The smell of burning ozone and copper filled his memory.
In the grand throne room of the Abyssal Sovereign Palace, three hundred grand elders had bled upon the obsidian floor. Gu Chen, the absolute ruler of the Nine-Heavens Demonic Realm, had stood atop a mountain of corpses, his dark imperial blade dripping with celestial blood.
He had won. The rebellion was crushed.
Or so he had believed until a cold, three-foot blade of soul-cleaving steel pierced through his back, bursting out from the center of his chest.
Gu Chen remembered turning his head slowly, his breath catching as he met the pale, trembling eyes of Mo Sha his right-hand man, the trusted shadow general he had raised from the dirt.
"Why?" Gu Chen had not asked with anger, but with the hollow disgust of a god looking down at a backstabbing rat.
"The Heavens cannot belong to a single monster, Sovereign," Mo Sha had whispered, his hands shaking as he twisted the dark blade, shattering Gu Chen’s Golden Core into a million fragments. "You were too strong. We had to break you."
Gu Chen had let out a dark, blood-soaked laugh that shook the pillars of the palace. "Break me? Little rat... I will tear my way out of hell itself. When I return, I will flay your soul for ten thousand years!"
Pain pulled him back to reality.
Cold rainwater poured down from a pitch-black sky, mixing with thick, iron-scented blood trickling down his temple into his eye.
Gu Chen opened his eyelids. The grand imperial palace was gone. He was lying face-down in a muddy ditch on the outskirts of a dense, misty forest, surrounded by rotting leaves and cold mud.
A flood of foreign memories surged violently into his consciousness, merging with his ancient soul.
The vessel he now inhabited belonged to Yu Shen an impoverished, orphaned outer disciple living in the slums of a low-tier mountain town. Three hours ago, Yu Shen had been ambushed by a local bully named Disciple Zhao and his gang over a stolen low-grade spirit herb. The thugs had beaten the frail boy mercilessly, smashing his chest and leaving him to choke on his own blood in the mud.
Gu Chen sat up slowly, rain sliding off his torn black garments.
He looked down at his hands. Despite the dirt and bruises, the body was remarkably tall standing at a lithe, commanding six feet. It wasn't built like a clumsy brawler, but possessed a lean, sharply sculpted physique, toned with smooth, compact muscle reminiscent of a dark prince. His jet-black hair, drenched in rain, fell in soft strands around his sharp jawline, bound behind his neck in a long, loose ponytail.
Gu Chen reached up, wiping the drying mud from his pale forehead. As his eyes opened wide, his pupils flickered with a deep, unnatural violet-purple light the indelible mark of an ancient Demonic Sovereign's soul.
"Pathetic," Gu Chen whispered, his voice low, smooth, and entirely devoid of human warmth. "To die at the hands of low-level Qi Refining insects... what a useless vessel."
He closed his eyes, drawing upon the unyielding willpower of his ancient soul to circulate a thread of lingering energy through his damaged meridians.
CRACK!
With ruthless efficiency, Gu Chen forcibly realigned his fractured ribs and unblocked three major energy pathways in a single breath. He smashed through the internal blockages with sheer, unadulterated willpower, ignoring the searing agony as his core stabilized at the 1st Stage of Qi Refining.
He paused, testing the ambient energy in the atmosphere, and let out a long, frustrated sigh.
"Terrible..." Gu Chen muttered, his jaw tightening. Although he had sworn to tear Mo Sha’s soul apart, the reality of his situation was dismal. This lower realm was practically a spiritual wasteland. The environmental Qi was so thin and diluted that cultivating back up to even the Golden Core Realm through normal training would take at least a few hundred years!
"A few hundred years just to reach Golden Core in a trash realm?" Gu Chen sneered silently. "What an absolute hassle..."
Suddenly, a blinding golden light erupted directly in his vision.
[BEEP! EVIL REHABILITATION SYSTEM ACTIVATED!]
[Host Soul: Gu Chen (Former Demonic Sovereign)]
[Current Vessel: Yu Shen (Qi Refining 1st Stage)]
[Core Mission: You have been granted a second chance at life! Purify your demonic heart, abandon violence, spread love and righteousness to unlock supreme rewards!]
[Warning: Committing wicked, violent, or corrupt acts will result in penalties!]
A translucent blue-and-gold panel hovered in the air, complete with a floating, cartoonish white cat mascot waving a little halo.
Gu Chen stared at the glowing panel for three quiet seconds. A cold, dismissive sneer carved across his handsome, pale face.
"A parasitic spirit array bound to my soul force?" Gu Chen sneered silently, his violet eyes narrowing with dark amusement. "Do you truly believe a toy can control a Sovereign who slaughtered imperial dynasties? Get out of my sight."
He flicked his sleeve, completely ignoring the system's flickering prompts.
Before he could step out of the muddy ditch, a sudden, violent wave of heat rippled through the misty forest.
The rain around him instantly turned to steam. The temperature in the woods spiked dramatically, as if a localized mini-sun had dropped into the trees two hundred paces away.
Gu Chen’s ears twitched. His ancient soul perception swept across the misty clearing, catching the faint, agonizing groans of a woman in deep distress.
"What a strange, chaotic energy..." Gu Chen murmured, his interest piqued.
DING!
[SYSTEM QUEST DETECTED!]
[Objective: Investigate the source of the chaotic heat anomaly and assist the suffering person in distress!]
[Reward: 10 Low-Grade Qi Stones!]
Gu Chen raised an eyebrow at the floating blue box. He scoffed at the sanctimonious wording, but his dark eyes glinted with calculation. In an impoverished wasteland with almost zero atmospheric Qi, 10 Qi Stones were actually a valuable hoard for a 1st-Stage Qi Refining vessel.
