Zhu Jie was a crafty opponent. She had anticipated my opening strike. The instant I rushed towards her she raised a hand and tore it through the air.

I suddenly felt as if I were running underwater, my movements lethargic. At first I believed she was using a martial technique, but something tingled in the back of my mind.

Switching to energy senses, I gasped. Filling every inch of the room, which had previously been empty, was an intricate web of qi.

It was as if a spider had spent a century weaving a masterpiece, yet Zhu Jie had created it in an instant with a single wave of her arm. Looking towards the woman once more, I realised I couldn't sense the depths of her cultivation whatsoever.

This was bad. It meant she either had the ability to completely conceal her body from prying eyes or the far worse alternative—we were dealing with an enlightened beast.

Even though the gap was only one or two star realms, the rift between Qi Gathering and Foundation Building was a colossal one. Against a beast, even more so.

They already had natural advantages that made them stronger than cultivators at the same realm. When things were exacerbated by an actual cultivation gap it was disastrous.

However, giving up was not an option. In fact, now that I knew the technique slowing my movements was formed of qi, I knew how to defeat it.

Zhu Jie refused to let me. The moment she threw out the web, she tossed the doll of Wang Ren to one side. In the same movement she tossed a silver needle into its chest.

I heard a grunt from behind me. A quick glance informed me that the transformation was speeding up. He had chitinous plates covering his entire forearms and half of his neck now. Four slits had appeared on his cheeks and forehead, foreshadowing the birth of new eyes.

There was no time to worry about my companion, however. With her hands free, Zhu Jie's figure flashed and appeared in front of me.

Dark qi swirled around her palm and she moved as though she was going to pierce my gut. At the last moment, she twirled around and danced away, giggling.

"Did you think I was that stupid? I saw how you removed the curse from my poor children. Unfortunately for you, little healer, I am far older than them. I have seen many things and fought many foes. I alone survived, leaving endless corpses in my wake."

I cursed. She had seen through me in an instant. I knew that any poison or curse she tried to inflict on me directly would be refined away by my organs.

Apparently, she knew it too. Or even if she didn't know the exact method by which I could purge them, she knew they weren't effective against me.

With a flourish, she withdrew another doll. This one resembled me. I frowned as I looked at the facial features.

It had been a few years, but my appearance was still a little unfamiliar to me. Perhaps it was due to the lack of mirrors or reflections in this world compared to Earth.

It was also a secondary concern. Cultivation removed impurities and made even the ugliest of people into handsome heroes or alluring beauties.

Without delay, a second needle appeared in her other hand. I pulsed my own qi, burning away the webs around me in a single breath.

She coughed and spat a blue liquid from the backlash, but a smile still adorned her face. With a flick of her onyx sleeve, she stabbed the needle into the doll's head.

Despite the protective film of qi over my body, I was powerless. A thousand burning lances pierced my skull, turning my brain into a nest of agony.

Every breath brought new waves of torture.

My vision blurred and the world spun around me. I couldn't tell up from down. Darkness crept into my vision in cracks and webs from the corners of my eyes.

The eerie sound of giggling and a thrumming pulse filled my ears. A burst of energy from my stomach, the second of four, wiped away the technique.

Normality returned. I gasped for breath, cycling my qi to clear any remnants of the technique. Zhu Jie was standing in front of me. In one hand she held the doll and in the other, the needle.

A cruel smile adorned her face. Her blood red lips were the most vibrant picture in the room, contrasting her white skin.

Her beauty was only a punch in the gut, knowing the twisted personality that lay within. How was she cursing me without her energy actually attacking my body?

If I could figure out the secret behind her technique it would give me a chance to fight back. As things stood, I would be turned into another one of her playthings along with Wang Ren.

I would rather die than spend an eternity as one of the cursed guardians of Dancing Lights City.

I focused like I'd never focused before. My mind was strained to the limit as I used my energy vision. She plunged the needle into the doll's heart and I braced for the pain.

Nothing happened.

The next instant I felt as if molten lead had been poured through my veins. My body burned in agony. Darkness.

I had passed out for a moment. My heart had stopped. Even though it took everything I had to simply stay standing, I forced myself to do the impossible.

Usually I relied on my senses as they were, but this time I tried to infuse my qi into my energy vision. A different kind of pain coursed through my brain as a thousand sensations and stimuli awakened simultaneously.

In that moment it was almost impossible to separate each one from the symphony of sensations, but I managed to single out just one. As Zhu Jie withdrew the needle, I spotted a thread of qi so thin it seemed to blend in with the air around it.

Stolen novel; please report.

As she pulled the needle out, the thread snapped, freeing my heart from her clutches. The burning in my veins vanished, but the phantom agony remained. Each of her tortures was uniquely painful.

But now that I'd discovered her trick, it was only a matter of time until I turned the tables. Unfortunately, it might be too little, too late.

Her eight pupils shifted, sparkling in the candlelight. A shadow flashed overhead. I ducked, avoiding a swooshing blade.

When I leapt back and stood up, I realised it had been Wang Ren striking me. His metamorphosis had finished, leaving him stronger, faster, and turned against me.

The clock was ticking.

His entire body was covered in thick, interlocking plates of chitin. Each one seemed to be a shield of its own. Both of his arms now ended in wide, flat blades that resembled glaives. One of those had been what he slashed at me with.

His feet were replaced by three-pronged insectoid claws that carved furrows into the wooden tiles with every step. For an instant our gazes locked, then as one we moved.

The chitinous glaives flashed and whirled, every breath delivering half a dozen strikes. Each of them carried the power to sever limbs and cleave flesh from bone. For now I was evading them, but he was slowly backing me into a corner.

