The needle slipped from my trembling fingers, clattering against the marble floor like broken promises. Blood pooled beneath Master Zhang's convulsing body, each spasm a testament to my failure. His eyes rolled back, showing only white crescents of approaching death.
"You killed him," Su Xinyue's voice cut through the suffocating silence. Her ice-blue gaze pierced through me, sharper than any blade I'd ever known. "The greatest acupuncturist in Beijing, dead because you couldn't control your pathetic Qi."
I pressed my palms against the cold floor, watching crimson seep between my fingers. The emergency room's fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting harsh shadows across Master Zhang's pale face. Three days ago, he'd been teaching me the forbidden meridian techniques. Now he lay dying from my amateur attempt at the Seven Star Revival.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this." My voice cracked, sounding foreign even to my own ears. The silver needles scattered around us gleamed mockingly, each one a reminder of my hubris.
"Supposed to?" Dr. Chen's bitter laugh echoed off the sterile walls. "You thought you could master techniques that take decades? Your arrogance killed the only man who believed in you."
The heart monitor's steady beep faltered, then flatlined. That piercing tone drilled into my skull, matching the rhythm of my breaking sanity. Master Zhang's final breath escaped his lips like a dying prayer, taking with it the last thread of my old life.
"Security will be here soon," Su Xinyue's heels clicked against the floor as she circled me like a predator. "They'll find you covered in his blood, needles in your hands. The media will have a field day."
I stared at my reflection in the pooled blood. The face looking back wasn't the confident medical student I'd pretended to be. It was a broken boy, drowning in consequences he never saw coming. My photographic memory replayed every moment of the failed procedure, each detail burning itself deeper into my consciousness.
"Twenty-three years old, and you've destroyed everything." Her words struck like physical blows. "Your medical license, your future, your pathetic little clinic dreams. All gone because you couldn't accept your limitations."
The sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer with each passing second. Red and blue lights flickered through the hospital windows, painting the room in colors of judgment. My hands shook as I reached for the scattered needles, muscle memory driving me to restore order even in chaos.
"Don't touch those," Dr. Chen's voice carried deadly warning. "You've done enough damage for one lifetime."
But my fingers closed around the silver instruments anyway. The metal felt warm against my skin, almost alive with residual energy. Something pulsed through the needles – a current I'd never felt before, ancient and powerful. My consciousness expanded, touching the edges of forgotten knowledge that shouldn't exist in this modern world.
The Seven Star Revival wasn't meant for healing, a voice whispered in my mind. It was meant for awakening.
Master Zhang's body jerked once, then lay still. But in that moment of movement, I saw something impossible. His meridian pathways glowed faintly beneath his skin, mapping out patterns I'd only seen in ancient texts. The Qi I'd accidentally released wasn't killing him – it was transforming him into something else entirely.
"What did you do?" Su Xinyue's composure cracked for the first time. Her pale face reflected the same horror I felt building in my chest.
The hospital room's temperature dropped ten degrees in an instant. Frost began forming on the windows, despite the autumn heat outside. Master Zhang's body emanated an aura of wrongness that made my skin crawl with supernatural dread.
"I tried to save him," I whispered, though the words felt like lies even as they left my mouth.
"You awakened something that should have stayed buried." Dr. Chen backed toward the door, his medical training warring with primal fear. "The old texts warned about practitioners who crossed the line between healing and necromancy."
Master Zhang's eyes snapped open, but they weren't human anymore. They held the cold intelligence of something ancient and hungry. His lips curved into a smile that belonged on a corpse, revealing teeth that had grown longer and sharper than any human's should be.
"Thank you, little apprentice," his voice carried harmonics that shouldn't exist. "You've given me exactly what I needed."
The heart monitor screamed back to life, but the rhythm was wrong. Instead of a human heartbeat, it pulsed with the cadence of ritual drums from forgotten temples. The fluorescent lights flickered and died, plunging us into darkness broken only by the unholy glow emanating from Master Zhang's transformed meridians.
Su Xinyue's scream pierced the air as something moved in the shadows. The creature that had been my mentor sat up with fluid grace, its movements too smooth for living flesh. When it looked at me, I saw hunger in those glowing eyes – not for food, but for the life force that kept me breathing.
"Run," I gasped, though my legs felt like lead. "Get out of here now."
But the doors slammed shut with supernatural force. The windows frosted over completely, sealing us in with whatever I'd unleashed. My hands still clutched the silver needles, their warmth now burning like brands against my palms.
"You cannot escape the consequences of your ambition," the thing wearing Master Zhang's face spoke with layers of voices from different centuries. "But perhaps... we can make a bargain."
The creature's attention shifted to Su Xinyue, whose beauty seemed to fascinate it in a way that made my blood run cold. She pressed herself against the wall, designer clothes torn and expensive makeup streaked with tears of terror.
"Leave her alone," I stepped forward, surprising myself with the strength in my voice. "Your quarrel is with me."
"Ah, but she carries something far more valuable than your amateur Qi." The creature's laugh sounded like breaking glass. "Her bloodline connects to the old temples, the ones that fed on human greed and desperation. She's a conduit, whether she knows it or not."
Su Xinyue's face went white with understanding. "You're lying. My family has nothing to do with that darkness."
"Your grandmother's confession tells a different story." The creature produced a yellowed journal from nowhere. "The Su family fortune was built on blood sacrifices to entities like me. You're not just an heiress – you're a key."
My mind raced, processing implications that terrified me. If Su Xinyue's family was connected to the old cultivation world, then my failed procedure had triggered something much larger than one man's resurrection. The needles in my hands pulsed with responding energy, as if they recognized kindred power.
"What do you want?" I asked, though I dreaded the answer.
"Simple," the creature smiled with Master Zhang's corrupted face. "Help me open the meridian gates that your kind sealed centuries ago. In return, I'll teach you the true arts of life and death."
The offer hung in the air like poison. Everything I'd ever wanted – real power, genuine knowledge, the ability to transcend my limitations – was being offered by something that had just murdered my mentor and stolen his body.
Su Xinyue caught my eye across the darkness. Despite her terror, she shook her head minutely. A warning, or maybe a plea. But what choice did I have? The creature held our lives in its borrowed hands.
"And if I refuse?" I asked, though we both knew the answer.
"Then you'll join your precious Master Zhang in a different kind of existence." The creature's eyes flared brighter. "Though I suspect your pretty companion will serve my purposes regardless of your decision."
The temperature dropped another ten degrees. My breath came out in visible puffs as I weighed impossible choices. In the distance, the sirens had stopped. Either the police had arrived, or something had stopped them from getting closer.
The silver needles in my hands suddenly felt heavier, charged with potential I barely understood. My reflection in the frosted windows showed a young man on the precipice of a choice that would define the rest of his existence.
Choose wisely, my voice whispered in my mind. Because after tonight, there's no going back to being ordinary.
The creature that had been Master Zhang leaned forward, its borrowed face eager with anticipation. Su Xinyue pressed herself deeper into the shadows, her expensive perfume doing nothing to mask the scent of her fear.
And somewhere in the building's depths, something else was stirring. Something that had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.
The needles grew hot enough to burn, but I didn't let go. Whatever happened next, I would face it with the tools of my trade in my hands.
Even if those tools were about to transform me into something I no longer recognized.