Ultimate Villain's Return as a Doctor in the Cultivation World Chapter 2 - Return of the Forgotten One

The scream that lurched back to consciousness wasn’t mine.

Well, actually, maybe it was. Hard to tell when your throat feels like you’ve been gargling broken glass and your brain feels like it’s been put through a blender.

I bolted upright, gasping, and imdiately regretted it as several fat rats scattered away from my body with indignant squeaks. One particularly brave bastard had been sitting on my chest, and it gave a look that clearly said "rude" before waddling off to join its friends.

"What the fuck?" I croaked, blinking hard to clear my vision.

I was sitting in water. Cold, murky water that slled like sothing had died in it. Multiple sothings, actually. The stench hit like a physical blow - rotting flesh, stagnant water, and sothing else I couldn’t quite identify but made my stomach lurch.

Looking around, I realized I was in a massive cave. And when I say massive, I an this thing could probably fit a small apartnt building.

The ceiling disappeared into darkness above , and strange phosphorescent moss provided just enough light to see the nightmare I’d woken up in.

Skeletons. Everywhere.

Human skeletons, scattered around the cave floor like soone had been playing the world’s most morbid ga of pickup sticks. So still had bits of rotting flesh clinging to them, which explained the sll.

And the rats - dozens of them - were having a feast, gnawing on whatever scraps remained.

"Oh, hell no," I muttered, scrambling backward and splashing more of the disgusting water. "This is not happening. This is not fucking happening."

But it was happening. The rats barely paid attention to now, too busy with their dinner. One skeleton near still had an eye in its socket, and I watched in horror as a particularly fat rat popped it out like it was a grape and scurried away with its prize.

I’m going to puke. I’m definitely going to puke.

"Okay, man," I said to myself, trying to stay calm. "Let’s think about this logically. You got electrocuted. Maybe you’re in a coma. Maybe this is just a really, really bad dream."

But everything felt too real. The cold water soaking through my clothes, the stench burning my nostrils, the sound of tiny teeth gnawing on bones. If this was a dream, my subconscious was seriously fucked up.

Another possibility hit like a truck. Well, another truck.

"So this is hell," I whispered, the realization settling in like a weight in my chest.

It made sense, in a twisted way. I’d been electrocuted. I was dead. And apparently, whatever cosmic force decided these things had looked at my life and said, "Yep, cave full of rotting corpses and rats. That’s where this guy belongs."

I blinked hard, hoping that when I opened my eyes, I’d be back in that hospital bed, or maybe even back at the café with Raj. But nope. Still in hell. Still surrounded by bones and rats and the worst sll known to mankind.

"This is just perfect," I groaned. "I spend my whole life trying to help people and animals, and I end up in rat hell."

But wait. If this was hell, where was all the fire and brimstone? The demons with pitchforks? The eternal screaming and torture? This just looked like the world’s worst cave system.

I tried to stand up, slipping a bit on the wet stone floor. My legs felt weird - not painful, exactly, but different. Like they weren’t quite mine. Actually, now that I thought about it, my whole body felt off.

Looking down at myself for the first ti, I froze.

These weren’t my clothes. I was wearing so kind of dark, expensive-looking robe that definitely wasn’t from any store I could afford. The fabric was soaked and stained, but even I could tell it was high quality.

And my hands... my hands looked different. Paler, maybe? The fingernails were longer than I rembered, and there was a ring on my finger that definitely hadn’t been there before. So kind of family crest or sothing, with a design I didn’t recognize.

"What the hell?" I muttered, touching my face. It felt the sa, but sothing was definitely off.

"Urghh—"

That’s when I heard it - a low, pained groan echoing from deeper in the cave.

Not the kind of groan you make when you stub your toe. This was the sound of soone in serious fucking trouble.

My dical training kicked in before my brain could catch up. Without thinking, I sprinted toward the sound, splashing through the disgusting water and dodging around scattered skeletons like I was running so kind of morbid obstacle course.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice echoing off the cave walls. "Soone there?"

Another groan, weaker this ti. Female voice. Definitely in pain.

I pushed past a particularly large pile of bones, nearly slipping on what looked like a ribcage, and that’s when I saw it - a strange human-shaped bump on the floor, completely covered in rats. The bastards were swarming over sothing, and that sothing was making the groaning sounds.

"Huh," I muttered, rushing forward. "Get the fuck off!"

I started swatting at the rats, kicking and shooing them away. They scattered with angry squeaks, clearly pissed off that I’d interrupted their al. But what I found underneath made my stomach drop.

It was a woman, and she was in bad shape. Really bad shape.

Her body was covered in blood - so much blood that it was hard to tell where the wounds were.

Her face was a ss of red, with more blood matted in her hair until it looked like soone had dunked her head in red paint. Her eyes were this weird hollow silver color, like nothing I’d ever seen before.

But what really caught my attention were the ears. Big, pointed ears poking out from her blood-soaked hair. And a tail - an actual fucking tail - lying limp beside her.

My brain tried to process this. Fox ears. Fox tail. In a cultivation novel world.

Beast-kin. Had to be.

But honestly? Right now I didn’t give a shit if she was part alien. She was hurt, and that triggered every instinct I’d developed over years of dical training.

I dropped to my knees beside her, my hands already moving to check for injuries. "Hey, are you alright?"

Her eyes fluttered open, those strange silver orbs focusing on with difficulty. Her lips moved, barely a whisper.

"No... how are you... alive..."

I couldn’t make out the rest. She was probably hallucinating from blood loss - happens all the ti with severe trauma cases.

I started doing a quick assessnt, my hands moving over her body to check for major injuries. Massive blood loss, obviously. Possible internal bleeding. Her pulse was weak and thready. But there was sothing else weird - her nervous system felt different under my fingers. Like a mix between human and... sothing else.

Maybe it was just my brain being fucked up from studying both human and veterinary dicine for so long. Right now, it didn’t matter.

"Okay, I need to stop this bleeding," I muttered, looking around frantically for anything I could use. "Co on, there’s got to be sothing..."

As I started to move away to search for supplies, I heard her mumbling sothing under her breath. Sothing about "couldn’t even kill the son of my husband’s murderer" or so shit like that.

I ignored it. Trauma patients say all kinds of crazy stuff when they’re in shock.

My eyes caught a glint of silver near one of the corpses about twenty feet away. I sprinted over and found what I was looking for - a knife and so small blades scattered near a skeleton. Probably belonged to whoever this poor bastard used to be.

I grabbed the knife, then imdiately cursed when I got a good look at it. The blade was covered in God knows what kind of contamination - blood, rust, and probably worse.

Using this on an open wound would be like injecting her with a cocktail of every infection known to man.

"What should I do?" I said out loud, panic starting to set in.

I wanted to save her. I needed to save her. It was my responsibility as a doctor, dammit. But with contaminated equipnt and no supplies, I was basically useless.

That’s when it happened.

A translucent blue screen popped up right in front of my face, like sothing out of a video ga.

[DICAL SYSTEM ACTIVATED]