Finally, Ming found the source of this strange aura. He'd flown slower than he could because he was afraid to lose it, but even so, the distance it had traveled was incredible.

He hovered outside a hospital, almost choking on the waves of energy coming from it.

He'd seen these hospitals before... places of healing, usually. What would this expert be doing here? Were they injured from defending their world? Is this where they went to recover? Were they a healer perhaps?

His mind reeled with questions, and he found it hard to focus when this aura choked and clung to him. He slipped inside the building and flowed toward the source.

He felt her now. A girl with a powerful soul and determination so strong it came off her in thick waves.

The weakling humans must be exceptionally talentless not to sense... this. It should be suffocating them.

He'd never felt anything like it.

Ming drifted through the sterile white corridors of the hospital and found the girl in her room. She was alone, propped up in a bed with a tube in her arm connected to a bag of fluid. A machine next to her beeped steadily. Another device seemed to breathe for her with more tubes that went down her throat.

Ming frowned. Was she part machine?

It wasn't unheard of for an expert to replace parts of themselves with metal. He scanned her gently but found nothing aside from that strange aura. Not even a scrap of cultivation.

Yet, he didn't fall into despair. She was just too... interesting.

He glided closer to her until he was just a hair's width away from her. She didn't seem to notice, and her eyes remained fixed on a glowing device with what looked like an alien language scrawled on it. Yet, the words changed every so often.

He shook his head. Such a strange world.

He stared into her eyes and brought one clawed finger to her forehead.

He placed the tip of his claw against her pale skin, careful not to hurt her delicate body.

A blue light shone from the tip of his claw and into her head. And he scoured her memories, thoughts, and emotions.

He saw her happiness with her parents. He felt the smile on her lips when she looked at them. He saw the men who broke into her home and beat her parents to death before her very eyes.

He felt the agony as they broke her bones and left her paralyzed. All so they could take a few measly possessions...

He stayed in her mind and felt her agony day by day. He felt her helplessness, her thirst for revenge, and the heart-shattering grief that haunted her.

He felt hopelessness, and despair like he had never known as she learned from coldly professional doctors that she would stay trapped in her own body for the rest of her life. Dependent and at the mercy of others.

Forever.

The pain in her heart was so great that even he despaired. Were it not for the one emotion that overpowered all of that... he would've been lost inside her mind.

But that was what had drawn him to her. Determination. Determination so raw, intense, and powerful that she exuded it from her being.

She refused to buckle and bow down, accepting a hopeless fate. The device she looked at contained countless books, and she turned pages by twitching her cheeks... she'd studied at a level far beyond her peers.

In a few years, she'd put the scholars he'd looked at to shame.

She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe without the aid of a machine, and yet she drove on and pushed forward.

Ambition and a desire for revenge burned within her. He witnessed her countless daydreams of making the ones who'd taken her family and done this to her pay...

He broke the link before he could be drawn any further in. He stared at her. This tiny child... only eight years old, and she had a fierceness about her that dwarfed any other he'd ever known.

Her body was broken, but he would have to remake the body of anyone he brought with him from this pitiful world. The sacrifice from him would be extreme, and he may never recover. Was she worth the extra risk?

It would take her years to cultivate... no not years... centuries, but maybe just maybe... she could do it.

He smiled, and his fangs gleamed under the fluorescent lights.

What was he wasting time for? He'd made his choice the moment he sensed that aura. It had to be her.

Every human he'd seen on this pitiful world paled in comparison. She was weak, and her body was broken... but he doubted her spirit could ever be.

Who better to follow the difficult path of cultivation to become a supreme expert? With this raw determination... perhaps she could reach heights that others only dreamed of. It was a long shot, but long shots were all he had now.

He looked at her with cold, calculating eyes.

She would have to agree to it... she would have to swear. He needed to know that she would take on his cause and truly embrace it with all her heart. And he knew exactly how to do that...

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***

Jie twitched her cheek, and the page turned. She felt a bit guilty for taking a break from her studies and enjoying a novel. But if she didn't, her mind got frazzled.

It wasn't exactly like she could go for a stroll in the park to clear her mind.

Besides, she'd studied for the last twelve hours straight. She needed a break. Her forehead tingled, but she ignored it as best she could.

If it started itching, she'd go insane. Better to focus on her book.

The tingling grew. She blinked and waggled her eyebrows, but it didn't help. It never did.

Suddenly, she found herself thinking of the day her parents were killed... and her life afterward... she tried not to, but it was like something anchored her mind to it, pulling her deeper into more vivid memories...

Tears formed in her eyes as she desperately tried to focus on her book. The text was blurry and distorted and she had to blink hard several times to clear the tears from her eyes. Her brain tingled as though fingers were combing through it.

The tingling stopped and the memories faded to a dull ache in the back of her mind. She'd have let out a relieved sigh if she could.

The screen of her electronic book flickered and went out and she found herself staring at her own crying reflection in the black screen. She frowned. Great. Now she'd have to wait for one of the nurses to come and fix it. And, when they did, they'd find she'd been crying.

Wonderful, Jie thought bitterly.

The air in front of her shimmered with a faint distortion that turned to a blue crackle of energy like lightning and glowing water, growing into an enormous serpentine form that seemed to take up the entire hospital room.

