Chapter 1

"Chen Jue, give me back my sister! Bring her back!"

"I trusted my big sister to your care, so why couldn't you save her? You killed her and her baby—two lives gone! Give me back my sister, give me back my nephew! You murderer! You'd have to die a thousand times to make up for this!"

"Give me back my wife and kid! Chen Jue!"

"That's right—I want to live!"

Many people were shaking Chen Jue's coffin lid, desperately trying to claw him out of it...

Chen Jue thought, I'm already dead—stop digging me up! He struggled hard, trying to escape those bloodshot eyes, those arms like iron, and the eighteen levels of hell, falling endlessly with no bottom in sight...

He knew this was his personal nightmare, a dream, not real, but Chen Jue was still trapped in it, his body feeling as if crushed under seven coffins stacked on top of him, unable to breathe. Then a small hand reached out of the coffin. A bruised, bloody child crawled out, dragging a long umbilical cord as it inched toward Chen Jue. Only then did he let out a loud shout and jerk awake from the nightmare.

He didn't know if he'd screamed his throat raw. When Chen Jue sat up with a jolt, something was fluttering outside the window. He couldn't see what it was, but the sound was familiar.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

The sound was especially shrill in the pitch-black night, a long, drawn-out cry.

Oh, it was that damn rooster—the one that should've ended up in a pot—crowing at all hours like it had no sense of time.

Chen Jue clutched his chest, gasping for air. His heart was beating too fast—about 120 per minute—and very urgently, like it wasn't getting enough blood.

He pressed his hand hard against his chest, and only after catching his breath did he slowly lean back against the wall.

His heart was still beating. He wasn't dead. Somehow, he was alive.

He'd ended up alive in another time and place.

He'd died after being shoved down a flight of stairs by a patient's relative. The person who pushed him was the patient's younger brother, who, in a blind rage, had somehow found superhuman strength. Chen Jue had indeed failed to save the pregnant woman, and when facing the family, he'd been the one in the wrong.

Chen Jue also touched the back of his head. The lump there had mostly subsided now, but in his original world, it would never have had the chance to go away.

He had been pushed backward, hitting the back of his head on the corner of a step. Even though he was in a hospital, there had been no chance to save him. He was a dead man.

He was sure he'd died right then and there.

But now...

Chen Jue let out a silent sigh, feeling like being alive was worse than being dead.

After his heartbeat slowed, Chen Jue looked around.

The world he'd landed in wasn't in any history book. Of course, if this was a parallel world or some kind of time rift, it wouldn't be in any history book they'd studied.

Judging by the villagers' clothes, this era was older than the Qing Dynasty—maybe around the Song Dynasty. Although it was a culturally rich era, it couldn't compare to later times. In such an ancient period, medicine was underdeveloped, and so was everything else.

They didn't light oil lamps in this house at night, so Chen Jue had to close his eyes for a moment before he could vaguely make out anything.

It was still that thatched hut, with low windows covered in thick paper, making it hard to see anything. He could only faintly see that rooster stretching its neck to peck at the corn strung up on the wall outside.

That one living, breathing creature—as real as it gets—told him he was still here.

Chen Jue leaned his aching head back against the mud wall. He hesitated for a moment, then reached down to touch his belly.

His belly was still small—flat and smooth. He couldn't feel the child at all.

Yes, there was a baby in his belly right now.

And he was definitely a man, yet there was a child in his belly.

When they'd first pulled him from the river, he'd hit his head on a rock, coughed up water, and slipped into a brief coma. The village chief had sent for a physician.

That physician with a thin white beard had felt his pulse and said he was pregnant. Chen Jue thought he was having hallucinations after death and closed his eyes, ready to go back to the dead.

But when he opened his eyes again, he was still lying in this ancient thatched hut—and still pregnant.

Over the past few days, he had felt his own pulse countless times and come to the same conclusion as that doctor.

He was indeed pregnant—the child was a little over two months along.

Chen Jue had lain on this heated brick bed for three days due to dizziness, still unable to figure out how this one-in-ten-thousand miracle had come about.

Just like his bizarre arrival in this time and place, it was inexplicable.

While feeling his pulse, Chen Jue had also given himself a full once-over.

His appearance was undoubtedly male, but since he could carry a child, he must have some kind of hidden reproductive tract.

Chen Jue hadn't watched many TV dramas, and the ones he had watched were all medical dramas.

He had watched a Japanese medical drama about a doctor who time-traveled to save his girlfriend who was dying of terminal cancer.

But that male doctor had merely traveled—his original body had fallen into the time rift.

Nothing about his body had changed. But Chen Jue had not only gained a new ability—he'd also gained a child.

He wasn't sure if he should count himself lucky.

He'd been shoved down the stairs and killed by a patient's relative, then resurrected in some ancient era he didn't recognize—and now he had a baby in his belly.

When all the shocking revelations piled up, none of them seemed to matter on their own anymore.

This was the effect of multiple curses stacking up.

Chen Jue sat there, face blank, in the pitch-black night. Every single detail now defied everything he knew as a doctor, yet he still thought about it with a blank face, as if this wasn't even him.

He had a cold personality—and he was just as cold to himself.

"Gifted but arrogant, cold in demeanor;

Though highly gifted, lacking the compassion of a true healer, he is ultimately not a good doctor."

That was the outside world's assessment of him when he became the Director of Cardiac Surgery at twenty-nine.

