Ascension Assembly Line, I Dig Earth to Forge Blades

After three hundred bitter years of cultivation, Zhuo Lin finally faces his heavenly tribulation. But the lightning that descends is no path to immortality—it is the slaughterhouse assembly line of alien shepherds. The so-called spiritual energy was nothing but feed; the tribulation, a mere screening process. Every cultivator and every mortal has been raised as livestock, their souls and spiritual power harvested to fuel colossal starships. When the ninth violet bolt strikes, Zhuo Lin glimpses the universe's brutal truth. He shatters his ascension jade with his own hands, wraps his soul around his ancestral black-iron scale, and detonates himself in a desperate bid to escape. By a sliver of fortune, his ravaged soul drifts back to mortal soil. His dantian is shattered, his spiritual power reduced to nothing. He is a mortal once more—yet he carries the one force that can challenge the gods themselves: the weight of the earthly realm. Cultivators once trampled the world with their spiritual might; now the shepherds reap all life with steel blades. Rooted in the blood-soaked earth, Zhuo Lin plants a single lock-spirit sprout, nurtured by black iron. Mortal soil becomes his field, flesh and blood his fertilizer, a heavy hammer his plow, and a woodcutter's knife his blade. They turned the world into a slaughterhouse—so he will grow a harvest that shatters the reaper's scythe. He will seal a hundred li of spiritual energy, crush golden-core bodies, dismantle steel scavengers, and hunt the starry motherports. Three centuries of cultivation were a lie. From this day forward, Zhuo Lin seeks not immortality. He stands as a mortal who defends his soil—and as long as mortal spines remain unbroken, the heavens themselves will eventually yield to dawn.