Three hundred years ago, spiritual energy descended upon Earth.
Everyone thought it was a celebration of evolution, until the first cultivators to "ascend in broad daylight" mutated into indescribable monsters high above the heavens.
They called themselves "Immortals," and regarded the humans below as livestock to be farmed for blood and medicinal pills.
To survive, the remnants of humanity severed their spiritual roots, fired up the furnaces of heavy industry, and built colossal steel domes, hoping to cling to life with anti-spiritual-energy fields and heavily armored mechs.
Lu Chen, a cold-blooded "corpse collector" in the lowest levels of a dome, accidentally fused with a mysterious mechanical pump left over from the old world.
The poisonous spiritual energy that made everyone else mutate and go mad was filtered by his mechanical heart into the purest ancient sword energy.
"Foundation Establishment: prosthetic overload, high-frequency psionic oscillation."
"Core Formation: a miniature nuclear fusion reactor implanted in the chest, the golden core is a nuclear blast."
"Nascent Soul: consciousness linked to a quantum network, cybernetic ascension, avatars beyond the body."
When a hundred-meter-tall mutated True Immortal tore open the sky and descended upon the dome, demanding a blood sacrifice of a million living people,
with gods and buddhas filling the skies, and humanity standing by in despair, waiting to die,
Lu Chen controlled a battered hydraulic mechanical arm and pulled a rusty iron sword from the ruins.
Amid the ear-splitting boil of engine oil and the roar of steam, he struck a sword blow that belonged to humanity.
"Since the immortals in the heavens have all gone mad..."
"Then today, I, a mortal, shall slay the immortals!"