Waking up in the Rusty Sword Sect was exactly like waking up in a London flat share, provided your roommates were obsessed with ancient weaponry and the plumbing had been dead since the Han Dynasty. Julian Thorne lay on a bed that was essentially a slab of granite covered by a thin, judgmental layer of straw. He stared at the ceiling, watching a spider weave a web with the kind of structural integrity he could only dream of for his own life.
"Right," Julian whispered, his voice cracking. "Day two in the afterlife, or the coma, or the very elaborate hallucination. Status report: I have one rubber glove, half a roll of medical tape, and I am currently being worshipped as a deity by a man who thinks disinfectant is 'holy fire.' It could be worse. I could be dead. Though, knowing my luck, death would just be an eternal waiting room with no magazines."
He attempted to sit up. A floorboard beneath his feet didn't just creak, it detonated. The wood splintered with the force of a small landmine, sending a jagged shard flying upward. With the practiced reflexes of a man who had dodged falling ceiling fans his entire life, Julian tilted his head. The shard whistled past his ear, narrowly missing his jugular, and embedded itself in the headboard.
"Good morning to you too, entropy," he muttered.
Suddenly, a sound echoed in his skull, not a physical sound, but a digital ding that resonated in his very marrow. It was the sound of a smartphone notification from hell.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED: The Great Physician's Burden]
Julian froze. A translucent blue screen shimmered in his field of vision, hovering exactly three inches from his nose. It stayed there as he turned his head. It followed him with the persistence of a debt collector.
"Oh, for the love of... Now I'm a protagonist in a light novel?" Julian groaned, rubbing his face. "Can't I just have a normal hallucination? Maybe one with talking cats and a buffet?"
[Analyzing User Statistics...]
[User: Julian Thorne]
[Class: Dimensional Anomalous Surgeon]
[Title: The Universe's Punchline / Walking Natural Disaster]
[ATTRIBUTES:]
Strength: 5 (You struggle with heavy doors.)
Agility: 4 (You trip over flat surfaces.)
Intelligence: 85 (A genius-level mind wasted on avoiding falling pianos.)
Vitality: 99 (The universe refuses to let you die so it can keep laughing at you.)
Luck: -70 (STATUS: ABYSSAL. You are a walking breach in the fabric of probability.)
Julian stared at the number. "-70? Out of what? A hundred? A thousand?"
[Luck Scale: -100 to +100. At -75, spontaneous combustion becomes a daily probability. At -80, you may trigger a localized apocalypse by sneezing.]
"Fascinating," Julian said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "So I'm five points away from becoming a human torch. Is there a point to this, or are you just here to provide color commentary on my impending demise?"
The screen flickered, changing its text to a deep, ominous crimson.
[MISSION: The Path of the Fortune Thief]
[Condition: To survive the 'Abyssal' Tier, you must balance the scales. Every life you save in this world allows you to siphon a fraction of the patient's 'Destiny' or 'Fortune.']
[Reward: +0.01 Luck per successful minor procedure. +1.0 Luck for shifting the fate of a Master.]
[Warning: If your Luck reaches -100, reality will simply delete you to save itself the trouble.]
Julian sat on the edge of the stone bed, the weight of the information sinking in. He wasn't just a doctor here; he was a 'Luck Vampire.' He had to heal people to stop the universe from erasing him like a typo. It was the ultimate irony: the man who brought disaster wherever he went was now forced to be a savior just to keep his atoms from vibrating out of existence.
The Rusty Sword Clinic
A knock sounded at the door or rather, the door was kicked open by Elder Feng, who was looking suspiciously healthy for a man who had been disemboweled yesterday.
"Grand Advisor! The morning sun greets the Divine Physician!" Feng roared, his voice shaking the dust from the rafters. A large chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling, aiming straight for Julian's head. Julian casually leaned two inches to the left, and the debris shattered harmlessly on the bed.
"Morning, Feng," Julian said, standing up and trying to smooth out his wrinkled scrubs. "I see you're feeling better. The 'Jahitan Takdir' held up, then?"
"It is a miracle, Advisor! My Qi flows like a mountain river! My disciples are waiting outside. They have heard of your divine skills and wish to be... 'operated' upon."
Julian walked out into the courtyard of the Rusty Sword Sect. It was a pathetic sight. The "sect" consisted of about fifteen teenagers who looked like they had been through a medieval blender. One had his arm tied in a knot. Another was hopping on one leg because the other was stuck in a bronze vase.
"These aren't patients, Feng," Julian said, looking at the line of bruised and battered boys. "These are survivors of a catastrophic lack of coordination."
"They are the future of the Rusty Sword Sect!" Feng announced proudly. "But their meridians are clogged, their bones are misaligned, and Iron-Head Li over there tried to break a boulder with his forehead. He has been sleeping standing up for three days."
Julian looked at Iron-Head Li. The boy was swaying, his eyes glazed over. As a neurosurgeon, Julian didn't need a system to tell him that Li had a concussion so severe his brain was probably doing a 360-degree spin inside his skull.
[TARGET DETECTED: Iron-Head Li]
[Condition: Severe Cranial Trauma / Blocked Qi Flow]
[Potential Fortune Gain: +0.05 Luck]
"Fine," Julian sighed. "Bring him to the table. And get me some boiling water, a clean needle, and the sharpest knife you have that isn't covered in rust. I know your sect is named 'Rusty Sword,' but let's try to keep the tetanus to a minimum today."
