The Ghost Gate of the Spiritual Pivot

Xie Qingci was once the most brilliant physician at the Imperial Academy of Medicine in the Great Jing dynasty. With his family's secret Thirteen Ghost Gate Needles, he could soothe the soul, calm fear and evil, and even bring the dead back to life. Faithful to the way of medicine, he followed the Ling Shu and Su Wen, aspiring only to heal the world. But after saving a gravely ill prince with a single needle, he stumbled upon the hidden currents of court politics. Framed for using witchcraft to murder his sovereign, he was condemned, and his entire family was executed.

In a single stroke, he fell from the heights into the mire. The renowned physician of old became a fugitive on the run. Carrying thirteen forbidden needles, he hid in the wilderness, abandoned medicine, and shut his heart away.

But the human world teemed with demons and monsters, and was even more merciless than the underworld: an innocent young woman was falsely accused and had her soul seized, while officials and gentry treated human life as worthless. False monks and sorcerers deceived the world and chased fame, while corruption festered in the temples of gods and Buddhas. Many demons were merely people with tragic lives, while wolves lurked in the halls of power.

Seeing justice denied and righteousness buried, Xie Qingci finally took up his silver needles once more.

He used medical principles to discern yin and yang, and the points of his needles to guide wronged souls onward. The first needle healed bodily illness, the second soothed wounds of the heart, and the third subdued the evils that plagued the world. Beneath his needles, he treated everything from stubborn physical ailments to the evils of human desire, and even the sickness afflicting people's hearts and society.

His journey as a physician became a journey westward.

He exposed masks of hypocrisy and tore away the covers that concealed the powerful. Between old injustices and grudges, and the kindness and compassion at the heart of his calling, he struggled onward through buried clues and staggering conspiracies. From a physician devoted to saving lives, he transformed into a lone servant who wielded his needles in pursuit of the Way and used medicine to set the world right.

He does not cultivate immortality, become a god, or borrow power from spirits and gods. He holds only to the heart of a physician.

The fiercest evil in this world is never demons or ghosts, but the human heart turned demonic.

The highest Way under Heaven lies not in arcane arts, but in the sound principles of the Inner Canon.

When the Thirteen Needles emerge, they can restore the balance of yin and yang, soothe souls, and awaken the conscience of the world.