Along with his physical transformation, the curse taking hold had skyrocketed his cultivation. Before, he'd been in the early stages of seven-star Qi Gathering. Now he was my equal, perhaps even holding an advantage.

Peak Qi Gathering.

It was the next step on my own path, but the curse had allowed him to reach it first. He'd been a prodigious talent before this, but the curse took his skills to new heights.

I was never talented in physical combat. Most of my knowledge and abilities came from a bastard blend of Earth martial arts and Zhao Dan's memories.

It was lacking against a true warrior.

Even so, that didn't make me powerless. I felt the heel of my left foot scraping against the wall. Insectoid Wang Ren smirked and lunged forward, both glaives shooting towards me.

One aimed for my heart and the other my head. A two pronged killing strike. It never landed.

In the last moment before his blades struck, I kicked out with my right leg. My knee snapped from the ridiculous explosive force, but it was healed immediately after.

At the tips of my toes, there was a whirling burst of medicinal qi. It wasn't the full application of my healing technique, only a simple one that burnt away the threads leading from his body to the curse puppet.

Unfortunately it didn't revert the curse. His body remained covered in chitin. It did, however, stop him in his tracks.

When the strings were cut he collapsed to the ground, exactly as a puppet would. I had found the weakness of using the puppets compared to directly cursing an individual.

They had no free will. No ability to move of their own will. I heard Zhu Jie curse for the first time, breaking her serene facade.

"Tch. It's no fun when the entertainment is too smart. Don't you know it's rude to interrupt the host during a show?" she tutted.

"I think it's perfectly acceptable if the show isn't to one's taste," I retorted. For the first time since we'd entered the heart of her nest, I had taken the advantage.

Now that I had unravelled all of her tricks, it was my turn to act. After checking that Wang Ren's vitals were stable, I turned my gaze back to my enemy.

She was far from powerless, but unless she had another ace hidden up her sleeve, there was little she could do to me. Her techniques were perfectly countered by my abilities.

I took three steps forward. She raised the doll with a devious smirk on her face and plunged the needle into its solar plexus.

I took another step forward, wearing a smirk of my own. I had burned away the thread of qi the moment it shot out towards my chest.

When she realised her technique had failed, her eyes went wide. Eight pupils shifted erratically. Zhu Jie took a step backwards towards her shrine.

I continued to advance unimpeded, slowly gathering speed. There was no need to rush. Clearly, she was cornered.

She had been pushed all the way back to her shrine. Another step and she would trip over. Forced to stop, she raised her arms in front of her face.

"Wait! You can't hurt me. If I die, then so will everyone else in the city!" she cried, crocodile tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.

I sighed. Why did things always have to take such a morbid turn. Nothing was ever simple.

Unfortunately for the manipulative spider, I was used to such situations. In war you had to take what you got. No victory ever came without sacrifice. Even saving a single patient was an achievement.

Most of the guardians had already been freed from the curse through my surgery. For those who remained, death would be a release from the prison of their own mind.

I took my final step, arriving in front of the crying Zhu Jie. I raised my hand, qi gathering on the edge of my palm for the killing blow.

The moment before I struck, Zhu Jie lowered her arms. The tears were gone, replaced with a twisted smirk. Cursed energy and dark qi erupted from the shrine behind her in a torrid wave, consuming the entire room and plunging me into darkness.

Unfortunately for the scheming spider, I had expected this. There was no way she would let me end her life without putting up any resistance.

The attempt at pleading to my emotions was only the first try. An instant after the cursed energy erupted, another pulse of energy struck back.

All the remaining strands of energy stored in my stomach burst. Rather than allowing the energy to disperse through my body I gathered the mist and blended it with my own medicinal qi.

It was this new energy which erupted out from my body. Everywhere it made contact with Zhu Jie's technique it purged it from existence.

Her face dropped from satisfied smile to horrified scowl as she realised what had happened. It remained frozen that way in death as the tips of my fingers sliced into her chest and closed around her core.

With a squelch, I tore it from her chest, burning away the viscera and storing it in my dimensional bag. As soon as it left her body, the corpse collapsed to the ground.

I saw dozens of thin threads snap as she died, leading in all directions outwards from the tower. Her curses and enchantments were broken.

From behind me came a groan and a thud. I turned to see Wang Ren pushing himself into a sitting position.

"Did we win? Is the spider dead?" he said while rubbing his head. "What the-"

I frowned. He had regained his consciousness, yet the physical transformation hadn't reverted. Furthermore, it didn't seem as though it would.

I rushed over to his side and knelt down. "This is odd. Killing her broke the curse, but your body…" I muttered while looking him up and down with energy vision and my own eyes.

I immediately spotted the cause. Unlike the direct application of the curse, where the transformation was fueled by the energy inside the victim's dantian, this was a permanent shift caused by the puppet technique.

Even with Zhu Jie's death breaking the shackles on his mind, his body was forever twisted into this hideous form. "Can you cure it?" Wang Ren asked, grimacing as he looked at his chitin plates and glaive-hands.

"I think so. Let me analyse it a little more. I don't want to hurt you," I responded, continuing to check for abnormalities, aside from the obvious.

"Perhaps this isn't so bad," he suddenly chuckled. "At least I have a glaive now."

I snorted. If he still had the presence of mind to make jokes it meant he wasn't doing so bad. Or he was on the precipice…

Luckily for him I finished my diagnosis. There was nothing different in his transformation compared to the others. The only difference was how it had been applied.

Unfortunately, the treatment would be far more painful. Because the transformation could not be undone by itself, I would need to carve the insectoid flesh away and then heal him back to full health afterwards.

"Do you want the good news or the bad news?" I asked, a glint in my eye.

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