He stood alone on the Sky-Crushing Summit, soaked in blood that was not his own, laughing at the heavens.
Nine Archdemons encircled him, their forms wreathed in shadow and primordial rage. Their eyes, burning with the light of dying stars, were filled with a mixture of hate and raw, undiluted fear.
Armies had already fallen before them. Kingdoms had already burned to ash. And yet, Zeng Haofeng, the Unfettered Sword Saint, stood tall.
His immortal robes were in tatters, and his ink-black hair whipped wildly in the storm born from their combined power.
"You cannot escape the Heavenly Tribulation, Zeng Haofeng!" one of the demons howled, its voice the sound of grinding mountains. "The heavens themselves seek to erase you!"
Zeng Haofeng sneered, a flicker of golden light in his eyes. "Escape?"
He raised a hand, and the very air around him warped, space itself bending to his will.
"I intend to devour it."
The skies cracked open. A pillar of divine lightning, thick as a dragon's spine and blindingly white, split the clouds. It was the universe's judgment, a force meant to obliterate beings who grew too powerful.
It crashed down upon him.
And Zeng Haofeng… spat a bolt of pure sword Qi back into the heavens, meeting the divine lightning head-on. The resulting explosion vaporized the summit, turning miles of rock into incandescent dust.
He laughed, a sound full of arrogance and absolute power. He had cultivated for ten thousand years. He had slain gods and devils. He had mastered the Dao of the Sword to its absolute limit. This world was too small for him now.
He tore open the gate to eternity with his bare hands, ripping a hole in the fabric of reality. It was not a portal to flee, but a door to his next conquest.
That was his final, triumphant act.
And now?
"—gh…nngh…"
He awoke with a cough.
His mouth tasted like rust and bitter chemicals. His limbs felt heavy, weak, disconnected. The air reeked of sterile plastic, machine oil, and… hospital-grade disinfectant?
A rhythmic, monotonous beeping echoed in his ears. It was a sound completely alien to him, devoid of any natural harmony.
Wires. Thin, transparent tubes snaked out of his arms, tethered to bags of clear liquid. Monitors blinked and beeped at his side, displaying glowing green lines that pulsed in time with the beeping.
He blinked rapidly as a blinding white light from above pierced his vision.
"W-What... is this place?"
A sterile, perfectly flat white ceiling greeted him. His body was no longer clad in immortal robes woven from starlight. He was in a stiff, coarse gown that chafed his skin.
He struggled to sit up, a wave of dizziness washing over him. The movement was clumsy, weak. His muscles, once harder than divine steel, screamed in protest.
Panic, an emotion he hadn't felt in millennia, began to coil in his gut.
He ignored the strange surroundings, the beeping, the tubes. Those were trivialities. He turned his senses inward, reaching for the source of his power.
He reached for his spiritual sea.
It should have been a universe unto itself. A boundless ocean of golden Qi, swirling with nebulae of condensed energy. A place where sword intents sharp enough to slice stars swam like dragons.
He reached.
And found nothing.
Empty.
Hollow.
It was a void. A barren desert where a thriving galaxy should have been. His dantian, the core of his cultivation, was cold and still. His meridians, once rivers of roaring power, were dry, cracked riverbeds.
His Qi… was gone.
His hand trembled as he raised it before his face. It was pale, thin, with unblemished skin. Not the hand of a warrior who had crushed mountains.
"My cultivation…" he whispered, his voice a dry, unused rasp. "Gone?"
The thought was so horrifying, so fundamentally impossible, that his mind refused to accept it. He tried again, focusing all of his will, all of his ten-thousand-year-old consciousness, on finding a single, stray wisp of his power.
Nothing.
The rhythmic beeping of the machine beside him seemed to mock his silence. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. The steady, weak beat of a mortal heart.
His heart.
The door to the room slid open with a soft hiss. A woman entered. She was dressed in a strange, white uniform. Her face was soft, but her eyes held a tired professionalism.
"Oh, you're awake," she said, her voice calm. The language was foreign, yet somehow, he understood it. "Don't try to move too much. You were in a bad accident."
She moved around his bed with practiced efficiency, checking the bags of liquid, tapping on the screens of the blinking machines.
Zeng Haofeng stared at her. He saw no cultivation in her at all. She was a complete mortal. Yet, she showed no fear. No reverence. She looked at him with the same detached pity one might give to a wounded animal.
He tried to speak, to demand answers, but his throat was raw. Only a dry croak emerged.
The woman offered him a small cup of water with a bent straw. "Easy now. The doctors will be in to check on you soon. You've been unconscious for three days."
He drank, the cool water a small relief. But his mind was reeling.
Doctors? Accident?
These concepts were meaningless. He was Zeng Haofeng. He did not have accidents. He was the accident that happened to others.
He closed his eyes, trying to piece it all together. The Tribulation. The gate to eternity. Then… this. This sterile white prison. This weak, powerless body.
Was this his ascension? Was this the "next world"? A realm where everyone was a powerless mortal, trapped in cages of bone and metal? A hell of absolute weakness?
The thought was more terrifying than any Archdemon.
He had to be sure. He had to know what had been done to him.
As the woman checked the tube in his arm, he focused on her, trying to feel for her life force, her spirit. It was faint, a flickering candle flame compared to the suns he was used to. But it was there.
He tried to gather the last remnants of his divine will, to crush her spirit with a single thought. It was an act as simple to him as breathing.
He focused. He pushed.
Nothing happened.
The woman simply looked back at him, a hint of concern in her eyes. "Are you feeling alright? You look pale."
The cold dread that had been coiling in his stomach now exploded, freezing him from the inside out.
It was true. All of it. The power that had allowed him to shatter stars and stand against the heavens was gone. He was trapped. A god in a cage of bone, unable to even rattle the bars.
He was a mortal.
Just as that final, soul-crushing realization hit him, something new appeared in his vision.
It was not a memory. It was not a hallucination.
It was a crisp, blue, translucent screen, hovering silently in the air before him.
Words began to type themselves across the panel, cold and clinical.
[Mortal Body Synchronization: 100%]
[Error: Soul Signature Exceeds Host Parameters. Anomaly Detected.]
[Searching for compatible energy source...]
[No Qi Detected.]
[No Mana Detected.]
[Activating Emergency Protocol: The Urban Cultivation System.]