"Where am I?"
"What is this place?"
"How did I end up here?"
"Didn't I get hit and killed by a car?"
In a void of absolute darkness, shrouded in Chaos where one could not even see their own hand in front of their face, Lin Fan's voice rang out, receiving no reply for a long time.
Lin Fan had been a typical down-on-his-luck youth in the twenty-first century—penniless, homeless, and wifeless. He made a living doing odd jobs every day, and his only hobby was playing online games.
That day, just as he stepped out of an internet café, he happened to see a runaway car hurtling toward a mother and daughter crossing the street.
There was no time to hesitate. Lin Fan's body reacted faster than his brain. He rushed forward and shoved the terrified mother and daughter out of the way. The outcome, naturally, was predictable: Lin Fan was sent flying dozens of meters through the air, dying instantly.
Just as Lin Fan wondered if he had somehow ended up in hell, a massive wave of information flooded his mind. The sudden influx felt as if his brain was about to burst, and with a single desperate scream, he passed out.
He had no idea how much time had passed before his consciousness slowly drifted back.
"So that's how it is," Lin Fan murmured.
Sensing a chaotic, primordial bead resting within his sea of consciousness, Lin Fan felt a surge of elation. He never imagined that he, too, would catch the transmigrating wave and become one of its members—and transmigrate all the way into the pre-cosmic Chaos, no less.
As it turned out, the bead in Lin Fan's mind was none other than the Primordial Pearl of Time and Space, one of the three supreme treasures of Chaos, commonly known as the Chaos Pearl.
During his mortal life, Lin Fan had accidentally stumbled upon a fragment of the Chaos Pearl. At the moment of his death, the fragment used its remaining primordial power of time and space to tear through the spacetime continuum, reversing yin and yang, and brought Lin Fan's soul back into the unformed Chaos of the primordial universe.
One must understand that when the Hongmeng shattered, Chaos was born. Within Chaos bred three thousand Demon Gods corresponding to the three thousand Great Dao, alongside the three supreme treasures of Chaos and myriad spiritual treasures.
Each of the three supreme treasures possessed wondrous capabilities. The thirty-sixth-grade Primordial Green Lotus governed vitality and creation; standing upon it rendered one physically invincible.
The Pangu Axe commanded slaughter and destruction; wherever its axe-qi swept, spacetime was obliterated, all existence erased, and Chaos was reset.
The Chaos Pearl governed the essence of time and space, enabling travel through spacetime and the evolution of spatial-temporal creation, containing a miniature primordial space within itself.
The Chaos Pearl fragment Lin Fan had obtained was left over from when Pangu cleaved open the heavens, at which time the original Chaos Pearl was destroyed by the axe-qi of the Pangu Axe. The pearl had used its remaining spacetime origin energy to forcefully tear open the Chaos spacetime, drifting through the cosmic void in an attempt to restore its origin, until it finally fell into Lin Fan's possession by sheer coincidence.
After a long while, once Lin Fan had fully digested the information in his sea of consciousness, he muttered softly to the Chaos Pearl dwelling within his mind: "Chaos Pearl, thank you for being here and giving me a chance to start over. Rest assured, this time, I will struggle alongside you through the calamity of the splitting of the heavens."
"Together, we will carve out a glimmer of survival beneath the Great Dao."
Hearing Lin Fan's soft murmur, the Chaos Pearl in his sea of consciousness trembled slightly, then returned to stillness.
Thus, Lin Fan's soul settled back into tranquility, allowing the chaotic spiritual Qi to wash over and scour his form. After all, the Chaos Pearl had merely brought him into Chaos; it had given him no method of cultivation, leaving Lin Fan to strengthen himself through this most primitive of methods.
Fortunately, in Chaos, the concepts of time and space did not exist. Unaware of how much time had passed, Lin Fan was suddenly startled out of his meditative state by a earth-shattering roar. Immediately following this, the very expanse of Chaos where he resided began to violently shudder, as if mountains were collapsing and the earth splitting apart.
Even the previously dormant Chaos Pearl within his sea of consciousness began to shake, as though gripped by fear.
This shocked Lin Fan deeply. What manner of event could possibly cause a supreme treasure of Chaos like the Chaos Pearl to feel fear?
"Oh no, Pangu is about to cleave the heavens!" After a long moment of realization, Lin Fan's face drained of color.
He knew well that the only thing capable of terrifying the Chaos Pearl was the impending action of Pangu preparing to shatter the chaotic universe to create a perfect world, transcending the Heavenly Dao and attaining the Great Dao.
Pangu cleaving the heavens—Lin Fan felt an irrepressible surge of yearning. After all, his previous self had been an avid fan of Primordial World web novels. To have the opportunity to witness Pangu cleave the heavens with his own eyes was nothing short of a supreme stroke of fortune.
Without even sparing a moment to check his own cultivation level, he followed a mysterious, guiding instinct and sprinted toward the center of Chaos.
Meanwhile, at the very center of Chaos, a figure of boundless height stood astride the thirty-sixth-grade Primordial Green Lotus, gripping the Pangu Axe as he engaged in a fierce battle against a multitude of Chaos Demon Gods.
As it turned out, Pangu wished to forge a flawless world in order to attain the fruit of the Great Dao.
However, to achieve this, Chaos itself had to be shattered. The three thousand Chaos Demon Gods considered the chaotic universe their home and cultivated using chaotic spiritual Qi; if Chaos were broken, these demon gods would lose any possibility of attaining the Dao for eternity, and worse yet, might not even survive.
As the saying goes, blocking someone's path to the Dao is akin to killing their parents. Furthermore, the three thousand Chaos Demon Gods were born in response to the laws of the Great Dao, naturally mastering the three thousand laws from birth.
Consequently, sensing this threat, the three thousand Chaos Demon Gods rose up to stop Pangu from cleaving the heavens, and a colossal battle instantly erupted.
Although the place where Lin Fan had taken refuge was in a remote corner, it was still battered by the shockwaves of divine power, a testament to the utter brutality of the conflict.
After a protracted and grueling battle, Pangu's cultivation, divine power, and mastery ultimately proved superior. Moreover, the Dao of Strength mastered by Pangu reigned supreme above all three thousand Great Dao. The vast majority of the three thousand Chaos Demon Gods were slain, while the surviving few fled heavily wounded into the deepest depths of Chaos to save their lives.
By the time Lin Fan arrived, the great battle was long over.
Pangu immediately brandished the Pangu Axe, sweeping away the Chaos with waves of the power of the Great Dao. Countless truths and principles unfolded before Lin Fan's eyes along the tracks of the axe, leaving him utterly entranced, immersed so deeply he lost all awareness of himself.
With the final swing of the axe, a boundless Great Thousand World materialized before Lin Fan's eyes, infinitely devouring the surrounding Chaos to expand. Countless laws intertwined, and an ancient, primeval aura immediately rushed toward him.
Meanwhile, the Pangu Axe in Pangu's grasp could no longer bear the karma of creation and shattered into the three Treasures of Open Heaven: the Taiji Diagram, the Pangu Banner, and the Chaos Bell.
With a wave of Pangu's hand, the Taiji Diagram transformed into a golden bridge spanning heaven and earth, stabilizing the newly born Primordial World.
The crisp, ringing tones of the Chaos Bell pinned down and calmed the turbulent chaotic currents swirling around the newborn world.
Pangu himself wielded the Pangu Banner, continuously slashing open the Chaos to expand the new realm.
In an instant, a newly born Primordial World lay unveiled before the eyes of both Pangu and Lin Fan.