I Am the Great Dao

In the midst of Chaos.

"Gah... My head hurts."

In a daze, all he felt was endless pain.

Hongjun slowly opened his eyes.

Wait... Hongjun?

I think I'm Hongjun?

Why?

Who am I?

He tried to remember who he was, but couldn't make sense of anything.

The pain in his head had thrown his memories into disarray.

In the haze, he only remembered that he was probably from Blue Star.

"I'm Hongjun? No... I can't be Hongjun!"

Hongjun jolted awake.

He opened his eyes.

All around him was a pitch-black expanse of Chaos.

Hongjun sat helplessly in the midst of Chaos.

Everything here was rubbing his worldview into the dirt.

He sat there in a daze, absorbing the memories in his mind.

Who knew how many years passed—perhaps ten thousand, perhaps a hundred million.

Only then did Hongjun suddenly radiate a glimmer of divine light.

"I am the Great Dao of the Primordial World!"

At last, he had sorted out the memories in his mind.

He had always been the Great Dao of this Primordial World. The world was completely intact, and within it, he was omniscient.

No one in this world could defeat him.

As for why he'd been transmigrated...

He hadn't transmigrated. He had always been himself.

This Primordial World had undergone an unknown number of cycles. With each cycle, the world grew stronger.

The memories in his mind that made him believe he was from Blue Star had come from a fragment of his soul, which had brought them back during the previous cycle.

The Primordial World would eventually enter the Age of Dharma's End. That had been his own arrangement, for no reason and with no excuse.

It was as if it were destined.

In the past, he hadn't possessed those twenty-odd years of memories from the Age of Dharma's End.

He had been nothing but an emotionless machine.

All he wanted was to keep the Primordial World running and make it stronger through one cycle after another.

But things were different now. He had regained his emotions—the emotions that fragment of his soul had felt during its twenty-odd years living on Blue Star.

Only now could he truly be called—the Great Dao!

"Gah, who would've thought? My origins are that impressive?"

Hongjun's lips curled into a smile. This was too interesting. He couldn't wait to see the legendary Primordial World for himself.

The magnificent Primordial World!

Just as he smiled in delight, the three thousand strands of silver hair on his head began turning black before his eyes. The aged wrinkles on his face gradually vanished, leaving his skin smoother than ever.

The dusty gray robe he wore transformed into a fresh green gown.

His complexion brightened, and he straightened his hunched back.

The cane beside him turned into a folding fan.

They said one's appearance reflected one's heart. A change in his state of mind brought a change in his posture.

His old, withered body had returned to youth.

It was proof that he now had a young heart.

The Hongjun of the past had been nothing but an emotionless "tool." Even with a positive outlook at first, all his passion had gradually worn away.

Imagine what it felt like to be invincible.

Invincible—so lonely, so desolate, so boring.

Now imagine that being invincible wasn't the whole story.

There were beings even stronger than you, living in other Chaos universes.

To grow stronger, his subconscious had given him a task.

The only way to grow stronger was to strengthen the world. Every time the world grew stronger, so did he.

And so Hongjun had set the world through one cycle after another.

Across the endless ages of reincarnation, his spirit had been worn down.

Lifetime after lifetime, again and again.

Through endless cycles, he had nearly lost all his emotions.

Before he had risen to this level, he had wondered whether one day he might become emotionless.

And that was exactly why this fragment of his soul had returned here.

It was a contingency he had left for himself.

In fact, he hadn't originally been called Hongjun.

And this place had originally been nothing more than a world of mythology.

Across countless cycles, Hongjun had determined the plot of each reincarnation.

After making changes and additions again and again, he had created the Primordial World.

That was how the Primordial World came to be.

Back when he'd still been full of passion, he had wanted to help this newly formed world develop.

So he had established an exalted identity.

Thus, the Heavenly Dao had come into being.

And he, in turn, had naturally become the Heavenly Dao's spokesperson, controlling the entire Primordial World and the fate of all its people.

His Daoist title was—Hongjun!

Heavenly Dao Hongjun!

Dao Ancestor Hongjun!

Hongjun smiled confidently. "Not bad, not bad. I'll work hard to strengthen the Primordial World! I'll start with... Pangu Creates Heaven!"

From this moment on, he would once more become the Great Dao.

The only difference between now and the very beginning was that he had twenty-odd years' worth of memories from Blue Star.

Hongjun picked up the folding fan and slowly rose to his feet.

He looked at the Chaos all around him.

He couldn't help feeling a little uneasy.

"It really is better to create the world. An expanse of Chaos is so dull."

He fanned himself, looking a little helpless.

"Hmm... I'll stick with being a man. Being a woman... I really couldn't handle that."

He was now the Great Dao, formless and shapeless, supreme over the world.

He could be a man, a woman, or any living being.

But with twenty-odd years of memories from Blue Star, being human was still the most comfortable.

As for being a woman... Sorry, he preferred being a man.

After all, in his memories, he had been a man both as Hongjun and during his twenty-odd years on Blue Star.

"Pangu Creates Heaven... First, there has to be Pangu, then the Three Thousand Chaos Demon Gods, and after that, Pangu's treasures: the Chaos Green Lotus, the Jade Disk of Creation, the Sky-Opening Axe..."

As Hongjun sorted through everything he knew about Pangu Creates Heaven, his hands kept moving.

With a wave, he created three thousand giant eggs.

The eggs were formed from Chaos energy.

Each one represented a Great Dao Law.

They were incarnations of the Three Thousand Great Daos. Each one commanded a Law, and had cultivated it to its peak.

In the later Primordial World, even before hatching, the aura these eggs gave off would far surpass that of Great Luo Golden Immortals.

One of the eggs was the largest. The Dao resonance it exuded almost reached the level of a Heavenly Dao Sage!

He was Pangu! The Primordial Great Heavenly King! The master of the Law of Strength.

He stood upon the Thirty-Six-Rank Chaos Green Lotus, held the Chaos Supreme Treasure, the Sky-Opening Axe, and bore the Chaos Supreme Treasure, the Jade Disk of Creation, above his head!

Pangu, who single-handedly faced the Three Thousand Chaos Demon Gods, brought forth the world, and transformed into all things in the Primordial World!

"Wait, am I one of the Three Thousand Chaos Demon Gods?"

That was right. In the Honghuang genre novels from Blue Star, the Three Thousand Chaos Demon Gods included all kinds of versions of Old Ancestor Hongjun.

Some said he was transformed from an earthworm. Others claimed he came from the curve separating the Yin-Yang Fish in Innate Taiji. Still others said he was a Chaos Demon God who commanded the Law of Immortality.

There were all kinds of versions of Hongjun.

"These people really are something. How did I go from being the Great Dao to an earthworm? And some say I'm an eel. That's just ridiculous."

Hongjun shook his head helplessly. He decided to include himself among them.

Let the people of later generations see for themselves: I, Hongjun, am no eel!

"Hmm... I'll make Old Ancestor Hongjun the one who commands the Four-Nine Heavenly Dao. Among the Three Thousand Great Daos, it ranks in the top hundred."

Hongjun stroked his chin, then waved his hand. A golden streak of light flew toward one of the giant eggs.

The innate energy within that egg transformed into the Dao resonance of the Four-Nine Heavenly Dao!

He was still rather greedy. The other Chaos Demon Gods each commanded a single Dao.

But he, Hongjun, commanded forty-nine Laws.

It was a play on words. Four-Nine Heavenly Dao, Four-Nine Heavenly Dao. If it didn't command forty-nine Laws, could it really be called the Four-Nine Heavenly Dao?