Gradually, the energy receded and as it did so, it revealed onyx black scales in its wake until Jie found herself face to face with a dragon.

The dragon was of an eastern style, with a long, serpentine body and four legs... though the front ones could easily have been large, taloned hands...

She would have leaped up and run screaming if she could've. As it was, she stared at it with wide eyes.

The dragon stared back. With massive slitted orbs the size of her head.

"Hello, Jie," the dragon said. His voice was like the low rumble of thunder.

Jie's eyes flicked to her IV drip. What the hell had they put in there now?

Lightning played over the dragon's dark black scales and some small rational part in the back of Jie's mind wondered how it kept itself in the air without any wings... but of course, it was just a hallucination. It's not like it needed to obey the laws of physics.

The dragon frowned.

"Ah yes... you can't talk, can you? Perhaps this would be better," the dragon said within her mind.

Jie blinked.

"Please let this be the drugs... I don't want to be insane..." she thought.

"Let what be the drugs?" the dragon asked but shook his head, "Whatever... you can talk through the mind link I've created. This is good. Makes things easier."

Jie's heart leaped up into her throat. Clearly, she was hallucinating but the dragon looked incredibly real and those jaws were huge! It could bite her head clean off!

"Put aside your fears. I'm not here to harm you. I'm here to make a deal. My name is Xie Ming, last descendant of The Great Lightning Dragon. I already know your name, Liu Jie. I also know you would give anything to be free of your injuries... to talk... to run..." he said.

Jie frowned.

Should she talk back? Was that wise? If she engaged the hallucination... wouldn't that make it worse somehow?

But, it'd been so long since she'd talked with anyone. Even if it wasn't real... it'd be nice just to... talk. That guy in the movie had that volleyball to talk to when he was alone... maybe this would help her keep it together?

"I would very much like that. Dragon Xie Ming," she sent back.

The dragon smiled. The smallest of his fangs were bigger than her fingers.

"Then, I have a proposition for you," he said.

She felt weird talking to something that wasn't real... but at least it wasn't like anyone could overhear her.

Ming tilted his head. "A proposition means a deal," he said.

"I know what it means," Jie said, "what's your deal then?"

Ming smirked. Either that or he was about to eat her. She hoped it was the former. He had really big teeth.

Would it hurt if he bit her? It wasn't real, but she'd read about things like hypnosis and how the mind could create pain for the body... she hoped it wouldn't bite her.

"How would you like to be free? To be healthy? Able to walk, run and move as you wish..." Ming said.

She looked to the side. Was her hallucination just going to remind her of her problems? That wouldn't be much fun... but still, it felt good to talk to someone... or something... or not a thing. Whatever it was, or wasn't.

And how did it hear some of what she thought but not other stuff? Was it hearing everything right now? It should, right? If it was in her brain?

She stopped thinking about that before she gave herself a headache.

"I'd like that more than anything," she said.

"I can give you that. That and so much more. I can take you to a world where you can become more powerful than you can imagine. Not only can I make you healthy again, but you could become strong enough to crush mountains with your fist," Ming said, "what would you say to that?"

"That would be amazing," she said, "I go to worlds like that all the time though."

The dragon's eyes widened, and his jaw hung open. "You travel across worlds even as you are now?" he said.

"Sure," she said with a mental chuckle, "anyone can do it."

"Show me! What power do you possess to travel between worlds with such casual ease? Do all of you possess this incredible gift?" Ming asked.

He leaned closer to her, his hot breath washing over her, stirring her hair, clothes, and the hospital blankets that covered her. His mental voice had grown louder. It was like having someone with a megaphone in her brain.

"Would you keep it down?" she said.

Ming backed away. "My apologies. I lost control of myself, but please tell me of this power," he said.

Jie rolled her eyes. "It's called books, and your imagination silly," she said.

The dragon's enormous face twisted with rage as his lips pulled back into a snarl that exposed far too many long, razor-sharp fangs.

"Don't toy with me!" the dragon roared with such force that the room shuddered as the fluorescent lights flickered between darkness and such bright intensity that several exploded in a shower of sparks.

Jie's ears rang from the sound and the door to her room burst open as a nurse rushed in. "What was that noise? What's going on here!? Are you okay, miss?" she asked, her eyes passing over the dragon as though he weren't even there.

"Enough of this foolishness," Ming said. He raised one taloned hand and released a wave of blue energy. The nurse crumpled to the floor.

"What did you do to her?" Jie screamed over their mental connection.

This wasn't real... no... the hallucination was just growing. She wasn't sure which was more frightening.

"Relax, child," Ming said as he calmed himself and his voice settled to a more soothing rumble. The lights stopped flickering with those that'd survived returning to their normal glow.

"I merely put her to sleep," he said, "As if I would belittle myself by slaughtering weaklings. Pah! Back to what I was saying, I can take you to a real world.

"Not some fantasy. A real world. A world you can see, taste, touch, smell, and hear. A world where you could walk on the clouds or split the earth. If only you are willing to do what it takes to gain such power.

"I can make you whole again Jie of the Liu family. I can make you better than you have ever been, and help you along a path to becoming a goddess. What say you to that?"