The Underdog's Ascension to God

"Hey, Ah Gou! Drag your feet faster, you skinny dog!" The shout was accompanied by the crack of a leather whip splitting the air, landing exactly one inch from Gu Chen's leg. The eighteen-year-old youth didn't flinch. He also didn't look up to meet the gaze of Foreman Liu, a low-level cultivator from the Zhao Clan who oversaw the mining paths. Gu Chen kept his head down, hiding his exceedingly handsome face behind clumps of dirty, ragged black hair. His face, if cleansed of coal dust, resembled an eternal painting of a young deity descending to earth. But in this place, handsomeness without power was a curse. In this world, he was merely 'Ah Gou'—The Dog. A derogatory nickname given by the ruling clan because his family had no legal right to bear an official surname. On the Jiutian Continent, natural energy—Qi—was a wild poison that could burn the meridians of mortal humans if absorbed without protection. The only way to tame Qi was through the 'Name' system. Those born into wealthy clans would activate their True Names on the Resurrection Stone from a young age, opening the gate to becoming sacred cultivators. Meanwhile, the poor, if they wished to touch cultivation, had to sell their entire lives to major sects, letting their necks be carved with a flawed Contract Tattoo just to become front-line slaves. Gu Chen's family chose a third path, refusing to become tattooed slaves, and as a result, they lived at the very bottom of the food chain as nameless trash. Gu Chen tightened his grip on the hemp rope binding the large bamboo basket on his back. The basket was full of bitter-rooted wild herbs and some chunks of low-grade mineral ore he had gathered from the lower slopes of Fog Mountain. His breathing was heavy, his tall, thin frame trembling under the burden, but his jet-black eyes remained as calm as a deep ocean. Silence was his shield. He rarely spoke because he knew, in a world where cultivation practitioners could kill a mortal like him with a mere flick of their hand, his voice carried no weight whatsoever. "Old Han! Hand over today's share of spirit stones!" Gu Chen's footsteps suddenly froze near the exit gate of the mining area. There, under the scorching sun, he saw his father, Old Han. The middle-aged man, who should have still been strong, now looked like an elderly grandfather of seventy. His body was hunched from over a decade of hauling mining stones, and his chest heaved and fell, wracked by chronic bloody coughs caused by exposure to wild Qi poison. In front of his father stood a young man from the Zhao clan, wearing a thin blue silk robe. On the youth's neck, a small clan tattoo glowed faintly—indicating he was at the Initial Stage of the Sinew-Severing Realm. "Young Master Zhao," Old Han's voice trembled, a dry cough interrupting his sentence. "Th-this... this is all I could mine today. Please, reduce this month's debt deduction. My wife at home, her hands are badly blistered from the residue of the silk robe enchantments she washes. We need money for medicine—" "Your wife's sickness is none of my concern, old man!" The Zhao clan youth spat on the ground. "Debt is debt. Nameless scum like you should be grateful the Zhao Clan still allows you to breathe on this land! If this basket isn't full tomorrow, we'll drag your crippled younger sister or your paralyzed mother to the sect to be furnace-fire cleaning slaves!" Gu Chen, standing a few meters behind, clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white. Hatred burned in his chest like hellfire. The suffering his parents endured felt millions of times more painful than the hunger he endured every day. Yet, he knew his current limits. Raging now would be the same as committing suicide and instantly destroying his family. He had to move and find another way out. That afternoon, after handing over the low-quality herbs to the local collector and receiving a few copper coins not even enough to buy a slice of white bread, Gu Chen returned to his shack. The rotten wooden door creaked open. Inside, his mother lay on a straw mat, her once-gentle hands now covered in festering red blisters from the chemical agents of the cultivators' robe enchantments. His father sat in a corner, massaging his chest, which continuously rumbled with bloody coughs. "Chen-er…," his mother called in a voice as weak as morning dew. Only inside this shack, with the door tightly locked, did his parents dare whisper his true name, Gu Chen. "Forgive your mother... I can't help you gather firewood tomorrow." Gu Chen knelt beside his mother, holding her blistered hand with utmost care. His handsome face softened, contrasting with the cold demeanor he usually showed outside. "Mother, rest. Don't worry about anything. Tomorrow, I will go to a higher place on Fog Mountain. There, Nine-Leaf Yin herbs grow near the cliff. The city collector pays three silver pieces for them if the roots are intact. That money will be enough to buy an antidote pill from the Sacred Healer Valley." Old Han looked up, his face pale with terror. "No, Chen-er! The upper area of Fog Mountain is a forbidden zone for ordinary humans! Even the Iron Bone Forging Realm cultivators of the Zhao clan often die there from illusion mists and savage beasts! Don't be rash, my son!" Gu Chen only gave a faint, reassuring smile, but in his heart, his decision was absolute. To him, watching his parents die slowly in poverty and oppression was far more terrifying than any mountain monster. … The next morning, before the sun could break the eastern darkness, Gu Chen was already moving. Armed with a small, rusty herb-picking knife and an empty basket, he ascended the slopes of Fog Mountain. Thick, milky-white mist began to roll in, slowly swallowing his tall, thin silhouette. He passed the safety marker stone installed by the empire. His steps were nimble, honed by years of climbing dangerous routes. The air here felt different. Every breath was cold and pierced the chest, a sign that the wild Qi in this area was extremely concentrated and poisonous to unprotected nameless humans. Two hours passed. Gu Chen had ventured too deep into the death zone rarely trod by ordinary mortals. At the bottom of a chasm shrouded in thick illusion mist, his sharp eyes caught a flash of dark blue light. His heart raced. It was the Nine-Leaf herb he was looking for! But just as his finger was about to touch the cold leaf blade, the surrounding air suddenly froze. An incredibly dense aura of death pressed against his back until he could barely breathe. Grrrr…. From within the thick mist, a pair of fiery red eyes, the size of fireballs, appeared. A massive, one-horned, wolf-shaped shadow—a high-level Shadow Beast—stepped out, baring fangs that dripped with poisonous saliva. Gu Chen froze. His instincts screamed that the creature before him could smash him into chunks of meat in the blink of an eye. The monster roared, splitting the mountain's silence, and lunged forward with speed that tore the air. Its sharp, black claws aimed straight for Gu Chen's neck. 'Is this the end of my life?' Gu Chen thought, his eyes watching the approaching claws, unable to dodge. 'Mother... Father... forgive me.' Just as the claw was one centimeter from the skin of his neck, an explosion of dense black energy erupted from the base of an ancient altar buried beneath the soil at Gu Chen's feet. Time seemed to slow to a halt. From the ruins of that altar, a clump of pure white light, radiating ancient majesty, shot out. The light spun in the air before finally piercing directly into Gu Chen's chest, nesting right in the center of his spiritual dantian. The blood within Gu Chen's body suddenly boiled like scalding water. The youth's consciousness immediately collapsed into thick darkness. Yet, the skinny body that should have fallen remained standing upright. When Gu Chen's eyelids opened again, his eyes were no longer black, but had turned pure white, radiating an aura as cold as arctic ice, capable of shaking the entire heavens and earth. The youth's thin lips moved, but the voice that emerged was not Gu Chen's gentle voice, but the majestic voice of a grown man, sounding extremely arrogant and full of mockery. "A scrawny body, a face like a woman, and the spirit of a coward," the ancient soul within his body snorted in annoyance, staring at the monster frozen before him. "For my majestic true soul to be bound to a nameless, broken vessel like this? What a hassle! Hey, little dog, since you dared to disturb my sleep, die!" With a single hand movement, exceptionally graceful yet carrying an absurd amount of pure physical force, Gu Chen's body shot forward.