Also known as: Congratulations, You Broke Cause and Effect
The morning after Wei Long accidentally bent the laws of reality by focusing for once, everything felt… off.
Not broken.
Just reconsidering itself.
Mount Chaos was eerily silent.
Birds didn't chirp — they bowed.The teapot didn't boil — it wept gently.And the Enlightened Radish Statue had regrown overnight, this time with a mustache.
Wei Long stared at it.
"…That wasn't there before."
Lin Qian approached carefully, holding a scroll.
"Master… this appeared in midair above your bed last night."
She unrolled it.
There were no words.
Just a single line drawn in ink — curved, chaotic, incomplete… but somehow alive.
Wei Long touched it.
And suddenly — he was no longer standing.
He floated in a blank space.
No ground. No sky.Only… a presence.
A soft hum. Not a voice.But not silence either.
The Dao was speaking.
Not in language, but in feeling.
"You have walked without walking.""You have understood without seeking.""You are not the first. But you are the loudest."
Wei Long blinked. "Uh… thanks?"
"Your luck is not your own. It is borrowed. Created from a moment no one remembers."
"…Could you explain that without sounding like a fortune cookie?"
Silence. Then:
"Ask your question."
Wei Long paused.
Then, quietly:
"What am I becoming?"
The presence pulsed. The line of ink curled into a spiral.
"A question the universe has begun to fear."
Suddenly, Wei Long was back on Mount Chaos — tea spilled, goats unconscious from over-worshipping, Lin Qian looking at him like he'd grown a second nose.
"You were gone for two hours."
"I think I just spoke to… the concept of cultivation itself."
Lin Qian frowned. "Did it give you answers?"
Wei Long looked at the sky.
"No. But I think it gave me… permission."
"Permission for what?"
He turned to her with a calm he'd never shown before.
"To stop running from what I accidentally am."
Elsewhere — far from Mount Chaos — the ripples of Wei Long's awakening had reached places best left unawakened.
In a cold mountain temple long buried under stone and silence, a monk stirred.
His eyes snapped open.
"...He's waking up."
Another voice, old and brittle, crackled from the shadows.
"Then it's time we tell the world about the first one."
Back at Mount Chaos…
Wei Long opened his palm.
A faint light danced in his fingers — not from technique, or force, or divine gift.
Just… luck, manifesting as will.
He smiled. "Still makes no sense."
Lin Qian sighed. "It never will, Master."
The Enlightened Radish exploded again.
They didn't even flinch.
To be continued...