger in hand. His chest still burned from the gunshot, but his body moved with an odd clarity.
The voice whispered again:
{ Host in combat. Weak point identified: carotid artery, 4.2 cm depth, left side of neck. Suggest incision trajectory. }
His grip hardened. As the beast lunged, he shifted smoothly aside, the dagger flashing. His strike wasn't that of a swordsman, but of a surgeon, precise, unflinching, and ruthlessly exact.
The blade slid across the beast's throat in one clean cut.
A crimson spray erupted as the creature staggered, collapsed with a heavy crash, and lay motionless.
Shen Liang's breath came hard. His white coat was gone, replaced by torn armor and mud, but his hands were steady. The same hands that could heal a heart… could just as easily stop one.
The soldiers who remained alive stared at him in awe and fear.
"He… He... he saved him… and killed the beast…"
One whispered, trembling:
"He is a saint with his scalpel… and simultaneously a demon with his blade…"
Shen Liang stared down at the dagger, the blood dripping from its edge.
A scalpel in one world. A sword in another.
And in both, he would decide who lived… and who died.
The battlefield was quiet now, save for the crackle of distant flames and the moans of the dying. Shen Liang stood in the ruin of it all, chest heaving, his vision still blurred at the edges. His fingers twitched, gripping the blood-slick dagger, reluctant to let it go.
The voice returned, calm as ever:
{ Vital signs stabilizing. Host injury detected. Abdominal bleeding—severe. Recommend immediate intervention. }
Shen Liang lurched, his hand clamping instinctively over the gash in his abdomen. When he drew it back, it was slick with dark, wet blood. He ground his teeth, a bitter breath escaping. "Damn it… by all rights, I should already be dead."
The System chimed again:
{ Host survival priority: locate resources. Tools acceptable: thread, bone needle, and alcohol substitute. }
He looked around and all he could see were corpses, shattered armors, and shards of steel. His stomach twisted painfully, and not from the pain, but from what he knew he had to do.
Dragging himself toward a fallen body, he broke a spearhead free and filed it against stone until it tapered to a crude point. From another corpse, he tore a strip of linen. He didn't think..... He didn't allow himself to.... He simply worked.
The soldiers watched, horrified and transfixed, as Shen Liang sat on the blood-soaked grass and began to stitch his own flesh with trembling hands. Each puncture sent fire ripping through him, yet his motions remained steady, clinical, and methodical.
By the time he tied the final knot, his breath was ragged, and his skin pale. But he was alive.
"Doctor…" The soldier he'd saved earlier, still half-conscious, his voice a whisper, reached for him. "You… you are not… human, are you?"
Shen Liang managed a faint, strained smile on his face. "Human enough."
Before he could say more, a horn blared in the distance. Not one, but many, low, resonant, and carried by the wind.
The surviving soldiers paled. One of them scrambled to his feet. "The beasts were only the vanguard… the enemy army is coming!"
Shen Liang lifted his gaze over to the ridge, shadows shifted, rows upon rows of armored figures marching in formation, banners rising above them like a dark tide.
His body screamed to collapse, but the System pulsed coldly in his mind:
{ Incoming threat identified. Survival odds: 12%. Recommend tactical withdrawal. Option: align with local forces for protection. }
The soldiers were already breaking, some staggering to their knees, others gripping their swords with shaking hands. Their commander was dead. Their healer was gone. Now, it felt like a headless troop...
And then, suddenly, all eyes fell on him, the stranger, the doctor who could stitch life back into dying lungs, and who could cut a monster down with the surgeon's precision.
Someone whispered, voice desperate and trembling:
"Doctor Shen… what do we do?"
Shen Liang stared at the oncoming tide, blood soaking through the crude stitches in his abdomen, the dagger still heavy in his hand.
He had been a surgeon his whole life. Decisions on the edge of life and death were nothing new.
But never before had an entire battlefield looked to him for an answer.