I had a violent, swirling mass of qi in my body, centred around my dantian. I had smashed through the bottleneck that separated eight and nine-star Qi Gathering.

From one to eight-star I had opened one meridian after another, purging the impurities and improving the flow of qi through my spirit veins. I had assumed the final star would be the same, but once again this world left me in a panic.

My knowledge of eastern medicine, the closest allegory for this whole cultivation nonsense I had, told me that there should be twelve principal meridians. Yet, there were only nine stars to the Qi Gathering Realm.

It was at times like this that I wished my predecessor had been more studious. He had worked hard, yes, but he seemed to have been allergic to reading.

I was an idiot.

In my moment of panic I'd forgotten that weeks earlier I'd read hundreds of cultivation manuals. Even though they wouldn't give me an exact method, they would tell me roughly what I was attempting.

If only the language those old coots used wasn't so poetic, I might be in a better position. Most of them said things such as:

"Gather your spirit and return to one, embracing the world."

"From one grows eight, from eight emerges one."

There was a clear logic there, the symbolism of eight and one. Eight meridians, one cultivator. However, I would've much preferred a step-by-step guide.

Embrace the world. Return to one.

Perhaps…?

I had two options. Either I could forcefully end the breakthrough, losing a portion of qi in the process and perhaps damaging my foundations. With my potent regenerative powers, it wouldn't be so bad.

However, I needed the strength that this breakthrough would bring to rescue Wang Ren and defeat those who held us in this city. Which meant I had to take the dangerous route.

I devised my own way of advancing, using those various manuals as inspiration as well as my own history of cultivation. I guessed that the meaning of those poetic lines was that one needed to join all eight meridians into a single circular flow, joining with the dantian.

If I was wrong? I had no idea what might happen. I was like a blind man trying to race a formula one car.

Even so, I had to push onwards. All those elders back in the Cloudy Falls Sect had warned that rushing ahead leaves shaky foundations, but I had the opposite problem.

My foundations were sturdy, but I was building without a blueprint. If I built one beam wrong, the entire tower might come crashing down. However, forging a unique path wasn't meant to be easy.

I gathered the raging qi, forcing it into submission. Eight meridians ran through my body, connecting my spirit veins to my four limbs and back.

The flow of qi had vastly improved with each meridian I cleared, but I could sense the imperfections. There were blockages between the dantian and the meridians. Incomplete connections.

Rather than clearing a muddy path, the goal here was to forge a new one. I had a flash of inspiration. Oddly, without encountering this curse I might have no idea how to proceed with my own cultivation. When I encountered Zhu Jie I would have to thank her before beating her senseless.

During the surgery, I used my patient's qi to seal the wound in their dantian. I was constructing solid forms using energy. I needed to do the same here, only scaled up a thousand times on an infinitely more complex scale.

I had never backed down from a challenge. I started to weave my qi. The smallest meridians were the four which flowed through my arms, so I started there.

Once I had a feel for the process I could attempt the larger meridians. They were strange structures, tube-like and yet formed from a criss-crossing mesh of quasi-physical matter.

As with my dantian, they existed inside my body but also apart from it. It hurt my brain thinking about it, so I didn't.

I could control my qi, so that was all I needed to do. I began from the opening of the meridians, layering strands of qi into a web and gradually expanding the meridian towards my dantian.

The actual construction wasn't too difficult. However, having to focus on controlling my qi while also ensuring I made no errors was a constant struggle. My mind was still reeling from the surgery I'd just performed, but there was no space for complaints.

A structure gradually took form. My meridian reached out towards my dantian as I went. Before long, it was hovering right above the shell. I had a decision to make.

Did I simply join the eight meridians to my dantian individually? How would that affect the flow of my qi? Did it operate on a pressure-based system the way water pipes did?

It was times like this that I wished cultivators took a more scientific approach to things. Research, test, document, simplify.

Rather than laying a foundation for future generations, I had the feeling that those lofty masters got off on their own sense of superiority and intentionally mystified the process to keep others down.

