Primordial Chaos's First Slacker? Starting Off by Smashing Through the Great Demonic Calamity

"Damn... which bastard starts renovating early on a weekend..." Xiao Kuang's eyelids felt as heavy as lead, his mind like a pot of overcooked mush. He muttered instinctively and forced open a sliver of his eyes.

What he saw instantly vaporized his remaining drowsiness and complaints. His soul practically shot out through the top of his head, nearly scaring itself apart.

There was no ceiling, no rented apartment.

There was only an endless shattered sky, black as the abyss yet stained a despairing purplish red by countless raging torrents of energy. Earth, water, fire, and wind surged out of control, tearing apart space, annihilating and regenerating. Enormous bones lay across the void like mountain ranges. Tattered banners rolled in flames. Corpse fragments from unknown races mingled with the wreckage of divine weapons, floating and colliding, turning this world into a thoroughgoing, roaring hell.

And he was falling from an extremely high place.

The wind howled past his ears, lashing his face so painfully it felt ready to split open.

"Holy shitttt—what kind of nightmare is this?! Bungee jumping without a rope?!" Xiao Kuang flailed his limbs wildly, trying to grab onto anything, even a single straw. Unfortunately, apart from the icy gale filled with destructive intent, he caught nothing.

Despair wrapped around his heart like icy vines.

The scene below grew clearer and clearer.

Upon a relatively "clean" shattered continent, the sight was even more terrifying.

On one side was boundless, dazzling immortal radiance and Dao resonance. Pure qi rose upward, evolving endless wondrous arts. Golden lamps and jeweled ornaments, purple qi and golden flowers spread layer upon layer, bringing countless auspicious signs—yet carrying an unquestionable, cold, supreme majesty.

On the other side was pure darkness that swallowed all light. Demonic qi towered into the heavens, while phantoms of howling demons rose and sank within it. Filth, slaughter, destruction, and extinction were so dense they had become tangible, viscous as a bog of blood. A single glance made one's primordial spirit tremble, nearly driving one mad.

These two terrifying powers, enough to overturn the universe and redefine earth, water, fire, and wind, were locked in the cruelest and most direct ultimate clash!

And Xiao Kuang was like a pebble hurled by an invisible giant hand—or rather, like a bag of badly timed garbage falling from the sky—plunging without hesitation toward the most brilliant, most dangerous core of that destructive storm...

"Wait, wait! Fellow Daoists down there! I'm on your side! Move! Get out of the way!!!" he screamed uselessly, his voice instantly swallowed by the energy's roar.

At the core of that pure qi and immortal radiance, an elderly man with a blurry form and an unfathomably supreme aura seemed to sense something and slightly raised his head.

At the core of that murky demonic abyss, a stern man in fluttering black robes, whose baleful aura nearly froze space-time, also lifted his eyes indifferently.

For one trillionth of an instant, their gazes seemed to collide. Each saw a trace of astonishment and confusion in the other's eyes.

Where had this variable come from?

There was no such record in the trajectory of the Heavenly Dao!

Yet during that infinitesimal, nearly negligible gap in the circulation of energy caused by the brief surprise of these supreme beings—

Carrying his insignificant hundred-odd pounds of mass, along with some strange fluctuation he might have picked up while crossing space and time—one even he himself knew nothing about—Xiao Kuang landed with a soft pff, absurdly lightly and tearfully precisely, embedding himself into that exact "point" where the two supreme beings' auras clashed.

Time seemed to stretch and freeze at that moment.

The tragedy he had expected—slamming into an iron wall and instantly turning to ash—never happened.

Instead, it was like... like using a needle to gently pop a balloon inflated to its absolute limit.

Or like using an eraser to wipe away the two darkest, most striking ink dots at the center of a painting.

The grand scene of clear and murky forces divided, Dao and demons contending, abruptly stalled.

Then, indescribably brilliant light erupted, swallowing everything and briefly robbing Xiao Kuang of all sensation.

BOOM!!!

In the end came a solid, dull thud of flesh striking earth, followed by dust billowing into the sky.

"Cough! Cough, cough, cough..." Xiao Kuang felt as if every bone in his body had nearly fallen apart and his organs had shifted out of place. Stars flashed before his eyes, and his ears rang with an endless buzz.

He lay at the very bottom of a massive, freshly made impact crater, filthy and utterly disheveled.

"Not... not dead?" He struggled to move his fingers, then kicked his legs. Aside from agonizing pain and weakness, all his parts seemed to still be present.

Before the wild joy of surviving could rise in his heart, he braced himself with one hand and tried to climb up.

The feeling... was a little off.

It was not the cold, hard shattered rock he had expected, nor was it scorching lava.

It was a strange, slightly elastic yet faintly cool... thin-sheet-like sensation?

He subconsciously lowered his head and looked beneath himself.

The dust was slowly dispersing, and the scene underneath gradually came into focus.

Xiao Kuang's pupils abruptly shrank to pinpoints.

Beneath him was not the ground.

Those were... two human figures?

Or rather, they had once been two human figures.

