The void was silent.
Words drifted through Gu Chuan's mind, echoing with the clarity of thunder:
The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things…
The opening lines of the Tao Te Ching. He had once skimmed them in his mortal life without comprehension. But now—reborn as the primordial serpent, a Chaos Demon God—each word burned with revelation.
His intelligence surged beyond mortal limits. His serpent soul resonated with the text, as if Daode's sacred insights had been written for this very moment.
Dao. The Way.
It was not only the laws of men, but of heaven and earth. The root of all things, the path from nothingness to creation itself.
And now he could feel it—threads of infinite law rippling through the chaos around him.
The void stirred.
A cyclone of raw chaos gathered around his colossal serpent body, pulling currents of gray mist into a roaring vortex millions of kilometers wide. The formless air condensed into streams of primal energy, surging into him like rivers returning to the sea.
His Dantian blazed open. A whirlpool formed within, devouring the chaos with no end. The gray mist liquefied into chaotic essence, vast oceans of it flooding his body, hammering flesh, soul, and scale alike.
The serpent grew.
10,000 kilometers.
30,000.
100,000.
200,000.
Until his body stretched two hundred thousand kilometers across the void—long enough to coil around Earth four times. Yet within the infinite chaos, even this titanic form was only the beginning.
His soul surged too. A dark-golden radiance spread through his sea of consciousness, coalescing into a serpent phantom—the divine shadow of his true self. His thoughts sharpened, his will hardened, his spirit fused with the chaos.
At last, he understood:
This was cultivation at the dawn of time.
Before Pangu opened the heavens, before the laws hardened into order, the answers to the Dao lay scattered, waiting to be claimed. Here, the Chaos Demon Gods could drink directly from the source.
Time lost meaning. Whether centuries or aeons passed, Gu Chuan could not tell. Chaos knew no days. No sun. No stars. Only silence, mist, and power.
Until one day—he stirred.
Boom.
The serpent's eyes opened, spilling beams of dark-golden light that pierced the void. His scales gleamed like forged treasure. His body had grown a hundredfold, now two million kilometers long—a wall of living chaos coiled through infinity.
His power was no longer just size.
Scales: Dark-golden armor infused with chaos essence, unbreakable, capable of withstanding even violent torrents of primordial storms.
Concealment: With a thought, his aura melted into the void, his colossal body fading like mist until he became invisible to perception itself.
Speed: A single flick of his tail shattered the silence of chaos, propelling him millions of kilometers in a heartbeat, moving like a fish through water.
Fangs: Jagged teeth gleamed with venom darker than night, a toxin that seeped beyond flesh into the soul. Even gods and demons would perish once bitten.
He tested it all—tail sweeping, body coiling, vanishing and reappearing like a phantom predator. The void shook at his movements. Even the chaos bent around his presence.
For the first time, Gu Chuan felt not like prey, but like a being worthy of reverence.
Yet in the silence, his instincts screamed.
"…!"
Far away, through the endless chaos, he sensed it. A vast and terrible aura, surging closer—another Chaos Demon God.
And it was heading straight for him.