Wailing

"Waaah—sob sob sob—!!"

The earth-shattering wail, like some immensely powerful sonic Divine Ability, violently tore apart the eternal tranquility of Fangzhang Immortal Island.

By the pool, the little figure—round and pink like a dumpling—sat bare-bottomed on the cool, lustrous jade bank. Her hair had been painstakingly permed into an explosive mass of curls by the Heavenly Tribulation, several charred black marks still streaking her face from the lightning. With her mouth wide open, she cried until heaven and earth shook, heartbroken beyond measure.

Su Miao truly felt wronged to the extreme.

Where was the peerless goddess she had imagined, wreathed in immortal aura, with lotus flowers blooming beneath every step?

Where was the heaven-reaching cultivation she had anticipated, where a casual wave made the galaxy sway and Laws arose amid laughter and conversation?

How had she become a two-year-old baby who could barely walk steadily, whose speech leaked air, and who could not even wipe her own butt?!

Oh, right—she did not even have clothes to wear! She was completely naked!

The gap was more absurd—more despairing—than misstepping from the summit of Mount Everest and plunging into the Mariana Trench!

"Waaah... my long legs... they're gone! Sob... my thirty-six D's... flew away! Waaah... how am I supposed to face people after this? How am I supposed to be little? I'll probably fall flat on my face just walking, sob sob sob..."

As she cried, she futilely tried to cover herself with her chubby little hands. Tears fell like pearls from a snapped string, pattering into the stream of Three Lights Divine Water flowing beneath her.

She cried so deeply, so wholeheartedly, that she never noticed the peculiar effect produced by her sobs—sobs infused with the power of the Pure World White Lotus Origin and the immense grievance buried deep within her soul.

Her cries actually condensed into tangible soundwaves, carrying an incomparably pure Dao resonance that washed over all things, spreading outward in rippling circles like waves across water.

Wherever the soundwaves passed, the clouds and mist wreathed around Mount Fangzhang were swept away completely, leaving the sky as clear and blue as if it had been freshly washed.

The seawater around the island, already crystal-clear, became like the purest crystal. Even deep beneath the sea, visible to the naked eye, every tiniest speck of dust and grime was thoroughly purified and dissolved.

Several bizarre-looking deep-sea fish that happened to be swimming past were swept by the purifying soundwaves. The filth, parasites, and baleful yin qi accumulated upon them over ten thousand years vanished in an instant. Their whole bodies became several degrees more translucent, and they swished their tails blankly, seemingly unable to understand why they had suddenly become several pounds "lighter."

This was no longer a simple cry. It was practically a large-scale, indiscriminate purification-and-deliverance Divine Ability!

In the darkness, the Heavenly Dao Will that had been silently watching immediately fluctuated violently.

[Oh, heavens! Little Ancestor! Stop crying already!]

It felt as though its head were buzzing.

To its consciousness, formed from countless Rules and Order, those cries containing the origin of purification were like someone using an enormous loudspeaker to loop the highest-frequency purifying demonic sound directly into its core code. It was harmless, but so noisy that its Dao Heart was about to become unstable!

What frightened it even more was that Su Miao's soul was already wounded.

Now, her violently surging emotions had drawn the Pure World White Lotus Origin into wailing with her. If she kept crying like this, it might truly damage the foundation of this Innate Spiritual Object!

If its origin suffered severe damage as a result, then if she were injured again in the future and died young because of it...

It shuddered, not daring to imagine it.

[She needs soothing! I have to calm her down! But... but what can I use to soothe her?!]

The Heavenly Dao Will spun frantically in circles—at least in the sense of its thoughts.

It governed the operation of Primordial order, and maintaining the balance of heaven and earth was its specialty. But soothing a child... it had never learned that line of work!

Which living being in the Primordial world did not immediately comprehend heaven and earth after taking form, striving to cultivate in pursuit of the Great Dao?

Who had ever encountered such an oddball who cried so earth-shakingly simply because she had successfully taken form—albeit in a somewhat shrunken state?

In a panic, it began wildly scanning through everything it could access.

Innate Spiritual Treasures?

The offensive ones might hurt her. She did not seem to need defensive ones for now. As for those that aided cultivation...

She probably could not understand them in her current state.

Spirit pills and miraculous medicines?

Every medicine carried some poison; whether her tiny body and fragile soul could endure them was another matter entirely.

Rare treasures and exotic fruits?

Clearly, one fruit would not be enough to quell such towering grievance.

[I've got it!]

In its urgency, the Heavenly Dao Will suddenly spotted an item forgotten in some corner—or rather, deliberately sealed away.

It was a bead.

About the size of a pigeon egg, it was entirely the color of chaos. Its surface was covered in fine, mysterious patterns that seemed naturally formed by heaven and earth. Looking closely, one could even make out several extremely faint cracks, nearly impossible to notice, as though it had once endured an unimaginable impact.

It floated there silently, its aura ancient to the utmost and restrained to the utmost. Had the Heavenly Dao Will not actively sensed it, it might have mistaken it for an ordinary stone.

This object was the Chaos Bead!

Its origins were nothing short of earth-shaking. Born within chaos, it had once stood alongside the Heaven-Opening Divine Axe, the Chaos Green Lotus, and the Creation Jade Disk as a supreme divine artifact of the Chaos Supreme Treasure rank. It contained a Hongmeng World within itself, with its own Heavenly Dao Laws, its mysteries boundless.

