At eleven o'clock at night, as a storm raged and wind and rain filled the sky, a young man could be seen running through a narrow alley in a certain city.
His name was Han Wu—a talented PhD in information technology at just twenty-nine years old.
He was currently the deputy director of a large company. After a long business trip, he had returned home today a day earlier than expected.
Although his title was deputy director, he hadn't founded the company, nor did he own any shares; he was merely a salaried employee, enduring heavy pressure day in and day out from both his superiors and subordinates.
Looking back, his life was just as unremarkable as those of the countless others struggling to survive in this harsh metropolis.
He was currently living with his girlfriend. The two of them rented a forty-square-meter apartment to make daily life easier and minimize expenses, as their combined income was only about thirty million dong—a very average income in society.
Having lived together for nearly a year, he planned to officially get married early next year so he could focus on his career. *I have a fiancée and a stable job; that's already much better than most,* he thought to himself as he picked out a roast duck—a humble dish that was his girlfriend's absolute favorite.
He hadn't told his girlfriend he was coming back, wanting to surprise her, and the roast duck would make the perfect late-night snack for their reunion.
But life is unpredictable. The moment Han Wu arrived home, he noticed a pair of men's shoes sitting right outside the door.
"Whose are these?" A dark premonition welled up inside him.
His heart hammered. Taking a few deep breaths to regain his composure, he tried to reassure himself, thinking, *Surely it's not like one of those cheap adult video plots.* Mocking his own thoughts, he gently turned the key in the lock. The lights were out; she was probably asleep.
With an unsettling, unanswered question lingering in his mind, he walked toward the bedroom, intending to wake his girlfriend and give her a little surprise.
But as he drew closer to the door, he suddenly heard a woman's soft, whimpering groans. It sounded highly unusual.
*Is she sick? No, that doesn't sound like it. Could she be... pleasuring herself?* he thought, peering through the cracked door.
As if struck by an immobilization spell, he froze, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head. He was the one who got a surprise—inside the room, his naked girlfriend was writhing in bed with a strange man.
He couldn't believe what was unfolding before his eyes. *Thud.* The bag of roast duck fell to the floor, the sound causing the two people lost in lust to suddenly freeze. "Who's there?" his girlfriend cried out in alarm. "Oh my god, Wu... I, I...! Why are you home so early? It's not what you think!" She had barely uttered those words when she let out a soft gasp as the man's shaft thrust hard into her passage from behind, resuming their rhythmic motion.
Tears streamed down her face, her breasts shaking with every heavy thrust, while Han Wu stood frozen, the light completely gone from his vacant eyes.
By now, he could no longer hear anything. His vision blurred as hot tears welled up and overflowed.
His vision of the future, the present, and the past shattered piece by piece.
His youth, the lovers who had been together since their first steps into the world, when they thought they had overcome countless hardships to be together and paint a picture of their future—reality had suddenly destroyed it all in the cruelest way possible. Driven mad, he ran out of the house, heedless of the pouring rain and howling wind.
He wept as he ran, tears and rain washing over his anguished face.
There was no one left on the street, only the sound of wind, rain, and thunder signaling that a massive storm had made landfall. "Why? Why is it so unfair to me?" Standing in the middle of the street, he looked up at the sky and screamed, letting the heavy raindrops sting his face.
Suddenly, the entire sky was engulfed in a blinding flash of lightning, followed by a massive, brilliant bolt striking straight down, right where he stood.
Han Yu had no time to register anything. Everything happened too fast, and his flesh was reduced to ashes. No one knew how much time had passed, but Han Yu now felt nothing but pain in his head, racking both his body and his soul.
He desperately wanted to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt incredibly heavy.
After a long time and many attempts, he finally managed to open his eyes. However, his surroundings were pitch black, without a single speck of light. Only the cold, damp chill of the hard stone beneath him seeped into his body. Feeling the aches and pains all over, Han Yu gradually regained consciousness.
"Am I dead? Is this the Avici Hell? Sigh, I never expected to die so young, and still a virgin," Han Yu thought. Lying in the darkness, he felt extremely cold. "Why did she do that? How could she bear to betray me? Will I ever see her again in the next life?"
But at that moment, he instinctively groaned aloud: "Ah... No, that's not right. Why do I feel physical pain? Could it be that I'm not dead? Where is this place?" The temperature was growing colder and colder. Suddenly, the distant roar of a beast cut off Han Yu's train of thought.
Startled and bewildered, he then calmly assessed his current situation.
His body was covered in countless wounds, the most severe of which was a gash on his flank that looked as if it had been slashed by a sword, exposing white bone.
Silently examining his body and thinking, he suddenly cried out, "This isn't my body! Could I have transmigrated to another world? Now that I think about it, my voice sounds different too." The other wounds had already scabbed over. It was clear this body had died of excessive blood loss. Right now, if he couldn't withstand the dropping temperature, Han Yu would die of cold all over again.
