Chapter One: Reborn and Returned

Coastal City, First People's Hospital, Emergency Department, Ward No. 3.

On the hospital bed, Lin Feng was suddenly surrounded by crackling thunder. The space around him twisted, and a dark singularity collapsed violently between his brows. All at once, Lin Feng’s eyes snapped open.

His pupils gazed into the void, as if piercing the very origin of the universe. His expression was solemn, unmoving as a mountain, his presence still and unshakable.

It was as though a myriad of stars flickered in his eyes, rising and falling—an extraordinary, otherworldly sight.

Lin Feng’s throat was parched, and in a hoarse, low voice, he asked, "Where am I?"

In the haze, a tall and burly figure appeared before him. This man wore a black suit, his head gleaming bald, his face brutish and arrogant. He reached out and slapped Lin Feng’s cheeks with contempt, scoffing:

"Where are you? Have you lost your mind, kid? Maybe we went a bit too far yesterday—here you are, back in the hospital again! Hahaha!"

That wild, arrogant voice exploded at Lin Feng’s ear, followed by a chorus of mocking laughter.

The clamor crashed together, making Lin Feng’s head throb with agony. Memories surged before his eyes like a film on fast-forward, flashing by like a lantern show.

Lin Feng—eldest son of the Lin family in Jinling City.

Three years ago, in pursuit of justice for a victim, Lin Feng testified in court against Liang Fengnian, scion of the Liang family.

But that act provoked a ruthless revenge!

Liang Fengnian joined forces with several families in Jinling, crushing the Lin Group and driving it to bankruptcy.

The Yao family of Coastal City, once eager to form an alliance by marriage, seized the opportunity to go back on their promise.

Desperate to survive, Lin Feng’s grandfather begged the Yao family, and thus Lin Feng escaped Jinling, marrying into the Yao family in disgrace, becoming a humiliated live-in son-in-law.

Yet still, Liang Fengnian would not let him go.

In 2023, his grandfather was beaten in broad daylight and eventually died of his injuries.

Soon after, his parents vanished in a mysterious shipwreck—suspected murder, but left unresolved.

Grief and hatred consumed Lin Feng.

He loathed the cruelty of Liang Fengnian.

He despised his own weakness, and the injustice of the world.

At last, Lin Feng climbed to the summit of Mount Tai and hurled himself from the cliff, ending his life in despair and wrath.

Who could have imagined that his suicide would fail, that he would be saved by a wandering immortal sage who traveled the boundless cosmos? From that moment, Lin Feng embarked upon the path of cultivation.

And so began an odyssey of one hundred thousand years.

Across ten millennia, bearing humiliation, Lin Feng strove with relentless determination. In five centuries, he overcame the ninefold tribulations and achieved the rank of Grand Celestial Immortal, ascending to the very top of the Immortal Registry.

Thereafter, he proved his Dao through slaughter, treading upon the corpses of myriad races, reaching the ultimate boundary.

He felled saintly heirs, massacred remnant clans, toppled ancient divine sects, and crushed countless once-proud geniuses underfoot.

He roamed the universe, becoming the Supreme Immortal Emperor of the Primordial Chaos, known as the "Celestial Emperor of the Nine Heavens." His name resounded across the boundless cosmos; his words became law, worshipped by billions of races and all the gods and buddhas of the heavens.

Yet his hatred could not be erased.

It became a demon in his heart.

One hundred thousand years later, as Lin Feng attempted to transcend the final tribulation, his heart demon erupted, and he perished, body and soul destroyed by celestial lightning.

"Unfulfilled! My hatred is endless! Curse you, heavens, I am not reconciled!"

"Long Yaoyang, Liang Fengnian! If I could live again, I would shatter your souls and torment you for ten million years!"

At the edge of oblivion, Lin Feng vowed to the heavens, his hatred undimmed, lingering on and on.

...

Gradually awakening from his memories, Lin Feng looked calmly at the vicious bald man before him and asked, "Who are you?"

"Who am I? Hahaha! Young Master Lin, you truly are a forgetful noble, aren't you? Did you forget how you were groveling at my feet yesterday, begging for mercy? Dragon Young Master sent me to greet you!"

Dragon Young Master?

Of course—Long Yaoyang, heir to the Tianlong Hall in Coastal City.

In the city’s underworld, he was a titan, second only to one.

With tens of thousands of subordinates, known to both the criminal and the upright worlds alike, even city officials had to show him respect.

To curry favor with Liang Fengnian of Jinling, he had often beaten and humiliated Lin Feng, recording videos to send to Liang Fengnian, thus tightening their alliance.

The bald man before Lin Feng was Long Yaoyang’s trusted enforcer.

A renowned boxer in Coastal City’s underground circuit, three-time champion—brawny and ruthless, with at least three lives on his hands.

He was a vicious, cold-blooded fiend.

Now, Lin Feng had returned to life, stripped of all cultivation, merely a severely injured, frail youth, powerless against even a chicken. There was no way he could contend with this murderous boxer.

The bald man looked down at Lin Feng, eyes full of scorn. A cruel grin split his lips as he seized Lin Feng by the hair, his massive two-hundred-pound frame pressing in, his greasy face close as he sneered:

"Let me tell you, you think you can find peace in Coastal City? Offend Liang Fengnian, and you’ve offended Young Master Long! You’ll have plenty more chances to lie in a hospital bed in this lifetime!"

"Get out!" Lin Feng growled low.

The single word was like a whip-crack, stinging the bald man’s ears, making him lose face before his underlings.

The lackeys behind him jeered:

"Yo! Bald Bro, looks like this kid’s asking for a beating—let’s make sure he stays in the hospital another two weeks!"

"Yeah! Bald Bro, he clearly doesn’t respect you. Teach him a lesson!"

Egged on by their shouts, the bald man would not allow himself to be shamed before his men—especially not by the city’s most notorious weakling.

The Yao family’s disgraced son-in-law, Lin Feng.

"Fine, fine, you really think you’re still Young Master Lin? Looks like I’ll have to teach you a lesson!"

Determined to regain his dignity, the bald man cracked his knuckles and sneered, his face twisted with menace.

He rolled up his sleeves, revealing a muscular, tattooed arm—its bulging muscles inked with a qilin, each arm as thick as Lin Feng’s thigh.

"Take this punch and see how you like another couple of weeks in bed!"

Raising a fist the size of a sandbag, bloodlust flashing in his eyes, he swung at Lin Feng, intent on pummeling him to death right there.

"Boss, show him who's boss!"

"Bald Bro, let him have it—make him wish he were dead!"

As the giant fist hurtled toward Lin Feng’s face, the two underlings cheered, eager to witness Lin Feng’s misery, as if they could draw endless delight from his suffering.

But in the next instant, they would pay a terrible price for their actions.

Never in their lives could they imagine that Lin Feng was no longer the useless son-in-law they despised.

No longer the failed heir, the disgrace of a ruined family.

No, not at all...

Within this frail body now dwelled the spirit of one who had endured one hundred thousand years of bitter cultivation, who had survived the ninefold heavenly tribulation—

The Celestial Emperor of the Nine Heavens, Lin Feng—Lin Jiuxiao!