Primordial's Number One Slacker? Smashing Through the Demonic Tribulation at the Start

"Damn it... who the hell is doing renovations on a weekend morning..." Xiao Kuang mumbled, his eyelids feeling like lead and his brain like overcooked porridge. He instinctively grumbled, forcing his eyes open just a sliver.

The sight that greeted him instantly vaporized his lingering sleepiness and complaints. His soul shot out from the crown of his head, nearly scattering into nothingness from sheer terror.

No ceiling, no rental room.

Only a boundless, shattered firmament, black as night, yet stained a despairing crimson by countless streams of wild, raging energy. Earth, water, fire, and wind churned uncontrollably, tearing space apart, annihilating and then being reborn. Colossal skeletons lay like mountain ranges, tattered banners wrapped in flames, and the fragmented corpses of unknown races mixed with the wreckage of divine weapons floated and collided, transforming this world into an absolute, roaring, infernal abyss.

And he was falling from an extreme height.

The wind howled in his ears, stinging his face until it felt like it would crack.

"Oh my goddddddddddddd-- What kind of nightmare is this?! Did I go bungee jumping without a rope?!" Xiao Kuang thrashed his limbs wildly, trying to grab onto anything, even a single straw. But besides the icy, destructive gale, he couldn't grasp anything.

Despair, like icy vines, instantly tightened around his heart.

Below, the scene became clearer.

On a relatively "clean" patch of shattered continent, the sight was even more horrifying.

On one side, boundless, dazzling immortal light and Dao rhymes surged, pure energy rising to manifest infinite wondrous methods. Jeweled pendants and golden lamps, purple qi and golden flowers unfurled layer upon layer, exuding myriad auspicious signs, yet carrying an undeniable, cold, supreme majesty.

On the other side, pure darkness that swallowed all light, demonic energy surging to the heavens, phantoms of ten thousand howling demons surfaced and sank within it. Filth, slaughter, destruction, and oblivion emanated with such intensity that they became tangible, thick as a blood swamp. A mere glance caused the Primordial Spirit to tremble, teetering on the brink of madness.

These two forces, capable of overturning universes and redefining the elements, were now locked in a brutal, direct, ultimate collision!

And Xiao Kuang, like a pebble tossed by an invisible giant hand, or perhaps like a bag of ill-timed garbage falling from the sky, was hurtling towards the core, most brilliant, and most dangerous point of that destructive storm, without hesitation... crashing down.

"Wait, wait! Fellow Daoist below! Friend! Move aside! Hurry, get out of the way!!!" he shrieked in vain, his voice instantly swallowed by the roar of energy.

Below, at the core of the pure immortal light, an elder whose form was indistinct, his aura profoundly mysterious and supreme, seemed to sense something and slightly raised his head.

At the core of the turbid demonic abyss, a stern man in black robes, his killing intent so potent it could solidify space-time, also looked up indifferently.

Their gazes, in a fraction of a billionth of a second, seemed to collide. Both saw a flicker of astonishment and confusion in the other's eyes.

Where did this variable come from?

The trajectory of the Heavenly Dao held no record of this!

However, within the minuscule, almost negligible gap in their energy flow, caused by the slight bewilderment of these two beings of the highest order--

Xiao Kuang, carrying his insignificant weight of a hundred-odd pounds, and perhaps some strange fluctuations picked up during his temporal displacement that even he didn't understand, went "plop," with an outrageously light and tear-inducingly precise sound, embedding himself precisely at the "point" where the two supreme existences' energies clashed.

Time seemed to stretch and freeze at that moment.

The anticipated tragedy of hitting an insurmountable wall and instantly turning to dust did not occur.

Instead, it was as if... as if a needle had gently pricked an overinflated balloon.

Or as if an eraser had wiped away the two most vibrant, core ink dots on a painting.

The grand scene of separated purity and turbidity, of Dao and Demon vying for supremacy, suddenly halted.

Then, a brilliance indescribable by words erupted, engulfing everything and temporarily stripping Xiao Kuang of all sensation.

BOOM!!!

Finally, there was a solid thud of flesh hitting the ground, and a cloud of dust billowed up.

"Cough! Cough cough cough..." Xiao Kuang felt like every bone in his body was about to shatter, his internal organs displaced. Stars swam before his eyes, and his ears buzzed.

He lay at the bottom of a massive, freshly formed impact crater, covered in dirt, utterly disheveled.

"N-not dead?" He painstakingly moved his fingers, then kicked his legs. Apart from intense pain and soreness, his parts seemed to be all there.

The ecstasy of surviving the ordeal hadn't even surged into his heart when he pushed himself up with his hands.

The feel... was a bit off.

It wasn't the cold, hard broken rock he expected, nor was it scorching lava.

It was a peculiar, slightly elastic, and somewhat cool... thin surface?

He subconsciously lowered his head to look beneath him.

The dust was slowly clearing, and the scene beneath him gradually came into focus.

Xiao Kuang's pupils suddenly shrank to the size of pinpricks.

