The Venom-Hearted Patient
By @john1208
The story opens at a lavish high-society engagement party, where disgraced heir Bram Vance drinks a lethal chemical to escape his arranged marriage to his fierce medical rival, Dr. Sloane Aris. Instead of dying, his body is taken over by Vekesh the Venom-Hearted - a hot-tempered, fiercely loyal poison grandmaster grieving his fallen disciples. Now locked in Crestfall Asylum, Vekesh spends his days in motionless cultivation to purge the modern toxins from his frail blood. Sloane, serving as his lead psychiatrist, diagnoses his profound meditation as severe catatonia.
But Crestfall Asylum is unknowingly built on a fault line of dark energy. When parasitic shadow-demons begin possessing the staff, Vekesh violently beats the entities out of them with a mop - a brutal spectacle Sloane eagerly records as a 'miraculous breakthrough in aggressive aerobic therapy.' A mysterious celestial voice promises Vekesh that curing the sick will grant him a ticket back to his lost disciples. However, as the ground literally rumbles beneath the ward, Vekesh realizes his miraculous healings are a trap. Will this venomous saint shatter his padded cell to stop an apocalyptic earth dragon, or will his desperate reward consume the city?
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