BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Chen Feng's eyes snapped open.
Fluorescent lights. White ceiling. The acrid smell of chemicals that definitely weren't from the cultivation world. And that sound—an electronic beeping that drilled into his skull with mechanical precision.
An alarm clock?
He bolted upright, hands flying to his chest. Searching for the wound. The blood. The sword that had ended his life—
Nothing.
Smooth skin under a thin cotton shirt with some kind of printed design. No wound. No pain. No blood.
He looked at his hands. Small. Soft. Unmarked by calluses from sword work or scars from tribulation lightning. Teenager's hands.
What. The. Hell?
Chen Feng scrambled out of bed—a soft, modern bed completely unlike anything in the cultivation world—and stumbled to a mirror on the wall.
The face staring back at him was a stranger's. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. Soft features that had never known hardship. Eyes that had never witnessed betrayal.
And yet... they were his eyes. Somehow, impossibly, they were his.
Memories crashed over him like a tidal wave—not his memories, but belonging to this body, this life.
Li Feng. That was this body's name. A student at Qingyun Academy, one of the most prestigious schools for the wealthy elite. Unremarkable grades. No friends. Parents who sent money but never visited.
A nobody. A failure.
And there—buried in the memories like a knife—one piece of information that made everything click into place.
This world. This ordinary, technology-filled, cultivation-less world called Earth.
It had four months before something called "the Apocalypse" descended.
Chen Feng—no, Li Feng now—stood frozen, processing the impossible truth.
He'd died. Been murdered by those he trusted most. And somehow reincarnated into a mortal world on the brink of dimensional catastrophe.
He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward, diving into his consciousness with the practiced ease of someone who'd spent two centuries cultivating his soul.
Please. Please let it still be there—
And there it was.
Suspended in the void of his consciousness like a miniature sun in eternal night, the Nine Revolutions Immortal Scripture glowed with brilliant golden light. Every character pulsed with power that could shake the foundations of heaven itself.
"It's here," Li Feng breathed, opening his eyes. A genuine smile crossed his face—not the cultivator's serene expression he'd perfected over two hundred years, but something raw and feral. "I still have it. They murdered me for nothing. NOTHING."
Laughter bubbled up again, but this time it was different. Not the dying gasps of a betrayed man, but the dark amusement of someone who'd just realized the cosmic joke.
"Enjoy your search, Liu Yan. Enjoy your empty victory, Yue Lian." He stared at his reflection, watching the stranger's face twist with cold satisfaction. "Search for ten thousand years. Tear apart the entire cultivation world looking for a manuscript that will never manifest again until I die and release it somewhere random."
He pressed his forehead against the cool mirror, two hundred years of memories warring with this new teenage body's fragile emotions.
The betrayal still burned. The pain of realizing every moment with Yue Lian had been calculated manipulation. That Liu Yan's brotherhood had been a two-century investment in earning trust just to destroy it.
But underneath the pain, something colder was crystallizing.
A vow.
"Never again," Li Feng whispered to his reflection. "Never trust. Never love. Never be weak enough to let anyone close enough to hurt me."
He straightened, wiping the moisture from his eyes. Weakness. This teenage body wanted to cry, wanted to break down, wanted to mourn what was lost.
But Chen Feng had died on that battlefield. What stood here now was something colder. Harder.
Something that would never make the same mistake twice.
[DING!]
Li Feng jumped as a translucent blue screen materialized in front of his eyes, floating in his vision like a mystical artifact.
[APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
[HOST DETECTED: LI FENG]
[SCANNING SOUL SIGNATURE...]
[WARNING: ANOMALY DETECTED]
[UNIQUE SOUL IDENTIFIED: REINCARNATED CULTIVATOR]
[PREVIOUS LIFE CULTIVATION REALM: SOUL SEVERING (PEAK)]
[CULTIVATION EXPERIENCE: 200 YEARS]
Li Feng stared at the notifications flooding his vision. A system? Like in those web novels he'd seen fragments of in Li Feng's memories?
