Above the Nine Heavens, the firmament did not merely darken; it bruised. The clouds churned like an ocean of spilled ink, thick and suffocating, blotting out the stars and the moon until only the abyss remained. A hideous gash tore open the fabric of the sky, a wound in the world itself that refused to heal.
Inside those roiling clouds, billions of thunder snakes writhed and hissed. They were not natural lightning but manifestations of cosmic judgment. The wisps of errant energy they shed were enough to bleed the color from majestic mountains and command ancient rivers to halt their eternal flow. The air grew heavy, smelling of ozone and imminent destruction.
This was the World Ending Thunder Tribulation.
Beneath this apocalyptic ceiling, a single figure stood in defiant isolation on the peak of Mount Ascension.
He was bare chested, his bronze skin glowing with a faint, rhythmic golden radiance that seemed to breathe with him. He was a statue carved from history, every inch of his muscles appearing to be forged from divine gold. His physical presence contained a terrifying, dormant power capable of shaking the pillars of heaven and cracking the bedrock of the earth.
Li Gang.
He was a madman in the eyes of the orthodox cultivators. He had entered the Dao through martial arts, rejecting the ease of spells and the flow of Qi to specialize in the torturous path of body cultivation. For three millennia, he had endured fires that melted spirit ore and crushed his bones only to regrow them denser than before. After three thousand years of arduous, blood soaked training, he stood here today with an indestructible physique. He intended to directly confront the heavenly tribulation and force open the supreme gate to Physical Body Sanctification.
"Come!"
Li Gang roared skyward. His voice was not human; it was a dragon's cry that shattered the silence, scattering a thousand zhang of the oppressive cloud sea.
His vital energy erupted like a supernova. It was a furnace of life force so potent it manifested as golden flames shooting into the sky, dyeing the monochromatic heavens with glorious, burning battle intent. He showed no fear. His eyes did not waver. They burned with a scorching excitement that outshone the lightning.
The path of a body cultivator was inherently one of defying the heavens. It was a war against heaven, a war against the earth, and a duel against all creation.
Today was the ultimate audit of his soul and flesh.
Boom!
The heavens answered his insolence. The first heavenly thunder finally coalesced, transforming from scattered sparks into a cohesive, hundred zhang thick thunder dragon. It roared, a sound that vibrated in the marrow of every living thing within a thousand miles, and smashed down directly.
That destructive power was enough to instantly flatten a great mountain range into a plain of dust.
Li Gang did not even raise an eyelid. He planted his feet, rooting himself into the granite, and simply punched out towards the sky.
There were no flashy moves. There were no brilliant, complex spells woven with delicate hand signs.
There was only pure, ultimate power.
Where the fist edge passed, the air instantly compressed, emitting an unbearable sonic boom that shattered the eardrums of the wind itself. The void twisted, vibrated, and screamed.
The golden fist aura collided head on with the thunder dragon.
There was no earth shattering bang. Instead, there was a terrifying dissolution. The destructive thunder dragon, terrifying enough to erase a city, disintegrated like fragile glass before the fist aura. It was annihilated silently, broken down into the most primitive energy particles before it could even touch his skin.
Overbearing. Brutal. Unreasonable.
A wild, arrogant smile played on Li Gang's lips, filled with a heroic spirit that had not dimmed in three thousand years.
"Is that all you have?" he laughed, his voice shaking the rain from the air.
Immediately after, the heavens raged. The second, third, fourth... heavenly thunders descended. Each was more ferocious, more violent, and more cunning than the last. They changed form, testing his defenses. They came as a sea of liquid thunder, a constricting net of lightning, and divine spears hurled by invisible gods.
Yet, under Li Gang's unstoppable iron fists, they all turned to dust.
He was an undefeated War God treading on the earth, shattering heavenly tribulations with his bare hands. He was the hammer, and the tribulation was merely the anvil.
However, just after he shattered the eighth heavenly thunder with a single, sky piercing punch, the rhythm of the battle changed.
The center of the churning tribulation clouds suddenly became dead silent. The roaring ceased. The wind stopped.
