Chen Yuan died with dry eyes and cramped hands.
Not from disease, not from violence. No, he died slouched in a torn office chair, three empty instant noodle cups beside him, and a cracked screen in front of him displaying the final line of Demon Immortal Path:
"In the end, the Demon Sovereign devoured heaven itself, and smiled."
He had clicked next chapter ten times after that. There was no epilogue. No aftermath. Just that one line. The greatest cultivation novel ever written ended like a stab in the ribs. After 3.6 million words and 7 years of weekly chapters.
He felt nothing at first. Then everything.
He blinked once.
And when his eyes opened again..
The screen was gone.
The chair was gone.
The air was thick with rot.
He was lying in a pit of corpses.
His limbs shook as he sat up. This wasn't sleep paralysis. This was something else entirely.
The sky above was the color of dried blood. Cracked moons hung from clouds like split eyeballs. And all around him, the dead twitched with the last spasms of failed cultivations. Bone shards, exploded cores, withered meridians.
He knew this place.
This wasn't like the world of Demon Immortal Path.
It was the world.
And worse: this pit, this mound of discarded flesh and failure
This was Chapter 1, Scene 3. The "Apostate Hell Trial" that slaughtered 900 outer disciples of the Crimson Soul Sect in a single day.
"Only one survived," he muttered. "He climbed out, stole the identity of a corpse, and poisoned his way up the inner sect."
Chen Yuan touched his face.
It was not his face.
He looked down at the robes he wore. They were black, soaked through. The emblem: the Crimson Soul Sect's lowest servant insignia.
He knew whose body this was.
"Lu Tian. The scapegoat." His voice cracked.
In the novel, Lu Tian died in the first paragraph. Off-screen. Pathetic. Just another body in the pit.
But now?
Now Lu Tian was him.
And in this hellhole of pill-thieves, soul-eaters, and heart-devourers. He had knowledge none of them could dream of.
He had read the entire book.
The corpses were warm.
Chen Yuan didn't remember standing. One second he was staring into a pair of eyeless sockets, and the next, he was moving. Climbing. Hands sinking into spongy flesh, feet slipping on shattered bones slick with half-dried marrow.
Every breath was a gamble. Some bodies still twitched, Qi running wild in their half-shattered dantians, their death-throes eating through the nerves of anyone too slow to dodge. Chen Yuan felt the heat of unstable cores boiling beneath his palm. One misstep and he'd explode just like the rest.
And yet he climbed.
Because the sky was not just above, it was escape.
He knew what was coming.
Three things happened next in the novel. Always in order. Always deadly.
First: a poisonous fog descended, composed of soul-eating resentment Qi gathered by the Sect's elder, Grandmaster Tu Fen, to cull the weak.
Second: bone-leeches, mutated spirit beasts bred in corpse arrays, were released to "test" the bodies for surviving life.
Third: the Sect disciples would arrive to harvest materials, organs, cores, blood, and collect any unfortunate survivors for servitude or worse.
Chen Yuan's hands gripped a jutting ribcage and he hauled himself up with a snarl.
A sigh escaped his lips when he saw open air.
The edge of the pit.
Ten more meters.
His heart pounded like thunder. Not just from the climb, but from a dangerous thought that was forming. One that crackled with risk. A possibility only a reader like him would ever consider.
What if I don't just survive?
What if I start here, where the demons are born?
He looked down at the corpse beneath him , lean, light-framed, with robes that marked the middle-tier outer disciple class.
If memory served, this one was Zhou Bin, the arrogant trash who got ambushed and thrown into the pit after trying to drug a senior's concubine.
In the book, his identity was what Lu Tian used to get out alive.
With trembling hands, Chen Yuan stripped the corpse clean and worked quickly. He had minutes. Less, maybe.
By the time the first wave of Resentment Fog rolled over the edge of the pit like a living tide of moaning whispers, he was ready. Wrapped in Zhou Bin's uniform, smeared in Qi-muddling corpse blood, hiding beneath the flayed skin of a true cultivator.
The fog hit.
Instantly, every pore screamed.
It wasn't poison in the normal sense. The Resentment Fog devoured conviction. Memory. Cultivation techniques based on spiritual balance or elemental resonance melted first. The Qi of the dead shrieked against him.
But Chen Yuan. No, Lu Tian now, gritted his teeth and channeled nothing.
Because the secret was this:
The Resentment Fog couldn't consume what didn't resist.
He slowed his breath. Let his heartbeat quiet. Pushed his mind into stillness.
A page from Chapter 4: Secret of the Abyss Root Method burned behind his eyes.
"Cultivation begins not by gathering, but by remembering. Draw not from the heavens. Draw from the abyss within."
He whispered it like prayer.
He whispered it like prayer.
He whispered it like prayer.
And the fog… passed through him.
It chewed the corpse next to him into a husk. Skinned another further down to bone. But it tasted nothing in him. He was a void.
And in that moment, he understood the truth that had always unsettled him as a reader.
The Abyss Root Method wasn't just forbidden. It was incompatible with traditional cultivation.
If Normal cultivation pull in Qi, refine it through breathing techniques, store it in the dantian. Advance via realms: Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, etc.
Abyss Root Cultivation banish the Qi, dig inward into memory, trauma, failure. Refine emotional scars into seeds of power, strength determined by how deep you dare fall. It was strength born from clarity, obsession, and raw truth.
Lu Tian closed his eyes.
He remembered the night his mother hanged herself after the debt collectors came.
He remembered pretending not to hear it, so she wouldn't feel ashamed.
The thought cut like a blade. Blood dripped from his nose.
He smiled.
The Abyss Root cracked open inside him.
A black thread of force coiled beneath his navel.
It was..
[Abyss Level 0: Scar Awakening]
-First Mark: Mother's Silence
It hurt. Gods, it hurt. But it was real.
He could feel the foundation forming—not from cultivation manuals, but from himself.
He barely had time to savor it.
The second trial arrived.
The bone-leeches.
They fell like worms of ivory rain, wriggling through the air, sniffing for fear.
One landed inches from his face.
It curled.
Then turned away.
His blood was dead.
His breath was hollow.
The Abyss Root hid his soul's light like a grave hides bones.
They didn't find him.
But the screams below… gods, the screams.
He waited three more minutes before he moved.
By then, the Sect Disciples had begun descending, collecting trophies and dragging half-dead survivors in chains.
Lu Tian didn't run.
He walked toward them, hunched, limping, robes torn just enough to look like a survivor with value—but not so much as to be a threat.
A senior disciple grabbed him by the throat.
"Name," he barked.
Lu Tian wheezed. "Zhou Bin."
The man's brows furrowed. "Didn't you die? Tu Fen said-"
"I killed the leech that tried. I'm… I'm valuable. Please…"
The senior smirked. "We'll see."
As Lu Tian was dragged away, wrists bound in black rope, the pit behind him closed with a thunderous boom of Sect formation seals.
He had escaped.
But not free.
Not yet.