Alchemist Reborn: Ruler of the Immortal Legion

The stench was the first thing that hit him.

It wasn't the clean, medicinal aroma of the Nine Heavens Alchemy Palace or the sweet scent of Spirit Peaches from the celestial gardens. No. This was the rank, suffocating smell of damp concrete, stale urine, and dried blood.

Han Chen’s eyelids felt like they were lead-plated. Every breath was a jagged blade scraping against his throat. But the real agony? That came from below. His legs didn't just hurt; they screamed with a white-hot, agonizing pulse that suggested the nerves had been shredded and left to rot.

I’m… alive?

The last thing he remembered was the sky turning black—not from clouds, but from the combined spiritual pressure of the Seven Celestial Emperors. His own disciple, the one he had hand-fed Divine Pills for centuries, had driven a poisoned dagger into his back just as his Alchemy Cauldron reached the point of transcendence.

The explosion should have erased his soul from existence.

Slowly, painfully, he forced his eyes open.

The sight that greeted him wasn't a palace, but a cage. Dim, flickering fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like dying insects. Rust-stained walls. A thin, filthy mattress. This was a military brig—a hole for the forgotten.

Memories… give me the memories.

He closed his eyes, and a flood of foreign images crashed into his mind.

The "Han Chen" of this world was a twenty-year-old soldier in the Arkas City Defense Force. A strategic genius, a man with a bright future—until he wasn't. He had been sabotaged during a high-stakes training exercise by his own superior, Sergeant Marcus. A "tragic accident" involving a faulty rappelling line and a deliberate injection of a neurotoxin.

The result? Permanent paralysis from the waist down. A "trash soldier" discarded by the army he lived to serve.

Han Chen let out a dry, hacking laugh that turned into a cough. "So, from a Sovereign Alchemist to a crippled prisoner. Fate, you really have a twisted sense of humor."

He tried to circulate his Qi, but his heart sank. The spiritual energy in the air was pathetic—thin, polluted, almost non-existent. It was like trying to fill an ocean with a single eye-dropper.

CLANG!

The heavy steel door of the cell groaned open, hitting the stone wall with a bone-jarring thud. Three men in camouflage fatigues stepped in. Their boots clicked sharply on the concrete, a sound of arrogance.

In the center stood a man with shoulders like a bull and a jagged scar running across his temple. Sergeant Marcus. He looked down at Han Chen with the kind of pity one reserves for a crushed cockroach.

"Still breathing, kid?" Marcus spat, a glob of yellow phlegm landing inches from Han Chen’s face. "I told the medics not to waste the good morphine on you. A gimp doesn't need to feel comfortable."

The two lackeys behind him chuckled. One of them, a lanky soldier named Jax, kicked the frame of Han Chen’s rusted bed. "Hey, Sarge, look at his eyes. He looks like he’s actually trying to think. You think there’s still a brain in that broken shell?"

Han Chen didn't flinch. In his past life, men like Marcus wouldn't even have been worthy of being the fuel for his furnace. He looked up, his gaze calm—terrifyingly calm.

"Marcus," Han Chen’s voice was a rasp, but it carried a weight that made the air in the cell feel ten degrees colder. "Your breath smells like sulfur and rotting meat. Your liver is failing, your kidneys are congested with low-grade 'Enhancement Pills,' and that scar on your head… it pulses every time your heart beats, doesn't it?"

The laughter stopped. Marcus’s eyes narrowed. "What did you say, trash?"

"The black market pills you’re taking to keep your 'tough guy' physique are eating you from the inside out," Han Chen continued, his eyes tracing the flow of blood beneath Marcus’s skin. To a Sovereign Alchemist, the human body was transparent. "You have, at most, three days before your heart undergoes a massive rhythmic failure. Of course, I could help you… but I think I’d rather watch you turn blue."

Marcus’s face turned a deep, bruised purple. It was a hit. For weeks, he’d been feeling a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest, something he’d hidden from the army doctors.