An unprecedented, heart palpitating pressure descended. It was not the pressure of power, but the pressure of extinction.
The smile on Li Gang's face receded like the tide. His expression became solemn, his muscles tightening instinctively.
He could feel it. The test was over. The execution was beginning.
A crack quietly opened in the very center of the tribulation clouds. From that abyss within the abyss, a single wisp of dark, black flame drifted down.
The flame was small, no larger than a candle's light. It looked harmless, almost fragile. Yet, it condensed all the stillness, silence, and finality of the end of the world.
The moment it appeared, Li Gang's vital energy, which had been boiling like lava, instinctively felt stagnation. His blood ran cold. His soul trembled.
"This is... Annihilation Divine Lightning?"
Li Gang's pupils contracted sharply, and a stormy sea raged in his heart.
This was impossible. Such legendary divine lightning was the stuff of myths, reserved for the destruction of worlds, not the testing of mortals. It should not appear in the thunder tribulation for Physical Body Sanctification. The Heavens did not want to test him; they wanted to erase him.
Before he could think further, the black flame had already drifted above his head. It moved with the slow inevitability of a nightmare.
There was no time to dodge, and no need to dodge. The flame had locked onto his existence.
In a body cultivator's dictionary, there was no word for retreat.
"Open... for me!"
Li Gang unleashed all the power of his life. Every bone in his body rang like a struck bell. His vital energy poured into every cell without reservation, burning his lifespan for power.
A towering golden Dharma Idol, a projection of his indomitable will, majestically appeared behind him. It performed the same action he did, crossing its massive arms to protect its front.
This was his strongest defense. The Indestructible Golden Body.
The black flame silently touched his arm.
Crack.
A faint sound, quieter than a snapping twig, boomed in Li Gang's ears like the loudest thunder he had ever heard.
His golden skin, tough enough to withstand divine weapons and swim in magma, actually showed a tiny crack under that black flame.
The impossibility of it froze his mind for a microsecond.
Immediately after, the cracks spread wildly like a spiderweb across a broken mirror.
Excruciating pain followed. It was not just pain of the flesh; it was pain that tore at his soul, dissolving his very concept of self.
Li Gang let out a muffled groan, his teeth grinding together until they shattered. He clearly felt his physical body beginning to disintegrate. It was being annihilated from the most basic particle level, erased from the record of existence.
That eerie black flame ignored all the defenses he prided himself on. It ignored his hard work. It ignored his three thousand years. It acted directly upon the very essence of his life.
"No... I am not... reconciled..."
The golden Dharma Idol shattered inch by inch, turning into motes of light that were swallowed by the darkness. Li Gang's consciousness rapidly blurred amidst the boundless agony.
The light in his eyes gradually dimmed, leaving only deep unwillingness and a despair vast enough to swallow the ocean.
He had failed. The path had ended.
Just as his consciousness was about to completely sink into the eternal void, something happened in the depths of his shattered soul. A faint wisp of his remnant spirit was enveloped by an incomprehensible, strange power. It was violently pulled away from the destruction.
He plunged into an endless abyss, passing through layers of spacetime barriers, spinning through a kaleidoscope of lights and sounds that defied logic.
"Ugh..."
Consciousness struggled out of the chaos. It was a slow, agonizing climb from the bottom of a deep well.
His vision gradually cleared from blurriness. He expected the gates of hell or the void of nonexistence.
Instead, what entered his sight were walls where large patches of plaster had peeled off, revealing the damp, cold bricks underneath like exposed sores. By the window, a tattered curtain swayed precariously in the night wind, and the gloomy sky outside appeared even more oppressive than the tribulation clouds. The air was thick, filled with a strange, nauseating mixture of industrial disinfectant, mold, and cheap, stale powdered milk. It stung his nostrils, a sensory assault that felt offensively mundane.
Where was this?
He tried to move, expecting the heavy weight of his muscles, but found his limbs frail. His hands and feet felt comically small, light, and unresponsive. His whole body was soft, weak, and utterly devoid of the explosive power he was accustomed to.
He laboriously raised his arm. It felt like lifting a lead weight.
