The Primitive Age, Lament of an Immortal(A mythological xianxia story)

In town, a smaller settlement subservient to greater Sparta, two men handed over a small amount of coin. They proceeded to wait for the street vendor to finish roasting skewers of meat and vegetables.

Da Hai and Zeus, two unique looking individuals who were doubtlessly receiving curious stares. The former didn't even appear human to the natives while the latter had the look, but silvery white hair that defies his physical age.

Whatever the case, the mortals present were inclined to not make trouble around them. They could subconsciously sense something wasn't right with either men, and that mystical sixth sense screamed danger.

"Not bad, street food here is pretty good. Though I would've preferred some candy." Da Hai ate the meat off his stick in one bite.

"Who sells candy on the street?" Zeus scoffed, but didn't delve any further. He was still wrapping his head around what Da Hai told him several hours earlier.

Eating and enjoying the local sites, no matter how dull it has become for the god king, was still a way to take his mind off it. It was simply too unbelievable.

"He overcooked it, meat lost all its taste." Zeus made a disgusted face when he saw Da Hai seemingly enjoy it despite that fact.

He was a like a country bumpkin seeing a city for the first time. Zeus didn't quite comprehend that the physical world that Da Hai originated from, was quite different both culturally and architecturally. This truly was a novel experience for him.

Without the rain obscuring things, and with the sun lighting up the world, the beauty of nature and civilization was beholden to them.

"Were things like this in your youth? I believe it was called a golden age."

Zeus frowned, his mother hated it back then. The younger him didn't have it in him to ask after the first time. That younger him had also never really experienced that age as a child.

He was honest to himself when he realized that he didn't know how to answer Da Hai. As such, he would normally only reference the works of latter men that he'd read.

But in front of Da Hai, it didn't feel like the right option.

He shouldn't have needed to in the first place. Zeus was born at the tail end of that era, debatably at its apex.

Cronos, god king of the titans sat at his apex wielding the authority Ouranos passed down. Yet Zeus ended it in one night.

Fists bloody with gold. A mountain and its temples shattered. Gods of the old era fleeing like the wind, too afraid to meet the shellshocked child of yesteryear.

A laughing women, and a herd of siblings covered in gold. It wasn't even one night, that was an understatement.

Not an hour, nor even a minute. Barely single second was all it took.

"It was…horrible for people," Zeus said with a finality in his voice. "My…mother would say…that everyday was a living nightmare."

"And your view?" Da Hai inquired, somehow acquiring a second stick of meat.

"Why are you asking me this, I thought you were only interested in the primordial?" Zeus snapped, hoping it'll dissuade Da Hai from inquiring again.

"Can't I just be curious." Da Hai chucked in amusement. It was unnerving to Zeus to see how relaxed he was. People he knew usually freezed up when the golden age was brought up.

"Besides kid, you've said all you knew about the primordials. Nothing that appealed to me."

'That's because the name you uttered doesn't exist.' Privately, Zeus didn't know what hooligan fed Da Hai that information. There had never been an entity named Zagreus.

Da Hai wasn't happy when he sensed Zeus speaking his truth, but held himself back from reacting.

"The golden age ruled by…that..."

"Your father," Da Hai finished for him. "I'm aware of the tragedy in your family. But I'm asking how was his rule over this cosmos?"

"She…uh, my Mother always described it as a living nightmare. I wasn't…didn't go out much" Zeus sighed with a complicated mix of regret and anger.

"There were more important things. Such as freeing my siblings and ending the tyrannical rule of…Cronos."

Like his five siblings, Zeus also shuddered at the memory. But he did so for an entirely different reason. Even he couldn't describe it.

"In my home universe, the most primitive age was one where powerful entities existed by the billions. Yet they still lived in caves, forests, and basic huts. Proper civilization didn't occur until much later."

Da Hai squatted on the dirt path and drew something a circle. Tracing its lines again, he subtly read the cause and effect that the Hellenistic Chaos World remembered

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This Chaos World did not posses the law of Karma, thus did not posses that mystical force the bound all things in the Three Realms. But Da Hai was powerful enough to look at a single object, and trace its history, as well as all that it had interacted with in its existence.

