Lan An had just awakened when an excruciating pain surged through his entire body. It felt as though every bone in his skeleton had been shattered into pieces. Even lifting a single finger required tremendous effort. What tormented him even more was the splitting headache. Countless unfamiliar memories flooded into his mind like a raging torrent, leaving him momentarily unable to react.
Two hours later, the pain in his head gradually subsided. Only then did Lan An finally realize what had happened to him.
"I... I didn't die? I've truly transmigrated?"
Lan An muttered to himself several times, his face still frozen in disbelief. His mouth hung wide open while cold sweat drenched his back. The shock was so great that if he still had any strength left, he would have punched himself hard a few times just to confirm this was real.
After painstakingly sorting through the chaotic flood of memories, Lan An began to recall everything. In his previous life, he was an orphan raised in an orphanage. When he was seven, an old man came and adopted him. As time passed and he grew up under the old man's care, Lan An learned that his adoptive father was a great soldier who had devoted his entire life to the nation's wars and never started a family. In his twilight years, the old man adopted Lan An so that someone would care for him in his final days.
Out of deep admiration and seeing his adoptive father as his idol, Lan An decided to follow the same path. Trained rigorously by the old man, he entered the military at eighteen with top honors, determined to become a legendary soldier just like his father.
Yet heaven's will often overrides human plans. Because his adoptive father had lived an upright and unyielding life, he had offended many powerful forces. The moment the old man retired and stepped down from power, those forces struck without mercy.
Lan An would never forget that night. Dozens of black-clad assassins broke into their home under the cover of darkness. Though both father and son sensed the danger with their sharp instincts, it was already too late. A storm of bullets and overwhelming firepower rained down on their small, peaceful wooden house. Ruthless hands buried a great soldier and a youth filled with boundless dreams in a sea of flames.
Before dying, Lan An saw in his adoptive father's dimming eyes endless warmth and deep regret. Perhaps the old man was thinking that if he had never adopted him, the boy's fate would have been different, at least he wouldn't have died so bitterly together with him.
Lan An's dry lips trembled. He had wanted to tell his father how proud he was to be his son. Unfortunately, before he could speak, everything was swallowed by the inferno.
"That was probably the greatest regret of my previous life," Lan An thought bitterly.
Suppressing his grief, he continued organizing the memories of this new body and the identity he had taken over. Suddenly, Lan An's expression changed dramatically. Boundless fury erupted in his chest like raging flames that could not be extinguished. His hands clenched so tightly that blood seeped from his palms.
After taking several deep breaths to calm himself, Lan An gritted his teeth and, with all his remaining strength, shakily raised his hand to touch his eyes. In that instant, the world seemed to spin. His eye sockets were completely empty.
He had been blinded. More precisely, someone had brutally gouged out both of his eyes. Endless, uncontrollable rage surged within him. If he still had any energy left, he would have roared like a maddened beast.
Because the cruel truth he could never have imagined was this: The person who personally dug out his eyes in this life, the one who condemned him to eternal darkness and endless humiliation, was none other than his own biological father.
The vast difference between his kind adoptive father from his previous life and this blood-related father struck Lan An like a heavy blow. Forcing himself to regain composure, he knew he needed to find a way to survive his current predicament.
The original owner of this body was named Lan An. His cold-blooded father was the Clan Master of the Lan Clan, a renowned cultivation clan on the Ice Heaven Continent. In this continent, the strong were revered and the weak were trampled. There were almost no laws, only the law of the jungle. The strong were always right. Might was truth. The weak could only submit or die.
On this continent, major powers were mostly formed by groups of cultivators and were ranked from first-grade to ninth-grade, with ninth-grade being the highest.
The Lan Clan was an eighth-grade cultivation force, second only to the two supreme ninth-grade powers that ruled the Ice Heaven Continent: Heaven Mountain Fairy Realm and the Ice Mystic Empire.
