The world became noise.
Clashing wills. Screaming steel. Exploding qi.
A mountain groaning under the weight of war.
Lin Fan staggered forward, bone dust falling from his half-regenerated ribs. His senses were sharpening with every breath — not through qi, not through dao, but through something primal. Something alien. Something ancient.
The battle roared around him like a thousand storms.
Magical beasts crashed against demon beasts in a whirl of fangs, claws, and clawed qi-lances. Cultivators shouted incantations, techniques flickering like constellations slammed into tornadoes of demonic essence. The air tasted of molten metal and despair.
And through it all—
Lin Fan stood.
Not because he was strong.
Not yet.
Not fully.
But because he refused to die the same way twice.
His heart thundered with an unstable rhythm — part human, part something far older. Each throb sent electricity racing down his arms, igniting the bone plates forming under his skin.
The mountain shuddered as a twelve-meter ape demon beast landed before him, eyes glowing the furious red of sentient cruelty.
"Fiend…" it growled mentally, its voice drilling into Lin Fan's mind through the demon beast psychic link.
"You smell of extinction."
Lin Fan blinked. His vision flickered, enhanced by something shifting behind his eyes.
"Funny," he muttered, flexing fingers cracking with bone seams, "I was about to say the same thing."
The ape demon beast lunged.
Lin Fan reacted purely on instinct. His body lowered, spine arching, bones shifting as if his skeleton had a mind of its own. A slab of bone armor burst from his forearm, blocking the first punch. The shockwave launched him backward through a pine tree — but his body twisted midair, muscles adapting to new force patterns.
He landed in a crouch.
Feet cracking stone.
Eyes burning with feral focus.
He stood and exhaled steam.
The ape charged again.
Lin Fan sprinted to meet it.
The collision detonated a crater.
They rolled like boulders down a slope, smashing through trees, punching through roots. The demon beast's claws tore open Lin Fan's back — but his regeneration flared instantly, sealing skin and weaving new bone threads beneath it.
Lin Fan slammed his forehead into the beast's jaw. The shock knocked out teeth the size of daggers.
Something in Lin Fan's cells rejoiced.
This was adaptation.
This was evolution.
This was becoming.
A bone spine erupted from his shoulder, piercing through the beast's chest. With a wrenching scream, he twisted it free, letting black blood spray.
The beast collapsed.
Breathing hard, Lin Fan looked at his own hands. The bone armor melted back beneath his skin.
He was changing too fast.
And the mountain knew.
---
The Battlefield Splits
A roar of demonic horns cut through the haze. Demon cultivators surged from the forest, cloaks fluttering like shadows. Their skull masks cracked with runes glowing blood-red.
They paused when they saw Lin Fan standing over the corpse of a demon beast.
One whispered, terrified:
"That's him… the fiend that survived soul poisoning…"
Another spat:
"He's not human. Look at him. Bone plates under his skin. Something's mutating."
Lin Fan raised an eyebrow.
He hadn't even attacked them yet.
Magical beasts, sensing the shift, circled in from the other side of the valley. These were noble creatures — foxes with nine burning tails, a white deer with horns like crescent moons, a tiger wreathed in celestial fire.
Humans stood behind them — righteous cultivators with shining swords and formations glowing like halos.
Their leader stepped forward, eyes narrowed at Lin Fan.
"Identify yourself," she commanded.
Lin Fan opened his mouth — but a demon cultivator cut in:
"He is the Fiend of the Azure Mystic Sect!"
"A failed cultivator who mutated!"
"A demon experiment gone rogue!"
"He must be eliminated before he evolves further!"
Lin Fan frowned. "You all need to discuss your propaganda more consistently. Even slander should have standards."
A few righteous disciples almost snorted. Even in the middle of a war, his deadpan delivery cracked their composure.
But then—
The ground trembled again.
A massive centipede demon beast slithered between factions.
Its hundreds of eyes glowed with demonic intelligence.
And it sent a psychic pulse like a tuning fork into everyone's mind:
"The anomaly… evolves… uncontrolled…"
"Kill… before it becomes… extinction…"
The magical beasts stiffened.
The demon cultivators readied their talismans.
The righteous sect disciples raised their swords.
And all eyes, across all races and factions, finally agreed on one single thing:
Lin Fan must die.
---
Flash of Earth — Who He Used to Be
Something flickered in Lin Fan's mind.
He wasn't born a monster.
He wasn't born a weapon.
He was a quiet nobody from Earth.
He saw the factory floor.
Dusty. Loud. Grease-smeared.
A place where he lived a simple life, picking up extra shifts to afford rent, instant noodles, and the occasional coffee.
He saw the schoolgirls trapped under falling steel beams — their screams slicing through the smoke.
He remembered running, not thinking.
He remembered pushing them to safety.
He remembered the weight of metal crushing him.
The pain.
The cold.
The fading heartbeat.
And then nothing.
Until this world.
Until this war.
Until this unwanted power.
A cosmic joke:
He died saving two children on Earth, only to become a nightmare in another realm.
Lin Fan inhaled through clenched teeth.
"No," he muttered. "I won't die a monster. Not today."
His muscles tensed.
His bone spines vibrated.
The factions charged.
---
All Beings Descend
The first attacker was a righteous cultivator, swinging a sword humming with spiritual light. The blade bit into Lin Fan's forearm — cut halfway — then stopped. His bone adapted, densifying instantly. The sword rebounded as if striking steel.
The cultivator froze.
"What—what physique is that?"
Lin Fan didn't answer. He drove a knee into the man's gut, sending him flying.
Demon cultivators hurled chains of blood-red symbols. They wrapped around Lin Fan, burning into his skin like molten wire. For a moment, his body trembled.
Then his cells drank the damage, learning from it, growing resistant.
The symbols fizzled out.
Magical beasts leapt, claws blazing with dao.
A fox with moonlit fur sliced Lin Fan's cheek — but his skin toughened immediately after.
A deer flicked its antlers, sending waves of healing qi toward its allies — but the energy rippled strangely around Lin Fan, unable to enter or be absorbed.
A tiger roared celestial fury — and Lin Fan roared back.
A psychic pulse from demon beasts clawed at his mind.
But his brain adapted, thickening its mental fortitude like a callus over trauma.
In seconds, every faction realized the same horrifying truth:
Nothing worked twice.
---
The Turning Point
Lin Fan slammed his foot into the ground.
A crater burst open.
Shockwaves rippled.
His body wasn't perfect yet — but it was learning, growing, warping toward something unstoppable.
A demon cultivator shouted:
"Kill him now! Before his adaptation stabilizes!"
A magical beast shrieked:
"He is Dao-blind! Yet he evolves! Impossible!"
A righteous elder cried:
"Monster! What are you?"
Lin Fan panted, sweat dripping.
Regeneration strained.
Power surging.
Instinct and reason colliding.
"I don't know," he growled. "But I'm done playing the victim."
His fist collided with a magical beast's shield — shattering it.
Bone armor erupted from his spine in jagged arcs.
His eyes glowed with an embryonic heat vision flicker.
The air trembled around him.
The battlefield tilted in his favor.
But not for long.
Because something ancient stirred.
Something worse than demon beasts.
Worse than magical beasts.
Worse than cultivators.
The mountain itself quaked.
And somewhere deep in the forest, a horn echoed — one that every being recognized.
One that meant a sovereign-level threat was coming.
A king of beasts.
A king of demons.
Or both.
Lin Fan's head snapped toward the sound.
His heartbeat quickened.
Not in fear.
But in anticipation.
The abyss had snarled.
And something in Lin Fan finally snarled back.
---