"If death is a lesson...
Then I'm ready to graduate."
Xiao Lianwu
Rain poured from a cracked sky, staining the ruins of Gongshi City with streaks of gray sorrow. Clouds hung like mourning banners over crumbling temple spires and half-eaten walls where statues of ancient sages once stood tall. The land had once thrummed with spiritual energy now it reeked of something bitter and wrong.
The Heavenly Gate above the city pulsed with ominous light. A tear in reality, spinning in midair, bleeding mist and power into the mortal world. Its edges were jagged, lined with runes that flickered in and out of existence.
It was beautiful. And it was death.
At the center of the collapsed plaza, a team of Cultivator-Hunters stood frozen before the Gate, its aura cracking the air with pressure. All except one had begun retreating.
That one was Xiao Lianwu.
He stood alone, his tattered black robe whipping in the stormwind, boots sinking into wet rubble. His spiritual core felt like a cold ember in a dying fire. Every breath rattled like broken glass in his lungs.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
He was just a rankless scout a supply boy with a cracked spirit root and a body barely tough enough to channel Qi. He wasn't trained to fight beasts beyond the second rank. He wasn't trained to fight at all.
But he was left behind anyway.
"Lianwu! RUN!" shouted Qing Fen, the vice-leader of the Jade Blade Sub-Squad, his face smeared with panic and guilt. "The beast's waking up! You'll die!"
Lianwu didn't answer. His eyes were locked on the Gate, on the shifting form clawing its way out from the void.
The Starlight Devourer.
A beast from the Abyssal Astral Plane, a creature that shouldn't exist this deep in a first-tier dungeon. Its body was a skeletal tapestry of starlight and bone, with six obsidian limbs that glided unnaturally over space. Every step it took left a fracture in the dungeon floor. Its wings didn't flap they bent time.
Nine-star threat.
A mistake.
A warning.
A death sentence.
"How did we trigger that?" Lianwu whispered.
He already knew. The main squad had gone deeper than the dungeon allowed, breaching a locked vault for treasure. They awoke something the world had forgotten. Something angry. Something impossible.
And now the squad had left him behind to buy time.
Again.
This wasn't the first time Lianwu had been used as bait. The weak were often disposable in the hunter world. He was born with a fractured core his Qi couldn't circulate properly without searing pain. His father, once a famous cultivator, had vanished during a Heavenly Gate incursion when Lianwu was just eight. His mother died the following winter.
By fifteen, he joined the Cultivator-Hunter Guild as a porter.
By seventeen, he was cleaning spirit beasts' blood off higher-ranked hunters' robes.
By twenty, he had barely risen past Rank G, laughed at for his weak talents, scorned by sects, and discarded by guilds.
Yet he stayed.
Why?
"Because even worms want to live," he once muttered after being kicked down a flight of stairs for accidentally spilling a spirit pouch.
Today, that worm faced a god-tier nightmare.
The Devourer shrieked a sound that shattered bone and echoed in the soul. Its six limbs curled inward, then launched it forward. A black comet crashing through stone. Its mouth opened, and stars blinked out inside its throat.
Lianwu closed his eyes.
There's no time to run.
No power to resist.
No hope.
He smiled bitterly.
"So this is how I go…"
And the world ended.
Darkness.
Not the suffocating dark of unconsciousness. Not the void of death.
This was deeper.
Colder.
Older than time.
Lianwu's eyes opened to find himself… floating. Not falling. Not breathing. Just… existing. Suspended in nothing. Around him, shards of glass drifted like stars each one reflecting him.
But not just one version.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Each shard replayed a different ending.
In one, he was burned alive by a rogue Fire Lord.
In another, his head was ripped off by a mutated White Tiger.
In another, he was executed by a sect tribunal for "stealing" a low-tier talisman.
Death. Death. Death.
Endless, eternal, repeating.
"What… is this?" he croaked.
From the deepest part of the void came a voice whispering through dimensions.
"You have died, Xiao Lianwu."
"Again."
He spun toward the sound.
Nothing. And yet… presence. Something vast. Watching. Waiting.
"This is the Abyss Archive."
"The record of your failures."
"I… don't understand."
"You have died in 3,287 timelines."
"And each time, you were forgotten."
"Timelines…?"
"The cycle resets. Again and again. Each time the world nears collapse, the Celestial Court rewinds reality. You live. You die. You forget."
"But not this time."
The shards spun faster. Images blurring. Then fusing. Lianwu's chest burned—not from pain, but from knowledge. Battle techniques. Movements. Reactions. Dozens of lives his lives flowed into him like a river of fire.
His body screamed. His mind cracked.
And then… it stopped.
Stillness.
Clarity.
Abyss Archive Initiated
[User: Xiao Lianwu]
[Timeline Sync Complete]
Memory Retention Level: 37%
Combat Repetition Bonus: +11%
Death Analysis: Complete
New Trait Unlocked:Recursive Learning (Unique)
New Trait Unlocked:Chrono-Resonance Instinct
New Skill Unlocked:Phantom Step (Rank F → D)
[Auto-Revive Triggered]
[Returning to Timeline 3288…]
Survive. Learn. Ascend.
Back in the Dungeon
Xiao Lianwu's eyes flew open.
He gasped like a man surfacing after drowning in a thousand oceans. The rubble around him was untouched. The air still shimmered with Gate energy. Qing Fen was still yelling in the distance.
Time had turned back.
But he had not.
He remembered everything.
The Devourer screeched, lunging forward again the exact same movement.
But this time, Lianwu moved first.
He didn't think. He reacted.
Step left.
Slide forward, pivot knee, twist wrist—THRUST.
His blade pierced the Devourer's shoulder joint, bypassing the bone shell.
The beast reeled back with a scream of surprise.
Lianwu didn't stop. He couldn't. His instincts no, his memories took over. He ducked, spun behind the creature, and sliced upward along the spine.
Blood if it could be called that splattered in waves of glowing stardust.
"W-What the hell…" Qing Fen gasped. "Lianwu?!"
But Lianwu didn't hear him. Not truly.
Timeline 182: This beast flinches if you cut behind the third rib.
Timeline 2049: Phantom Step works best after the third feint.
Timeline 600: Don't aim for the eyes. They explode.
Knowledge. Memory. Mastery.
He fought with the experience of a man who had died perfecting this dance. And now, at last, he was the one leading it.
Minutes passed.
Then silence.
The Devourer's body slumped, lifeless. A crater formed where it fell, energy leaking into the dungeon walls.
Lianwu stood, chest heaving, blade cracked but still in hand. Not a scratch on him.
He had just soloed a 9-star Abyss-class entity.
And no one could understand how.
Qing Fen approached slowly, sword half-drawn.
"You… That wasn't you," he whispered. "Who… what are you?"
Lianwu turned to him. His gaze was calm. Ancient.
"I'm still Xiao Lianwu," he said softly. "But I've died enough to become someone else."
He walked past the stunned man, heading toward the dungeon's gate core.
Each step felt lighter.
Each breath filled with purpose.
"They'll come for me," he murmured. "The enforcers. The sects. The ones who remember the resets."
"But this time…"
He clenched his fist. The Archive pulsed beneath his skin, invisible to all but him.
"This time, I remember too."