The atmosphere was not merely dark; it was oppressive—a living, breathing shadow that weighed upon the very fabric of reality. This was a secluded pocket dimension, a cancerous blister hidden within the folds of the cosmos, isolated entirely from the prying eyes of the Heavenly Dao.
In the center of this dead space sat an entity upon a throne constructed of gray, fossilized bones.
This was one of Old Monsters of the Ancient Ming Race. He had existed for eras that predated recorded history, his blood energy so potent and dense that a single drop could drown a thousand mortal realms in a crimson tide.
He was a calamity given form. Yet, as he sat there, chin resting on a withered fist, he felt the one thing his immortality could not cure: boredom.
The Nine Worlds were stagnant. The suppression of the High Heavens was absolute. He sought a variable—something chaotic, something that could defy the rigid order of the Grand Dao.
Floating before him was a chaotic swirl of soul fragments, plucked from a blue planet called Earth located in a dimension utterly devoid of Qi. It was a spiritual graveyard. Most souls dissipated the moment they were dragged into this higher plane, crushed into nothingness by the sheer atmospheric pressure of the Grand Dao.
Except one.
"Interesting," the Old Monster rumbled. His voice was a tectonic shift, sounding like mountains grinding against one another.
One tiny, insignificant soul flickered in the void. It was weak, pitifully devoid of cultivation base or spiritual talent. Yet, it possessed a tenacity that bordered on insanity. It refused to scatter. It swore, it cursed, and it metaphorically spat in the face of the oblivion pressing down on it.
"A Dao Heart of pure obstinance," the Old Monster mused, his ancient eyes narrowing. "You do not seek immortality. You do not seek justice. You simply refuse to be told what to do. Perfect."
The Old Monster extended a withered, gray finger. At its tip, a drop of blood coalesced. It was dark as the void itself, yet heavy as a collapsing star.
"I have experimented on millions," the entity spoke to the flickering soul. "Divine Beasts, Heaven's Proud Sons, the descendants of Immortal Emperors. They all broke under the weight of my legacy. But you... you are a blank slate from a godless world. You have no preconceived notions of limits."
The Old Monster flicked the blood.
It tore through the space between them and slammed into the soul. The merger was instant. The soul screamed—a silent, spiritual shriek that rippled through the dimension—but it did not shatter. Instead, it did something the Old Monster had not seen in an eon. It devoured the blood.
"I grant you the bloodline of the Ancient Ming," the Old Monster declared, his hands weaving complex seals that caused the void to tremble. "This bloodline does not merely exist; it hungers. It can corrupt foreign energies and devour them into its own, enhancing you without limit."
"It can devour other bloodlines, amplifying its own power. It will amplify your combat prowess to unfathomable degrees, turning you into a war machine that defies logic."
The soul pulsed, turning a deep, terrifying gray.
"And to ensure your mind can keep pace with your body, I grant you the Immortal Soul Bone. With it, complexity turns into simplicity. You shall learn anything instantly and near-instantly figure out any type of Energy or Dao Law you encounter."
Finally, the Old Monster stood, his shadow eclipsing the reality around him.
"To ensure you survive the turbulence of the void, I bestow upon you the foundation of the Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique. Crush the earth, shatter the void, suppress all existence with your very weight."
He tore open a rift in space-time—a chaotic, swirling tunnel leading to a lower-tier dimension, a world governed by crude laws of magic rather than the pure Grand Dao.
"Go. Breed. Conquer. Show me if a mortal soul can cultivate the supreme physique to its apex in a world of fragile glass."
With a casual wave, the soul was launched into the chaotic stream. The Old Monster closed his eyes, his experiment concluded. Whether the seed sprouted or died was now up to fate.
...
The transition was violent. Not physically, but existentially. One moment, he was a soul drifting in the chaotic void, staring down an eldritch abomination made of bones; the next, he was slamming into a vessel of flesh and blood like a meteor hitting a planet.
Ren Ming gasped, his eyes snapping open.
CRACK.
Immediately, the floorboards beneath him groaned. It wasn't a polite creak; it was the sound of wood fibers screaming under immense duress. Splinters shot out sideways as the cheap tatami mats compressed into oblivion. He tried to lift his arm, and the air around him warped, a low hum resonating through the small, dusty apartment.
"Whoa," Ren Ming grunted, his voice rasping as if the throat hadn't been used in years. "Heavy."
He lay on a cheap futon that had been flattened into a literal pancake.
This wasn't normal gravity. This was the Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique. It felt like he had a neutron star stitched into his marrow.
The Old Monster wasn't kidding; this physique was built to crush the earth and shatter the void. If he didn't learn to control his own density, he'd probably sink right through the Earth's crust and say hello to the core before breakfast.
He sat up, the movement sluggish but filled with terrifying, coiled power. The air displaced by his movement created a gust of wind that rattled the sliding glass doors.
He looked around. It was a sterile, bachelor-pad style apartment. Minimalist. Boring. No photos of family, no girlfriend, no pets.
"Okay, status check. Who am I? Where am I?"
He reached into his mind for memories, but there was nothing. A blank hard drive. Usually, this is the part where the protagonist panics, screams about amnesia, or waits for a blue system box to appear and hold his hand.
