At the foot of Azure Cloud Mountain, the clamor of the mortal world had long since been shut away behind layer upon layer of peaks.
Yet even in the heart of all this earthly hustle, people toiled for a few scraps of silver, until they were utterly spent.
Lin Fan was one of them.
Night had fallen deep. The city's neon lights shone through the cold glass of the office building, casting shifting, strange shadows across his pale face.
The clatter of his keyboard had long since stopped. Only the screen glowed faintly blue, illuminating the densely packed words on the document. They twisted and writhed like talismans demanding his life.
A sharp pain seized his chest, as if a boulder were crushing him. He couldn't catch his breath. Everything before his eyes began to spin, blur, and fade... before finally plunging into endless darkness.
His consciousness flickered like a candle in the wind.
The scenes of his life shattered into fragments, rushing past one after another before quickly vanishing.
Just as he was about to sink into oblivion, utterly hopeless, a point of dazzling, multicolored light blazed into being. It seemed to come from the dawn of the universe, piercing endless space and ignoring every barrier of time and distance as it suddenly burst into the depths of his disintegrating consciousness.
The light wasn't blinding. Instead, it was warm and peaceful, yet it contained an indescribable vastness and antiquity. It seemed to hold the mysteries of creation itself, with the flow of galaxies and the cycles of the universe rising and falling within it.
The light flashed and vanished, so quickly that he might have thought it a hallucination before death.
Pain!
An icy chill seeped up from beneath him, mixed with the sharp sting of gravel and broken stones digging into his skin.
And there was the overpowering sensation of being watched, accompanied by a savage, primeval aura that seemed to rush straight at him.
Lin Fan jerked his eyes open. The violent pounding in his head nearly made him vomit.
What he saw wasn't the snow-white ceiling of a hospital. It was a vast, dreary gray sky, with a few strangely shaped, brightly colored clouds drifting slowly past.
The air filled his lungs with an unprecedented freshness, mingled with the heavy, earthy stench of soil and... some inexplicable sense of danger.
He struggled to sit up, only to discover that he was completely naked, his skin exposed to the air and covered in goose bumps.
All around him stood waist-high ferns he'd never seen before and enormous, grotesque trees. Every leaf was astonishingly large, emanating a desolate, primeval aura.
"Where... am I?"
His voice was dry and hoarse, barely human.
Fear coiled around his heart like an icy snake.
He clearly remembered working overtime, the sharp pain in his chest... and then what? That light?
Before he could make sense of it, the ground began to tremble faintly. Once, then again—slow, heavy steps accompanied by a teeth-grating crunch, as if some gigantic creature were crushing trees as it drew closer.
Every hair on Lin Fan's body stood on end. The icy sensation of being watched suddenly became almost tangible, thick with bloodlust.
He scrambled behind an enormous moss-covered boulder, held his breath, and cautiously peered around it.
Several dozen yards ahead, the dense forest fell to either side like brittle stalks. A colossal figure appeared!
It was a giant beast, shaped like the primordial dinosaurs described in ancient texts. Its body was as huge as a mountain, covered in cold, rough, gray-brown scales that reflected the thin daylight like metal.
Each time its thick, pillar-like limbs struck the ground, the earth trembled faintly, leaving deep claw marks.
Most terrifying of all was its head. Its gaping jaws revealed interlocking fangs like daggers, dripping with viscous saliva. Its vertical pupils were crimson and cruel as it slowly surveyed the area, nostrils flaring as though searching for something.
A chill shot from Lin Fan's feet straight to his scalp. His heart felt ready to leap out of his chest.
He clamped a hand over his mouth, afraid of making the slightest sound.
He would rather believe this was a nightmare. But the rancid wind blowing over him, the real tremors in the earth, every detail of the beast's scales—all cruelly told him the same thing: this was reality!
An absurd, terrifying, incomprehensible reality!
The dinosaur had clearly caught a scent. Its enormous head suddenly swung toward the boulder where Lin Fan was hiding, and its blood-red eyes locked onto it.
It let out a low, hoarse growl, like sandpaper scraping against metal. The sound made Lin Fan's eardrums ache and his blood surge.
Run!
That was the only thought left in his mind.
Lin Fan could no longer afford to think of anything else. Naked, he summoned every ounce of strength his instinct for survival could muster and darted from behind the boulder, racing for the dense forest in the opposite direction.
Sharp stones and brittle branches pierced the soles of his feet, leaving streaks of blood, but he barely felt the pain.
The wind roared in his ears, mingling with the heavy, hopeless thudding behind him and the sharp crashes of trees being smashed apart.
The giant beast looked clumsy, but it was astonishingly fast. Every stride covered the distance of more than ten of Lin Fan's all-out steps!
The ground shook more and more violently, and its foul breath seemed to wash over the back of his neck.
Lin Fan didn't even dare look back. He could feel the beast's enormous shadow already covering him, the chill of death piercing to the bone.
He threw himself into a desperate roll, barely dodging a swipe. The beast's gigantic claws grazed his body and gouged three deep furrows into the ground!
He scrambled onward, his lungs burning as his strength rapidly drained away.
A shallow stream appeared ahead. Without a second thought, he plunged into it, sending water flying in every direction. He hoped the current would wash away his scent.
But the beast didn't care. It stepped straight into the stream, churning the mud and cutting off the flow.
Lowering its grotesque head, it growled again in warning. Lin Fan's tiny, desperate figure was reflected in its crimson eyes.
There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run!
Lin Fan was cornered beneath a steep cliff. Behind him lay a dead end.
The cold rock pressed against his back. Before him gaped the approaching maw, radiating an oppressive, murderous aura.
After the overwhelming fear came a wave of utter absurdity and fury that swept away his reason.
He'd studied hard for ten years, worked diligently and killed himself with overtime, only to die at his desk!
And even after death, he couldn't have any peace. He'd ended up in some unknown wasteland, naked, about to become this beast's meal?
Why?!
A nameless rage surged through him, overwhelming his fear and drawing out the last of his strength.
He suddenly straightened his naked body, covered in scrapes and streaks of blood. He stopped retreating and pointed at the advancing primeval beast. Summoning every last bit of strength, he roared at the gray sky above. His voice warped with fury and defiance as he shouted the first words he'd spoken since arriving in this world:
"Curse you, heavens! Are you messing with me?! If you want me dead, then just kill me already! What kind of damned Heavenly Dao toys with people like this?!"
Before you continue