The Malpractice Masterclass
Julian's "operating theatre" was a wooden dining table under a willow tree. He had no anesthesia, no sterile drapes, and his only assistant was a teenager who kept trying to eat the medical tape.
"Hold his head," Julian commanded. "Feng, if he moves, he might forget how to use his legs permanently."
Julian took the "surgical knife" a kitchen blade that Feng had sharpened on a whetstone until it hummed. He poured high-proof rice wine over it, the fumes making his eyes water. He looked at Li's forehead. The boy had a hematoma the size of a grapefruit.
"Alright, Li. This is going to feel like a very aggressive headache followed by the sweet release of logic."
As Julian prepared to make the incision, his "luck" decided to intervene. A bird, flying overhead, suffered a sudden heart attack and dropped out of the sky. It fell toward the table, aiming directly for Julian's sterile field.
Without looking, Julian caught the bird in his left hand, tossed it into a nearby bucket, and made the cut with his right hand in one fluid motion.
[CRITICAL SUCCESS: Unintended Deflection Technique!]
The crowd of disciples gasped. "Did you see that? He caught the 'Death Omen' with one hand and opened the Gate of Wisdom with the other!"
Julian ignored them. He was in the zone. He drained the fluid from the hematoma, his hands moving with a precision that didn't belong in this century. But then, the real Murim madness started. As he touched the bone, he felt a resistance a literal pressure of energy. It was the 'Qi' the system mentioned.
It was a blockage, a knot of golden light that was preventing the brain from healing. To Julian, it looked like a blood clot, but it felt like a battery.
"If I poke this, it's either going to heal him or explode," Julian whispered.
He took a small acupuncture needle he'd found in Feng's kit. He channeled his frustration the pure, concentrated essence of his bad luck into the needle. If luck was a positive charge, his misery was a massive negative.
The moment the needle touched the golden knot, the energy didn't dissipate; it was attracted to Julian. It flowed up the needle, through his fingers, and into his chest.
[SYSTEM: Siphoning Fortune...]
[Absorbing 0.05 Luck from Iron-Head Li...]
Li's eyes suddenly cleared. He gasped, his body jolting as the pressure in his skull vanished. The golden light in his forehead faded, replaced by the healthy glow of a boy who no longer thought he was a goat.
"I... I can see!" Li shouted, jumping off the table. "I can see the colors! I can see the wind! I can see that the Grand Advisor is wearing very strange trousers!"
Julian leaned against the table, feeling a strange warmth in his chest. It was the first time in his life that a "mistake" hadn't happened during a procedure.
[NOTIFICATION: Procedure Successful!]
[Luck Attribute: -70 -> -69.95]
"Only sixty-nine point nine-five more to go," Julian muttered. "At this rate, I'll be a normal person by the time I'm eight hundred years old."
The Luck Vampire's Dilemma
The rest of the afternoon was a blur of medieval triage. Julian set a broken arm using bamboo splints and medical tape (Luck +0.02). He treated a case of "Fire Poison" which turned out to be a simple allergic reaction to a local caterpillar (Luck +0.01). He even "cured" a disciple's chronic hiccups by hitting a specific nerve in the neck, which the sect members immediately dubbed the 'Strike of Eternal Silence.'
By sunset, Julian was exhausted. He sat on the porch of his rickety shack, watching his luck-meter.
[Luck: -69.80]
He felt slightly... lighter. For the first time, he didn't trip when he walked up the stairs. He only stubbed his toe once, and it didn't even bleed. It was a miracle.
Elder Feng approached him, carrying a jar of wine and a look of deep concern. "Grand Advisor, you have worked wonders today. But I must warn you. Word of the 'Doctor with the Jade Head' is spreading. The devil medical sect The Blood-Needle Cult will not be happy. They claim all healing in this province belongs to them. They charge a heart and a lung for a simple cold. You are giving it away for free."
"I'm not giving it away for free, Feng," Julian said, taking a sip of the wine. It tasted like vinegar and jet fuel. "I'm getting paid in something far more valuable than gold."
"What is that, Advisor?"
"Survival," Julian said.
He looked up at the sky. A shooting star streaked across the horizon. Usually, a shooting star in Julian's life meant a meteorite was about to level his house. But this time, the star stayed in the sky.
"Hey, System," Julian thought. "Is there anyone else like me here? Anyone with... the opposite problem?"
[Scanning...]
[Detection: A 'Probability Sink' has been detected in the Southern Capital. High concentrations of 'Extreme Fortune' detected. Subject is currently being crowned as the 'Eternal Emperor of Seven Blessings.']
Julian choked on his wine. "Arthur. That lucky bastard. He's an Emperor? I'm here stitching up teenagers in a barn, and he's probably sitting on a gold throne eating grapes that don't have seeds."
The System flickered one last time before Julian went to sleep.
[New Objective: The Great Rebalancing]
[Description: The Emperor's luck is destabilizing the world. If his fortune continues to grow, your misfortune will deepen to maintain the cosmic tether. You must find the 'Lucky Star' and perform a second surgery.]
Julian groaned, putting his head in his hands. "So my mission is to travel across a continent filled with people who want to kill me, just to operate on the man who sent me here in the first place? And I have to do it while being the unluckiest man in history?"
A small lizard fell from the ceiling, landed in Julian's wine jar, and splashed the vinegar-alcohol all over his face.
Julian wiped his eyes, his mask falling off one ear.
"Right," he whispered to the lizard. "Let's get to work."