The vinyl seam under my fingernails tasted like vinegar and despair.
I spat out a mouthful of industrial foam, kneeling beside the porcelain basin in the corner of Room 404. A lesser cultivator would have succumbed to Clara’s foul sedative, but my meridians, though clogged with mundane grease, were forged from five centuries of swallowing boiled arsenic for sport.
I scraped two gouges into the padded wall, rolling the grey stuffing between my palms. Foam stuffing. Dried flakes of lime from the cracked baseboard. Three drops of lukewarm fluid drawn straight from the porcelain reservoir’s siphon valve. A speck of my own earwax for binding essence.
I pinched the sludge into a sticky, misshapen black sphere roughly the size of a pigeon egg. Then, channeling three miserable threads of Yang Qi through my fingertips, I charred the surface until it produced an odor resembling burning rubber and old licorice.
"The Nine-Turn Bone-Knitting Silt Pill," I muttered, setting it atop the plastic bedside shelf to dry. "Crude. Repulsive. But enough to purge the marrow of any worm crawling on two legs."
The electronic latch hissed. The heavy steel door swung inward, revealing Director Barnaby.
He entered like a fat rooster surveying a flooded barnyard. A silver stethoscope swung over his double-breasted tweed suit, and his left foot was encased in an enormous orthotic slipper. He limped with every step, his round, ruddy face pinched in agony.
Behind him stood Dr. Croft, clipboard pressed against his chest like a wooden shield, dark circles carved deep into the sockets beneath his tortoiseshell glasses.
"Look at him, Julian," Barnaby huffed, propping himself against my nightstand with a loud groan. "Not a shred of remorse. The seismic tremors yesterday cracked forty thousand dollars worth of structural concrete in Ward C, and this fellow tells the orderlies he was trying to cast a subterranean anchor!"
"Mr. Qiao's fixation on geokinetic delusions is compounding, Director," Croft said, jotting a mark on his paper. "He needs increased chlorpromazine. He claims his stolen drone is an ancient broadsword."
"I care nothing for his mechanical toys!" Barnaby wiped sweat from his upper lip, his face grimacing as he shifted weight off his left toe. "God in heaven, my foot is on fire. It’s the imported ham. I told Beatrice the cured Iberian cut would flare the uric acid, but did she listen? Three days until the municipal audit, and I can barely drag my carcass across the lobby."
His roving, distracted gaze dropped to my bedside shelf.
The Director blinked. His small pig-eyes lingered on the charred, lumpy ball of mud resting beside a cup of water.
"What is this?" Barnaby asked, leaning in. "Did someone smuggle confectioneries past the desk? Is this an artisan dark truffle?"
"Director, don't touch that," Croft warned, stepping forward. "Contraband in 404 is rarely edible."
"I am the grandmaster of the Nine-Peak Furnace," I said coldly, sitting cross-legged on my thin mattress. "Do not soil my pill with your grease-slicked fingers, mortal. That medicine is meant to scour the dead flesh from my own spleen."
Barnaby scoffed, waving Croft away. "You think you can hoard luxury sweets in my facility, 404? This is a clear breach of institutional policy. Confiscated. In fact..."
Driven by spite, childish gluttony, and the desperate need to exert petty dominance, the fat fool snatched the medicine and shoved it directly into his mouth.
"Director!" Croft yelled.
Barnaby crunched down. His round cheeks froze. His eyes bulged like two hard-boiled eggs popping from a pot.
"Disgusting!" Barnaby gagged, his larynx convulsing. "It tastes like... like asphalt and swamp drainage! What did you—"
He swallowed. He had to. My concoction possessed an internal magnetic polarity tuned to the esophagus; once past the tongue, it dragged itself down the gullet like a hungry leech.
A sickening *crack* sounded from the Director’s left slipper.
Barnaby shrieked, clawing at his windpipe. Then, his face transitioned from beet-red to an alarming shade of lavender. Black, oily sweat burst from his pores, staining his crisp white collar instantly. A sound like boiling grease rumbled deep inside his belly.
"Call a code blue!" Croft dropped his clipboard, lunging for Barnaby. "He poisoned the Director! Clara! Orderlies!"
"Silence!" Barnaby roared.
The room went dead still.
The Director stopped clutching his neck. He looked down at his left foot. He wriggled his toes. Then, without a hint of hesitation, he stomped his afflicted heel into the linoleum floor with the force of a pile driver.
*Thud!*
No grimace. No scream. The inflammation had visibly receded, the swelling in his slipper collapsed like a punctured tire.
"My... my joint," Barnaby whispered. He took a brisk step. Then another. He skipped once, his expensive tweed jacket flapping wildly. "The calcification. The throbbing heat. It’s... gone. The Iberian ham has been defeated!"
