The physician was dangling by four frayed fingernails over the belly of a tectonic hell-wyrm, yet his primary concern appeared to be his synthetic clipboard. "Help!" Dr. Croft shrieked, his wingtip shoes kicking frantically against thirty feet of sheer, exposed rebar. Beneath him, the fissure burped a geyser of superheated sulfur that singed his polyester trousers. "The structural integrity—my pension—somebody grab the fire hose!" I stepped to the precipice, adjusting the sleeves of my white linen institutional smock. Such graceless panic. A second-tier disciple of the Nine Nether Valley would have accepted incineration with far more decorum. "Silence your squawking, Physician Croft," I commanded, extending two fingers toward the abyss. "You disturb the convergence of the subterranean ley-lines." I flicked my wrist. The Azure Crane Lifting Talisman required no paper when one possessed pure meridian pathways. A translucent ripple of spiritual force snaked downward, hooked the doctor firmly by his synthetic belt buckle, and hoisted him upward through sheer invisible leverage. He did not rise like a man being hauled; he hovered vertically, drifting through the air like a dandelion seed caught in a divine updraft, until his feet tapped gently onto the cracked linoleum beside me. Croft collapsed onto his hands and knees. He patted his thighs, his groin, his neck, then dragged his palms across the scuffed floor wax. His face had turned the color of week-old curd. "Thermal updraft," Croft wheezed, chest heaving like a bellows. He scrambled backward from the magma pit, gripping his air monitor so hard the casing cracked. "A localized chimney effect created by the pressurized rupture of the municipal geothermal main. Extreme convective air resistance buoyed my body mass. Simple physics. Textbook thermodynamics. I am not having a psychotic break." "Naturally, Junior Brother," I said smoothly. "Whatever bedtime fable comforts your fragile spirit realm." Director Barnaby arrived at a panicked waddle, wheezing through his mustache, flanked by two orderly guards wielding foam extinguishers. "Julian! My God! The south wing is condemned! The Board of Trustees will strip my parking space!" "We are fine, Director," Croft said, rising shakily to his feet and yanking his white coat straight with violent, jerky motions. His pupils were the size of pinheads. He looked around the wrecked recreation room, where twenty terrified inmates were cowering beneath overturned steel tables. "Nobody is hallucinating. This is merely an acute situational crisis. We will regain operational order immediately." Croft pointed an unsteady finger at the ring of orange polymer chairs that had miraculously survived the floor's collapse. "Assemble!" Croft barked, voice cracking into a high pitch. "Crisis management protocol! An impromptu debriefing cluster! We will process the trauma of this catastrophic infrastructure failure through dialectical behavioral therapy right now!" I observed the man with mild pity. In this mundane realm, when the sky fell, the powerless evidently formed a ring to discuss their sorrow. Still, a gathering of minds suited my purpose. The earth dragon’s core anchor lay somewhere within this fortress of madness, and these lesser beings might inadvertently hold the key. "Very well," I said, claiming the tallest chair with the posture of an emperor taking his jade throne. "Convene your tribunal." The ward residents shuffled into place like condemned prisoners. Chloe Sun sat two seats to my left. She kept her knees tucked tight against her chest, her bare feet pale against the grit-covered floor. Her gaze never left my face. In the dim, red glow reflecting from the crack in the floor, the spiritual imprint upon her brow shimmered with familiar, agonizing brilliance. My late Dao companion had worn that exact, stubborn expression moments before the Blood Moon Tribulation obliterated our mountain peak. "Let us begin by establishing grounded reality," Croft said, furiously scribbling nonsense on his cracked clipboard. "Who can describe what we just experienced using rational, non-metaphorical terminology?" "The ancient slumberer stirs beneath the stone," I stated clearly. "Its scales grind against the abyssal basalt, seeking the blood-pole of the northern meridian. If the subterranean anchor is not reinforced with nine spirit-cleansing stones before the third watch, this entire province will be drowned in liquid