The Great Dao's intent shifted once more.
This time, it did not crush me. It did not probe. Instead, it unfolded—carefully, deliberately—like a truth too vast to be delivered all at once.
And what it revealed shattered the foundation of everything I thought I knew.
I was not a being from another universe.
I was a remnant.
A living fragment born from the corpse of something far older—something complete.
The Original Universe.
Understanding struck me like a slow, suffocating wave. Long before this multiversal framework existed, before layered realities and branching worlds took form, there had been a single, absolute universe. Whole. Unified. Perfect in its own incomprehensible way.
And it had been destroyed.
Not annihilated in an explosion, but broken apart—its laws fractured, its existence scattered across countless dimensions like shards of a shattered mirror. From those remnants, new universes were born. Imperfect. Partial. Governed by incomplete laws that together formed what was now called the multiverse.
This… this realm was one of those fragments.
And so was the world I came from.
But my world was different.
The Great Dao conveyed this with a weight that made my consciousness ache.
The universe I had lived in previously was small. Incredibly so. Minuscule when compared to the vast, layered realities surrounding us now. Yet unlike the others, it was intact—its internal laws unbroken, its structure stable.
A sealed fragment.
Possibly the only remaining piece of the Original Universe that had never been distorted, never rewritten, never fully integrated into the greater multiverse.
A pristine shard.
And that was why my world felt so… ordinary.
No cultivation. No magic. No divine interference. No systems, no gods descending from the heavens.
Because in that universe—
The Great Dao existed…
but it could not manifest.
It had no means to act.
No form to take.
No voice to speak with.
It was present as law alone—silent, absolute, dormant.
My breath hitched as the implication settled in.That world had not been abandoned by the Dao.
It had been complete without it.
And I… I had been born within that closed, self-sustaining fragment of the Original Universe. A being whose existence was recorded under a version of reality where the Dao did not govern directly.
Which meant that when I died—
And crossed into a realm shaped by an active, manifested Great Dao—
I became something that should not have been possible.
A being carrying intact Original laws into a fragmented multiversal system.
The lotus eye watched me in utter stillness.
And for the first time, I felt something unsettling ripple through the Dao's presence.
Not anger.
Not hostility.
But uncertainty.
Because if what it conveyed was true…
Then I was not merely an intruder.
I was living proof that something existed before it could ever act.
And that terrified me far more than the thought of being erased. The Great Dao did not hesitate this time.
Its intent descended upon me with grave finality, and the truth it revealed was so immense that my consciousness nearly recoiled from it.
The Original Universe had not been destroyed by an external enemy.
There had been no war between gods.
No invading force.
No cataclysm born of chaos.
It had been destroyed by the Great Dao itself.
Or rather—
By its attempt to manifest.
In the beginning, the Original Universe had been whole—its laws perfectly interwoven, its existence complete in a way that required no overseer, no guiding will. The Dao existed within it as a latent principle, omnipresent yet unnecessary, unable—and unneeded—to take form.
But at some unknowable point, that balance shifted.
The Great Dao attempted to step beyond being mere law.
It tried to become.
That single act was enough to doom everything.
The moment the Dao sought manifestation, the universe could no longer contain it. The laws that had once been unified began to strain, then fracture, like glass under impossible pressure. Reality cracked—not explosively, but inevitably—splitting along fault lines of causality, time, and existence itself.
The Original Universe shattered.
From those fractures, countless incomplete universes were born—each one inheriting only portions of the original laws. Some gained time but lost space. Others gained causality but lost stability. Many collapsed almost instantly, unable to sustain themselves.
What survived became the multiverse.
A vast, layered system of fragments, governed by a manifested Great Dao that now existed precisely because the universe was no longer whole.
Understanding burned through me.
The multiverse wasn't evolution.
It was damage control.
A broken structure held together by an authority that should never have needed to exist in the first place.
And my former world…
That small, sealed, intact universe—
It had survived precisely because the Great Dao failed to manifest there.
It was a fragment that closed itself off at the moment of fracture, preserving the original balance. A silent sanctuary where the Dao remained unformed, powerless to interfere.
Which meant—
I swallowed hard.
I had lived my entire life inside a piece of reality that represented what the universe once was.
And now, I stood before the manifested Great Dao—the very force whose attempt at self-existence had caused everything to break.
The lotus eye pulsed faintly, its petals rotating in a pattern that felt… restrained.
It did not deny what it had done.
There was no regret in its presence.
Only inevitability.
The Great Dao did not destroy the universe out of malice.
It destroyed it by being incompatible with perfection.
And that was when the final implication struck me, cold and absolute.
If the Dao had failed once—
If its manifestation had already broken a complete universe—
Then what did it intend to do with me?
A being born from a world where it could not exist.
A living reminder of a state of reality that rejected its presence.
For the first time since I crossed the barrier, fear overwhelmed irony.
Because I realized something terrifying.
I wasn't just an anomaly.
I was a contradiction.
And contradictions…could not be allowed to persist forever.The Great Dao's gaze softened.
Not in warmth—never warmth—but in possibility.
Its intent flowed into me, structured and restrained, carrying meaning I could finally withstand.
It seemed the Great Dao had already understood my intentions—perhaps even before I had fully formed them myself.
Its gaze did not sharpen, nor did it soften. Instead, it deepened, layers of meaning unfolding as its intent poured into me with terrifying precision.
It conveyed that I had not been chosen only because I carried the intact laws of the Original Universe.
Nor merely because I had survived the collision.
I had been chosen because of the mistake the Great Dao itself had made.
The truth struck with a strange, hollow weight.When the Original Universe shattered and the multiverse formed, the Great Dao had finally manifested—but that manifestation had been flawed. In trying to govern fragmented realities, it had created universes where imbalance was inevitable.
Living beings were born.
Not gradually.
Not carefully.
They were born at the peak.
Worlds flooded with entities possessing immense power from the very moment of their creation. Cultivators, gods, higher beings—existences that consumed vast quantities of energy simply by existing. And because energy was not infinite, the cost became unavoidable.
The multiverse stagnated.
The flow of creation slowed… then stopped.
No energy remained for new life to form.
No room for evolution.
No possibility of a correct world.
A universe filled with powerful beings—
yet fundamentally dead.
The Great Dao did not express regret.
But it acknowledged failure.
And now, through me, correction had become possible.
As the intact laws of the Original Universe were absorbed, they would not simply strengthen this multiverse—they would restructure it. Power would no longer be granted at birth. Growth would regain meaning. Energy would circulate, replenish, renew.
A world that could continue.
A world closer to what once was.
But there was a price.
As the Great Dao assimilated the Original Laws, it would be unable to fully manifest. The strain of reconciling perfection with fragmentation would force it into a semi-manifested state—present, governing, yet unable to act directly