Shapeshifting Animation

Darkness.

Not emptiness, but a darkness forcibly crammed full—thick, viscous, and overloaded with information.

Su Miao felt like a sponge tossed into a high-speed centrifuge. Countless bizarre fragments, tongue-twisting syllables, and warped, flickering runes were madly flooding every inch of her consciousness in a simple, brutal, utterly irresistible manner, squeezing her already fragile and wounded soul.

"Ugh..."

A faint groan slipped from her unconsciously. Her little head felt like it was about to explode!

This felt ten thousand times worse than pulling consecutive all-nighters to finish a graduation thesis!

It was as if someone had pried open the top of her skull and dumped the entire National Library's collection, along with all its visual archives, straight into her head—and it was fucking all in the Primordial World classical Chinese edition!

Just as she felt she was about to be utterly scattered by this torrent of information, her consciousness on the verge of sinking completely, that overbearing force seemed to pause slightly and become a little more "gentle."

Though it was still cramming knowledge down her throat, at least it was no longer a violent demolition job. It was more like... forcibly installing an enormous expansion pack called <Primordial World Survival Guide (Toddler Enlightenment Edition)>.

Countless images and pieces of information began to flow and settle within her Sea of Consciousness in a comparatively orderly fashion.

She "saw"—

An endless Chaos. A towering giant swung a colossal axe, splitting Heaven and Earth apart. The clear and turbid separated, and all things came to life...

The scene was majestic, yet it flashed by too quickly for details to be clear, leaving behind only the basic concept: "Pangu opened the heavens; the Primordial World was first formed."

She "heard"—

The divisions of cultivation realms: Earth Immortal, Heavenly Immortal, True Immortal, Mystic Immortal, Golden Immortal, Primordial Unity Golden Immortal, Great Luo Golden Immortal, Quasi-Saint (Primordial Golden Immortal), Saint (Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal of the Origin)...

Each major realm was further divided into early, middle, late, and perfected stages.

At this point, the Inherited Memories seemed to deliberately highlight and bold [Mystic Immortal] and [Golden Immortal], emphasizing the gulf between them—a chasm as vast as Heaven and Earth.

Immediately afterward, an incredibly humiliating "animated replay" began playing by force:

In the image, a silly Pure World White Lotus huffed and puffed as it crazily absorbed Spiritual Qi for several Eons, storing a belly full of energy. Then, like an overinflated balloon, it howled that it wanted to take form!

Without any guidance from Cultivation Methods or any comprehension of Heaven and Earth, it simply detonated all that energy at once, trying to force itself into taking shape...

And the result...

There was enough energy—far more than ordinary Innate Creatures needed to take form, in fact. It was enough to directly attain the Golden Immortal Fruit and step into the ranks of the Primordial World's backbone.

But unfortunately, the operator—namely, the soul of Su Miao—

Was way too pathetic!

Its strength was nowhere near enough to control and precisely guide such an enormous amount of energy. It was like a novice driver trying to pilot an interstellar battleship. The battleship was barely built, but the pilot was immediately launched skyward by operational overload and system backlash, then... got stuck in toddler mode!

Her cultivation had also come crashing down to the early Mystic Immortal stage because her soul and body were mismatched, while the uncontrolled energy dissipated everywhere.

The animation even ended with several close-up shots of her soul origin. The clearly visible cracks, old and new layered atop one another—old sudden-death injuries plus fresh injuries from taking form—seemed to silently mock her recklessness.

Su Miao: "!!!"

So... it wasn't that the Heavenly Dao was stingy, nor that the Great Dao had plotted against her. It was... it was that she had crippled herself through cultivation?!

She could have become a Golden Immortal big shot right away, but now she was only a puny Mystic Immortal?

A crippled Mystic Immortal, at that—her soul damaged, her body shrunk, even her mind affected?!

A wave of regret and mortification, deeper than when she had discovered she had become a nursing infant, surged through her in an instant.

"Ugh..."

Her little lips puckered, and her eyes reddened again. But this time, it was not from grievance. She had been reduced to tears purely by her own stupidity.

The Heavenly Dao Will seemed to sense her emotional shift, and the Inherited Memories immediately became "considerate," beginning to instill "remedial measures" and "future plans" into her.

All sorts of profound mysteries regarding the origin of the [Pure World White Lotus]:

Purifying filth, cleansing Inner Demons, impervious to all evil, creating Vitality...

It was an expert at repairing Heaven and Earth, maintaining the Primordial World's environment, and protecting the ecosystem!

And if she did a good job protecting the environment, Heaven and Earth would naturally bestow rewards upon her—merit!

The Inherited Memories' depiction of merit was truly glittering with golden light, brimming with boundless temptation:

The Primordial World's universal hard currency!

It could directly raise one's cultivation realm!

It could enhance the might of Spiritual Treasures and even elevate their grade!

It could turn calamity into fortune and disaster into auspiciousness, greatly boosting one's luck!

