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There’s pressure all around me.
Darkness, I shift. Formless and unformed.
I was not expecting this as I seem to be an egg. Which would be cool as it implies I might be some sort of bird or lizard, maybe if I was really lucky, a dragon.
I’m not. What’s left of my memories are a bit fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be on the Isekai Express straight to being an entire world.
Which being in an egg doesn’t preclude, mind you, but I don’t feel like a hairy giant with horns on my head, so Pangu I ain’t. Well, I’m ready and there’s no axe to swing or egg tooth to scrape with, so I’ll press back against the shell.
Crack
The top cracks and stars rain down as I solidify, my form taking shape as the bundles of light, Qi, and something else pound craters into me.
The shell is covered with cracks as pieces of it float free. On instinct, I pull and they fall in on my body, causing more craters. Yet there remains a shell, a barrier upon which more stars strike. Each one leaving a dot of light.
Excitement over, and the dimensional barrier stabilized, time begins to pass. Within the Small Plane, there is a single landmass. A barren spit of land the size of an Earth-like planet, if flattened.
The vast body around the land is saltwater purely because expectations shape reality here. Which doesn’t exactly help with kick-starting life. So yeah, a few million years pass. Though without any active life, the passing of time doesn’t weigh on the fabric of reality, and so, the rest of existence doesn’t particularly advance. Time is weird like that.
Anyway, now there’s dirt. I don’t know how.
What I do know, is that those early “falling stars” turned out to be eggs? Seeds? Let me explain.
They all left behind what I thought were pebbles. Many were vaguely egg-shaped, but not all of them, so I figured that was just the shape they took from the fall. Now, there wasn’t much to do over the last bit of time except observe the Qi density slowly tick upwards, so I watched the rocks as they got covered by dirt and water. What with being at the bottom of craters.
And one of them just hatched. Which would imply egg, right? There was even an eggshell. Except what hatched out was a patch of grass. So, like, is it a seed?
But yeah, I’m calling it galaxy grass.
Blades so dark a green it might as well be black. The flowers that shine like literal stars. Also, the patch that hatched started out shaped like a galaxy. Which I guess means a spiral?
The stuff grows ludicrously slow. What hatched seems to be fully grown, but new blades of the grass take a thousand years to mature. I kind of lost track of things at this point, as watching grass grow was infinitely more interesting than dirt.
Then the dirt started to explode as more eggs hatched. Though more and more, seed seems like the better word as it is only plants that are hatching. With those explosions coming from the fact that some of those plants are full-sized trees.
Well, my spotty memory said they should be full-sized. As the millennia pass, they keep growing. And moving. Can’t forget the moving.
While the galaxy grass had been satisfied where it was, these plants would happily uproot themselves and fly off to a better location. In particular, a giant redwood - looking tree claimed the center of everything.
That one worried me as it not only grew taller but wider. The dang thing was close to a full percent of my landmass before it did a thing that stopped my worries about it growing to cover everything.
See, it stopped growing into my space and started growing space itself. Didn’t even reach the top of the atmosphere before it shunted itself into its own space.
That taken care of, I could enjoy the scenery. Quite sparse, with only other grasses growing more of themselves. Everything else whether tree, flower, or bush, grew even slower than the galaxy grass and wasn’t propagating.
Then at some point the rest of the eggs, and I guess they are eggs, hatched. Well, not traditional eggs, obviously. While there were more than enough serpents, lizards, birds, fish, and a whole lot of insects. There was also every other type of animal and then some hatching as well.
They weren’t normal animals either. Dragons, Taotie, Leviathans, Phoenixes, Krakens, Black Turtle-Snakes, Kun-Peng, White Tigers, Golden Monkeys, Vermillion Birds, Pixiu, Kitsune, Behemoths, Three-Legged Crows, Nekomata, Qilin, some other similar beings, and a bunch of “normal” animals that very clearly weren’t.
Thankfully, they appeared to be juveniles instead of fully grown, because if you know anything about some of those critters? Yeah, my world wasn’t big enough to hold them.