However, when Great God Pangu opened heaven and earth, the great calamity swept through chaos. The Chaos Bead was struck by the light of the Heaven-Opening Axe as well, its main body damaged and its rank falling repeatedly. Though it remained a top-tier Innate Supreme Treasure, with powers and mysteries on par with the Three Treasures of Heaven Opening—the Taiji Diagram, Pangu Banner, and Chaos Bell—it had ultimately lost its status as a Chaos Supreme Treasure. Moreover, because its origin was damaged, many of its wondrous functions had concealed themselves. Without immense fortune and great magical power, they could not be awakened.

Because of its unusual condition, it had always been stored away by the Primordial Great Dao, before later being tossed to the Heavenly Dao Authority for safekeeping.

Even the Heavenly Dao itself could not fathom all the bead's mysteries. It only sensed that the Laws within lay dormant like those of a dead thing. It was tasteless to consume yet a pity to discard, so it had remained unused all this time.

But at this moment, it could no longer worry about any of that!

This bead looked harmless enough. Its hard texture meant it should withstand a fall, and its ancient aura might perhaps catch a child's attention?

This one, then!

Heavenly Dao Will hesitated no longer. Carefully drawing upon a thread of Rule Power, it wrapped the dormant Chaos Bead within it, silently tore open space, and precisely dropped it before Su Miao, who was crying so hard she had the hiccups.

"Plop."

A soft sound.

A gray, dusty bead covered in tiny cracks rolled in circles to Su Miao's fair, chubby feet and came to a stop.

The chaotic patterns on its surface glimmered with an exceedingly faint, nearly imperceptible warm sheen beneath Mount Fangzhang's abundant Spiritual Light.

Su Miao, who had been crying as though the sky were falling, jumped at the sudden noise.

Her crying stopped abruptly.

She let out a loud sobbing hiccup. Her long lashes, damp with tears, trembled as her big, misty eyes looked blankly downward.

There lay a round bead she had never seen before, resting quietly at her feet.

It looked gray and unremarkable, with cracks across it, like some broken stone marble casually picked up from the roadside.

But...

For some reason, looking at the bead made the inexplicable grievance and agitation in Su Miao's heart seem as though they had been gently smoothed away, little by little, by a tender little hand.

The ancient, tranquil, even somewhat battered aura it gave off inexplicably made her feel a sense of shared misery.

It was as though... it too was a poor little thing no one wanted, broken beyond repair?

She sniffled, raised a chubby hand with little dimples on its knuckles, and carelessly wiped the tears and soot from her face. Then, curiously extending her other plump little hand, she tremblingly and tentatively poked toward the gray bead.

"Hic... Wh-what is this?"

Just as Su Miao's chubby little fingertip, streaked with tears and curiosity, was about to touch the seemingly ordinary yet unimaginably significant Chaos Bead, a sudden change erupted!

The Chaos Bead seemed to sense something. The tiny cracks on its surface flashed faintly, and an ancient, vast, yet incomparably obscure consciousness—like an ancient god who had slept for hundreds of millions of years slightly opening a slit in its eyes—followed Su Miao's probing fingertip and sought to bore into her innocent, fragile Spiritual Platform and Spiritual Sense!

This consciousness was incomparably immense. Even the slightest trace of it, one part in hundreds of millions, was far beyond what a two-year-old child whose soul was wounded and who had only just taken form could endure!

Hidden in the shadows, Heavenly Dao Will was so shocked it nearly lost its soul!

[Oh no! I forgot about this! The Chaos Bead possesses intelligence! Though it has lain dormant since ancient times, its status is too high. Even damaged, it is no ordinary object! How could she possibly endure this trace of autonomous awareness?!]

It could no longer concern itself with anything else, nor did it have time for any delicate measures. In its urgency, it could only brutally cram the massive Inherited Memories it had long prepared—containing foundational knowledge of the Prehistoric World and methods of cultivation—into Su Miao's utterly defenseless little head all at once, like floodwaters bursting through a dam!

It tried to use that vast amount of relatively gentle information to wash away and overwrite that terrifyingly ancient consciousness that was about to invade!

"Bzzz—!"

Su Miao only felt as though an exploding galaxy had been stuffed into her head in an instant!

Countless bizarre scenes, abstruse and tongue-twisting syllables, and intricate, incomprehensible Runes surged like a tsunami, instantly drowning all her senses!

The Chaos Bead right before her, that ancient consciousness about to touch her, and the icy feel of Jade Stone against her toes...

Everything, everything, drifted away from her in that moment.

Her vision went black. Her tiny body swayed, and before she could even cry out, she cleanly and decisively—fainted.

Her little hand remained unconsciously half-clenched, as though she still wanted to catch that broken bead that had rolled over.

Only the Chaos Bead remained, lying quietly by her feet. The light in its surface cracks had long since faded, and it had returned to its ancient, inconspicuous appearance, as though everything that had just happened had been nothing more than an illusion.

On Mount Fangzhang, Immortal Light still shone, and Spirit Mist gathered once more.

All that remained was a Milk Baby knocked unconscious by a torrent of information, and a Heavenly Dao Will that might have caused trouble, silently calculating the consequences.