fire." Croft squeezed his pen so hard the acrylic casing snapped, squirting blue ink across his knuckles. "Delusional externalization of structural engineering failures. Textbook paranoia. Chloe! You’ve been silent. How did your sensory perceptions process the boiler explosion?" Chloe did not reach for her journal. Instead, she rose, moved with haunting, silent grace toward the dry-erase whiteboard on the intact north wall, and grabbed a red marker. Her hand moved without hesitation. She did not sketch a cartoon, nor did she write childish pleas for release. With sweeping, mechanical precision, she drew four interlocking trigrams, surrounding an octagonal cage anchored by three jagged runes. Air locked in my chest. It was the Nine-Fold Dragon Subjugation Array. The proprietary secret of the Cloud-Piercing Sect. A diagram known only to myself and the woman who had died shielding my nascent soul four centuries ago. At the center of the drawing, she drew a single, deliberate downward arrow, labeling the bottom in crude, shaky English: *BOILER ROOM B-4.* Croft squinted at the whiteboard, scoffing. "A juvenile representation of the hospital's central heating layout combined with occult iconography. Typical schizotypal pattern-matching—" "She speaks the divine truth!" Director Barnaby cried suddenly, clasping his chubby hands together and staring at me with dog-like devotion. "Patient 404 warned us about the mud! He cured my gout with the sacred clay! If he says the boiler is cursed, Julian, we must appease the steam!" "Director, please, you are compromising institutional boundaries—" The recreation room doors swung open. Nurse Clara glided in, pushing a stainless steel cart laden with steaming paper cups. She wore her pristine white scrub dress, completely untainted by the soot that covered the rest of us. Her smile was sweet, maternal, and thoroughly venomous. "I brought chamomile tea for everyone," Clara trilled, her voice dripping with artificial warmth. "With a splash of organic lavender honey to calm our racing nerves after that nasty water-pipe shudder." She began handing the cups out. She handed one to Croft, who drank it greedily, and moved toward Chloe with two cups balanced on a resin tray. As she drew near, the scent reached my nostrils. It was not lavender. It was the rancid, metallic stench of powdered Wight-Bone Herb, mixed with the distilled essence of Soul-Rot Spores. One swallow would sever a mortal’s spiritual consciousness permanently, rendering them a hollow husk—incapable of ever holding an awakened soul again. She was trying to obliterate Chloe's dormant memory before the girl could finish the array. "Drink up, Chloe, dear," Clara purred, thrusting the cup into Chloe’s hands. "It will wash away all those silly pictures." I did not bother with pleasantries. I stepped forward, raised my arm, and struck the tray with the flat of my palm. The paper cups exploded into steam and scalding liquid, splashing across the floor tiles, where the brew hissed and immediately ate away the linoleum in a puddle of bubbling gray foam. "Insolent subterranean reptile!" I roared, towering over her. "You dare offer your vile marrow-corrupting slop to the reincarnated matriarch of the Cloud-Piercing Sect?!" Clara stumbled back against the wall, clutching her wet apron, eyes wide with performative horror. "Dr. Croft! He attacked me! He’s having a violent manic episode!" "Restrain him!" Croft shouted, reaching for his whistle. "Hold your fire!" Director Barnaby bellowed, throwing his portly body directly between me and Croft. "Look at the floor! The tea is eating the linoleum! The tea has caustic agents! Patient 404 has saved us from institutional liability yet again! Nurse Higgins, where did you source these botanical extracts?!" Croft froze, staring at the sizzling hole melting through the floorboards. Amidst the chaos, Clara straightened her uniform. Her sweet, modest facade dropped for a fraction of a heartbeat. She looked past the shouting director, locking her amber-flecked eyes onto mine. Her lips did not move, but her voice echoed directly inside the cavern of my skull, sharp and cold as a serpent’s tooth. *Enjoy your little victory, grandmaster,* the whisper slithered through my consciousness. *Your precious flying relic is locked inside the sub-basement medical incinerator. The pilot flame ignites at midnight. When your metal melts, the dragon’s collar snaps.*

The Dao of Group Therapy