Ren Ming did none of those things.
"Panic is for people who don't have cheats," he muttered.
He closed his eyes and focused on the sensation throbbing at the back of his skull—the Immortal Soul Bone. The Old Monster had said the bone could turn complexity into simplicity. Ren Ming focused on the concept of 'Language' and 'Location.'
ZING.
Information flooded him. It wasn't a clumsy memory retrieval; it was instant deduction. His brain processed the environment like a supercomputer. The writing on a discarded pamphlet on the floor: Japanese. Kanji. Katakana. Syntax. Grammar. In a millisecond, he was fluent.
Then, the Soul Bone analyzed the ambient energy. The air was thick, chaotic, comprised of multiple warring wavelengths—Demonic particles, Holy light, and natural Nature Energy (Touki).
The Soul Bone analyzed the energy signatures, cross-referencing the "feel" of the world against the infinite knowledge inherent in the Dao.
"Kuoh Town," Ren Ming muttered, the name rolling off his tongue with perfect native intonation, though his tone was distinctly casual. "Japan. Private Kuoh Academy uniforms in the closet."
He stood up. The entire building shuddered. A coffee mug on the table rattled ominously. He walked to the window, peering out at the sleepy town bathed in twilight.
"High School DxD," he realized, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "No shit? I really got isekai'd into the boob anime?"
He leaned against the window frame. The metal groaned under his casual touch, bending like wet clay. He remembered the show from his past life. Entertaining, sure. Great 'plot,' definitely.
But the protagonist?
Issei Hyoudou was... underwhelming. Just another dense, screaming protagonist in a harem anime where the harem doesn't even form properly until the end.
And the politics?
The Devil faction, Angel faction, Fallen Angel faction, the Khaos Brigade, the mythological alliances... it was all just a massive headache of bureaucracy, peace treaties, and old people arguing in meeting rooms.
"Yeah, miss me with that political shit," Ren Ming said aloud, scratching his chest. "I ain't here to play diplomat or be some savior for the devils. I'm an Ancient Ming."
He looked at his hand. He could feel the bloodline dormant within him. It was hungry. It didn't want to negotiate treaties; it wanted to corrupt energies and devour them.
"In those fanfics I used to read, the MC always spends forty chapters trying to keep the timeline intact or sweating bullets over whether Rias Gremory or Sona Sitri notices them. Like, seriously, who cares?" Ren Ming laughed, a dark, rumbling sound that seemed to vibrate the shadows in the room. "I've got the Immortal Soul Bone. I can learn anything instantly. I'm not gonna participate in the script; I'm gonna hijack it."
He needed to get strong. Fast.
He knew the power scaling here was disjointed. You had street-level devils, and then you had literal gods like Ophis (the Ouroboros Dragon) and Great Red (the True Red Dragon God) chilling in the Dimensional Gap.
If he made too much noise too early, he might get squashed.
But strangely, he felt... muffled. The Ancient Ming Bloodline seemed to act as a shroud, a spiritual void that swallowed his presence. As long as he didn't flare his aura directly in their faces, he was a ghost to their sensors.
"Alright. First things first. I need to get this body up to speed. Can't exactly build a harem if I accidentally crush a girl's spine with a hug because I can't control my own mass."
Ren Ming checked the fridge. Empty. Typical single guy setup.
"Time to hit the gym. And by gym, I mean the mountains. Need to cultivate this Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique until I can walk without causing a localized earthquake."
He grabbed a hoodie, threw it on, and stepped out the door. He didn't lock it. If a burglar broke in, they were welcome to the nothingness inside. Ren Ming had a world to conquer, and he was going to do it his way: loud, proud, and completely unbothered by the "rules" of this world.
...
Ren Ming found a secluded valley deep within the mountains surrounding Kuoh, several miles away from the nearest hiking trail. The moon hung high, casting a pale, ethereal light over the jagged rocks. The air here was fresher, richer in Touki.
"This spot will do nicely," Ren Ming noted, cracking his neck. The sound was like a pistol shot.
He sat cross-legged on a large boulder. Immediately, the rock pulverized into dust under his weight. He fell through the dust cloud, landing on the earth beneath, which cracked in a spiderweb pattern.
He sighed, dusting himself off. "Okay, control. It's about density. Mind over matter."
He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward. The cultivation method the Old Monster had imprinted on him was complex, an archaic art from a higher dimension that would drive a normal human insane. But with the Immortal Soul Bone, complexity was a joke. The bone analyzed the cultivation manual, stripped away the flowery language, and presented Ren Ming with the raw, efficient code of the universe.
[Insight: Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique requires the accumulation of Earthly heaviness to suppress the Heavens.]
"Right. Absorbing energy. Let's see what this world has to offer."
Ren Ming opened his pores. In a Xianxia world, he would be absorbing Qi. Here, the atmosphere was a cocktail of Mana and Nature Energy. To a normal cultivator, this would be poison—different energy types clashing and destroying the meridians.
But Ren Ming was Ancient Ming.
