The rain vanished. The smell of rotting garbage and antiseptic faded into nothingness.
Burt was no longer lying in the mud. He was floating.
He opened his eyes to find himself in an endless expanse of white mist.
There was no sky, no ground, only a swirling, pearlescent fog that hummed with a low, ancient vibration.
"Where… where am I?" Burt whispered.
His voice didn't croak; it echoed, clear and resonant.
"You are in the Mind Palace of the Supreme Medical Saint," a voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The mist parted, revealing a figure standing before him.
It was an old man with a long white beard, dressed in flowing robes that seemed to be woven from starlight.
He looked at Burt not with pity, but with a fierce, demanding pride.
"I am your ancestor," the old man said. "And you, Burt Lot, are the last of our bloodline."
Burt stared, his mind reeling. "My bloodline? What are you talking about? My mother was a cleaner. I… I'm nobody."
The old man scoffed, his face filled with disbelief. "A member of my bloodline was a cleaner?"
He didn't wait to hear an answer and waved a hand.
The the mist shifted, forming an image. Burt saw his mother, years ago.
She wasn't scrubbing floors. She was standing in a forest, her hands glowing with soft green light as she healed a wounded wolf.
"Your mother was the Saintess of the Divine Valley," the ancestor revealed. "She fled to the mortal world to protect you from our enemies. She sealed her powers, crippling her own cultivation to hide her aura."
The image changed. It showed his mother in the hospital bed at Gold Medical, pale and wasting away.
"The Golds… they said it was cancer," Burt stammered.
The ancestor shook his head. "Lies! It was the Cold Poison of the Shadow Sect. She could have cured it instantly if she had unsealed her power, but that would have revealed your location."
"She chose to die a mortal death, suffering in silence, to keep you safe until the ring awakened."
Burt fell to his knees. The realization hit him harder than Tyson's fist.
She hadn't just died. She had sacrificed herself.
And the Golds… they had treated a divine saint like a beggar, feeding her useless chemotherapy while charging him a fortune for it.
"They profited from her sacrifice," Burt hissed, his hands curling into fists. "They mocked her."
The ancestor nodded. "Rage is good, but it wasn't rheir fault. So I'm telling you now. Today, you inherit the legacy she died to protect."
The old man raised a finger and pointed at Burt's forehead.
"Receive the Nine Divine Needles—the technique to steal lives from the King of Hell."
"Receive the Primordial Body Refinement—a physique that cannot be broken by mortal hands."
"Receive the Medical Gaze—eyes that see the truth hidden in flesh and bone."
A beam of golden light shot from the ancestor's finger, slamming into Burt's skull.
"ARGH!"
Burt screamed as information flooded his brain. It wasn't just knowledge; it was muscle memory.
He saw millions of acupuncture points. He felt the flow of Qi through meridians he didn't know existed.
He learned recipes for pills that could cure plagues and poisons that could melt steel.
His body felt like it was being torn apart and stitched back together. His bones cracked and reformed, denser and stronger.
His blood boiled, burning away the impurities, the weakness, and the toxins of a lifetime of poverty.
"Awaken, my descendant," the ancestor's voice faded as the white world began to dissolve. "The world thinks you are trash. Show them they are but dust beneath your feet."
GASP.
Burt's eyes snapped open.
He sat up, his chest heaving.
He was back in the alley. The rain had stopped, leaving the asphalt slick and black under the streetlights.
He touched his ribs. No pain.
He touched his face. The swelling was gone.
His nose, which he was sure had been broken, was straight.
He looked down at his hands.
Under the grime and blood, his skin was glowing with a faint, healthy luster. He could see… everything.
He looked at a puddle of water three feet away. He could see the individual ripples, the microscopic movement of a mosquito larva swimming in it.
He looked at the brick wall. He could see the stress fractures in the mortar, the heat radiating from the pipes behind it.
The Medical Gaze. It was real.
Burt stood up. He felt light, explosive. The hunger and fatigue that had plagued him for days were gone, replaced by a hum of energy in his lower abdomen.
He looked at the heavy steel dumpster next to him. A massive, industrial container filled with waste.
On instinct, he lashed out.
BANG.
His fist collided with the thick metal side of the dumpster.
It didn't hurt.
Instead, the metal groaned and buckled. A fist-sized dent, three inches deep, appeared in the steel.
Burt stared at his hand, shocked. Not a scratch.