It could even make Heavenly Dao Daddy look upon you with favor. So long as you had enough merit, no one would dare casually kill you even as you walked down the road—they would fear becoming entangled in karma and getting struck by lightning!

In short, her broad road ahead was to work hard at making use of the Pure World White Lotus's innate traits, become an "environmental protection model worker" for the Primordial World, and earn merit—the Primordial World's "universal currency."

Then she would have cultivation, Dharma Treasures, Fortune, and powerful backers all in hand!

Su Miao dizzily digested all of this, instinctively trying to understand it through her Blue Star way of thinking:

So... my future career plan is... to become a Primordial World sanitation worker?

The kind of senior technician with an official post, Heavenly Dao allowances, and a job where working was the same as earning foreign exchange?

Maybe... this wasn't impossible to accept?

It was still better than sending out résumés on Blue Star and getting tortured by HR, right?

At least the full benefits package (Merit) was guaranteed. Her boss, the Heavenly Dao, might be a hands-off boss, but at least it wouldn't PUA its employees... right?

At last, the Inherited Memories lightly brushed over the dusty gray bead lying quietly in a corner of her consciousness.

A concept naturally surfaced—[Companion Spiritual Treasure].

When innately powerful beings took form, treasures born in tandem with them would sometimes emerge alongside them. These were known as Companion Spiritual Treasures. They were most compatible with their hosts and possessed boundless power.

The Heavenly Dao had not explicitly explained the bead's origins. After all, it had only temporarily stuffed in a toy to placate a child; it was not truly a companion treasure. Yet it did not correct Su Miao's perfectly natural assumption.

Thus, a chain of logic automatically formed in Su Miao's little head:

I took form from a Pure World White Lotus → this bead appeared with me → it must be my Companion Spiritual Treasure!

It looked battered and worn, and even had a few cracks, but it had to be something good!

Just like me—even though I'd shrunk, my foundation was still excellent!

Thinking that way, she immediately felt much better. She even developed a trace of fondness for that Broken Bead that shared her plight.

The massive infusion of Inherited Memories was finally nearing its end.

Su Miao only felt dizzy and disoriented, her little head heavy, as though it had been forcibly crammed full of several hundred gigabytes of compressed files that needed time to slowly unpack and digest.

Swaying unsteadily, she plopped back down onto the cold Jade Stone floor. One chubby little hand instinctively braced itself beside her, landing right on the Chaos Bead.

The cool touch made her a little more clear-headed.

She shook her still-foggy little head, trying hard to pull her consciousness free from that vast, smoky ocean of information and focus once more on reality.

The first thing that entered her vision was still the back of her own plump, fair, tender hand, complete with tiny dimples.

Then her gaze lowered...

"!!!"

Su Miao's eyes flew wide open. The embarrassment she had just managed to suppress erupted again like a volcano!

Bare! White! Plump!

She! Was! Still! Naked!

She had been so busy crying and getting knowledge stuffed into her head that she had completely forgotten about it!

Now that she had common sense, her sense of shame had fully returned along with it!

The adult soul within her screamed madly:

Clothes!

I need clothes!

Even a bellyband would do?!

Her little face instantly flushed crimson. Not caring about her dizziness anymore, she frantically tried to cover herself with her short, chubby hands, only to find that covering the top exposed the bottom, while covering the bottom exposed the top. It was a complete case of robbing Peter to pay Paul—the more she tried to hide, the more conspicuous it became.

"Waa..."

She wanted to cry again, this time from panic.

Her gaze darted wildly around, hoping to find something, anything, that could cover her body.

Leaves? Too small!

Rosy clouds? She couldn't grab them!

The Jade Stone beside her? Was she supposed to chip off a piece and hang it on herself?!

At last, her gaze involuntarily fell upon the Lotus Pond beside her, still wreathed in the rosy glow of Three Lights Divine Water.

Within the pond, aside from the original Twelve Petals Pure World White Lotus that had become her true body, several secondary lotus platforms swayed in the water. Some had six ranks, some nine. They too were flawlessly white, radiating pure Spiritual Light and a faint lotus fragrance.

Especially that Nine-Ranked Lotus Platform. Its Lotus Petals were huge, their texture fine and lustrous. They looked... rather soft? Very... suitable for tearing off and making into something?

A bold thought, born of desperation, suddenly shot into Su Miao's mind.

Just as Su Miao stared at that Nine-Ranked Pure World Lotus, a dangerous gleam rising in her eyes and her chubby little hand itching to move, the Chaos Bead in her other hand—the one she had just recognized as her "Companion Spiritual Treasure"—seemed to tremble ever so faintly, almost imperceptibly.

Deep within the bead, a minuscule halo of light swiftly flickered through the chaos-colored depths, as though some spirituality that had lain dormant since time immemorial had been quietly stirred by its host's first intense and unmistakable thought of "creation" and "need."