## Primordial Darkness
When Tao surfaced from his recollection, the void around him sharpened into recognition. This place…The Far Shore, his half-remembered lore supplied.
An exiled fringe, the multiverse's forgotten attic, where discarded shards of creation moldered in the dark.
So this is what 'desolate and complete' feels like, I mused, the intent of my arrival echoing back like a half-heard joke. I'd sought a cosmic back alley to attune without fanfare, and the Portal had obliged with ruthless precision. I floated in my solitary bubble of creation energy, a defiant speck of "something" amid an infinite sea of "nothing."
Names surfaced unbidden: No-Space. Outer Void. Nyx's Primordial Darkness. Facets of the same truth ~ unbeing, the cradle and grave of multiverses rolled into one indifferent maw. A grim smile tugged at my lips. Being a comic nerd in my past life finally cashes in. Vacationing in the spot where 'nothing' isn't just a concept -it's the landlord.
The silence pressed like a thumb on my soul, resonant and gnawing. Earlier probes with my divine sense had grazed faint impressions: an endless staircase spiraling into absurdity, a quiet intelligence lurking in the profound deep, patient as erosion. At least my perception held, even if it wilted at range. This null state was my leash ~ vital, for now.
This journey wasn't meant to be a cultivation retreat, but the oppressive stillness was its own kind of provocation. It was layered, profound, reminding him of the abyssal lands of the God Domain ~ but infinitely deeper. A familiar, restless itch began to stir within him.
Maybe I just don't like the silence. Maybe I need to cause a little chaos.
The decision settled with cold clarity. Before diving into the woven insanity of Marvel's realities, he would first adjust to its fundamental substance. And what better way to learn the rules of a reality than to break a few?
Nothing teaches rules like breaking them. Force a fracture, and the cracks tell all. It reveals more than static observation ever could.
## Extracting Energy
The Far Shore looked empty, but Tao knew better. This "void" was a lie. It was Oblivion's body. The cosmic embodiment of nothingness itself. The end of creation. The nothing that watches the birth of everything. The old words echoed in his mind. If Oblivion regarded all existence as a fleeting dream, then what Tao was touching now was the hidden, unknown law of nihility ˜ an endless well of origin energy, waiting.
He extended his hands, cycling the essence-gathering methods of the TDG and Source Worlds within the safe confines of his domain.
Nothing.
Stubborn. It seems whatever facilitates this emptiness isn't going to offer anything on a silver plate.
He changed his approach, pivoted, cranking his creation shield's absorption to its brink. The shift hit like a gut punch: the void's viscosity thickened, clotting around my bubble like congealing shadow.
His barrier writhed, alive with protest, sending subtle waves rippling through the local weave ~ stirring rules that resented the intrusion.
A soft chuckle escaped him as his shield writhed and reshaped like a living thing, stirring the local rules in subtle but undeniable waves. He adopted a tone of mock solemnity, addressing the void itself.
"Junior," he mused aloud, "the Great Dao is all about balance. Your fortune is clearly too strong, while this Old One's is lacking. I am not robbing you; I am merely an instrument of the cosmos, restoring the natural order. Now, allow me to bear a drop of this burden for you... indefinitely."
He sat cross-legged in the absolute stillness, drawing the paradoxical currents inward. His Boundless Transformations of Energy sutra - the cornerstone of his trinity cultivation method ˜ activated, and the Creation Mill within him began to turn. This energy was unlike any Qi or divine law, yet it was perfect. Limitless, renewable, and of a quality that dwarfed his own. He was drinking directly from the concept of unbeing.
It flooded my meridians with whispers of erasure, each pulse a brush with oblivion's chill logic: Why exist? Why strive?
He gritted through it, transmuting the flood - nihility degrading into vast chaos tides.
•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•
## Internal World
Unlike Luo Zheng, who had merged his very lifeblood with his inner world's creations or rooted his world in chaos, Tao required more unconventional methods to expand his personal realm. Expansion wasn't make-or-break for my path ~not since soul-tempering dulled its bottlenecks ~ the opportunity was too valuable to ignore for another reason.
The more it expands, the more it can facilitate the recreation of a complete divine dao set on his own. Even flawless daos needed a vessel, and his inner world was the ultimate crucible.
And what a vessel it had become. After inscribing the fundamental civic rules into the Prime Ruling Tablet centuries ago, the countless races within had erupted from their conflicts into a golden age. New continents teemed with life; populations of millions of species exploded.
