The fluorescent lights of the Jiangcheng General Hospital flickered with a rhythmic, soul-crushing hum that seemed to echo the fading heartbeat on the monitor in Room 402. Elena Lin sat on a cold plastic chair, her head buried in her hands. The air here smelled of bleach and impending death—a scent she had grown to loathe over the last six months.
"Miss Lin, I'm being as patient as the board allows," a sharp, nasal voice cut through her exhaustion.
Elena looked up. Dr. Harrison stood over her, his lab coat crisp and white, contrasting sharply with Elena's faded denim jacket and the dark circles under her eyes. He held a clipboard like a weapon. "The outstanding balance for your mother's ICU stay is now sixty thousand dollars. If the payment isn't cleared by noon today, we have no choice but to transfer her to the charity ward."
Elena's heart constricted. The "charity ward" was a death sentence for someone in her mother's condition. It lacked the advanced life-support systems keeping her mother's fragile organs from failing.
"I just need three more days," Elena whispered, her voice rasping from lack of sleep. "I've applied for a loan. I'm waiting to hear back from my father's old associates."
Harrison let out a short, derisive snort. "Your father's associates? Elena, your father died a disgraced man. The Lin family name is synonymous with medical malpractice and 'voodoo' herbalism. No one in this city is going to give you a dime."
Elena flinched as if he'd slapped her. Ten years ago, the Lin family had been the guardians of the legendary Celestial Phoenix medical techniques—a fusion of spiritual Qi and acupuncture that had healed the city's elite for generations. But a ruthless corporate takeover and a framed scandal had stripped them of everything. Her father had died of a broken heart, and her mother had been left a shell, eventually collapsing into this mysterious coma.
"Please," Elena begged, standing up. "My mother is a human being, not a ledger entry."
"Noon, Miss Lin," Harrison said, turning on his heel. "After that, the machines are turned off."
Elena stood frozen as he walked away. Her hand instinctively went to the small, silk pouch hidden beneath her shirt, hanging from a cord around her neck. Inside was a single, slender needle made of an ancient, matte-silver alloy. It was the last heirloom of the Lin family—the Phoenix Needle. Her father's dying wish was for her to never use it, to live a quiet life far from the world of medicine that had devoured them.
But the quiet life was killing her mother.
Numb with desperation, Elena walked out of the hospital into the oppressive heat of the Jiangcheng afternoon. The city was a sprawling metropolis of glass and steel, a place that worshipped wealth and efficiency. She had nowhere left to turn. Every relative had closed their doors; every "friend" had deleted her number.
She was crossing the hospital's VIP parking lot when the world suddenly turned to chaos.
A black Rolls-Royce Cullinan screeched to a halt just yards away from her. The doors flew open, and a group of suited bodyguards scrambled out, their faces pale with panic.
"Master Blackwood! Master Blackwood, stay with us!" one of them shouted.
From the backseat of the car, a frail, elderly man was being pulled out. He was convulsing, his face a terrifying shade of purple-grey. His eyes had rolled back into his head, and a thin, white foam was gathering at the corners of his mouth.
"Call the emergency team! Get Harrison out here now!" a younger man in a sharp grey suit barked. He was holding the elderly man's head, his hands trembling.
Elena stopped. Her eyes narrowed, her vision instinctively shifting. Since she was a child, she had been trained to see what others couldn't—the flow of Meridians. To her eyes, the air around the elderly man wasn't just air; it was a swirling mess of stagnant energy. She saw a dark, icy blue light radiating from his chest, suffocating his heart.
Cold-Yin Poisoning, she thought, her pulse quickening. This isn't a heart attack. If they use a defibrillator on him, the electrical shock will react with the stagnant Qi and kill him instantly.
A medical team from the hospital came sprinting out, led by Dr. Harrison himself. They had an AED and a gurney.
"Get back! Give us room!" Harrison shouted at the bodyguards. He quickly tore open the old man's shirt and prepped the AED pads. "He's in cardiac arrest. Charging to two hundred!"
"Stop!" Elena's voice rang out across the parking lot, surprising even herself.
Harrison paused, looking up with a snarl. "Lin? What the hell are you doing out here? Get lost!"
Elena pushed through the crowd of bodyguards, her eyes fixed on the old man. "You can't shock him. It's not his heart—it's a pulmonary blockage caused by a thermal imbalance. If you shock him, you'll rupture his primary meridian."
Harrison laughed, a sound full of malice. "Pulmonary blockage? Primary meridian? This isn't your grandfather's tea shop, you crazy girl. This is real medicine. Stand back or I'll have security arrest you!"
