Ren awoke to an unbearable agony, as if every bone in his body had shattered. Even twitching a fingertip was an arduous task. More alarmingly, a fierce headache pulsed through his skull, as countless foreign memories flooded his mind, leaving him no time to react.
Two hours later, the throbbing in his head gradually subsided. Ren slowly grasped the reality of his situation.
"I… I'm not dead. I actually transmigrated?" Ren muttered to himself, his facial muscles contorted in disbelief. His wide-open mouth and the cold sweat slicking his skin betrayed the shock coursing through him. If he had the strength, he'd surely punch himself a few times to confirm this bizarre truth.
Struggling to organize the chaotic deluge of memories, Ren began to recall his previous life. He was an orphan raised in an orphanage. At seven, an old man adopted him. Living with his adoptive father, Ren grew up, learning that his father was a revered soldier who had dedicated his entire life to the war effort, never marrying. In his twilight years, he adopted Ren, seeking companionship in old age.
Inspired by his adoptive father, whom he idolized, Ren chose to follow in his footsteps. Under his father's guidance, Ren excelled, entering the military academy as the top student at eighteen, yearning to become a great soldier like him.
But fate, alas, had other plans. His adoptive father, Luo Ren, had, throughout his upright and honest life, offended numerous powerful figures. When he retired and relinquished his seat of power, these forces began to make their move.
Ren would forever remember that day: dozens of black-clad figures infiltrated their home in the dead of night. Though their sharp instincts warned Ren and his father of the intruders' presence, it was already too late. A barrage of bullets and overwhelming firepower ruthlessly assaulted their tranquil wooden house. The hands of evil buried a great soldier and a young man with boundless dreams in a fiery inferno.
Before his life ebbed away, Ren saw in his adoptive father's cloudy eyes an infinite warmth and a hint of remorse. Perhaps he thought that if he hadn't adopted Ren, his fate might have been different, or at least he wouldn't have died so unjustly by his side.
Ren's parched lips parted. He had wanted to tell his father how proud he was to be his son, but tragically, Luo Rencouldn't utter a single word before they were both consumed by the raging fire.
"This is probably my greatest regret from my previous life," Ren thought, a bitter taste in his mouth.
He suppressed his anguish and continued to sort through the memories of this new life, and the identity of the person he had transmigrated into. In that instant, Luo Ren's complexion drastically changed. An boundless rage, like an unquenchable inferno, surged within him. His hands clenched so tightly they bled.
Taking several deep breaths to regain his composure, Ren gritted his teeth, trembling as he mustered all his strength to touch his eyes. In that moment, the world spun. The place where his eyes should have been was COMPLETELY EMPTY.
Ren was blind, or rather, his eyes had been brutally gouged out. An uncontrollable fury consumed him. If he had the strength now, he would have roared like a wild beast, for there was a truth, no matter how unbelievable, that Ren could not fathom:
THE PERSON WHO HAD PERSONALLY GOUGED OUT HIS EYES IN THIS LIFE, FORCING HIM TO LIVE IN DARKNESS AND ENDURE UTTER BITTERNESS AND HUMILIATION, WAS HIS OWN BIOLOGICAL FATHER.
The stark contrast, like the vast chasm between heaven and earth, between an adoptive father and a blood relative whom this body had once called "father," deeply shocked Ren. Struggling to regain his composure, Ren knew he needed to devise a suitable plan to survive his current predicament.
The owner of this body was named Luo Ren. His cold-blooded father was the patriarch of the Luo Clan, Luo Thunderbreak, a notorious cultivation family on the Ice Heaven Continent. In this land, the strong were revered and the weak scorned. There were no meaningful laws; everything adhered to the natural order where the strong were always right, the strong were truth, and the weak had to obey the strong at all costs, or face death.
On this continent, major forces were largely comprised of cultivators, unified into nine ranks, with the first being the lowest and the ninth being the highest.
The Luo Clan on the Ice Heaven Continent was an Eighth-rank cultivation force, second only to the two Ninth-rank forces with supreme status: the Heavenly Mountain Immortal Realm and the Ice Profound Empire.
Despite being subordinate to the two Ninth-rank forces, this did not diminish the Luo Clan's standing on the Ice Heaven Continent. For among the myriad forces on this continent, those that could rival the Luo Clan could be counted on one's fingers.
With a long and unbroken lineage, the Luo Clan's traditions stretched back countless years, with its ancestors being legendary figures who had ascended to the Immortal Realm. With territories spanning thousands of miles, millions of clansmen, and a continuous emergence of heaven-defying talents, the Luo Clan's terrifying power was evident.