What met his gaze was not a bronze arm forged of divine muscle, but a soft, slender, tender little hand with baby fat.
Li Gang's consciousness completely froze. The cognitive dissonance was nearly enough to send him back into a coma.
He looked around, forcing his neck to turn. This was a cramped dormitory, bleak and utilitarian. A dozen identical bunk beds were arranged side by side, packed so tightly the space between them was barely enough for one person to pass sideways. Around him, several children his age were still asleep, huddled under thin, gray blankets.
This was... an orphanage?
The question triggered a landslide in his mind. Countless unfamiliar memory fragments flooded his brain like a tide, violent and sudden.
He saw a name. Li Wolf.
He saw a life. A thin orphan of about five or six years old, living in a dilapidated, state run orphanage in the East End of London. He felt the phantom pangs of hunger, the chill of the drafty windows, the loneliness of being unwanted.
He, the esteemed body cultivation Grandmaster, the indestructible Li Gang who had challenged the heavens, had perished at the final moment of his attempt to achieve Physical Body Sanctification.
And then, inexplicably, he had become a little kid in a foreign land in a world devoid of spiritual energy.
A bitter self mockery welled up in his heart, tasting like bile.
How absurd.
He had once shattered mountains and rivers with his fists. He had trod upon stars with his feet. He had terrified gods and demons alike. Yet now, he was trapped in this fragile sack of meat, so weak that even turning over required a conscious effort of will.
That vast vital energy capable of shaking heaven and earth was gone. That formidable body, indestructible through all tribulations, had turned to naught.
He frantically probed his internal state.
He checked his Dantian. Empty. A dry well.
He sensed his meridians. Frail, narrow, and blocked with the impurities of a mortal diet.
He had nothing left.
An orphan forgotten in a corner of the world, unsure if he would even eat his fill tomorrow. Was this Li Gang's new life? Was this heaven's ultimate mockery of his defiance? To strip him of his godhood and leave him as the lowest of the low?
"No..."
Just as this bone chilling despair was about to swallow his remaining will, just as he was about to accept this cruel fate, he suddenly shuddered.
It was a subtle feeling, easily missed, but to a Grandmaster of the body, it was a thunderclap.
Deep within this young, malnourished body, within every undeveloped muscle fiber and beneath the soft marrow, he sensed a familiar pulsation.
It was faint, like the heartbeat of a sleeping insect, but it was there.
It was not vital energy. It was not spiritual energy or Qi.
It was the most primitive, most savage power of the physical body. It was the potential for absolute force. This power was the only legacy imprinted in the essence of his soul after his previous life's body disintegrated. The Annihilation Lightning had destroyed his flesh, but his understanding of the body, his will, and a seed of his original power had survived the crossing.
Li Gang's mind moved, focusing entirely on that sensation.
The hidden power instantly responded. It was obedient. It knew its master. It gathered into his right hand like a warm, rushing current, revitalizing the weak flesh for a split second.
He subconsciously clenched his fist. The motion was sharp, lacking the trembling weakness of a moment ago.
Crack!
A crisp sound of metal twisting abruptly echoed in the silent room. It sounded like a gunshot in the quiet night.
Li Gang lowered his head and looked at his hand.
His small, pale fist was gripping the iron railing of the crib beneath him.
And that thumb thick iron railing, solid, cold metal, was now deeply dented inwards. It was twisted, compressed, and bent by his sheer, raw force. The paint had flaked off where his fingers had dug in, revealing the shiny metal beneath.
Li Gang stared blankly at his small hand. He looked at the twisted iron railing.
For a long moment, the only sound was the ragged breathing of the other orphans.
Then, in his dead eyes, a fervent light of ecstasy and disbelief suddenly burst forth. It was a terrifying light, the look of a predator realizing its claws were still sharp.
"I, the indestructible body cultivator, became a child?" he whispered, his voice raspy and unused.
He looked at the iron. He felt the heat in his blood.
"But this power... is this a gift inherited from my previous life?"
He was in a strange world, in a weak body, with no cultivation base. But he had his memories. He had his techniques. And he had this seed of monstrous strength hiding in his bones.