The last thing Lin Hao remembered was betrayal.
Ten thousand years of cultivation. Ten thousand years of blood, sacrifice, and the slow,
grueling climb toward heaven itself. He had shattered realms, bent space to his will, and
stood at the very threshold of godhood, the first cultivator in all of creation to reach the
peak of the Mahayana Stage.
And on the night he was supposed to ascend…
They stabbed him in the back.
All twelve of them.
His most trusted disciples. His chosen successors. The people he had poured his entire soul
into cultivating, guiding, and protecting for centuries. One moment he had been kneeling in
the center of the Ascension Formation, the heavens opening above him in a blaze of golden
light and the next, twelve blades carved from his own spiritual energy pierced through his
body simultaneously.
He remembered their faces as his consciousness shattered.
He remembered smiling.
Foolish children, he had thought, even as darkness swallowed him whole. Did you truly think this would be enough to kill me?
"Lin Hao! LIN HAO! If you're late to school one more time, I swear I'm donating your gaming console to charity!"
Lin Hao's eyes snapped open.
He was staring at a white ceiling. Cracks ran across it like the veins of a leaf, and a single
naked lightbulb dangled from a fraying wire above his head. The room smelled of instant
noodles and old textbooks.
He sat up slowly.His hands…he stared at them, small, thin. The hands of a boy, not a man who had spent ten millennia forging his body into something harder than divine steel. He flexed his fingers and they trembled slightly, the joints cracking from what felt like the stiffness of a long, deep sleep.
Where… He looked around. A narrow bed with a faded blue blanket. A desk buried under a
mountain of crumpled papers and empty snack wrappers. Posters on the wall, he didn't
recognize the faces on them, but they appeared to be young humans in colorful clothing,
their mouths open in expressions of exaggerated joy.
A mirror hung crookedly beside the door.
Lin Hao stood… staggered, actually, his legs weak and unfamiliar…. and walked to it.
A seventeen-year-old boy stared back at him, pale, thin to the point of being gaunt. Dark circles under his eyes. A fading bruise on his left cheekbone. His black hair stuck up in every direction, and there was a small scar above his
right eyebrow that hadn't been there before or rather, hadn't been on his body before.
Lin Hao studied his new face for a long moment.
Then he closed his eyes and reached inward.
Every cultivator, upon waking, instinctively checked their spiritual core, the reservoir of qi
at the center of their being, the foundation upon which all cultivation was built. For Lin Hao,
checking his core was like glancing at the sun. Ten thousand years of compressed power,
dense and blinding and infinite.
He reached inward now.
And found nothing.
No…. not nothing. That would have been a relief. He found something worse than nothing: a tangle of broken meridians, spiritual channels so damaged they resembled shattered glass
more than the flowing rivers they were supposed to be. He found a dantian, the core
spiritual organ that was barely the size of a walnut, cracked down the middle, leaking
what pitiful wisps of spiritual energy it had managed to gather like a broken bucket leaking
water.
In the cultivation world, there was a term for people like this, Trash.
"LIN HAO!" The door burst open, and a middle-aged woman in a faded apron stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips and exasperation written all over her face. She had kind eyes behind her frustration, tired eyes, the eyes of someone who had been worried for along time. "Did you hear me? It's already 7:40! You have fifteen minutes before…" She
stopped, blinking at him. "Why are you standing in front of the mirror?"
Lin Hao turned to look at her.
His new mother. He knew this instinctively, the way the body's memories rose to the surface
like oil on water. Her name was Wang Mei. She worked double shifts at a textile factory. She
had calluses on both hands and a habit of humming old folk songs when she was nervous.
She loved him more than she had ever loved anything in her life.
And this boy… this broken, talentless, bullied boy whose body he now inhabited had never once told her he appreciated it.
"Sorry," Lin Hao said. His voice came out rough, deeper than the boy's usual tone. Wang Mei blinked again.
"Are you… feeling okay? You sound strange."
"I'm fine." He offered her a small, calm smile, the kind of smile he used to give to junior
disciples who needed reassurance. "I'll be ready in ten minutes."
She stared at him for another moment, something flickering behind her eyes, confusion,
maybe, or that particular maternal instinct that sensed something had changed without
being able to name what. Then she shook her head and retreated.
"Breakfast is on the table. Don't let it go cold."
The door clicked shut.
Lin Hao turned back to the mirror. He absorbed the memories flowing to him from the
previous owner of this body…. a rushing flood of seventeen years compressed into seconds.
He absorbed the humiliation of being called trash by his own extended family at every
reunion. The beatings from senior students at his school who cultivated at the Qi Gathering
Stage and used him as a punching bag. The loneliness. The quiet, crushing hopelessness of
a boy who had been told his entire life that he would never amount to anything.
He absorbed it all without flinching.
