All-Self Forging

Shen Yan died in a laboratory. When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer himself—but a nameless menial laborer in the beast pens of Qingyun Sect, in a realm called Tianheng. The real worker had just been gored to death by a desolate beast, and Shen Yan inherited his identity, his rations, and his place at the very bottom of this world. In Tianheng, martial prowess decides everything. A chosen few are born into the Six Academies, where they learn supreme martial arts. The rest do not even own their own bodies—they are listed in the sect's pharmacy ledgers as consumables, used for drug trials, beast taming experiments, and spirit-host projects. Shen Yan awakens only one ability: Devour-Flesh. By touching a living being, he can absorb a part of its physical traits—strength, resilience, perception, even the innate talents of desolate beasts. Each stolen attribute becomes raw material to reshape his own body. But every gain comes with backlash. The more he takes, the heavier the toll. Cross the limit, and what he devours may not be power—but his own life. Starting with a single ration ledger still paying out rations to the dead, Shen Yan uncovers a web that connects missing laborers, mutated beasts, underground medicine vaults, and the spirit-thread networks spread across the land—all linked by an invisible hand. In the iron-ordered Tianheng Realm, the true predators are not always beasts. To survive, and to give back names to those already written off as losses, Shen Yan must use all things as his raw materials and his own flesh as the furnace—forging himself, inch by inch, into a body of a myriad forms. Until one day, with that All-Self body, he will shatter the gate that presses down on every ordinary person's head.