Chapter 4: The cosmic egg
The embryonic form of the cosmic egg slowly rotated amidst the intertwining of aether and chaos, its surface flowing with interwoven golden and silver light patterns.
Lin Yun's consciousness hovered nearby, his fingertips almost touching the thin halo of light.
This was the first time he had actively mobilized the power of "primordial time" to shape a tangible form since inheriting Chronos's Godhead.
Within the light patterns, tiny specks of light swam, like frozen stardust, each containing an undeveloped timeline.
At the same time, each was also a world.
The moment his fingertip was about to touch the halo, a sharp, piercing pain suddenly tore through Lin Yun's consciousness.
It wasn't physical pain, but a deeper, cognitive tearing.
Lin Yun "saw" himself simultaneously appearing in three different spacetimes.
To his left was a canvas tent on Crete, where he was squatting by an archaeological pit, a half-fragment of a bronze plaque still clutched between his fingertips.
The corroded green rust left marks in his fingernails, and in his ears was the sound of his teammates calling him for dinner in Greek.
To his right was the Void Realm, where he floated, observing the birth of the cosmic egg.
Ancient chains of time wrapped around him, inscribed with ancient runes he couldn't understand.
In the middle was a dark and ancient space, where he had transformed into a pure, silver-grey torrent.
He surged and collided in Chaos, each surge giving birth to countless embryonic Universes, only to crush them and restart in the next second.
The three "selves" cried out simultaneously.
Sound waves collided and burst in his consciousness, churning his memories into a mess... Orphism's fragmented creation myths, Hesiod's Theogony, sacrificial inscriptions from the city-state of Athens, and the heroic epic of Sparta.
There was even the Pinyin version of "greek mythology Stories" he read as a child.
All texts related to mythology came alive, transforming into vivid scenes that flashed before his eyes.
He saw Chronos awaken from Chaos, the chains of time around him clinking.
Each link in the chain corresponded to the rise and fall of an epoch.
He saw Chaos split into Gaia and Tartarus, and the first cry emerged from the darkness, a mix of an infant's babble and a monstrous roar.
He saw Zeus wield lightning to cleave the heads of the Titans, and the giant boulders of Mount Olympus rolled down amidst the roar, crashing to the ground to form bottomless canyons.
Golden blood seeped from the canyons, converging to form the later River Styx.
He saw Orpheus's lyre at the ferry crossing of the Netherworld, the notes on its strings turning into butterflies, resting on Eurydice's fading shadow, and with a flutter of their wings, one by one they vanished... These images, imbued with primitive and violent power, assaulted his cognitive boundaries as "Lin Yun"... Lin Yun tried to grasp his memories from Earth.
The smell of his mother frying eggs in the kitchen, the window seat on the third floor of the university library, his mentor's red annotations on his thesis.
Then, he found that they were like grains of sand in water; the harder he tried to hold them, the faster they slipped away.
His mother's apron turned into Gaia's green dress, the library's lights transformed into Zeus's lightning.
His mentor's annotations became the threads in the hands of the three Fates, weaving an impenetrable net before his eyes.
"Ah—!"
Lin Yun's consciousness let out a silent roar.
The "eternal perspective" of a primordial god and the "limited cognition" of a human were engaged in an invisible life-and-death struggle.
The former made him feel that all things were but dust.
The conflicts of the Olympian gods were merely the fluttering wings of mayflies in eternal time.
The ten years of slaughter in the Trojan War, in his eyes, amounted to no more than a human blink.
The latter, however, made him cling to those fragmented emotions.
He felt heartache for Orpheus's tragedy, and his blood boiled for Heracles's twelve labors.
He even felt hungry remembering missing dinner at the cafeteria because he was researching in college.
The tug-of-war between the two perspectives made his consciousness feel as if it had been forced into a spinning meat grinder.
Every inch of his perception was being torn apart and reassembled.
He could clearly "smell" the rusty scent of the chains of time.
And he could "hear" his mother calling him for dinner.
He could "touch" the cold halo on the surface of the cosmic egg.
And he could "taste" the sour tang of the yogurt he secretly drank as a child.
He could "see" countless Universes annihilated the moment they were born.
And he could "recall" how the black patterns on ancient Greek pottery shimmered under the light the first time he saw them in a museum.
"Balance! Find the anchor point of balance!"
Ananke's voice suddenly boomed in the depths of Lin Yun's consciousness.
It was like a thunderbolt cleaving through Chaos.
Her light and shadow, at some unknown moment, had appeared beside him.
The specks of light around her flickered intensely, and with each flicker, a portion of the stinging pain was absorbed, merging into her radiance.
"The authority of a primordial god allows you to see eternity, while human memory allows you to understand the 'temperature' of existence."
"Lose either, and you will no longer be whole!"
He needed an anchor point for life!
Lin Yun grasped this word amidst the intense pain.
What could be an anchor point?
Is it Chronos's Godhead?
But it was too vast, too cold, like an endless wilderness, leaving him unable to find the place of his "self."
Are they those creation scenes?
They were more like a pre-set script, which would play out according to a fixed trajectory, whether he wished it or not.
They were not the unique imprint belonging to "Lin Yun."
Wait, a pre-set script?
This thought made his consciousness tremble violently.
He remembered that what he was most fascinated by when studying mythology was never a fixed version of a narrative, but rather the variations and differences between different versions.
Why did Orphism revere Chronos as the supreme god?
Why did the Athenians emphasize that Athena was born from Zeus's head?
Why, in Sparta's myths, was Heracles's martial prowess far superior to accounts from other city-states?
Why, in the Pinyin version of myths he read as a child, was Medusa's hair red, while academic mythological literature said it was golden?
Because those myths were never rigid dogmas, but rather the understanding and imagination of the world by different groups.
They were like rivers, surging through the canyons of history.
Sometimes diverging, sometimes converging, ultimately flowing together into the ocean of human civilization.
This "pluralistic" cognition originated from his twenty-five years of life on Earth.
It was getting red-faced arguing with his deskmate in high school about "whether Achilles truly loved Briseis."
It was the sudden enlightenment he felt in college while comparing different annotated versions of "The Odyssey" in the library.
It was seeing modern tourists and ancient reliefs overlap in the same spacetime at the Acropolis in Athens during his graduate studies... These were all unique imprints belonging to "Lin Yun," things that no primordial Godhead could overwrite.
"Found it!"
Lin Yun's consciousness suddenly stabilized.
He no longer tried to reject the primordial god's eternal perspective, but rather used it as a "tool."
Then, with human memories as his foundation, he firmly anchored his core consciousness.
Like casting an anchor chain into a swift river, no matter how the torrent of time surged, the hull of his consciousness remained steady