Night clung stubbornly to the mountains of Fengxia, refusing the sun purchase as if ashamed of what it had witnessed. A dead boy lay half-buried under broken pines and crushed stone, his body cracked like porcelain, his limbs twisted unnaturally.
The corpse belonged to the Lin Fan who had been born in this world—the quiet, talentless disciple who had endured years of scorn, false accusations, and finally betrayal at the hands of those he once called brothers.
His soul had already faded, unraveling into dust.
Into the silence, another soul fell.
A scream tore the air—not of pain, but of collision, as a foreign consciousness slammed into ruined flesh.
Lin Fan of Earth—factory worker, quiet nobody, accidental hero in a world that rewarded neither—woke inside a broken body that wasn't his.
And the mountain trembled.
---
He didn't know where he was at first.
Darkness pressed against him, suffocating, heavy, liquid. Pain pulsed through him in slow, drowning waves.
Pain?
But I… died… didn't I?
His last memory: the shriek of twisting metal, a runaway supply loader screaming down the slick factory ramp, two schoolgirls frozen in its path. He had thrown himself forward without thought, hands burning as he braced against steel—then the world had blurred, cracked, and gone cold.
He had simply hoped the girls would live.
He never imagined waking again.
Yet here he was, trapped inside a body that felt like stone carved into the shape of a corpse.
A single breath ripped out of him.
His eyes snapped open.
The world was wrong—colors too sharp, edges too defined, sounds too crisp. His vision zoomed without his permission, focusing on a falling pine needle. He saw it spiral, saw the tiny fracture along its stem, heard it cut the air.
Then pain hit.
Every nerve ignited. His bones vibrated. His muscles twisted like molten iron cooling too fast.
He screamed—but the sound was swallowed by the mountain.
His veins blazed with heat, and his heart hammered with a force that threatened to split his ribs. The more he breathed, the more his body… changed. Repaired. Reinforced. Reconstructed itself from the ruins.
Muscle tissue knotted itself back together with a violence that bordered on cruelty. Bones snapped into place, then thickened—then layered—then changed. His skin rippled, cycling between human softness and an underlying armor harder than spirit jade.
He didn't understand it.
He had never understood cultivation.
Yet this wasn't cultivation at all.
This was instinct.
A primal engine inside him awakening.
Something alien, something ancient, something unstoppable.
He blacked out.
---
When he woke again, he lay staring at the sky. Dawn bled over the horizon in streaks of silver and pale red.
His chest rose evenly.
No more pain.
Only strength.
He sat up slowly.
The body he inhabited now—Lin Fan the disciple—had been weak, talentless, unable to sense even a whisper of spiritual energy. But Lin Fan of Earth felt something else entirely.
Not qi.
Not Dao.
Not any form of mystical energy.
It was deeper.
Physical.
Biological.
Primordial.
He touched his chest.
Heartbeat steady.
Too steady.
He pressed harder.
The bone beneath didn't feel like bone.
It felt like a living weapon.
A memory not his own flashed: a courtyard filled with lanterns, disciples glaring, elders sneering, an elixir vial held up as evidence of a crime he didn't commit. A blow to the head. Darkness. Cold. Death.
The other Lin Fan's final moments.
Lin Fan of Earth whispered softly, "You didn't deserve that."
A strange sadness tightened his throat. He didn't know the boy… yet they were one now. His death had given Lin Fan of Earth this second life.
He clenched his fists.
"I'll live for both of us."
The mountain wind answered with a low howl.
---
He rose to his feet. The world felt different: lighter yet heavier, distant yet painfully clear. He saw heat signatures in the air. Heard the faint rumble of beasts miles away. Felt the pulse of footsteps from humans on lower ridges.
His senses had never been like this.
His world had never been like this.
His body… had never been like this.
He took one step—and cracked the stone underfoot.
He stared.
"…That wasn't normal."
He took another step—shattering the ground again.
"Definitely not normal."
He tried to control it, moving slowly, adjusting to the new weight and power of his limbs. The broken earth followed him in a messy, uneven trail. He sighed.
"Great. I can't even walk properly."
A rustle echoed above.
A hawk burst from the treetops—but his vision tracked it effortlessly. His muscles tensed instinctively, preparing to leap higher than any human should. He forced himself still.
"Okay… this isn't qi. This isn't cultivation. This is…"
Words failed him.
It was like a dormant engine had activated within his cells, rewriting him from the inside out. A physique not meant for this world. A biology forged for survival beyond reason. A body that remembered death and adapted to ensure it never happened again.
He exhaled.
"Doomsday… Prime…"
The name surfaced from somewhere inside him, foreign yet fitting.
He didn't know its origin.
But his blood knew.
His nerves knew.
Every cell in his resurrected form recognized the title.
Doomsday.
Adaptation.
Evolution.
Return stronger.
Never die the same way twice.
Power rolled beneath his skin like a slumbering beast stretching its limbs.
He looked down the mountain path.
The sect lay somewhere below—Azure Heaven Sect, home of hypocrisy, cruelty, and the people who murdered the original Lin Fan. They thought they had buried their scapegoat.
They expected a corpse.
They would not expect him.
He turned his back to their mountain walls for now. He needed to understand this body. This power. This second life.
He needed solitude, time, and focus.
But deep in his gut, the truth had already settled:
They would come for him.
And when they did…
This time, Lin Fan would not die.
Not easily.
Not quietly.
Not at all.
He stepped into the forest.
The ground trembled beneath his feet.
---