Dawn crept over the shattered ridge like a blade dragged across stone, cold and unwilling. Lin Fan sat alone beneath a twisted pine, the bark scarred by the shockwave he had unleashed unknowingly the previous night. His chest still rose and fell with a strange heaviness, as if something ancient had awakened inside him and was now testing the limits of his flesh.
He raised his hand.
Flexed his fingers.
Listened to the faint crack of bones strengthening, reorganizing, subtly shifting.
His body felt… wrong.
Wrong in a way that felt right.
Like it had been waiting.
A faint tremor rippled across his knuckles, and his skin hardened momentarily—bone plating blooming beneath the flesh like cold armor before sinking back under the surface.
He frowned.
"Not cultivation… not qi," he muttered. "Something else."
He tried again.
No spiritual energy responded.
No qi threads.
No Dao resonance.
Nothing the world recognized.
But his body obeyed something deeper—instinct, the primal language of an ancient physique sculpted by extinction, destruction, and evolution.
A dark thrill stirred in him.
The sect had never taught him this.
The sect had never believed he could learn anything at all.
That thought soured the morning, and his jaw tightened. Memories flashed like dull knives: the elders' faces warped with disgust, his fellow disciples whispering behind his back, the contempt they spat so easily onto the "talentless waste." The night they framed him. The night they killed the Lin Fan who originally lived in this world.
The betrayal.
The cold.
The pain.
The confusion.
The lie carved into his corpse.
A shadow crossed his face.
He stood.
Something inside him—some newly awakened predatory instinct—stretched outward like muscles he'd never used before. He felt vibrations in the earth… heartbeats far away… hostile intent drifting through the woods.
He turned, lips curling.
"Following me? Already?"
Three Azure Heaven Sect disciples crept along the path below, muttering anxiously.
"Are you sure the body was taken by beasts?"
"That's what Senior Brother said."
"But… they said someone saw a figure walking away in the dark. Looked like him."
"Impossible. Lin Fan died. We all saw the blood pool."
"It's an omen, I tell you. Something about last night… the elders are nervous."
Lin Fan's eyes narrowed, the shadows around him sharpening.
The "old him" would have revealed himself.
The "old him" would have tried to talk.
The "old him" would've believed fairness existed.
But the old him was dead.
He stepped off the ridge.
The drop was fifteen meters.
He landed silently behind them.
The disciples froze.
One turned.
Saw him.
Went pale.
"Y-You… You're supposed to—"
"Be dead?" Lin Fan finished quietly.
His tone wasn't loud.
But it made all three of them stumble back.
One fumbled for his sword, voice cracking.
"Y-You dare show yourself before us! Theft of the Awakening Elixir—"
"I didn't steal your elixir," Lin Fan said calmly.
That calm terrified them more than shouting.
The second disciple spat.
"You think lies will save you? Senior Brother already sold it to—"
The first disciple elbowed him violently.
"Idiot!"
Lin Fan tilted his head.
"Ah. So someone did sell it."
They stepped back in unison.
"Stay away!"
Lin Fan didn't move.
But the mountain did.
A faint tremor pulsed outward from his feet—the same subconscious shockwave that had pulverized boulders the night before. Pebbles rattled. Dust rose. The boys' teeth chattered.
It wasn't qi.
It wasn't cultivation.
It wasn't any Dao technique.
It was instinctive adaptation, a body designed for destruction beginning to learn how to flex its newborn strength.
The disciples drew their swords shakily.
"You—You're no longer human!"
Lin Fan smiled without warmth.
"And yet you're the ones shaking."
Before they could blink, he moved.
Not teleportation.
Not spiritual footwork.
Just raw, overwhelming physical superiority.
He seized one disciple's wrist, squeezing until the sword clattered to the ground. The bones didn't break—Lin Fan held back intentionally. The boy screamed anyway.
Lin Fan leaned in.
"Tell the elders I'm alive."
The boy trembled violently.
"W-Why? Why let us go?"
Lin Fan's eyes grew cold.
"Because letting you run will cause more fear than killing you."
The boy dropped to his knees.
Lin Fan released him and stepped back, fading into the trees like a shadow dissolving in fog.
Behind him, the disciples fled down the mountain path, tripping over themselves, scrambling to carry news they wished they didn't have.
A quiet wind carried their terror downhill.
Lin Fan exhaled slowly.
But across the valley, something else stirred.
---
In the northern canyons, demon beasts snapped their heads toward the sky—their crimson eyes glowing with unease. Psychic currents rippled through their hidden networks.
Something. Awakening.
Not human.
Not demon.
Not beast.
Devourer? Destroyer? …Unknown.
Magical beasts further south—old spirit tigers, mountain qilin, cloud foxes—paused mid-hunt, ears flattening, their speech restrained to growls and whispers.
"It is not Dao."
"It is not Heaven's will."
"It is… a Fiend."
Deep in the mountains, demon cultivators felt a ripple too—like a cold whisper brushing their souls.
"A calamity?"
"A harbinger?"
"No… something worse."
The world had sensed him.
And it recoiled.
---
Lin Fan continued walking the ridge, eyes tracing the horizon like a hunter scanning a territory he was beginning to claim unconsciously. Beneath his skin, fibers strengthened; bones layered themselves; senses sharpened with each breath.
His mind buzzed with new data: wind pressure, heartbeats miles away, subtle vibrations of distant battle formations, traces of fear from animals fleeing further up the mountain.
His physique was evolving—reading threats, preparing countermeasures, learning to survive a world that had already killed him once.
But inside, another voice whispered—his own.
Calm. Control. Adapt without losing yourself.
He clung to that.
His humanity.
His memories.
His past life.
His quiet humility, now tinged with steel.
"Doomsday Prime," he murmured, testing the idea.
"No… Lin Fan."
He looked down at his hands.
"They'll come for me. Righteous path… demonic path… beasts…"
He clenched his fist.
"Good."
A smile ghosted across his lips—half sadness, half promise.
"Let them come."
---