As the ambient mana drifted toward him, his bloodline surged. The dark, void-like energy within him lunged out of his skin like a starving beast. It didn't just absorb the mana; it violated it. It broke the mana down, stripping it of its 'magical' properties and converting it into raw, heavy fuel for his body.
"Ugh," Ren Ming grimaced, tasting the energy. "Tastes like sparkling water mixed with battery acid. But hey, protein is protein."
He began to cycle the energy. Most people in DxD used magic circles—complex mathematical equations to shape reality. Ren Ming realized via the Soul Bone that he could do that too. He looked at the underlying equations of the local ley lines visible to his spiritual sense.
"Complex arithmetic? Please. This is middle school stuff."
With the Immortal Soul Bone, he near-instantly figured out the Dao Laws governing the local space. He saw the 'code' of the barrier that usually hid the supernatural world from humans. He didn't just learn it; he optimized it.
With a lazy wave of his hand, he erected a privacy barrier around the valley. It wasn't a standard Devil barrier; it was a chaotic distortion field that bent light and sound away from him.
"Now, the grind begins."
For the next three weeks, Ren Ming didn't return to the town. He became a ghost of the mountains. He hunted wild animals for food, roasting them over fires made from burning raw mana.
His progress was terrifying.
Week 1: The Weight of the Earth
The first week was pure physical torture. He focused on stabilizing the Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique. He had to learn to decouple his mass from his volume.
He practiced stomping.
BOOM.
A single footfall sent a shockwave rippling through the valley floor, uprooting trees fifty meters away. The vibration was so intense that birds fell from the sky, stunned.
"Too loud," Ren Ming grunted. "Need to dampen it."
He focused. He compressed the force, internalizing the weight. By the end of the week, he could shift from 'heavy as a mountain' to 'heavy as a feather' instantly. He could walk on a dry leaf without crumbling it, and in the next microsecond, drop with enough density to crater a tank.
He identified his Physique was at roughly 10% completion.
Week 2: The Palaces of Fate
With his body under control, he turned to his soul. In the cultivation system he was given, the Fate Palace was the foundation of the Dao.
He sat under a waterfall, the water crashing uselessly against his skin. He visualized the space above his head.
"Open."
The air screamed. The first Palace formed—rough, gray, smelling of ancient stone and forgotten eras. The Palace of Life.
BOOM.
The second formed. The Palace of Energy.
By the end of the week, four magnificent, gray Fate Palaces hovered invisibly above his head. They acted as spiritual batteries, storing the immense quantities of energy he was devouring from the environment. They swirled with a chaotic gray mist, hungry and imposing.
Week 3: The Predator Awakens
By the third week, Ren Ming reached the equivalent of the Royal Noble realm.
He wasn't actually sure where he stacked against the DxD verse yet. He knew an average Royal Noble in the novel could easily shatter mountains and sink islands.
But Ren Ming wasn't average. His Physique granted him extreme physical abilities that tremendously boosted his prowess.
And then there was the bloodline.
"It amplifies combat prowess to unfathomable degrees," he recalled the Old Monster's words.
He decided to test it. He found a massive grizzly bear, corrupted by stray demonic energy, rampaging near the edge of his barrier. The beast was huge, easily twice the size of a normal bear, with glowing red eyes.
Ren Ming didn't use magic. He didn't use a weapon. He just walked up to it.
The bear roared, swiping a claw that could shred steel. Ren Ming didn't dodge. He let the instinct take the wheel.
Wham.
Ren Ming caught the bear's paw with one hand. The ground beneath him didn't even crack. He had perfect equilibrium.
"Is that it?" Ren Ming asked the bear, looking bored. "My turn."
He didn't punch. He just flicked his wrist, activating the Petrifying Immortal Light.
A beam of gray light shot from his palm. It hit the bear point-blank. Instantly, the roaring beast went silent. The fur turned to gray stone. The saliva dripping from its maw froze into crystal. Within a second, the terrifying predator was nothing more than an exquisitely detailed garden statue.
"Dope," Ren Ming grinned, tapping the statue. Clink, clink. "That's gonna be useful for... 'negotiations'. Or if someone annoys me."
Magic-wise, he was also a cheat code. He spent the rest of the week looking at the spells used by the devils in the distance—small flares of energy he could sense from the town. He could look at a spell, understand the math instantly thanks to the Soul Bone, and replicate it or dismantle it.
He stood atop the highest peak of his valley, shirtless, his body sculpted like a Greek statue carved from granite. His muscles were dense, compact, holding the power to suppress a world.
He felt the hum of Kuoh Town below. The devils were active. The fallen angels were plotting in the shadows. The barrier around the school was pulsing.
"I'm strong enough to walk around without getting insta-killed," Ren Ming decided, cracking his knuckles. The sound echoed like thunder in the valley. "But I still need to really see where my strength lies. I haven't really let loose yet."
He grabbed his hoodie from a rock. It was time to go back.
"Hope the people here aren't too fragile," he muttered, a predatory glint in his eyes. "Because I'm not really good at holding back."
He leaped from the mountain peak. He didn't use magic to fly; he just jumped. His legs propelled him miles into the air, soaring in a massive arc toward the town lights below. He was coming for the plot, and he was going to tear it apart with his bare hands.