Fumbling around his clothes for a long time, he found a fire-striker of the kind used by people in ancient times.
After blowing on it for a while, a small flame flickered to life, illuminating his surroundings.
Only then did Han Yu realize he was at the bottom of a cold, black stone abyss.
He looked down at his hands—when had they become so small? And his clothes, though tattered, were definitely not the polo shirt he had been wearing.
Looking to his side, he saw a corpse dressed in grey clothes, styled like a family servant.
"Perhaps this person died trying to save me and bring me in here," Han Yu thought.
Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through his head, and fragments of memory associated with this servant began to resurface one after another.
What on earth was going on? What were these memories? The questions flashed and then vanished; he couldn't think at all, as the flood of memories gave him no room to do so. Clutching his head tightly with both hands, pieces of information began to replay like a slow-motion film.
The Han Family, Baiyun City, Huangyuan, Han Yun, Han Ling'er... unfamiliar faces were imprinted one by one into Han Yu's mind. From the memories flooding back, he had to accept a reality—he had transmigrated.
Transmigrated into an eleven-year-old boy with the same name.
He was a direct descendant of the Han Family, one of the three strongest forces in Baiyun City, located in the northern part of the Daluo Kingdom—one of the two largest nations in the Eastern Huangyuan Region.
As for the Eastern Huangyuan Region, it was a vast territory located in the northeastern part of the Huangyuan Continent. On the Huangyuan Continent, the strong ruled supreme.
Although Han Wu was born into the Han family and was the grandson of Han Lei—one of the strongest experts in Baiyun City—he was already eleven years old and still unable to cultivate.
Later, Han Lei managed to invite the number one physician of Baiyun City, Huangfu Ji, to examine his body. Unexpectedly, he was born with a defective bloodline that was incurable.
Under these circumstances, Han Wu would spend his entire life as an ordinary person, and others called him a good-for-nothing.
Obviously, in a top-tier cultivation clan like the Han family, such a fate was incredibly painful.
If his grandfather, Han Lei, were not the family head, and his father, Han Yun, were not the greatest genius of the Han family in the last hundred years, no one would have even spared him a glance. From that moment on, the good-for-nothing Han Wu lived like a shadow in the Han family.
Only his father refused to accept this fate, constantly searching for rare treasures in the hope of curing him.
Until a month ago, a natural phenomenon suddenly appeared in the Xueshan Forest.
Countless experts from the surrounding areas came seeking their fortune, but most of them only left behind their corpses.
Ten days ago, a late-stage Spirit Sea Realm expert escaped with his life, covered in countless wounds. Only then did people learn that a bottomless abyss had appeared in the Xueshan Forest, filled with black fiendish energy.
Many demonic beasts and martial artists who came into contact with this black fiendish energy went mad, becoming bloodthirsty and slaughtering one another.
Therefore, the people here called this place the Deathly Black Domain.
However, there were indeed many good things at the bottom of the Deathly Black Domain.
According to that Spirit Sea Realm expert, someone had glimpsed the faint silhouette of a Black Jade Divine Lotus through the layers of black fiendish energy. According to ancient records, it could reconstruct one's meridians and reshape the body.
When this news reached the Han family, his father, Han Yun, immediately consulted with his grandfather Han Lei, who was also the head of the Han family. They arranged a team of ten late-stage Spirit Sea Realm experts to escort Han Wu to seek this opportunity.
This was also the strongest force that the family head's lineage could muster.
If not for the fact that the Black Jade Divine Lotus had to be consumed immediately after being plucked, Han Yun would never have dared to risk bringing the good-for-nothing Han Wu along. On the third day after entering the Xueshan Forest area, which was yesterday, the entire team was ambushed by a group of masked experts, led by an Earth Meridian Realm expert.
This resulted in the annihilation of the entire team.
In the moment of peril, Elder Ding managed to grab Han Wu and escape. However, they were forced to fall into the Deathly Black Domain, jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
To protect the good-for-nothing Han Wu, Elder Ding had held him close to cushion the impact. Upon hitting the ground, Elder Ding sacrificed his life, while the good-for-nothing Han Wu, infected by the black fiendish energy and suffering from blood loss, also died. This, however, conveniently allowed the transmigrated Han Wu to take over his body. After absorbing the memories of the deceased, good-for-nothing Han Wu, he let out a sigh and thought to himself, "To think that besides me, your fate was also so tragic. Reborn this time, I will climb to the peak and never allow anyone to bully me again."
A fierce fire of determination burned within Han Wu. "Why is this black fiendish energy unable to harm me?" Han Wu pondered in silence but could not find an answer; his understanding of this world was still far too limited.
Quickly, he brushed these thoughts aside. "I don't know what the future holds, but for now, I must prepare to survive this ghostly place." He searched Elder Ding's corpse, found some dry rations, and chewed on them to warm his stomach. Then, he went to find some dry firewood to start a fire before lying down to rest, gradually drifting off to sleep.