And Luo Ren, the eldest son born to the Luo Clan's patriarch, Luo Thunderbreak, should have held a noble status, showered with endless affection. Yet, ironically, after his birth, eagerly awaited by countless clansmen, Luo Ren seemed to indirectly slap the entire Luo Clan, from top to bottom, with stinging force.
Luo Ren had NO SPIRIT ROOTS.
On the Ice Heaven Continent, even three-year-old children knew that spirit roots were the minimum requirement for cultivating immortality. Without spirit roots, Luo Ren was destined to be a useless waste for life.
Had Luo Ren been born into a mortal family, this would have been perfectly normal. But he was born into the Luo Clan, the son of the patriarch no less, making him a colossal joke across the entire Ice Heaven Continent. The esteemed patriarch of the Luo Clan, an Eighth-rank cultivation force, had given birth to a useless son. This alone sealed Luo Ren's tragic fate from the moment he was born.
Luo Ren's mother came from an ordinary fifth-rate family. After giving birth to a useless son, she was scorned and shunned by both her clan and her husband. Overwhelmed by grief, she died with her eyes still open.
Things grew even worse for Luo Ren when the Luo Clan's second young master, Luo Lei, his younger brother, was born a year later. From birth, Luo Lei inherited two types of spirit roots from Luo Thunderbreak: Ice and Lightning. The Lightning spirit root was extremely rare, allowing easy cultivation of powerful Lightning-attribute martial techniques with immense destructive power and high lethality. Cultivators with Lightning spirit roots were often stronger than others of the same rank, which was why Luo Thunderbreak firmly held his position as the Luo Clan patriarch, with absolute authority no one dared challenge.
Luo Lei's inheritance of these two spirit roots from Luo Thunderbreak brought immense joy to the entire Luo Clan. Through the decision of the Elder Council, Luo Lei was designated the future young master of the Luo Clan.
Luo Lei's appearance brought even more humiliation to Luo Ren. Luo Ren's living conditions in the Luo Clan were worse than that of servants, because even servants in this domineering clan had the ability to cultivate.
Luo Ren lived a lowly life, performing all sorts of menial tasks for the clan, no different from a slave, just to earn food. No one regarded him as the Luo Clan's eldest son; his very existence was a disgrace to the Luo Clan.
It seemed things couldn't get any worse, but they did. When Luo Ren was thirteen, his younger brother Luo Lei, while cultivating a clan eye technique, suffered an unforeseen accident that led to his blindness.
As an Eighth-rank cultivation force with a lineage spanning generations, the Luo Clan possessed secret techniques to transplant another pair of eyes for Luo Lei. However, to prevent any mishaps, the Luo Clan elders unanimously agreed that the eyes of someone with the same bloodline as Luo Lei had to be used.
And then the most brutal event occurred: Luo Thunderbreak himself ruthlessly gouged out his own son's eyes to transplant them into his other son. Luo Ren's despair and burning hatred had not the slightest effect on Luo Thunderbreak's resolve. Clearly, between a useless son and a genius son, Luo Thunderbreak needed no deliberation.
Blind at thirteen, Luo Ren completely lost the right to live as a human in the clan. He became a living punching bag for the younger generation of the clan to practice their martial techniques. Whenever his body was bruised and battered, on the verge of death, they would spare him, give him food, allow him time to recover, and then resume their torture. It seemed that tormenting the patriarch's son brought an extraordinary sense of accomplishment to these unruly youngsters.
For the past three years, Luo Ren had lived such a life, blind, constantly suffering physical and spiritual injuries. The tragic fate of the man named Luo Ren ended at sixteen after an overzealous "training" session by those devils masquerading as children.
And at that fateful moment, a completely different Ren, transmigrated from another world, arrived.
"Compared to you, how incredibly fortunate I am," Ren mused. Although his previous life had also ended unhappily, it was still a fate the original owner of this body could only dream of.
Ren silently resolved that if Heaven had granted him this chance to transmigrate into this world, he would not surrender to fate. No matter what, living on was better than dying in humiliation.
"First, I need to escape this desperate situation," Ren furrowed his brow, his mind racing to find a solution.
"Ding! Successful awakening. Overlord System activating."
"Host authentication commencing: 10, 9, 8... 5... 2..."
A strange, somewhat robotic voice suddenly echoed in Ren's mind, interrupting his thoughts. In that instant, Ren held his breath, his rigid face slowly flushing with insane joy.