"He's dying!" Elena shouted, looking at the man in the grey suit. "Look at his fingernails! They aren't blue; they're black. That's not oxygen deprivation; it's toxicity. You have thirty seconds before his lungs collapse!"
The man in the grey suit, who Elena realized was the old man's grandson, hesitated. He looked at his grandfather's blackening nails and then at Harrison. "Is she right?"
"She's a fraud, Mr. Blackwood!" Harrison spat, pressing the pads to the old man's chest. "Clear!"
Thump.
The old man's body arched violently. But instead of the rhythm returning, a horrifying gurgling sound came from his throat. A spray of dark, almost black blood erupted from his mouth, staining Harrison's white coat. The heart monitor on the portable unit flatlined into a continuous, high-pitched scream.
"Vitals are gone!" a nurse screamed. "He's hemorrhaging!"
Harrison went pale. "I... I don't understand. The shock should have—"
"You killed him," the grandson whispered, his face turning into a mask of pure, cold fury.
"Move," Elena said. Her voice was no longer that of a desperate daughter; it was the voice of a Master.
She didn't wait for permission. She shoved a stunned nurse aside and knelt by the old man. Her hand moved with a blur of speed, pulling the Phoenix Needle from the silk pouch. The silver metal seemed to catch the sunlight, humming with a faint, invisible vibration.
"What are you doing?" the grandson grabbed her wrist. His grip was like a vice, cold and powerful. "Don't touch him."
Elena looked him dead in the eye. Her brown eyes seemed to glow with a hidden amber light. "You have two choices. You can let me save him, or you can watch him go cold while you wait for a 'qualified' doctor to sign his death certificate. Choose. Now."
There was something in her gaze—a profound, ancient authority—that made the man's grip loosen. "If you hurt him further, I will make sure you never see the sun again."
"I'm already in hell," Elena muttered.
She ignored the gasps of the crowd. She held the needle between her thumb and forefinger, closing her eyes for a split second to center her internal Qi. She could feel the "Ice Poison" inside the man, a jagged, freezing force.
With a precision that no machine could match, she plunged the needle into a point just three inches above the man's navel—the Sea of Qi.
"She's stabbing him! Security!" Harrison yelled.
But the bodyguards didn't move. They were staring at their master.
Elena twisted the needle sharply. Internal heat, flow through the silver, she commanded her own spirit. She felt a surge of warmth leave her fingertips and travel down the needle.
Suddenly, the old man's body stopped convulsing. The dark blood on his lips began to turn a bright, healthy red.
Elena didn't stop. She pulled the needle out and struck four more points in rapid succession: the throat, the temples, and both wrists. Each strike was accompanied by a soft hissing sound, like steam escaping a pressure valve.
Beep.
The flatline on the monitor jumped.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The old man's chest heaved. He took a gasping, ragged breath, and his eyes fluttered open. The purple-grey hue vanished, replaced by a faint, healthy pink.
"Grandfather?" the grandson gasped, falling to his knees.
The old man blinked, looking confused but alive. "Leo? Why... why am I on the pavement?"
Elena sat back on her heels, her face suddenly ghostly pale. Using that much Qi in her weakened state had drained her. Her hands were shaking, but she quickly hid the needle back in its pouch.
Harrison stood there, his mouth hanging open. "That... that's impossible. He was dead. You can't bring back the dead with a piece of wire!"
Elena stood up, her legs feeling like lead. She didn't look at Harrison. She looked at the grandson, whose piercing blue eyes were now fixed on her with an intensity that made her skin prickle.
"He needs a warm infusion of ginger and ginseng, no cold water for forty-eight hours," Elena said, her voice steady despite her exhaustion. "And keep him away from whatever 'medicine' Dr. Harrison was prescribing. It was feeding the ice in his blood."
She turned to walk away, her mind already snapping back to her own reality. The adrenaline was fading, and the weight of the sixty-thousand-dollar debt was crashing back down on her. She had saved a life, but she still couldn't save her mother's.
"Wait!" the grandson called out.
Elena stopped but didn't turn around.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"Nobody," Elena replied. "Just a ghost from a family you probably helped destroy."
She began to walk toward the hospital entrance, her heart heavy. She had only minutes until noon. She didn't see the man in the grey suit signal to one of his guards.
"Find out everything about her," the man whispered, watching Elena's retreating figure. "Her name, her family, her debts. And get the best suite in this hospital ready for my grandfather. I want her mother's records on my desk within the hour."
Elena Lin didn't know it yet, but the Phoenix had just been caught in the sights of the most dangerous man in the country. And Alexander Blackwood never let a prize escape.