"You think being a cripple gives you the right to talk back?" Marcus roared. He lunged forward, his heavy boot aimed directly at Han Chen’s shattered shins.

He expected a scream. He expected the sound of more bone snapping.

What he got was a blur of movement.

Even with paralyzed legs, Han Chen’s upper body reflexes were honed by a thousand years of combat. He didn't just move; he flowed. His right hand shot out like a striking cobra, his fingers forming a specific mudra—the Life-Severing Pinch.

SNAP.

Han Chen’s fingers caught Marcus’s ankle mid-air, pressing down on a precise nerve cluster located just behind the bone.

"ARGH!"

Marcus screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. It felt as if a bolt of lightning had traveled from his ankle directly to his brain. He collapsed to the floor, clutching his leg, his face pale and dripping with sweat.

"Sarge!" Jax and the other soldier moved to intervene, pulling their batons.

"Sit," Han Chen commanded.

It wasn't a shout. It was a Soul Pressure—a fragment of his former divinity forced through a weak, mortal throat. The two soldiers froze. Their knees buckled, and for a terrifying second, they couldn't remember how to breathe. It was as if they were standing in the presence of an ancient, predatory god.

Han Chen ignored them. He pulled himself up, using the bedframe for support. His legs hung limp, but he didn't look like a victim. He looked like a king on a broken throne.

He reached out and grabbed Marcus by the hair, forcing the big man to look him in the eye.

"Listen closely, you insignificant speck," Han Chen whispered. "In my world, I have turned stars into dust and gods into servants. You think a broken body can stop me? This 'accident' you caused… it didn't kill me. It just freed me from the boredom of being a regular soldier."

Han Chen pressed a thumb into the center of Marcus’s forehead—the Hall of Impression point. A tiny spark of his remaining soul energy flickered.

"I’ve just blocked your primary meridian," Han Chen smiled, a cold, predatory thing. "In ten minutes, your left arm will go numb. In twenty, you’ll lose your sight. In thirty, your heart will stop. Unless… you tell me where my confiscated belongings are. Specifically, the box of 'herbal supplements' I brought from my family estate."

Marcus was shaking now. He could already feel a strange coldness creeping up his arm. "The… the evidence locker! Aisle four! Please… stop it!"

Han Chen shoved him away. Marcus scrambled backward, tripping over his own men as they bolted out of the cell, fleeing from a man they thought was a corpse.

Left alone in the silence, Han Chen let out a long, shaky breath. His forehead was soaked in sweat. That tiny display of power had nearly emptied his spiritual reservoir.

I need to move. Fast.

He closed his eyes and focused. He didn't have pills, but he had the Golden Bone-Washing Technique. He began to massage specific points on his thighs with a rhythmic, vibrating pressure. He forced his blood to flow in a reverse cycle, a process so painful it felt like his veins were being filled with molten lead.

CRACK. POP.

He bit his lip until it bled, refusing to make a sound. Slowly, the gray, dead skin of his legs began to flush with a dull pink. The toxin was being forced out through his pores in the form of a black, foul-smelling sludge.

Ten minutes.

Han Chen gripped the edge of the bed. He forced his muscles to contract. With a groan of sheer willpower, he stood. His legs wobbled, his vision swam, but he was standing.

"Pathetic," he muttered to himself, looking at his shaking hands. "But it will suffice."

He limped toward the door, his mind already calculating the ingredients he could scavenge from the military infirmary. He needed to refine the Body-Forging Liquid tonight. Because tomorrow, the men who sent Marcus wouldn't send a bully with a boot—they would send an executioner.

As he reached the hallway, the red emergency lights began to swirl. A voice boomed over the intercom.

"Code Red! Code Red! Security breach in Block 7! All units to the brig!"

Han Chen leaned against the wall, a shard of a broken mirror in his hand. He looked at his reflection—thin, pale, but with eyes that burned with the fire of a reborn sun.

"Let them come," he whispered. "I’ve been looking for some fresh ingredients anyway."