"Very well, parasite," Gu Chen murmured. "I'll take a look."
Moving with ghost-like silence, his 6-foot frame glided through the dense brush like a shadow. He pushed past a thick set of pine branches, stopping at the edge of a small, moss-covered clearing.
Lying against the trunk of an ancient oak tree was a young woman around nineteen years old.
She was breathtakingly gorgeous. Long, voluminous fiery crimson-red hair fell in wild, disheveled waves over her shoulders, pinned loosely with a delicate gold phoenix hairpin and torn silk ribbons. Her skin was a fair, flawless porcelain, now flushed a deep, rose-pink color from her chest up to her delicate ears. She wore the luxurious white-and-red hanfu robes of an elite high-tier sect, though her garments were torn at the collar and soaked in sweat, clinging tightly to a voluptuous, well-endowed hourglass figure.
Her eyes ,a vibrant, luminous ruby-red, fluttered open, glowing with a feverish, chaotic light as steam rose softly from her trembling frame.
Su Yan. Direct disciple of Lotus-Phoenix Peak within the Sun-Moon Sect.
DING!
[QUEST UPDATE!]
[Objective: The victim is suffering from an internal thermal collapse! Call a senior Medicinal Master immediately and protect her until help arrives!]
[Reward: 10 Low-Grade Qi Stones!]
Gu Chen looked at the system panel with absolute disgust. "Call a doctor? Waste time playing the heroic errand boy?" He brushed the panel away with a cold flick of his wrist.
He stepped out of the tree line, his hands tucked inside his sleeves, his striking violet eyes locking onto her trembling body. Activating his Sovereign vision, his gaze pierced straight through her silk robes and skin to analyze her internal energy structure.
The Sun-Phoenix Physique!
Gu Chen’s breath hitched slightly, his lips curving into a dark, predatory smile.
In the higher realms, women possessing the Sun-Phoenix Physique were prized above all else as ultimate celestial furnaces. Her internal fire was lethal to her, but to a cultivator practicing dark or cold-attribute demonic techniques, her pure Yang fire essence was a priceless tonic!
A sudden surge of dark excitement flushed through Gu Chen's chest.
If I use the Abyssal Dual Cultivation arts with a celestial furnace like her... reaching the Golden Core Realm won't take hundreds of years. It will take barely a few years!
The dismal, annoying grind of this low-tier world had just vanished in an instant.
"A peerless furnace, delivered straight to my doorstep," Gu Chen purred, his smooth, deep voice cutting through the humid mist.
Su Yan flinched at the sound of a man's voice. She forced her head up, her hand trembling violently as she reached for the golden hilt of her sword.
"W-Who... who are you?" Su Yan rasped, her voice husky and breathless from the excruciating heat. Her ruby-red eyes glared at him with a desperate, proud defiance. "Stay back! I am a direct disciple of Lotus-Phoenix Peak... if you dare touch me..."
Her threat carried zero weight. The small movement exhausted her remaining strength; her sword slipped from her limp fingers, and she collapsed forward into the damp grass, her hot forehead landing near Gu Chen’s boots.
Gu Chen didn't step back. He slowly knelt down on one knee, his dark ponytail falling over his shoulder. He reached out, his long, cool fingers clamping firmly around her chin, forcing her flushed, sweat-glistening face up so her glazed ruby eyes met his violet ones.
"Your meridians are tearing apart, little princess," Gu Chen whispered, his icy breath fanning over her hot, parted lips. "In less than an hour, your precious Sun-Phoenix fire will incinerate your soul."
Su Yan shuddered violently. The moment his cool fingers touched her feverish chin, a jolt of unimaginable relief surged through her body. Driven by raw biological survival instincts, her body craved his cold touch so intensely that she involuntarily pressed her face deeper into his palm, letting out a soft, helpless whimpering sound.
"Ah... cool..." Su Yan whimpered, tears of pure shame and agony brimming in her ruby eyes. Her proud mind screamed at her to pull away from this unknown youth in torn rags, but her body was completely paralyzed by the feverish craving. "Help... save me..."
Gu Chen looked down into her desperate, blushing face, his thumb gently tracing the hot, trembling curve of her lower lip.
"Save you?" Gu Chen chuckled darkly, his violet eyes flashing with a crimson-violet light. "Nothing in this world is free. If you want my cold energy to survive, you must surrender your body and soul to me."
He didn't wait for her verbal answer. Sensing her burning core on the verge of total collapse, Gu Chen reached down, slipping his long arms beneath her narrow waist and voluptuous legs, scooping her hot, trembling body effortlessly into his arms.
Su Yan gasped, her small hands instinctively wrapping tightly around his neck. The physical contact sent a shockwave of soothing relief through her chest, causing her to bury her flushed face directly into the nook of his neck with a breathless sigh of surrender.
FLASH!
The golden system panel exploded violently in Gu Chen’s vision, the cartoon cat mascot flailing its arms in absolute panic.
[WARNING! WARNING!]
[Host detected taking shameless advantage of a critically injured woman!]
[System Notice: Host is behaving like a classic demonic villain!]
[Critical Penalty will be Applied!]
Gu Chen looked at the flashing red warnings with absolute disdain.
"Deduct all you want, parasite," Gu Chen sneered inwardly, carrying the panting, feverish genius girl toward a secluded cave hidden in the nearby cliffside. "In this world, strength, vengeance, and pleasure are the only truths that matter."
He stepped into the dark cavern, the heavy sound of Su Yan’s breathless moans echoing against the cold stone walls as the Sovereign prepared to claim his very first celestial furnace.