Limits such as other Chaos Immortals existed of course, but this Chaos World lacked anything to stop him. He'd already shattered the local Heavenly Dao.

"I'd say it's more primal," Da Hai said to Zeus. "A far cry from the city states of current era. Even the nymphs, dryads, and monsters of that era lived basic unambitious lives.

"The Titans of that era ignored those lower than them. Performed only their roles in maintaining this level of reality. How monotonous.

"It's far more interesting now. You did good kid. Your kingdom brought about an age of prosperity for human kind. My own disciple would give praise for how much culture has advanced."

Zeus frowned, was all those exchanges just a roundabout way to praise him? It felt entirely unnecessary.

And besides, Zeus didn't agree. He had barely anything to do with it. If you asked him, It was still largely Métis.

At the end of the day, things are up to date to decide. The sisters spun this reality into existence, they were all just along for the ride.

Zeus did not believe Da Hai was telling the truth. In his opinion, the Chaos Sea was just the next level of reality above Aether.

It was likely the primordial Khaos, who then looped back to the innermost layer of existence. Like the ouroboros, an infinite circuit.

Even a creature like Da Hai, logically came form that place. Likely a creature sealed since ancient times, much like Typhon had been before he emerged and was beaten into Mt Etna.

"Prosperity huh. The mortals like to imitate us gods. It's not that strange." Zeus walked ahead of Da Hai with an air of discomfort.

"I also promised to guide you to Delphi, it's just further north so why waste time."

Da Hai shrugged outwardly, but inwardly frowned. Zeus knew he was utterly powerless in front of him, and had subsequently resigned himself to his current fate.

So eager to meet his end, yet so quick to abandon his fighting spirit. Just what had beaten him down so?

Zeus would find excuses around speaking of his father. But in a similar vein, would find excuses to not speak of his own mother.

After his defeat, he seemed to believe that it had been a fated conclusion. In fact, he seemed to attribute everything to fate.

It made sense to Da Hai. After reading the histories of everything he'd seen with his own eyes, he could see the hands of the sisters in everything.

Everything in this world held a thread weaved by them. Their entire lives, nothing more than theatre, the sisters being the playwrights.

Even Zeus, as powerful as he was, had an invisible thread linking him to the Hellenistic Chaos World. It was not the same type of connection as a god was to their godly domain, but it was there.

Most intrinsically, Zeus couldn't sense it. In fact, no creature living or dead could. That's why he never noticed that his own string had been severed.

The moment Da Hai hit Zeus to the point of reducing him to a dust cloud at the conclusion of their fight, he'd done so.

"Besides, mortals are favoured by the sisters. Like us Olympians, who were rewarded by fate. The golden era ended because the Titans, especially 'him', attempted to avoid fate."

Zeus had no real reaction when he explained this. As if he was robotically speaking a fact of life.

"The Dao is fifty, heaven is forty nine," Da Hai suddenly said. "That's a common saying even in the Three Realms."

"Dao? As in path?" Zeus had learned a bit of Da Hai's language. Whereas Da Hai could comprehend Greek the first moment he heard Zeus' words due to his extreme levels of enlightenment, Zeus didn't seem to possess the same power.

He had to learn things the old fashion way, albeit he was incredibly quick. That was the thing Da Hai noticed about the youth. Everything just seemed to come to him naturally.

"It means there is always a chance to escape preordained fate. Even the Heavenly Dao, the Law of karma, the book of life and death, the reincarnation disk. All of them knew there exist a possibility," Da Hai said with an emphasis on each name.

"One merely needs to grasp that opportunity."

Zeus felt that Da Hai was too keen on this idea. Perhaps it was merely the overconfidence in one's power.

His mother never put much importance on acknowledging fate in his training. He learned that later in life when he was already king.

The tragedy of his wife. In accordance to fate, Athena had to be born. The meeting back then shattered his heart.

"I can see the topic is bothering you," Da Hai suddenly said. "Anyways, you are right about one thing. I do need to find my way to Delphi. As resident king, lead the way?"

"Sure."

Exiting this settlement was quick. It wasn't a major city like Athens, Sparta, or Thebes, places that ruled kingdoms. Da Hai had no real desire to head for any major city, hence the two carried on through the dirt road.

