Avery had decided to abandon his current mental picture. The black hole was relatively well suited for the rune of storage, but many aspects of the Tao, like karma or reincarnation, could only be properly expressed through a more complex and logically valid world.

  Since he had chosen the hard path, he needed to make sure he had the best foundation possible. Taking a deep breath, he erased everything he had made, knowing it would take months of work to reimagine it completely. The gains were worth the risk. Then, using his previous experience, he poured every concept he knew in the dark void, in the form of indistinct grey gas symbolising Chaos.

  Avery wanted to simulate the creation of the world, following the Chinese myths. From the chaos, he imagined 3000 Mazingers, Chaos Gods each possessing their own unique Dao law. Of course, he did not know what all the 3000 Daos were, but he just specified the ones he knew, including space, time, fate, 5 elements, karma, strength... As for the rest, he just claimed they existed and left them blurry.

  It would have been better to know them all, but for some reason none of the many books he had read had thought it a good idea to print out a huge list of 3000 unnecessary names.

  Once the 3000 Mazingers condensed out of the gray gas, he focused on the god of strength, Pangu. He identified with Pangu and gave him the same crushing boredom and yearning for escape that he had felt, back when he was engraving without the Tao to wipe those insignificant emotions away.

  The conditions in the Chaos were harsh, and the Mazingers were the only entities within it. It was impossible for them to reproduce, as each Mazinger was a completely unique individual with no compatibility with each other, be it spiritually or physically.

  The Chaos was infinite, but it was also uneventful. It was like being a tiny fish in the ocean, an ocean without bottom, border, or limit of any kind, but you were only one of the 3000 fishes in the world. And you, as an immortal fish, have an eternity to drift forever alone in this bitter sea of loneliness.

  The currents that drowned any hope of mortal creatures surviving were just a speed boost for you, leading you always farther to the horizon and beyond, only to find a new identical horizon as your only prize. There was nothing to think about either, no novelty to contemplate, only the same ever-changing but unvarying world.

  When humans are bored out of their mind, they often resort to counting things like the bricks on a wall, but the Chaos was mysteriously both fluctuating and unchanging, an illogical paradox that provided a strange but dull environment with nothing to attract the attention.

  While the subtleties of Chaos itself would be more than enough for a normal man to contemplate for their entire life, if they were lucky enough not to be driven mad at the mere sight of its nonsensical inconsistency, Chaos Gods were born from Chaos with the power of Chaos. They already knew everything, and nothing could arouse their curiosity.

  Fortunately, the Mazingers could feel each other's presence, and they soon set out towards each other in search of companionship. They gradually gathered at what Avery imagined to be the "center" of Chaos, but they were too different and unsuited for each other. An argument and a fight soon broke out, lasting thousands of years, until everyone grew tired and parted ways.

  They could not really win any meaningful victories, as their powers were incomparable. Neither could they grow stronger and overcome adversity and prove their worth that way. They had already reached the peak, but it was nothing they could revel in and be proud of. They had all been born that way, and they never grew.

  Every man was born stronger than an ant, but no one took pride in that. It was only when facing equals that one was stimulated, and the Mazingers were not equal. In a contest of strength Pangu was unbeatable, and while he might lose in a contest of anything else like time or karma, he instinctively looked down on any way other than strength.

  Pangu, embodying the law of strength, had the strongest combat power and was unbeatable in a fight, but he had the exact same realm than every single other Mazinger. None of them had made any progress in billions of years. Their strength came from their law, and their law was complete, so there were no deficiencies to make up for, or any goals to strive towards. Not only did they not know how to advance, if that was even possible, they had never even considered cultivating. Strength was something given at birth by fate, not something that one had to work for.

  If you compared a Mazinger 10 seconds after he was born to himself a billion years later, there would be no difference. Their strength, their intelligence and character, their knowledge and, apart from their infrequent meetings, even their experience would be exactly the same.

  We often say you can only appreciate something you have lost, but Pangu and his companions had never lost anything, nor had they ever gained anything.

  All of this wasn't exactly consistent with what the myths claimed, because Avery had an unclear memory of those vague stories. He knew the basics, like Pangu dividing Chaos with his axe, but otherwise he was just making stuff up, imagining whatever he felt made sense, attempting to logically connect events he only hazily remembered together.

  Then again, whether it was true to the myths or not was not important, what mattered was that it helped Avery build a solid foundation for his mental visualisation, in which he could pour any and all his insights into and help him predict the Tao. It didn't need to be real, but it needed to feel realistic enough so that on some superficial level, Avery could believe this world to be real.