He couldn't help a wry thought. All from one offhand broadcast: 'Bear more young; it gladdens your God.' Now it was doctrine, status etched in bloodlines. Even the True Gods - sixth-layer Paramita echoes - flaunted dynasties of hundreds of thousands, their internal worlds budding like overripe fruit.
Success soured sweetly, though. More souls, more schemes. Struggle feeds me, but slaughter starves the garden.
My fix? Ambitious borders: new mother-world like provinces carved from the existing chaos, preludes to true divine unveiling. Once my Sanskrit true meaning divided fully, those latent energies would ignite.
But first, logistics. He adjusted the temporal flow in his ring artifact's array, pushing it to a million-to-one ratio. Any faster, and the time zones would shatter this thing from the inside out. A pragmatic thought followed. Not that I plan to let them out anytime soon, even if they disagree.
## Chaos Forge : Cultivation
Returning his focus to his dantian world, he released his control over its time flow. A massive drain on his origin power commenced, and time inside resumed its frantic, million-times acceleration.
As his consciousness descended fully into cultivation, the external world responded. His creation energy barrier formed a metaphysical drain in oblivion itself, pulling unobservable energy from pure nothingness and devouring it. Transformed chaos energy flooded his inner world in torrents, causing land to form at a breathtaking pace.
Outside, in the timeless Far Shore, nothing changed. But inside his universe, eons passed. So many eons, in fact, that the newer Gods began repeating the very same requests their ancestors had made long ago.
This is getting repetitive, he felt a tinge of helplessness. He'd left the Source World thinking it would be easier to figure out the leftover godly way energies himself or with the LoHP. The problem was their inherent flawlessness made them nearly impossible to deconstruct. He was still less than halfway through constructing the remaining two.
The energy he absorbed now, superior in quality to his own divine dao, degraded into vast quantities upon transformation. Each surge was a paradox: creation through theft, order born of nothing.
Each time a Sanskrit domain extended to its limit, it would duplicate, then condense into a single golden stream that carved his internal world into new, partitioned sections. Two became four, then more, each realm separated by luminous barriers. The True God inhabitants, who had once petitioned to leave, now ruled these distinct domains, their own internal worlds expanding with the new land. No sooner had one God's war for resources ended than another began, and even new faith condensation worlds began to spark into existence.
In that place beyond time, something akin to eternity elapsed within his seclusion.
•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•
## The Void's Reckoning
While Tao built silently within his shield, something stirred outside.
Oblivion.
The embodiment of the Far Shore itself, the living concept of nothingness, had begun to notice. Each thread of power Tao siphoned was not some stray current ~ it was Oblivion's own essence. His body. His breath. His dream.
At first it was nothing, a mere irritation, like a single grain of sand in an endless desert. But to Oblivion, the insult mattered. For all of eternity and infintiy, he had been the void that consumed, not the one consumed. Never in all existence-nonexistence had anyone dared to rob him unannounced.
And now, a metaphysical sink gnawed at him, unseen, unrecognized, yet undeniable.
Oblivion flexed his power, and the Far Shore trembled. Space twisted, time folded, reality itself reshaped in subtle spirals meant to isolate the disturbance. Rules shifted. Layers collapsed. But the drain didn't stop. It wasn't outside him, nor inside - it was woven into him, bleeding away his essence in steady, maddening trickles.
Tao, meanwhile, kept his focus. Inside the shield, his inner world flourished. The eighth Sanskrit domain wall rose like a scripture carved into reality itself, luminous and unyielding. To him, the tremors outside were little more than background thunder.
It was afterall, what he seeked. How the powers were in use against him.
For Oblivion, they were humiliation.
And so, with the cold decisiveness only a concept could muster, Oblivion made his choice. If this anomaly could not be expelled, then it would be severed.
The section of void where Tao worked was cut loose ~ sliced clean away from Oblivion's greater body like infected flesh.
One moment Tao cultivated within the Far Shore, drawing from endless nihility. The next, everything shifted.
Silence. White absence. No longer the true Far Shore, no longer Oblivion's domain. Tao floated in an unscripted pocket, an exile cast out from an exile.
He opened his eyes slowly, a faint smile touching his lips. "Exiled from nothingness itself," he murmured. "Now that's a first."
•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•