"Was this the Primordial World, in the Era of Liches and Demons, not long after the Human Race had first appeared?"
Jiang Yuan awoke from his stupor, struggling to accept the fact that he'd transmigrated.
Transmigration was great. Transmigrating to the Primordial World was even better. But after arriving here, he hadn't become some lofty Innate God or Devil, nor the disciple of a mighty cultivator. He was just an ordinary member of the Human Race.
That was very bad.
Everyone knew that in the Primordial World, your origins determined everything. If you weren't born with something, you'd never have it in this lifetime.
Take the Sage Positions, the Innate Supreme Treasures, or the top-tier Innate Merit Spirit Treasures... To obtain any of those, you needed some connection to Great God Pangu.
No connection to Great God Pangu? Then, sorry. Even if you were lucky enough to dominate for a while, you'd still make a dismal exit in the end, reduced to the ashes of a calamity.
Lesser treasures, like ordinary Innate Spiritual Treasures, didn't require a connection to Great God Pangu. But they did require a connection to Heaven and Earth: you had to be an Innate God or Devil nurtured by the world's origin.
Only then could you have a fated connection with an Innate Spiritual Treasure.
If you weren't even an Innate God or Devil, you were no more than some nobody by the roadside. Don't even dream of getting an Innate Spiritual Treasure. Even if you did, you wouldn't be able to hold on to it. Your fate was sealed: you'd turn to ash in one of Heaven and Earth's great tribulations.
Jiang Yuan knew this all too well, so he was deeply dissatisfied with the identity he'd transmigrated into. Before transmigrating, he'd been an ordinary member of the Human Race. After transmigrating, he was still an ordinary member of the Human Race. Hadn't he transmigrated for nothing?
To be fair, an ordinary human from this era would have been a person of great standing in later times. But this wasn't the future. In this era, ordinary members of the Human Race were at the very bottom of the Primordial World.
No treasures, no Destiny, no strength—he was the genuine article, a man with nothing going for him.
"How did I end up as an ordinary human? Even if I couldn't become an Innate God or Devil, being one of the first humans created by the Holy Mother would've been pretty good. But what's the point of being an ordinary human?"
Jiang Yuan felt helpless. But things had come to this, so he could only accept his fate and figure out how to change it.
Although origins determined everything in the Primordial World, that said, transmigrators were the greatest anomaly under Heaven. They were born to break convention and create legends.
"Am I inside the belly of a Kun Fish?"
Once he'd managed to accept reality, Jiang Yuan began assessing his situation. Then he couldn't hold it together. He'd been picking up seashells by the shore when a Kun Fish had swallowed him whole.
In other words, he was now inside the Kun Fish's belly. So how was he still alive and well instead of being digested?
Sun Wukong had survived being swallowed because he possessed incredible powers. Jiang Yuan was just an ordinary human; he didn't have that kind of ability.
Realizing something was wrong, Jiang Yuan hurried to his feet and examined himself, trying to find out why he hadn't been digested.
Then he noticed a faint divine radiance emanating from his body. It was this radiance that had protected him from being digested by the Kun Fish.
"What is this divine light?"
Before Jiang Yuan could think it over, his vision suddenly went black. When he could see again, he found himself in a hazy, grey space.
An ancient, mysterious jade disk floated silently before him. The divine light that had protected him came from this very disk.
Its surface was covered in densely packed runes, like a page from a book filled with writing.
The contents were simply too obscure. Jiang Yuan had only glanced at them, without even making out a single character, when a wave of dizziness swept over him.
"Isn't this the jade disk I picked up by the shore before I transmigrated? Could this thing be what let me cross through time?"
Thinking of where the jade disk had come from, Jiang Yuan realized his cheat might finally have arrived.
Sure enough, as soon as the thought crossed his mind, the disk suddenly blazed with light and released a torrent of information into his mind.
The Creation Jade Disk!
At last, Jiang Yuan learned the jade disk's origins. It was none other than the famed supreme treasure of creation, the Creation Jade Disk.
Legend had it that there were fifty pieces of the Creation Jade Disk. They served as vessels for the Great Dao, containing the mysteries of the Three Thousand Great Daos.
