Truth Be Told, Every Woman Loves Me

In that stretch of countryside there are still immortals who leave an inheritance behind for whoever stumbles into it, and what comes with it is a method of healing by needle, a dragon energy that changes whatever it is applied to, and a way of fighting. Dicky Carter grew up in one of those villages with an injury that left him crippled, and he took years of mockery for it. He found a woman who had been bitten by a snake, got her out, and was poisoned himself. While he lay unconscious the inheritance came to him. It closed up his own injury and left him with the needles, the dragon energy and a level of fighting nobody around him could match. He used it first on the village doctor, whom he pulled out of trouble, then against a tiger, then on a batch of spirit ginseng he refined himself. A widow in the village was being ground down by her mother-in-law, and he got her away and took her with him into the county town. There he made himself useful to the people who ran things and became someone they had to deal with.