Beneath him was not any kind of ground.

It was... two human shapes?

Or rather, they had been human shapes.

Now, they were more like two human-shaped scrolls, forcefully flattened and imprinted onto the bottom of the crater.

The one on the left, his robes appeared to be Daoist robes, his face blurred but exuding an ultimate profundity. Faint wisps of purple qi and golden flowers still lingered around him, but these special effects were now dissipating like a leaking balloon.

The one on the right, in black robes and ferocious armor, his face stern and fierce. The terrifying demonic energy and howling phantoms of ten thousand demons around him were also rapidly fading, becoming transparent, like chalk drawings being erased.

On these two flattened "scrolls," the last expression on their faces, captured in the moment they looked up at the sky, was a clear look of astonishment and bewilderment that they hadn't had time to change.

Xiao Kuang: "..."

He staggered, scrambling out of the crater on hands and feet, and stood there, looking down at the left, then at the right.

My brain completely crashed, the smell of burnt CPU like it was coming out of my ears.

Who am I?

Where am I?

These two under me... they look like the legendary... Dao Ancestor Hongjun and Demon Ancestor Luohu's... two-dimensional pancake versions?!

He smacked his lips, his throat dry and tight, only one thought repeatedly flooding his mind:

"It's over... I can't afford it... this will bankrupt me... I couldn't afford it even if I sold my ass for ten lifetimes..."

In this strange, dead silent space, where even the rampaging elements seemed to have temporarily paused.

High above the nine heavens, in the deepest part of the dark, shattered firmament.

Without any warning, a vast, complex, mysterious... semi-transparent, distorted mess of code suddenly lit up?!

[Heavenly Dao: ((′--)--)-_-)????]

This massive code symbol, covering nearly half the sky, flickered and shook wildly, like a computer screen hit by a virus. An unimaginably grand, supreme, yet utterly chaotic, bewildered, and "this script is all wrong!" kind of frantic emotion, like a tangible tsunami, crashed down!

Xiao Kuang stumbled from the impact of this emotion, falling back into the pit, landing right between the two "humanoid scrolls."

[Heavenly Dao: Error!!! Error!!! Critical Error!!! Target program 'Hongjun' not responding... Target program 'Luohu' not responding... Core process 'Dao-Demon Conflict' interrupted... Worldline collapse risk increasing... Initiating emergency protocol... Searching for available alternative resources... Searching...]

The immense, chaotic will swept over the bottom of the pit, seemingly analyzing the situation frantically.

[Unknown interference source 'Xiao Kuang' detected... Analyzing energy level... Extremely low... Analyzing origin... Anomalous... Cannot parse... Forced compatibility matching in progress... Match rate: 0.000...001%... Warning! Insufficient conditions!... Forcing permission elevation... Overriding original protocol... Binding in progress...]

"Wait, hold on! What do you mean? Binding? Buddy, I'm not signing up for a membership! Not buying courses! Not taking out loans!" Xiao Kuang's scalp tingled. Although he didn't understand what the code symbol was "saying," the ominous feeling of being "conscripted" was so strong it was almost tangible!

[Binding successful! Permissions granted! Agent 'Xiao Kuang'! Immediately execute 'Dao Integration' duties! Advance the 'Calamity' process! Maintain Primordial stability! Immediately! Now! Get to work!!!]

The last two words, "Get to work," almost became heavenly thunder, carrying a sense of utter program malfunction and exasperation on the verge of collapse, exploding into Xiao Kuang's soul!

At the same time, an unimaginably vast, cold, and boundless energy, filled with infinite streams of law and principle information, without giving him any chance to refuse, like a bursting galaxy, poured violently and forcefully into his tiny, failing soul, the soul of a slacker who just wanted to lie flat!

"I'm wo—"

Xiao Kuang only managed to utter half a curse before his consciousness was submerged by the boundless torrent of information.

His last thought wasn't about the surprise of power, nor the arrogance of status.

It was...

"I failed calculus... Dao Integration? Preaching the Dao? Advancing Calamities? I'll advance your ass... This lousy job... whoever wants it can have it... I just want to... slack off..."

His consciousness sank into the boundless, cold, and violent ocean of Laws.

His body, however, was forcibly lifted by that power, suspended above the giant pit, and began to passively emanate faint, intermittent, and seemingly unreliable purple qi and golden flower special effects.

The giant code symbol in the sky [((′--)--)-_-)] flickered wildly a few more times, as if it wanted to issue further commands, but ultimately seemed to have exhausted all its strength, or perhaps it simply crashed from anger. It flickered unstably between light and dark several times before grudgingly and slowly disappearing behind the shattered firmament.

Leaving behind a silent battlefield.

A fresh giant pit.

At the bottom of the pit, two bewildered two-dimensional great-being pancakes.

And above the pit, one who was forcibly given supreme authority, whose body was being flooded with Primordial's top "civil servant training material" to the point of rolling his eyes and losing consciousness...

A freshly baked, serene (unconscious)...

Dao Integration couch potato.