"Chronicle of Ages? What tomb? This is merely my painting."
Within the fake Chronicle of Ages.
The Painter watched as one ancient hero after another stepped out of the album. Those familiar figures stirred his thoughts, as if they had crossed through time and space and returned to the earliest ages.
From the moment he was born, the Painter had been unable to understand what kind of creature he was.
He was a doodle formed from countless thick and fine lines interwoven together, like a child's hasty pencil drawing on a wall.
This writhing black shadow of tangled lines sat quietly within the vast, primordial Nine Continents world, witnessing the births of countless creatures.
He watched them evolve and grow. Grasslands appeared, then forests, schools of fish, and tribes.
In his spare time, he most loved watching this land. The sight of tiny insects crawling back and forth could hold his attention for an entire day.
He loved that dazzling world of hunting animals—the killing and the growth, as if they were composing a resplendent hymn to civilization.
Later, those insects changed and matured. The animals awakened their intelligence and formed tribes.
Whenever the powerful chieftain of a race returned from a hunt, dragging its prey back to the tribe and roaring furiously at the sky, the tribesmen below would cheer.
Those scenes shook him to the core.
His meaningless life was illuminated by this painting of Survival of the Fittest, as if he had finally understood the meaning of his existence.
Then he became the leader of all the races, enjoying their offerings, solving their troubles, and building houses for them.
The primitive animals began offering sacrifices to him for no apparent reason.
He was a crude creature made of lines, and gradually came to be called an immortal.