The blazing sun scorched the desert.
He knelt on the sand, half a snapped military saber buried in his abdomen. The shadow of a lion-tribe soldier swallowed him whole, and a bloodstained blade rose high overhead.
"The weak don't deserve an Ability Lock."
That was the last sentence he heard in that world.
When the blade fell, agony detonated at his neck. He watched—absurdly calm, impossibly clear—as his headless body erupted with a three-meter pillar of blood.
Then came the void.
And within the void—another kind of pain.
Huo Linfei opened his eyes and saw a long scorpion tail speared straight through his chest.
The Scorpion King's stinger had punched in through his back and burst out the front. Poison made every nerve scream. He could only stare as his skin began to rot away.
"A Super Beast warrior?" The Scorpion King's voice echoed, wet and sticky. "Just an ignorant weakling."
The stinger twisted as it withdrew. He heard the sickening sound of his organs being shredded.
Darkness fell again—
but this time it came with an irresistible crushing weight.
The Whale Shark King's black hole was tearing his armor apart. Skin peeled first. Then muscle unraveled like cotton, teased into threads and pulled away.
Right before he was compressed into dust, he heard the Whale Shark King's merciless chuckle:
"Weaklings don't have the right to choose."
"…These are my memories?" Huo Linfei couldn't believe it.
He didn't get time to think.
A blade-like pain stabbed into his mind, and he saw something he couldn't understand—
his memories, neatly sliced apart like cloth.
At each cut, luminous filaments floated at the cross-section.
The wielder stood inside gray fog. Only the hands were clear.
Long, pale fingers held a transparent scalpel. Each slice shaved off new memory fragments like flakes of skin.
"Experiment number one thousand and twenty-four," a muffled voice drifted from the mist—female, barely discernible. "Still unable to identify the sample's power source… that existence called 'Ability Energy' does not belong to this world…"
The blade suddenly changed direction, plunging deeper into the core of his recollections—
"Kgh—!"
Huo Linfei's consciousness had never been so sharp.
The Doomsday Beast's fingers were spearing through his chest. Unlike the Scorpion King's poison, this was heat—searing joints scorching his organs as he shielded a sobbing March 7th behind him.
Blood surged backward into his windpipe—then froze solid and clogged it.
In the next instant, his body was swallowed by the Doomsday Beast's tide of destruction.
Everwinter Hill—howling wind.
This time he wasn't alone.
Cocolia's ice spear nailed him to a fragmentum ice pillar. Frost crawled through his veins.
"Outsider. You shouldn't stop Belobog from being reborn."
His frozen heart shattered.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bronya's face contort in horror.
A place he'd never set foot in—the Scalegorge Waterscape.
A gigantic body held him like a toy.
"Energy enough to vaporize a planet?" a voice mused. "What a pity the vessel is too fragile."
From within that enormous form, a fox-eared woman extended a slender hand and pushed her fingers into his eye socket.
The wet, gurgling sound of his brain being stirred became his final lullaby.
"Sometimes," Huo Linfei thought dimly after so many deaths, "being hard to kill is really not a good thing…"
Every death brought a new flavor of pain.
But the truly terrifying part wasn't the injury.
It was the emptiness—
the void after death.
He could feel it: his consciousness being gathered, reconstructed, and thrown into yet another loop.
Like a mayfly flushed into a sewer—about to drown—then fished out and hung up to dry… only to be tossed back in again.
"Enough." The surgeon in the mist finally stopped.
The crystal blade reflected countless "Huo Linfei" deaths in its facets.
"Implant it directly."
Darkness ripped open under a blinding blue light.
He saw his brain being forced into a glowing mass—
a jellyfish of light, woven from countless lines of code.
Its tendrils stabbed deep into his neural tissue.
At the jellyfish's core, a silhouette was reflected—familiar—
yet he couldn't remember who it was.
[System booting…]
[Binding to host…]
"AAH—!"
In reality, Huo Linfei's body arched violently.
His eyes flew open, bloodshot.
Ability Energy—enough to level everything around him—surged…
and then, just before eruption, was swallowed clean by fragments of Equilibrium.
"Damn it! That reaction's worse than mara!" the recruiter yelled from behind the counter, scrambling for cover. "Medic! Where's the medic?!"
Huo Linfei couldn't hear him.
As his consciousness sank into darkness again, he caught one final image buried at the deepest layer of memory—
A pink-haired girl—familiar and strange—leaned close.
She gently pressed a finger to his brow.
"Remember: every death you saw was real…"
Her voice softened, steady as a promise.
"…But don't be afraid—because I will always stay by your side."
In the Scalegorge Waterscape, Dan Heng dragged the spearpoint of his Cloud-Piercer across the ground. He no longer looked like himself.
If Huo Linfei were here, he wouldn't be mocking "cosplay."
He'd be screaming—
"Why is Dan Feng here?!"
Dragon horns rose from Dan Heng's forehead. A dragon tail made of water coiled behind him. The power of the Imbibitor Lunae thrummed in his blood like an alarm.
"Something's wrong," Welt adjusted his glasses. "Gravity here doesn't match the outside. Something is twisting the local space structure."
At the very front, Jing Yuan raised a hand.
Cloud Knights halted in perfect unison.
His white hair drifted; golden eyes locked on a shape in the shadows.
"Aiya~ so many honored guests." A light, cheerful female voice rang out. "This humble lady is simply overwhelmed~"
As the voice rose, "Tingyun" stepped gracefully out of the darkness.
"Tingyun?" Jing Yuan's tone stayed level—but his fingers were already on the hilt of Shifu's Dream.
"General, why pretend?" "Tingyun" covered her lips and giggled.
The gesture was familiar—
and in this moment, deeply wrong.
"You should have guessed long ago. Or… would you rather I graciously reveal my true… form?"
The cavern shook violently.
Tingyun's body cracked like shattered porcelain—
and countless golden branches erupted from within.
Screams tore through the air as several branches speared through the chests of the front-line soldiers, hoisting over a dozen bodies into the air like decorations.
"Fall back!" Welt barked.
A pseudo–black hole bloomed in his hand, grinding the advancing branches into nothing.
Golden light flooded the entire space like a tidal wave.
When it faded, the scene before them made Dan Heng's dragon eyes constrict.
The Ambrosial Arbor was no longer a withered trunk.
It had been warped into a nightmare—half plant, half living thing.
Along its thick branches, the outlines of women's bodies bulged beneath the bark.
Thousands of branch-tendrils bore fruits that birthed abominations.
And where the crown should have been—
Phantylia's upper body emerged, fused into the tree itself.
"Welcome to my new boudoir~" the Lord Ravager's honeyed voice came from all directions.
"In your Xianzhou terms, this is… 'dead wood reborn in spring,' isn't it?"
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 80)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 80)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 74)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter20)
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