After all, who wanted more rivals?

Qi flowed in cycles, round and round the body. Most techniques followed a similar pattern, except for a few which relied on explosive power or sharp edges. I barely knew that many myself, most of them my own half-baked creations.

To that end, I decided that I would connect a single exit and a single entry point to my dantian. The four meridians which flowed into my limbs would be fed by the exit point while the other four would return into it.

If it didn't work? Once we escaped this place I could tear it down and start again. Actually I'd need to wait until we finished exploring the Blossoming Heavens. Well, better to do a job half-right than not at all.

I joined the completed structure to one side of my dantian, then began to build outwards and join with the other meridian in that arm. I worked like this for all four, first connecting them into my dantian and then finishing the flow by joining the exit point.

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After what felt like an eternity, I placed the final strand of qi into place. In that instant, I felt a surge of spiritual energy flooding into my body from the world around me. I gasped at the sheer quantity of it.

None of the manuals described a phenomenon like this. I was at a loss. Either way, it couldn't harm me.

I focused on cycling the energy through my newly formed meridian system. From eight individual paths to one endless flow.

A portion of the energy was cycled through my refined heart, becoming fuel to further the refining of my liver. My entire spirit and body was being baptised as I pushed my way through the early and middle stages of nine-star Qi Gathering.

Around half-way to the peak the baptism ended. I opened my eyes, exhaling a faint greenish-black mist of qi and impurities.

Then I scrunched up my nose. My eyes watered at the foul stench of the black goop coating my body and staining my robes.

Sighing, I looked around at the shambling corpses that filled the streets. Hopefully there was a working bath in one of these houses.

I didn't want a repeat of that nonsense in the Jagged Sword Mountains.

Thankfully after searching eight houses I found a wooden tub that didn't have too many spiderwebs in it. I'd found a bath in the third house, but it was already occupied by a legless zombie.

I decided to leave that dude to chill and find another. There was a faintly glittering blue spirit stone embedded in the rim of the tub. I assumed that was a tap of sorts, but I hadn't encountered a bath of this design before.

After messing around, I discovered that sending some qi into the spirit stone would cause the bath to fill with water. It was ice-cold, but I didn't care. All I needed was to scrub myself clean.

About thirty minutes later I felt somewhat human again. It was a small luxury; one which I felt guilty about having given Wang Ren's current predicament, but I couldn't exactly save him while covered in foul-smelling goop.

What hero saved the day with the stench of an open sewer clinging to him? A shitty one, that's who.

I spread out my mana senses once more. I found Wang Ren in the same location he'd been before. Wasting no more time, I donned a clean robe from my spatial bag and began to rush across the rooftops.

It took me less than a minute to reach his location. I found this street absolutely filled to the brim with zombies. A few even grew violent when they bumped into another, scratching and clawing at one another.

However, those fights never went on for long. Once they had let out their grievances, they returned to their lethargic ambling about.

Of all the strange things in this city, peaceful zombies were perhaps the weirdest. Even weirder than the cursed insectoid cultivators. Those at least I could understand, but what was the purpose of these walking dead?

Wang Ren's spiritual presence was inside a large building. The paint was peeling and the sign above the entrance was mouldy and decrepit, but I surmised this place was once an inn.

Entering, I found a bar packed with zombies. Sitting at tables, clasping mouldy tankards and garbling incoherently, it was a twisted caricature of a lively bar.

In the centre of the chaos, laughing and sipping on a splintered, rotten cup, was Wang Ren. His eyes were dull, glazed over as if he were sleeping.

Yet his movements were lively and jubilant. I felt sick. I felt my disgust for this Zhu Jie growing with every moment. Slaughter and cruelty were one thing, but mind control? That was repulsive.

Walking over to him, I placed a hand on his shoulder. He didn't even seem to notice, clanking his cup against that of a nearby zombie's. On any other day I might have laughed at such a scene, but I found no laughter coming to my lips now.