Trading routes that had served the people well. Zeus had watched the centuries go by as once isolated people broke out of their small communities to find others.

It was just like how he and his siblings approached, and recruited other gods to stand alongside them on Mt Olympus.

"If your world had no such thing as the sisters. How could civilization even arise?" Zeus suddenly asked.

The two had walked in silence for a time, having long left city and people behind. So the suddenness of the silver haired youth's voice was the only thing heard.

Da Hai chuckled with an air of nostalgia. The later memories may bring pain, but the earlier ones were ones he was fond of.

"I had an ambitious disciple who wished to place himself above all creatures. He and his brothers brought about the end of the older primitive time period, united myriad scaled creatures beneath the waves.

"I didn't do much back then if I'm being honest. Old monsters like I? We were too busy scheming and cultivating to bother. My disciple was one of the rare few with a vision."

It sounded impressive to Zeus, though he could tell Da Hai was omitting alot of details.

"Here's the thing though." Da Hai suddenly turned serious. "He believed himself to be fated to gain dominion due to his lineage. Yet he should've died before reaching maturity."

"I guess fate had different plans," Zeus added.

"I had different plans. I was also under the same impression as you once, so I thought to take advantage of their mighty destiny. But thinking back, if I didn't do anything, they would've fallen above the East Sea."

Da Hai stopped walking to glance at the ocean far away, towards his east. "There was never any certainty. It was just people, myself included, making choices we thought was best. Then we lived with the consequences."

"Then fate…"

"Stop." Da Hai raised a hand. "Even a blind man can tell. The will of your Chaos World, what an outsider will call a world will, what I call Heavenly Dao, and what you'd call the Moirai. They are control freaks who wants their spindle in everything.

"What you believed about fate is both true and not true. It just depends on who's perspective is being asked. And more critically, who's perspective is in command of the universe."

Walking ahead, Da Hai made note of the landscape around him. It truly was beautiful, proving that the Moirai at least had an eye for athletics.

But with each footstep, Da Hai could feel the presence of life. Not just a mortal creature, or even an immortal. It was a third sphere celestial lifeform, rendered catatonic much like Ouranos in the world of stars, and Aether in the upper sky.

Brain dead just like the rest. Her body being just another layer of reality.

Even in this state, Da Hai could not calculate their history. They were Chaos Immortals like him. Enlightened in the Dao like him. He may be much further ahead, but they were still fundamentally the same tier of existence.

'Yurlunggur truly left me a queer puzzle.'

"You know kid. You are without a doubt the most powerful entity inside this Chaos World. And even beyond it, only a small percentage of beings can stand up to you. You certainly have the qualifications to fight back.

"Though if you find safety in relaxing where you are, I wouldn't judge either. There's an assurance in it. But don't go under the assumption that the sisters are absolute existences. Even they usurped something to get where they are."

…

The road was long, but not harsh. The Mediterranean climate was calm for the time being. Days passed with little fanfare.

Each morning, Da Hai would shoot down a bird for breakfast. Each night, Da Hai would grill a wild animal.

Neither action was necessary as both were immortal entities. Unnecessary outside of a strange calm in each meal.

They soon neared the edges of the Peloponnese. The road that led to central Greece lay behind.

"In broad daylight?"

Da Hai paused at the scene. On the road, bandits had cornered a caravan of traders. Or it could also be migrants, it was difficult to tell and Da Hai couldn't be bothered to calculate.

Mortals in the Hellenistic Chaos World were all powerful at a baseline. But among each other, they were just normal humans. Cornered by an armed group, there was little untrained mortals could do.

He didn't need super hearing to tell threats were being exchanged.

Before he could say another world, he noticed that Zeus had sent out a gust of wind.

Da Hai watched with calm as the armed group was knocked back dozens of metres, giving the startled caravan time to escape. He gave a small chuckle at Zeus' lack of acknowledgment to the event.

"They're praying to the lord of justice, giving thanks to Zeus who saw the injustice of theft." Da Hai's comment did not move Zeus at all. "Kind of you."

"Whatever, cases like these are common and are the responsibility of the land's overlords. I just happened to see this one is all. let's move on."