Maybe because his memory was too good—he had a photographic memory—he could still recall those words.

He hadn't paid them any mind before.

His personality was already set in stone. The head nurse had told him countless times to be kinder to patients' families, to show some emotion—warmth, compassion, sympathy. To empathize with patients.

Otherwise, one day the families would cause trouble.

Chen Jue sat blankly on the kang (a heated brick bed), thinking—she really had called it.

He had finally been pushed down the stairs by a family member.

And when they made a scene, they went all the way—straight to death, with no chance to make it right.

Chen Jue slowly clutched the fabric over his chest. He felt suffocated, and for the first time, he felt pain.

Everyone dies someday. He accepted death—like keeling over from overwork on the operating table—but he had never imagined he would one day be shoved down a flight of stairs by a patient's family and die that way.

Chen Jue had replayed that medical incident in his mind countless times. It shouldn't be called a medical accident—it was a failed resuscitation.

Xinhe... I'm sorry.

I'm not trying to dodge blame, but I can't catch my breath, and my chest hurts too much.

Chen Jue thought.

He took a few deep breaths, forcing himself to keep thinking, since sleep was out of the question.

Outside the low window, that rooster was still pecking at corn kernels while letting out an occasional 'cock-a-doodle-doo,' adding a touch of life to the deathly quiet night.

Chen Jue stared at the window, its light flickering, and went on thinking.

Xinhe was the pregnant woman.

She was the wife of Huo Jilin, the current CEO of Huachen Pharma.

Huo Jilin was also a big shareholder of Zhonghai Hospital.

Jiang Xinhe had a serious heart condition.

And he—he was the Director of Cardiac Surgery, the youngest one at Zhonghai Hospital at the time.

So he ended up as Jiang Xinhe's attending physician.

Chen Jue inhaled slowly. At the time, he hadn't wanted to take on a patient who didn't even value her own life.

Childbirth was already a brush with death, let alone for a heart patient.

You couldn't save both the mother and the child.

Jiang Xinhe had once smiled softly at him and said, "In this world, how can there be a way that's perfect—true to the Buddha and not failing him?"

At that point, she could barely catch her breath, yet she was still reciting poetry to him, line by line, for her child—Tang poems, Song ci, and when those ran out, even Buddhist sutras.

When doctors weren't enough to rely on, the Buddha became a lifeline.

So she knew her own condition. Medicine couldn't save her.

Unfortunately, human obsession is something even the Buddha can't change.

Jiang Xinhe was determined to have this child, ignoring everyone who begged her not to.

Chen Jue asked her why she was so set on having this child. If she didn't have it, she might live to a ripe old age. Medicine was improving—maybe she could have a kid later.

Wasn't the Huo Group investing in in-vitro embryo research at their hospital? Though he didn't agree with that research, at the time it became one of his arguments to convince her.

Jiang Xinhe had only looked at him and smiled. Chen Jue understood the meaning in her smile—she didn't want a child born that way either.

Chen Jue still remembered the words Jiang Xinhe said to him right before she was wheeled into surgery.

She'd been reading to her baby, just setting down the book, and casually remarked: "God has a sense of irony. Cats love fish but hate the water; fish love worms but can't get on land. Everything in this world goes through the cycle of having and losing, choosing and letting go. I give up my life to trade for its life—that should work, shouldn't it?"

That wasn't a casual remark—that was her writing her last will. Chen Jue watched her without a word.

He wasn't good with words, and even if he were, he couldn't talk a mother out of sacrificing herself.

He wasn't an OB. He'd seen plenty of mothers, but Jiang Xinhe still baffled him.

He couldn't quite wrap his head around it.

He was a healthy baby, yet he'd been abandoned at this hospital the moment he was born. His mother was the exact opposite of Jiang Xinhe.

Jiang Xinhe was willing to give up her own life to bring that sickly child into the world.

Why?

He just stared at Jiang Xinhe.

Jiang Xinhe was still joking with him: "Doctor Chen, don't look so glum. Life isn't all smooth sailing. I'm willing to give everything I have to trade for its life."

She said it with a gentle but determined look, yet there was a bone-deep sorrow in her voice.

At the time, Chen Jue didn't know why she was so sad. He figured it was his fault.

He let out a long, heavy sigh.

The fact that Jiang Xinhe was thinking about writing a will was partly his fault as her attending physician. In the first few months of treating her, he'd constantly tried to talk her into aborting the baby, which had made her pessimistic—so much so that now, about to go into surgery, she wanted to write a will.

Chen Jue had told her flat out: "I don't do life-for-life trades."

"Then promise me—if something goes wrong, save the baby first. I'm begging you, Doctor Chen..."

"I'm begging you, Doctor Chen... Save it...

Take my life in exchange for its..."

Chen Jue raised a hand to cover his eyes. The lump on the back of his head had gone down, but his eyes still stung, as if every blood vessel was about to burst.

He'd done everything he could, but he hadn't saved either one—the mother didn't make it, and neither did the baby.

Author's Note:

First off, happy New Year to everyone.

I'm starting this new story at the start of the year. The first part is already done, so you can read without worry. Feel free to add it to your collections—I'll keep updating after the New Year. Thanks for collecting, commenting, and reading.

This story is about childbirth. It's been a while since I wrote one, and my fingers were itching, so I wanted to write one.

Note: All the medical stuff in this story is completely made up—don't take it seriously.