Awakening and Beginning

Heaven had no sun or moon; earth had no fixed form.

This was a realm of eternally silent darkness.

There was no sound in the darkness, nor were there any moving objects.

Kangqiao's consciousness felt unbearably cold. His memories were chaotic and confused. The last lingering trace of warmth seemed to be watching a movie called Godzilla 4 in a cinema, and then there was nothing after that.

What was a cinema? And what was Godzilla?

Kangqiao could not remember, but why did those words come to mind?

Kangqiao could no longer keep thinking, because he felt so cold.

So cold that even his soul seemed on the verge of freezing and shattering.

He needed to rest.

However, just then, within this eternally silent darkness—

Somewhere without direction or space, a dim yellow mass of primordial matter suddenly lit up.

The matter of origin gave birth to light, illuminating the entire darkness.

Even Kangqiao, who had already fallen into a half-dazed state, could sense it at that moment.

But soon, the eternally silent world of darkness suddenly exploded.

The immense light of primordial matter shattered and burst apart, sweeping across the entire dark space.

And at that very moment, Kangqiao's consciousness was completely knocked unconscious.

When he awoke again, with a sensation as though he were in a dream, Kangqiao only felt incredibly, incredibly comfortable.

It felt as if he were wrapped in a hot spring on a freezing winter day.

Time had no end, and the passage of years was impossible to perceive.

In that state of complete immersion, one day, Kangqiao finally woke up.

Yet the instant he awakened, he discovered that he was floating upon a doomsday ocean.

Eyes wide, Kangqiao stared blankly at everything before him, feeling that none of it was real.

The sky was covered by dim, heavy clouds, and above them, the giant eye of an endless storm ravaged the entire world.

The air was filled with windblown sand that reeked of sulfur, while pillars of fire occasionally erupted from the distant seabed and shot into the heavens.

Great waves swept across the entire ocean, which was murky beyond measure at this moment.

This was an unknown world, and a terrifying world at the end of days.

Simply looking at the world before him made Kangqiao unwilling to face reality.

Much less when his mind remained in the state of someone who had just woken up, utterly unaware of what was going on.

Instinctively, subconsciously, Kangqiao struggled to flee this place.

He paddled with his four limbs like a lizard.

No, Kangqiao's body was now that of a lizard.

A strange little creature capable of diving through the sea and even unafraid of scalding seawater.

Its skin was rocky gray, with a long tail and short limbs. Its entire body looked like that of a lizard that had only just hatched.

Yet this seemingly ordinary and tiny Water Lizard could be born into this apocalyptic heaven and earth. Perhaps that was a miracle?

Beneath the sea, he could maintain his vital functions without surfacing for air. Even if an undersea volcano erupted beside him, at most he experienced the thrill of being flung high into the air before landing back in the seawater without a scratch.

To Kangqiao, the heat of undersea volcanoes was like a wonderful warm bath.

This warmth made his body feel exceptionally comfortable. Whenever he saw crimson lava spewing from some island, he even felt the urge to approach it and sleep within it.

Kangqiao's consciousness was deeply unsettled. A voice and a different instinct drove him to reject the temptations of his body's current instincts and frantically flee these "apocalyptic dangers."

Then he swam as he observed.

When tired, he drifted with the waves and wind. When awake, he continued wandering aimlessly through regions filled with apocalyptic scenes.

At this point, time had already lost all meaning.

In the end, Kangqiao was utterly exhausted.

Like a lizard that had fallen into the water, belly facing the sky, he simply bobbed about in this apocalyptic world.

At some unknown time, one day, Kangqiao finally woke again.

But this time, his confused consciousness suddenly became clear.

He remembered his past as a human, and he also remembered becoming a lizard and witnessing this land at the end of the world.

Coming back to himself, Kangqiao poked his head out from the mud on the seabed. He turned to look at his body and limbs, suddenly feeling inexplicably melancholy.

"Have I turned into a lizard?"

He did not need to breathe air, and he was unafraid of high temperatures? What kind of lizard was he, exactly?

Those inexplicable thoughts lingered only briefly before Kangqiao stopped thinking about them.

Because he was very hungry now.

So hungry that his entire body, even every cell within it, urged him to quickly find food.

And at that very moment, Kangqiao began surveying his surroundings.

Unlike his muddled memories from the last time he woke, the once murky and turbulent ocean had become clear.

Looking up toward the surface, Kangqiao could even see sunlight shining through the seawater and illuminating the entire sea.

Kangqiao understood that he might not be too far from the surface.

He thought perhaps he should go take a look above water, but then he spotted a group of crustaceans resembling horseshoe crabs crawling across the seafloor.

But unlike the horseshoe crabs from his memories, these creatures had many pairs of legs on their abdomens.

They also had two long antennae on their heads.

They did not look much like horseshoe crabs. Instead, they looked somewhat like cockroaches.

"What exactly are these strange things? They aren't poisonous, are they?"

Kangqiao hesitated for only a moment before losing all room for thought.

Because he was too hungry.

So hungry that what little reason he had left was quickly drowned out.

Reason only gathered when one was full.

So, as a special kind of lizard, Kangqiao charged straight at them.

Kangqiao was at least several times larger than these strange creatures.

It was roughly the difference between an adult and a child.

Hunting these slow-moving creatures could not have been easier.

The sharp claws on his limbs tore through the crustaceans' defenses, and blue blood instantly scattered throughout the surrounding waters.

Kangqiao's feeding was exceptionally brutal and bloody.

One was not even enough to fill the gaps between his teeth. Only after hunting more than ten crustaceans did his hunger finally ease.

Beneath the crustaceans' shells, the flesh was... how should he put it?

It was not very tasty. At least, to Kangqiao's current sense of taste, it was full of a fishy stench.

But his body did not reject that stench.

At least, it did not make him want to vomit. Whether that was good or bad, he had no idea.

"Meh, it was just so-so."

Looking at the mess on the seafloor, Kangqiao smacked his lips, feeling no particular emotion.

Because he wanted to know what the outside world looked like now.

Thus, he looked toward the surface again.

His limbs pressed close to his sides, and his tail swayed from side to side. He swam no slower than a fish.

Finally, after only a short while, Kangqiao broke through the surface. Amid splashing water, he finally saw the long-lost sun.