Chen Yuan died with dry eyes and cramped hands.
Not from illness or some gruesome end. No, he died slouched in a broken office chair, three empty instant noodle cups beside him, and a cracked screen in front of him showing the final line of Demon Immortal Path:
"In the end, the Demon Sovereign devoured heaven itself, and smiled."
He clicked "Next Chapter" ten times after that. Nothing. No epilogue. No aftermath. Just that one sentence. The greatest cultivation novel ever written ended like a blade to the gut. Seven years of weekly chapters, 3.6 million words, and this was it?
At first, he felt nothing. Then, everything.
He blinked once.
And when his eyes opened again…
The screen was gone.
The chair was gone.
The air stank of decay.
He was lying in a pit of corpses.
His limbs shook as he sat up. This wasn't sleep paralysis. This was something else entirely.
The sky above was the color of dried blood. Cracked moons dangled in the clouds like split eyeballs. All around him, the dead twitched with the final spasms of failed cultivations, bone shards, exploded cores, withered meridians.
He knew this place.
It wasn't like the world of Demon Immortal Path.
It was the world.
And worse, this pit, this mound of discarded flesh and shattered dreams—
This was Chapter 1, Scene 3. The "Apostate Hell Trial" that butchered 900 outer disciples of the Crimson Soul Sect in a single day.
"Only one survived," he muttered. "He climbed out, stole the identity of a corpse, and poisoned his way up the inner sect."
Chen Yuan touched his face.
It wasn't his.
He looked down at the soaked, black robes he wore. The insignia, the Crimson Soul Sect's lowest servant rank.
He knew this body.
"Lu Tian. The scapegoat," he whispered.
In the novel, Lu Tian died in the first paragraph. Off-screen. Forgettable. Just another corpse in the pit.
But now?
Now he was Lu Tian.
And in a hell of pill thieves, soul eaters, and heart devourers, he had something no one else did.
He had read the whole damn book.
The corpses were still warm.
Chen Yuan didn't remember standing. One moment he was staring into a pair of eyeless sockets, the next, he was climbing. Hands sinking into spongy flesh, feet slipping on slick bones. Half-dried marrow made every step a gamble.
Some bodies still twitched. Qi flared in shattered dantians, death throes lashing out at anything nearby. One brush against an unstable core and he'd burst apart like the rest.
But he climbed.
Because the sky wasn't just sky, it was escape.
And he knew what came next.
Three things, always in order, always fatal.
First, the Resentment Fog. Soul-devouring Qi collected by Grandmaster Tu Fen to purge the weak.
Second, Bone leeches. Twisted spirit beasts bred in corpse arrays to sniff out survivors.
Third, Sect disciples arriving to harvest bodies, materials, and enslave anyone left breathing.
Chen Yuan grabbed a jutting ribcage and hauled himself higher.
He saw the pit's edge.
Ten meters to go.
His heart thundered, not from the climb, but from an idea. Dangerous. Reckless. But one only a reader like him could imagine.
What if I don't just survive?
What if I start here, where the demons are born?
He looked down at a corpse beneath him. Lean. Light-framed. Robes of a mid-tier outer disciple.
Zhou Bin, if he remembered right. Arrogant scum who got tossed in the pit after trying to drug a senior's concubine.
In the book, Lu Tian used his identity to escape.
With trembling hands, Chen Yuan stripped the corpse and worked fast. Minutes, maybe seconds left.
By the time the first waves of Resentment Fog poured over the pit like a tide of moaning whispers, he was ready. Clad in Zhou Bin's robes, smeared in Qi-muddling corpse blood, skin hidden beneath the peeled remains of a cultivator.
The fog hit.
Every pore screamed.
It wasn't poison, it was worse. It devoured conviction. Memory. Cultivation techniques built on spiritual balance or elemental resonance unraveled on contact. The dead's Qi shrieked against him.
But Chen Yuan, no, Lu Tian, channeled nothing.
That was the secret.
The Fog couldn't consume what didn't resist.
He slowed his breath. Let his heartbeat fade. Pushed his mind into silence.
A page from Chapter 4 burned behind his eyes.
"Cultivation begins not by gathering, but by remembering. Draw not from the heavens. Draw from the abyss within."
He whispered it like prayer.
He whispered it like prayer.
He whispered it like prayer.
And the fog passed through him.
It flayed the corpse beside him. Skinned another to bone. But him? It found nothing. He was a void.
And in that moment, he understood what always unsettled him as a reader.
The Abyss Root Method wasn't just forbidden. It was incompatible with traditional cultivation.
Where normal cultivators pull in Qi, refine it, store it in the dantian, advancing realm by realm…
Abyss Root Cultivation banishes Qi. It digs inward into memory, trauma, pain. It refines scars into power. Strength born of clarity, obsession, and truth.
Lu Tian closed his eyes.
He remembered the night his mother hanged herself over unpaid debts.
He remembered pretending not to hear it, so she wouldn't feel ashamed.
It cut like a blade. Blood trickled from his nose.
He smiled.
The Abyss Root opened.
A black thread coiled beneath his navel.
[Abyss Level 0: Scar Awakening]
First Mark: Mother's Silence
It hurt. Gods, it hurt.
But it was real.
He could feel a foundation forming, not from books, but from himself.
No time to savor it.
The second trial arrived.
Bone-leeches. Dropped like pale worms from above. Drawn to fear.
One landed near his face.
It sniffed. Curled.
Turned away.
His blood was dead. His soul lightless.
The Abyss Root had hidden him like a grave hides bones.
They didn't find him.
But the screams…
He waited three minutes more.
Then he moved.
By then, the Sect disciples were descending, harvesting cores, dragging the living in chains.
Lu Tian didn't run.
He walked toward them. Limping. Tattered. Looking valuable, but not dangerous.
A senior disciple seized his throat.
"Name," the man growled.
Lu Tian wheezed. "Zhou Bin."
The man's brows furrowed. "Didn't you die? Tu Fen said—"
"I killed the leech that tried. I'm useful. Please…"
The senior smirked. "We'll see."
Bound in black rope, Lu Tian was dragged away as the pit behind him sealed shut with a boom of Sect formations.
He had survived.
But he wasn't free.
Not yet.