Though ranked below those two, the Lan Clan's status was still unshakable. Among the countless forces on the continent, only a handful could stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
Having existed for countless years with an unbroken legacy, the Lan Clan's founding ancestor was a legendary figure who had ascended to the Immortal Realm. They controlled vast territories spanning ten thousand miles and had millions of clan members. Geniuses appeared generation after generation. Such was the terrifying might of the Lan Clan.
And Lan An was the eldest son born to the Clan Master, Lan Polei. He should have been a noble young master bathed in endless favor and glory.
Yet fate played a cruel joke.
Right after his birth, which the entire clan had awaited with anticipation, Lan An mercilessly slapped the face of every member of the Lan Clan.
Lan An had no Spiritual Root.
On the Ice Heaven Continent, even a three-year-old child knew that a Spiritual Root was the most basic requirement for cultivation. Without one, Lan An was nothing more than a useless cripple destined to remain trash for life.
If he had been born into an ordinary mortal family, this would have been normal. But he was the son of the Lan Clan's Master. His existence became the greatest laughingstock across the entire Ice Heaven Continent. The Clan Master of an eighth-grade force had actually sired a worthless son.
His mother came from a mediocre fifth-rate family. After giving birth to a crippled son, she was despised and abandoned by both the clan and her husband. Overwhelmed by grief, she died with her eyes wide open in resentment.
Things grew even worse for Lan An when, a year later, the second young master, his younger brother Lan Yu, was born. Lan Yu inherited two types of Spiritual Roots from Lan Polei: Ice and Lightning. The Lightning Root was extremely rare, granting immense destructive power and terrifying offensive ability. Cultivators with Lightning Roots were usually far stronger than others of the same realm. This was also why Lan Polei firmly held the position of Clan Master with absolute authority.
The birth of Lan Yu filled the entire Lan Clan with joy. Through the Elder Council's decision, Lan Yu was designated as the future Young Clan Master.
Lan Yu's existence only brought Lan An even more humiliation. Within the clan, Lan An lived worse than the lowest servants. Even the servants had the right to cultivate, but he did not.
He lived like a lowly wretch, performing the most menial and degrading tasks just to earn scraps of food. No one treated him as the eldest young master. His very existence was a stain upon the Lan Clan's honor.
But that was not the end of his suffering.
When Lan An was thirteen, his younger brother Lan Yu went blind during the cultivation of a secret clan technique. The Lan Clan possessed a secret method to transplant new eyes for him. However, to avoid any complications, the elders unanimously decided that the eyes must come from someone with the same bloodline.
And so the most brutal tragedy unfolded.
Lan Polei personally gouged out his own son's eyes and transplanted them into his other son. Despite Lan An's face twisted in utter despair and burning hatred, it did not sway Lan Polei's resolve in the slightest. Between a worthless cripple and a heaven-sent genius, the choice was obvious.
Blinded at thirteen, Lan An completely lost any right to live like a human within the clan. He became a living punching bag for the younger clan disciples to practice their martial skills on. Whenever his body was on the verge of collapse, they would stop, feed him, and let him recover, only to continue the torture afterward. Tormenting the Clan Master's son seemed to give those arrogant brats an indescribable sense of accomplishment.
For three whole years, Lan An endured this hellish existence. His eyes were gone. His body and soul suffered endless damage. The tragic fate of the person named Lan An was supposed to end at the age of sixteen, after one particularly vicious training session by those little demons in human skin.
But at that fateful moment, a completely different Lan An, one who came from another world, crossed over and took his place.
"Compared to you… I was truly much more fortunate."
Lan An sighed inwardly.
Although his previous life had also ended tragically, it was still something the original owner of this body could never have even dreamed of.
Lan An made a silent vow: Since heaven had given him this chance to transmigrate, he would never bow to fate again. No matter what, living on was better than dying in humiliation.
"However, first I need to escape this current predicament."
Lan An frowned, his mind racing for solutions.
Ding! Awakening successful. Overlord System activating…
Host binding process commencing: 10… 9… 8… 5… 2…
A cold, mechanical voice suddenly rang out in his mind, cutting off Lan An's train of thought. In that instant, his breathing stopped. His stiff face gradually flushed red with wild, ecstatic joy.