But later, when Pangu created Heaven and Earth, the treasure was destroyed by the Chaos Demon Gods, leaving only thirty-seven pieces. Of these, Dao Ancestor Hongjun obtained thirty-six and used them to unite with the Dao, making up for the deficiencies in the Heavenly Dao.
The last remaining piece was the one in Jiang Yuan's hands. Lost to the world for countless years, it had come into his possession through a twist of fate. Then it had carried him across the River of Time and Space to the age when the Human Race had just appeared.
"What a stroke of great fortune!"
Jiang Yuan couldn't help exclaiming in excitement. Dao Ancestor Hongjun had obtained thirty-six pieces of the Creation Jade Disk and reached the highest position.
He had less, with just one piece. Did that mean he was one thirty-sixth of a Dao Ancestor? That was still incredible. He should be no weaker than a Sage!
The Creation Jade Disk was the greatest treasure for comprehending the Dao in all of Chaos. It had no real offensive power or defensive power; its only function was to help people comprehend the Dao.
No matter how gifted you were, with the Creation Jade Disk's aid, you could reach the pinnacle of comprehension in the world.
Great God Pangu obtained it and became the mightiest of the Chaos Demon Gods. Dao Ancestor Hongjun obtained it and became the first Sage of the Primordial World.
Jiang Yuan obtained it and became...
In short, the Creation Jade Disk was incredibly powerful. After all, aside from Destiny, comprehension was the most important thing in cultivation.
With sufficient insight, you could see through the very nature of Heaven and Earth at a glance, then take it as your teacher and create all kinds of divine abilities and Dao arts.
What's more, with enough insight, you could create cultivation techniques that defied fate and changed your destiny—making nearly anything possible.
"Too bad. It's a wonderful treasure, but my strength is too low. I can't bring out its full power."
After his excitement faded, Jiang Yuan thought about his situation and couldn't help sighing. Using a magical treasure required magical power, and his was feeble.
His cultivation was so low that it was practically nonexistent.
The cultivation realms of the Primordial World, from lowest to highest, were Innate, Void Refining, Heavenly Immortal, Taiyi, Daluo, Quasi-Saint, and Hunyuan.
As for Jiang Yuan, he was in the Post-Heaven Realm, a realm unique to the Human Race. It ranked below the Innate Realm, making it the very bottom of the Primordial World.
In simple terms, a Post-Heaven cultivator at this time was considered an ordinary mortal who knew nothing about cultivation!
A mortal in the Era of Liches and Demons—just listen to how absurd that sounded. The two things didn't belong together at all.
And yet, this absurdity had truly come to pass. Within the Human Race, there were countless mortals like Jiang Yuan.
The first humans—the clods of mud flung from the Gourd Vine by the Holy Mother—had it better.
Made from the top-tier Innate Spiritual Treasure Nine Heavens Breathing Soil, one of the Ten Great Divine Waters, the Three Lights Divine Water, and the Holy Mother's essence blood, they were born as Innate Living Beings with Void Refining cultivation.
As for the few she sculpted by hand—the Human Ancestors—she had poured her heart and soul into them. They were born as Innate Gods and Devils with Heavenly Immortal cultivation.
Their ancestors had been formidable, but their descendants didn't measure up. After generation upon generation, their bloodline had degraded at a shocking rate. In just over a dozen generations, they could no longer maintain their Innate Rank Position and fell into the state of Acquired Living Beings.
Jiang Yuan was the thirty-sixth-generation descendant of the Human Ancestor Suiren. Even with the might of an Innate God or Devil, by the time the bloodline had reached his generation, little of its divinity remained. He'd been born no different from an ordinary mortal.
It was the birth of these Acquired humans that had added a whole new realm to the Primordial World: the Post-Heaven Realm, where people were as helpless as mortals.
You could say that the Human Race had given birth to history, but that was clearly no good thing.
Mortals needed cultivation techniques to cultivate. But since the Primordial World had no Post-Heaven Realm, there were no cultivation techniques for it.
Without cultivation techniques, how could anyone cultivate?
And in the Primordial World, being unable to cultivate had dire consequences—worse than death, a life not worth living.
Any creature could crap on your head, bully you, mock you, or even eat you.
Sure enough, Jiang Yuan, unable to cultivate, had been swallowed by a Kun Fish.