Now, they looked more like two human-shaped paintings forcibly flattened and imprinted onto the bottom of the crater.

The one on the left seemed to wear Daoist robes. His features were blurred, yet they carried an extreme profundity. Specks of dissipating purple qi and golden flower effects still lingered around him, but now they were vanishing with little pff pff sounds like a deflating balloon.

The one on the right wore black robes and savage armor. His face was cold, stern, and vicious. The terrifying demonic qi around him and the phantoms of howling demons were also rapidly fading and turning transparent, like chalk drawings being erased.

The two flattened "paintings" still retained the clear expression of astonishment and bewilderment that had not had time to change when they looked up at the sky in that final instant.

Xiao Kuang: "..."

He swayed as he crawled to his feet on all fours, standing in the crater and looking down at the left, then the right.

His brain completely crashed. It felt as if the burnt smell of a fried CPU could waft out of his ears.

Who am I?

Where am I?

And these two beneath me... seem to be... the legendary... Dao Ancestor Hongjun and Demon Ancestor Luohu... in... 2D Pancakes form?!

He smacked his dry lips, his throat tightening. Only one thought remained in his mind, scrolling over and over:

"Damn it... I can't, can't afford to pay for this... This would bankrupt me... I couldn't pay it off even if I sold my ass for ten lifetimes..."

Within this bizarre, dead silence, where even the raging earth, water, fire, and wind seemed temporarily frozen—

High above, in the deepest reaches of that black, shattered sky—

Without warning, an indescribably immense, complex, profound... semitransparent distorted string of gibberish suddenly lit up?!

[Heavenly Dao: ((′--)--)-_-)????]

The enormous garbled symbols covered half the sky, flashing and twitching madly like a virus-infected computer screen. An incomparably vast, supreme will—now filled with utter chaos, bewilderment, and the frantic feeling of "the fucking script is wrong!"—came crashing down like a tangible tsunami!

The impact of that emotion made Xiao Kuang stagger, and he dropped onto his butt in the crater again, landing right between the two "human-shaped paintings."

[Heavenly Dao: Error!!! Error!!! Critical Error!!! Target program 'Hongjun' unresponsive... Target program 'Luohu' unresponsive... Core process 'Dao-Demon Conflict' interrupted... Worldline collapse risk sharply increased... Initiating emergency plan... Searching available replacement resources... Searching...]

That vast and frenzied will swept over the bottom of the crater, seemingly analyzing the situation on-site at a mad pace.

[Unknown interference source 'Xiao Kuang' detected... Analyzing energy level... Extremely low... Analyzing origin... Abnormal... Unable to parse... Compatibility forcibly matching... Match rate: 0.000...001%... Warning! Conditions insufficient!... Forcibly elevating permissions... Overriding original protocol... Binding...]

"Wait, wait! What does that mean? What binding? Bro, I'm not signing up for a card! Not buying courses! Not taking out loans!" Xiao Kuang's scalp went numb. Though he could not understand exactly what the garbled symbols were "saying," the ominous feeling of being drafted as forced labor was so strong it was nearly tangible!

[Binding successful! Authority granted! Agent 'Xiao Kuang'! Immediately carry out Dao Integration duties! Advance the 'Calamity' process! Maintain Primordial Chaos stability! Right now! Immediately! Get to work!!!]

Those final words—"get to work"—almost became thunder from the nine heavens. Carrying the frantic exasperation of a program that had completely malfunctioned and was on the verge of crashing, they exploded within the depths of Xiao Kuang's soul!

At the same time, an unimaginably vast, cold, boundless force packed with endless streams of law information gave him no chance to refuse. Like a breached galactic river, it poured brutally and forcefully into his tiny, academically hopeless, only-wanting-to-laze-around soul!

"Fuck, I—"

Xiao Kuang only managed to curse halfway before the boundless torrent of information drowned his consciousness.

His final thought was not delight at gaining power, nor arrogant excitement over his new status.

It was...

I even failed advanced math... Dao Integration? Preaching the Dao? Advancing the Calamity? Advance my ass... This shitty job... whoever wants it can take it... I just want to... slack off...

His consciousness sank into an endless ocean of cold, violent laws.

Yet his body was forcibly lifted by that power, floating above the enormous crater. Tiny traces of weak, intermittent, utterly unreliable-looking purple qi and golden flower effects began to spread around him.

The massive garbled symbols in the sky, [((′--)--)-_-)], flashed madly a few more times, seemingly wanting to issue another command. In the end, however, they appeared to have exhausted all their strength—or perhaps simply crashed from rage. After flickering unstably between light and dark several times, they reluctantly and slowly vanished behind the shattered sky.

Leaving behind the dead battlefield.

A freshly made enormous crater.

Two bewildered 2D Pancakes of mighty beings at the crater's bottom.

And above the crater, one man who had been forcibly stuffed with supreme authority, whose body was being flooded with Primordial Chaos's top-tier "civil servant training manual" until his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness...

Freshly made, with a serene expression on his face—unconscious, that was...

A Dao Integration slacker.