[HEAVEN-TIER TECHNIQUE DETECTED: NINE REVOLUTIONS IMMORTAL SCRIPTURE]
[ANALYZING TECHNIQUE REQUIREMENTS...]
[CRITICAL FLAW IDENTIFIED: REQUIRES 9X NORMAL QI CONSUMPTION]
[COMPENSATORY MEASURES ACTIVATING...]
"What—" Li Feng's voice caught. The system knew about the Scripture? About its enormous energy requirements that had kept him stuck at Soul Severing Peak for fifty years?
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
[CONGRATULATIONS! THE APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL SYSTEM HAS BEEN BOUND TO HOST!]
[BEGINNER PACKAGE AVAILABLE - CUSTOMIZED FOR REINCARNATED CULTIVATOR]
[CLAIM PACKAGE? YES/NO]
Li Feng's hand trembled. This was either a gift from heaven or a trap. In the cultivation world, things that seemed too good to be true usually were.
But what did he have to lose? He was already dead once. This was borrowed time in a borrowed body.
"Yes," he said.
[BEGINNER PACKAGE OPENED!]
[CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE RECEIVED:]
[1. STAR DEVOURER SCRIPTURE (HEAVEN-RANK TECHNIQUE)]
[2. ULTIMATE BODY SCRIPTURE (HEAVEN-RANK BODY REFINEMENT)]
[3. MARROW WASHING PILL x5 (PHYSIQUE UPGRADE)]
Knowledge exploded in Li Feng's mind.
The Star Devourer Scripture flooded his consciousness first—a technique so monstrous it made him gasp. It could devour any form of energy. Spiritual qi, mana, death energy, stellar radiation, even the nuclear fusion burning at stars' hearts. Everything converted to pure cultivation base with perfect efficiency.
But there was a catch. Once activated, it couldn't stop. It would continue devouring the targeted energy source until completely drained—until nothing remained. No pause. No emergency stop. Just absolute consumption.
For most cultivators, that would be a fatal flaw. Absorbing too much energy would cause catastrophic overload.
But for someone practicing the Nine Revolutions Immortal Scripture—a technique that required nine times the normal qi—it was perfect.
"It's a perfect match," Li Feng breathed. "The Star Devourer won't stop until it's completely drained the energy source. And the Nine Revolutions needs nine times more energy than normal techniques. The 'flaw' becomes an advantage."
The Ultimate Body Scripture came next—ten stages of body transformation that would turn flesh into divine weapon. Iron Flesh. Bronze Bones. Silver Blood. Each stage more powerful than the last, culminating in a body that could shatter stars with a casual flick.
And finally, five jade bottles materialized on the bed. Marrow Washing Pills—each one worth more than most cultivators earned in a lifetime. They would completely rebuild his physique from trash to excellent grade.
Li Feng picked up the first bottle with trembling hands. In his previous life, a single Marrow Washing Pill had elevated him from trash talent to barely mediocre. It had taken him three months of grueling meditation to reach Body Tempering Stage 1.
Now he had five pills. Three Heaven-tier techniques. Two hundred years of experience. And four months before the apocalypse.
He looked at his reflection one final time.
"Liu Yan. Yue Lian." He spoke their names like a curse. "You thought you were so clever. Killing me for a treasure you could never possess. You thought you'd won."
His smile turned vicious.
"But you did me a favor. You freed me from sentiment. From trust. From the weakness of caring about anyone but myself. You taught me that power is the only truth, and mercy is a luxury for fools."
He held up the first Marrow Washing Pill.
"Thank you, my dear betrayers. When I return to the cultivation world—and I will return, stronger than you can possibly imagine—I'll make sure you understand the depths of your mistake."
He placed the pill on his tongue.
"But first... I have an apocalypse to conquer."
The pill dissolved instantly, and then—
Pain.
Pure, absolute, all-consuming PAIN exploded through every cell of his body.
Li Feng's scream tore through the morning silence as his body began to tear itself apart and rebuild.
And somewhere in the depths of his agony, a small part of him wondered:
In becoming strong enough to never be hurt again... was he destroying the very thing that made him human?
But the pain swallowed the thought before he could answer.