Croft stared, his mouth hanging slightly open. "Director, you just consumed an unidentified compound made of bathroom debris."
Barnaby didn't hear him. He whirled on me, his pig-eyes wet with an almost manic reverence. He dropped down on both knees, right onto the filthy floor of Room 404, crushing his pressed slacks without a single thought.
"Master," the Director choked out, seizing the hem of my paper hospital gown. "The holistic bio-resonance! The ancient homeopathic detoxification! You cleared forty years of crystalized purines in eight seconds! Teach me! I will pay any sum. My private clinic in the hills—I'll make you head of integrative medicine!"
I looked down at the bald pate bowed before me. Truly, mortals were predictable dogs. Feed them a crumb of heaven, and they begged for the leash.
"You wish to enter my outer sect?" I asked smoothly.
"Yes! Anything!" Barnaby pleaded, rubbing his cured foot with tears in his eyes.
"Grant me two hours in the recreation yard," I said. "Unsupervised. And instruct your lackeys to keep their paws off my materials. The dragon beneath your feet stirs, and only my stone array will prevent this septic pit from plunging into the core of the earth."
"Courtyard privilege granted! Immediately!" Barnaby barked, turning his head toward Croft. "Julian, sign the recreational slip!"
"Director, this violates every security protocol—"
"Sign it, or I will reassign you to night shift urinal inspection!"
Ten minutes later, the autumn wind struck my bare ankles against the open concrete.
The yard was surrounded by twelve-foot chain-link fences topped with razor wire, but beneath the manicured turf, the spiritual veins were bleeding. I could feel the magma-hot pulse of the slumbering Earth Dragon grinding against the bedrock three miles below. Every vibration hummed in the marrow of my shins.
Sitting near the wooden bench was Chloe Sun. She sat motionless, wrapped in an oversized grey cardigan, her pale hands folded neatly over her knees. When I stepped into the sunlight, her dark eyes flicked upward, meeting mine.
That soul-mark. Faint as an autumn leaf drifting on a river, yet unmistakable. In my previous life, she had thrown herself into the Cauldron of Seven Stars to forge the very blade Croft had locked in his cabinet. Now, she was an empty vessel, her tongue silenced by trauma, her memories shattered into mist.
I gave her a solemn nod. *Wait for me, Lian'er. Once my sword is reclaimed, I shall mend your spirit.*
She tilted her head, her fingers tightening around the wool of her sleeve, completely blank.
I went to work. I gathered sixty-four smooth grey gravel stones from the decorative flowerbed. I placed them along the flagstones, tracing the Eight-Directional Subterranean Lock. Three pebbles for the Mountain Gate. Five for the River Trench. Seven for the Iron Pillar.
"Just sixteen more," I muttered, kneeling on the hard asphalt, setting the penultimate stone into alignment. The air above the formation began to waver with faint heat-distortion, the ancient seal taking shape.
*Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.*
A wide plastic push-broom slammed straight through the center of my formation, scattering the sixty-four stones like bowling pins.
I froze. My Qi backfired, tasting like copper in the back of my throat.
Nurse Clara stood over the wreckage, leaning heavily on the wooden broom handle. Her floral-patterned scrubs were immaculately clean, but her smile was pure, dripping venom.
"Oh, goodness me, Mr. Qiao!" she chirped, her voice dripping with artificial sympathy. "Director Barnaby said you could enjoy the fresh air, but we can't have rocks all over the walking path. Patients might trip!"
"Viper," I hissed, rising to my feet, my joints popping. "You intentionally severed the seal."
Clara leaned in, her hazel eyes narrowing until the pupils seemed to stretch into vertical golden slits. "The Great Worm does not bargain with an insect in pajamas," she whispered, too low for the yard orderlies to hear. "Enjoy the warmth, Grandmaster. It rises."
A muffled detonation shuddered beneath our shoes.
The copper sprinkler heads lining the manicured grass hissed, then screamed. The ground convulsed with a violent, sickening lurch that threw Barnaby—who was watching through the glass double doors—flat against the lobby window.
*BOOM!*
The sprinkler caps blew off into the sky like artillery shells. Out of the brass pipes erupted not water, but thick, steaming, sulfurous black mud. The scalding sludge rained down upon the yard, hissing against the grass and melting the synthetic patio furniture.
From the largest ruptured pipe near the center of the enclosure, the mud coalesced into a thrashing, dog-sized horror—a jagged mass of clay and shale with burning coal sockets and a maw lined with obsidian fangs.
A Minor Earth-Gargoyle.
It roared, spitting scalding steam, and turned its burning gaze toward the bench.
Chloe Sun sat entirely frozen, paralyzed with shock, as the creature gathered its stone haunches to leap straight at her jugular.