It only took one brief application of my healing technique to break him from the trance. I had been expecting to find cursed energy inside his body, but there was nothing.

Not even a poison.

That left only one possibility. This was a technique powered by qi. An enchantment that beguiled all those who entered Dancing Lights City. It was the same one I had broken myself.

The only oddity was the familiarity I felt. It reminded me of the soul controlling worms of the Gao Clan, but without a creature guiding the technique. Whatever it was, Wang Ren was no longer under its influence.

"Ugh… Junior Brother Zhao, is that you?" he asked, stuttering like a drunk.

My mouth split into a wide grin. "You sound like shit, Senior Brother," I chuckled.

He looked down at the cup in his hands, flinching at the mould and rot. When his gaze snapped upwards and he saw the zombies sitting at his table, he leapt to his feet. The chair was thrown back, smashing into two halves against the ground.

"What manner of demonic nest is this!?" he exclaimed. "What are these creatures? The bar… That Madame, she…" he mumbled random phrases while his gaze darted back and forth.

"The entire city is a lie. A creature known as Zhu Jie controls it from the centre of her web, enchanting visitors and sending them to her children for entertainment," I explained.

Once I told him of my various encounters with the cursed insectoids and how I had healed them, he was able to calm down. However, I could tell from his pale face and nervous gaze that he was unsettled.

I empathised. It had not been easy for me either and I had managed to break the spell on my own. I couldn't imagine what he must be feeling, having believed he was drinking and laughing among friends.

"Sect Leader, I have failed you," he suddenly said, falling to his knees and pressing his head to the ground. "I began enjoying myself to the point that I even forgot about your existence. Punish this pathetic one."

I sighed. He was so rigid when it came to matters such as this. Placing a hand on his shoulder, I lifted him up.

"Wang Ren, enough. I am just glad that I was able to reach you before anything worse happened. If you want redemption, then join me to free this city from that damned witch," I told him.

He brushed off his robe and nodded. A determined gaze settled in his eyes as the fires of vengeance were lit within him. This was the Wang Ren I knew.

"Lead the way."

"Let's go. Remember, don't kill any of them unless you have to. The curse controls them, their actions are not their own," I reminded him as we raced towards the next district.

There were two more between us and the towering spire where Zhu Jie and her strongest child resided.

Wang Ren nodded in understanding. "With us working together, restraining them will be easy."

He suddenly stopped and stared at me, his gaze travelling down towards my navel and then back up to my face. "Sect Leader, your cultivation!? Nine-star… How?"

I tapped my temple and smirked. "What? Shouldn't a sect leader be a towering tree that shields his followers from lightning and rain?"

"Hmph. I'll catch up to you soon enough," he snorted.

Actually I felt that for a man like him, having a rival who he had to chase after was the best motivation of all. He needed constant challenge.

He wasn't a madman like Elder Bang, his master, had been. However, he shared the same fiery passion for battle. Only with his glaive in hand, in the middle of a chaotic battlefield, did I ever see him smile.

There was only one guardian in each of the districts we passed through. They were six and seven-star respectively.

With Wang Ren and I working together, it wasn't a challenge at all. He restrained them while I performed my surgery.

When he saw the first person return to a human form and regain their consciousness, he had an odd look on his face. We explained the situation to the dazed man before advancing.

The second guardian was a similar situation, but this time I could've sworn the temperature around Wang Ren increased when the treatment was finished. I understood his feelings well. I shared them.

We arrived at the base of the spire. The streets here were free of the walking corpses. Instead they were covered in thick spider webs.

With a snort, Wang Ren slashed his glaive a single time, carving the webs into scraps. A clear path had been formed between us and the entrance of the tower.

Eighteen floors lay between us and our enemy.

I wasn't sure what we would find at the top. Another cursed individual, perhaps, taking it out on those around her. A twisted sorceress forcing others to do her bidding.

Whatever Zhu Jie was, we would be ending her games and leaving Dancing Lights City in control of our own minds, all curses purged in our wake.

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