Then he reached into those memories and pulled out one specific detail: the name of the
boy whose body he had taken.
Lin Hao.
He almost laughed. Even the name was the same.
Fate, he thought, has a strange sense of humor.He was pulling on his school uniform, a white shirt and dark trousers that hung slightly too loose on his thin frame, when it happened.
A sound like a bell struck in an empty cathedral. A chime that resonated not in the room
around him but somewhere inside his chest, in the exact empty space where his shattered
dantian sat.
And then light.
Not physical light… nothing Wang Mei would have seen if she'd opened the door at that
moment. It was internal, a luminescence that bloomed behind his eyes and filled his mind
with something cold and precise and ancient.
A window appeared in his vision, hovering in the air before him like a page torn from a divine
text.
[ SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE ]
Host Detected: Soul Signature — IMMORTAL EMPEROR LIN HAO
Status: Soul Degradation at 94.7% — Memories and Power Fragmenting
Body Compatibility: 12% (Improving)
Special Condition Identified: Betrayed Sovereign Protocol Activated
The Primordial Apex System has been bound to this host.
This System was forged from the remnants of the Host's shattered Immortal Core. It
recognizes no ceiling. It acknowledges no limit. It exists for one purpose: to restore
what was taken.
Welcome back, Your Majesty.
Lin Hao read the notification once.
Then he sat down on the edge of his bed, very slowly, and read it again.
In ten thousand years of cultivation, he had heard of Systems, mysterious artifacts of
heaven that occasionally bonded to chosen individuals and guided their growth. He had
always considered them curiosities. Crutches for the talentless. He had never needed one.
Apparently, heaven had decided he needed one now.
He focused his mind on the glowing window and thought: Show me everything.The System responded instantly.
[ HOST STATUS ]
Name: Lin Hao
Age: 17
Cultivation Stage: Mortal — Unawakened (Rank 0)
Spiritual Roots: Shattered (Repairing — 0.3% complete)**
Dantian Condition: Critically Damaged (Repairing — 0.1% complete)**
Soul Power: Immortal Emperor Grade (Sealed — 0.02% accessible)**
All-Path Cultivation: LOCKED (Unlock Condition: Reach Qi Gathering Stage 1)**
Traitor Detection: LOCKED (Unlock Condition: Reach Foundation Stage)**
Available Quests: 1
[ QUEST AVAILABLE ]
"First Breath"
The journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step. And yours begins in a broken
body that can barely tie its own shoes.
Complete: Reach Qi Gathering Stage 1
Reward: 1,000 Merit Points + Fractured Immortal Breathing Technique (Volume 1)
Time Limit: 30 Days
Lin Hao closed the status window.
He looked at his hands again… those thin, trembling, talentless hands… and something
settled in his chest. Something cold and quiet and immovable. The same thing that had
carried him through ten thousand years of cultivation. The same thing that had kept him
smiling even as twelve blades tore through his soul.Patience.He had rebuilt himself from nothing before. He had started as an orphan boy in a dying village with no resources, no backing, no talent beyond a refusal to quit. He had clawed his way up through every realm, broken through every ceiling, shattered every boundary that heaven set before him.
He could do it again.
And this time, he had ten thousand years of knowledge, techniques, and experience locked
inside a soul that no shattered dantian could touch.
This time, he also had twelve targets.
Lin Hao stood up, straightened his school uniform, and ran a hand through his chaotic hair.
He took one last look at the thin, unremarkable boy in the mirror.
"You've been called trash your whole life," he said quietly to his own reflection.
He allowed himself one small, dangerous smile.
"Let's show them what trash can do."
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ]
Host's Sovereign Will has been detected. Cultivation Speed Modifier: +15% (Permanent)
The System is pleased. Not that it would ever admit that.
He walked out of his room and sat down at the kitchen table. Wang Mei had made steamed
buns and thin rice porridge — simple food, honest food, the kind of meal that tasted like
someone loved you.
Lin Hao ate every bite.
For the first time in ten thousand years, he was starting from zero.
He found, to his own surprise, that he didn't mind at all.
Outside the apartment window, Shanghai hummed and glittered in the early morning light.
Thirty-seven million people living their ordinary lives, completely unaware that the hidden
cultivation world lurking beneath their city's surface was about to be turned upside down.
And somewhere across that vast, glittering city— in boardrooms and dojos and secret
underground arenas — eleven souls carried on with their reincarnated lives, blissfully unaware that the man they had killed was awake.
That he remembered everything.
And that he was already coming.
Thank you for reading Chapter 1 of Ascension of the Fallen Emperor! If Lin Hao's story has you curious, please hit that Add to Library button, it helps more than you know. Drop a comment below and let me know what you think. The Emperor's journey is just beginning, and I promise you won't be disappointed.
Updates: [two chapters daily]