That didn’t mean there was enough space for them all. With each that hatched, things got rowdier. They didn’t seem to need to eat, gulping down the Qi, but that didn’t stop them from trying.
The herbs ran away, hiding in deep crevices and obscure corners. Predators targeted those trying to chase said herbs. The occasional carnivorous plant having their own form of fun. Plus the fruit trees and such who are just chilling as other creatures gather around them, waiting for their fruits to ripen. That and a few classical pairings such as Three-Legged Crows and the Fusang tree are coming together.
All very exciting, but I’ve got something else to pay attention to. With this infusion of life, life has come to my land as well! Which is pretty sweet, given I’ve been forced to sit around and watch for longer than probably healthy for anything even resembling mortal. Not that there is much of that around right now.
So yeah, way down near the bottom of my landmass, I’m growing root vein things. Context clues point away from meridians, which the various beasts and planes have. Instead, they ping as either dragon veins, ley lines, or spirit veins. This also seems to be a choice?
I’m ignoring that because they have a use for me. While not technically physical, they allow me to control myself for the first time since hatching. If only I had more or they were longer. As it stands, I manage to snag a few things with the...
Oh, they’re spirit veins. Seems I made the choice by using them like I did. But yeah, I grabbed stuff that got abandoned, forgotten, or someone took their eyes off of when I was nearby. Stuff like unhatched eggs, dead bodies, forgotten fruit, a few toads that hibernated a little too deeply, blood, bones, feathers, and every branch and twig I could get my metaphorical hands on. You know, normal stuff.
More interesting is that while dragging the stuff down it all got coated in rock that resisted Qi and preserved the contents even from the flow of time. Which meant that deep underground I slowly accumulated massive stores of junk.
Though I might have been a little too greedy? For some reason, all these primordial life forms have started to cause havoc. Oh wait, it is my fault, but for a different reason.
All the Qi, which I will now refer to as Primordial Qi, came from outside of my world. Leaking in through the stars in the sky. Now though, my spirit veins carry my own Earthly Qi, which when it touches the other stuff, breaks both down into a more neutral Qi. Which isn’t a problem for me, but the Primordial beasts need the more energy dense Primordial Qi to thrive.
And as for the havoc? They’re all reproducing! This isn’t as bad as it might seem. The denser the Primordial Qi is, the more likely they are to lay eggs. Though with less of the stuff, they give birth to beings that aren’t quite on their level.
Though this also helps me! More life means more spiritual veins. And that all became a cycle, especially since I’ve come to realize that Primordial Qi isn’t exactly hospitable to mortal life. See, once the regular Qi density goes high enough in an area, I noticed bacteria starts showing up in the soil.
Now, don’t be too hard on Primordial Qi. My Earthly Qi seems just as inhospitable. Though from the opposite angle? I get a feeling the Primordial stuff is too pure, each element clearly defined making it heterogeneous. While the Earthly is well mixed and homogeneous. The normal Qi is mixed just right. Like a pancake with blueberries in it, as compared to a pancake with blueberries on the side or blueberries blended into the batter.
Oh, and it looks like the Primordial entities are leaving? I hope I’m not left alone.
Wait! Some of their kids aren’t like their parents? I can’t bring myself to call them Primordial and they seem massively weaker. I don’t think they can leave, so at least I won’t be alone. And, uh, yeah, I’m grabbing more stuff.
Yep, times passing and I’m grabbing! And look at that, barely a million years since they started leaving and I think the last is about to pull up roots and skedaddle. The grand World Tree at the center of it all is finally ready to go. I wonder why it took so long compared to even its fellow Primordial trees? Oh, it was preparing an avatar thing. Left behind a tiny, well for tiny for how big it was, tree that is actually it and not some descendant, but also isn’t a Primordial.
Welp, now that they’re gone and I have some non-Primordial maybe I can advance myself? Given what little I remember from before I hatched, that should be the case?