A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

It was an ordinary afternoon. Yang Hu had just finished taking a patient's pulse when a chorus of exclamations suddenly erupted from the other end of the street.

"Oh no! Butcher Wang has collapsed!"

"She's out of breath! She's almost out of breath!"

The crowd erupted into chaos. Yang Hu's heart skipped a beat; he dropped his pen and rushed out in a few strides.

While he was seeing patients in the clinic, he vaguely heard people shouting and arguing at the street corner. Now that he thinks about it, Wang the butcher was known for his fiery temper, and he must have gotten into a quarrel with someone, which made him so angry that he collapsed.

A crowd had gathered at the street corner. A burly butcher lay on the ground, his face purplish-blue, eyes rolled back, and chest motionless. His wife sat slumped beside him, weeping uncontrollably. Several neighbors were at a loss, some trying to revive him by pinching his philtrum, others trying to give him water—it was all chaos.

"Make way!" Yang Hu crouched down, parting the crowd.

He checked for breath with one hand and pressed the side of his neck with the other. There was no breath, and he couldn't feel a pulse in his neck.

Among the onlookers, some were already sighing: "This is hopeless... Let's call a coffin shop."

"Even if the city doctor came, it would be useless; the person was already dead."

In their eyes, someone who has stopped breathing and has no pulse is dead. The dead cannot be healed. Even the old doctor who has practiced medicine in the city for decades says the same thing.

Just then, a white-bearded doctor who had been invited squeezed through the crowd, glanced at the body, and waved his hands repeatedly as he withdrew, saying, "It's beyond saving. It's beyond saving. Even a god couldn't save someone who has died so suddenly. Young man, don't waste your energy. You'll only cause trouble for the deceased and give people something to talk about."

But Yang Hu knew in his heart that the butcher had most likely suffered a sudden cardiac arrest due to a sudden surge of anger and blood stasis. In his previous life, such sudden death might have offered a chance of survival if rescued within minutes. The heart wasn't truly dead; it had simply stopped beating.

"He's not dead," Yang Hu said in a deep voice. "Don't move, let me handle this."

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable certainty. Though the onlookers were full of doubt, they still made way for him. The woman, her eyes filled with tears, grasped at a last straw and nodded repeatedly, "Miracle doctor, please save him, please save him!"

He pried open the butcher's eyelids to look inside, then opened his mouth to check his throat, making sure his airway wasn't blocked by vomit. His heart wasn't completely dead yet; this moment of stillness was the narrowest gap between life and death—if he missed it, it was truly gone.

Immediately, he unbuttoned the butcher's shirt, clasped his hands together, and placed the heels of his palms against the center of the butcher's chest, between his breasts. With his arms straight, he used the strength of his upper body to press down hard, quickly and deeply. With each press, he squeezed and pushed out the stagnant blood in the butcher's chest, making it spin.

"Pressing on the chest?" The onlookers were stunned. "What are you doing? It's a perfectly healthy corpse, why are you pressing on it like that..."

"One, two, three, four..." Yang Hu ignored it, silently counting the beats, his hands pressing down quickly and steadily.

He pressed down thirty times, then bent down, pinched the butcher's nose, pried open his mouth, took a deep breath, and fed it to him. The butcher's chest swelled up and then slowly slumped down. After feeding him two more breaths, he bent down again, crossed his hands again, and began pressing down repeatedly. The ribs in his chest made a slight cracking sound under his palms, but he dared not stop or loosen his grip. He knew that if his hands went limp at this moment, it would truly be too late to save him.

"This...this is for breathing on the dead?"

"Are you crazy, putting your mouth to mouth on a dead person..."

The crowd buzzed with discussion, while the woman stared blankly, wondering what the young doctor was up to.

Yang Hu didn't care. He pressed, breathed, then pressed again, breathed again, sweat dripping from his forehead onto the ground, his arms trembling with aching, but he didn't stop for a moment. One round, two rounds, three rounds.

The initial laughter and disapproval gradually turned into skepticism. The young doctor knelt on the ground, his expression solemn and genuine, pressing down on the "dead" as if he were truly trying to save a living person.

Not far away, Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, stood quietly by the crowd, watching. She was used to life and death on the battlefield; many strong men died without taking another breath, and she had never seen anyone pull someone back from the brink of death. Looking at Yang Hu's steady hands, the indescribable feeling in her heart deepened even more.

Time passed slowly. The onlookers gradually fell silent, leaving only the muffled thuds of Yang Hu pressing down and the rhythmic counting.

Just when everyone thought the young doctor was wasting his time.

"Cough...cough cough!"

The butcher's chest heaved violently, and a muffled cough escaped his throat. Then, he began to cough violently, and his bluish-purple face gradually regained its color!

"He's...he's alive!"

"He's breathing! The butcher is breathing!"

The whole street erupted in chaos. The woman rushed over, embracing her husband and wailing. The onlookers stared wide-eyed, as if they had seen a ghost, at the butcher who had just sat up, still somewhat dazed, and then at the young doctor squatting to the side, his brow beaded with sweat.

The dead, the living dead, were forcibly pulled back from the brink of death by this divine doctor from the east of the city.

The woman, while crying, suddenly kowtowed heavily to Yang Hu, saying, "Miracle doctor! You are a living bodhisattva! You saved my husband's life!" She kowtowed several times until her forehead turned red.

"A resurrection! This is a resurrection!" an old man murmured tremulously, about to kneel down as well. The crowd of onlookers immediately knelt down as well.

Yang Hu supported him, panting, and said, "He's not really dead, he just had a sudden loss of vital energy. If we acted quickly enough, he can still be saved."

But few people listened to this. In their eyes, what had just happened was an incredible miracle: a dead man, who had stopped breathing, was brought back to life by this young miracle doctor with just a few presses and a few breaths.

After that day, the reputation of "the miraculous doctor from the east of the city who can bring the dead back to life" spread like wildfire throughout the streets and alleys of the entire border town. Dozens of people who witnessed the scene embellished the story to everyone they met, making it more and more incredible. Eventually, it was said that the doctor could make the dead speak and call people back from their coffins.

In teahouses, restaurants, and neighborhoods, everyone was talking about that young, twenty-something-year-old miracle doctor: he could even revive those with severed throats, those possessed by evil spirits, and those who had stopped breathing.

"That butcher Wang's body was half cold, but he was brought back to life by someone pressing him down a few times."

"Those old doctors in the city take forever to treat a common cold, but this young man is brave enough to treat it, capable enough, and he treats it well."

"A hairless face? A hairless face can snatch someone from the jaws of death? That takes real skill!"

Those who used to whisper behind his back, "How much skill can a mere child like him have?" now all give him a thumbs up when his name is mentioned. The white-bearded doctor who previously waved his hand and said "there's no way to save him" dares not mention the matter in public again, for fear of being laughed at behind his back.

"That guy in the east of the city" has become a prestigious title that no one in the city dares to disrespect and that is highly coveted.

His medical reputation, from that moment on, resounded throughout this border town.

Yang Hu knew in his heart that his skills would eventually be used for more than just saving the people of one city. In the large camp to the north, which lacked medical supplies, many more than just Wang the Butcher had fallen after the battle on the city walls. Those soldiers who could have been saved, those brothers who were carried out and buried as if they were "dead," were where his hands should truly be used.