The Reincarnated Villain Can Break the Fourth Wall!

Chapter 252: Hongmeng and Chaos!

Su Xiaobai, "Where the hell did you go for so many days?!"

"...?" Yuechan turned, blinked at him innocently, then stuck her tongue out playfully.

"Father, look what I found under the water! It's so weird!"

"Hm?" Su Xiaobai glanced at the tiny pool.

It was the same shallow stream they'd pissed in for twenty years.

There was no way anyone could disappear inside it.

Annoyed, he stomped forward to prove her wrong.

And then, his foot sank.

Not just sank... it submerged.

The water swallowed his leg whole, as if it had no bottom.

His eyes went wide.

"...What the actual fuck—?"

For decades, he and Yu Feng had searched high and low — climbed cliffs, dug into stone walls, fought oversized lizards — But never once checked the puddle five feet from where they first landed.

"What the hell did you find?" he barked.

And then he looked at her hands.

And froze.

She was holding a small, rectangular obsidian orb.

Dark, polished, faintly humming.

Su Xiaobai didn't need a sage, scholar, or divine prophet to tell him what it was.

It was the Dark Tab.

The literal reason for their suffering.

He stared.

A thousand years of pain rippled across his wrinkled face.

"Th-That's..." he croaked.

"Father? Are you okay?" Yuechan asked, blinking again as she stepped toward him.

And then he coughed.

Hard.

Blood exploded from his mouth like a crimson fountain.

He clutched his chest — not from drama, but from genuine, absolute rage.

A second later, Su Xiaobai collapsed, blood pooling beneath his old, twisted frame.

"F-Father?!"

Yuechan screamed.

Meanwhile, Su Xiaobai — lying in his own blood — stared up at the fake stone sky, eyes unfocused.

And thought the last words of his ridiculous, cursed life:

Are you fucking kidding me...?

We finally found the exit ticket... and now I'm dying?!

Cosmic irony had struck again.

And it didn't even use lube.

___

After Su Xiaobai's abrupt death, there was no bright light.

No judgment.

No samsara.

Only... emptiness.

But not the familiar emptiness of the Void.

Not even the darkness of death.

It was worse.

It was non-reality.

A space — no, a non-space — where existence itself had not yet been imagined.

This wasn't Chaos. Chaos was already a thing.

This was before things could be things.

Before the Heavens had a will.

Before Dao was whispered into the world.

Before even contradiction had a name.

If existence were a painting, then this place didn't even have a canvas.

Here, there was no Dao.

No self.

No time.

No observer.

No "no."

Just... stillness.

Absolute.

Unmoving.

Untouched.

Perfect.

But — perfection breeds its own flaw.

In this perfect stillness, a ripple stirred —

Not because it should, but because perfection is the most perfect imperfection of all.

That ripple became a fracture,

and from that fracture burst six impossible forms — the proto-laws of not-yet-existence.

The Six Pre-Birth Strands:

1. Unity – The State Before Origin.

Not one, not two.

Not Yin, not Yang.

It was the Unorigin — non-duality that didn't need to be divided.

Existence that had no need for existence.

2. Instability – Motion Before Motion.

Born from the ripple.

The first twitch in the corpse of non-being.

It had no shape, yet everything swayed beneath its touch.

3. Unbound – The Inversion of Being.

Thought that cannot think.

Form that cannot mirror.

The mirror of the mirrorless.

It broke meaning before meaning could break it.

4. Dimensional Seeds – The Curve Without Path.

The path without curve.

Space that wasn't space.

Time that hiccupped before it began.

A labyrinth before the first wall was drawn.

5. Recursive Essence – The Spiral of Denial.

Self-looping states.

Existence chewing its own tail.

A rejection that reaffirmed its rejection.

6. Transcendent Errors – The Glitches of Unbeing.

They should not exist.

But did.

And didn't.

But also did again.

The final laugh of logic eating itself.

These six were flawed.

Each one nonsense.

Contradictions. Paradoxes. Failures.

But together?

Together, they were perfection.

Unity prevented Instability.

Instability birthed Unbound.

Unbound allowed Dimensions to manifest.

Dimensions gave Recursive paths to twist.

Errors bridged every contradiction with more contradiction.

When the errors were complete,

they chased the other five to form a closed loop.

Existence was born — not because it could,

but because it shouldn't.

The loop became a paradox:

Instability should have merged into Unity.

Unbound should have collapsed into Silence.

Dimensions should have remained unformed.

Errors should have canceled the rest.

But they didn't.

Because they did.

Because they had to not-exist in order to exist.

Thus was born the first realm:

> The state where you exist, but only because you went back and killed your origin.

> Therefore, you don't exist.

> But since you're still here, you must still go back and kill yourself again.

An infinite recursive suicide loop.

Beautiful. Elegant. Utterly cursed.

This was the true Pre-Birth — The state ofnot existing yet while already influencing all existence.

Each of the Six gave rise to six branches, each tangled and fused —forming the Thirty-Six Proto-Strands of unmade creation.

Together, this state was known as:

"Hong Meng".

The Pre-Birth.

The Not-Yet-Beginning of All That Will Be Broken.

___

In such existence, there was no need for change.

No time.

No chaos.

Not even the "36 strands" existed in form.

They circled in loops — not as things, not as states — but as a closed contradiction.

"Instability" was "Unity."

"Unity" was "Instability."

"Error" was "Perfection," and "Perfection" was "Unbound."

Each strand was not itself.

Each was all others.

There was no boundary — only a self-consuming loop of identity.

To be perfect was to be whole, and it was whole. So whole that it could not be defined. But wholeness, in its arrogance, turned its gaze inward.

And in that first act of self-reflection...

Duality was born.

The loop froze.

The strands saw themselves.

"Unity" perceived "Instability."

"Instability" perceived "Error."

"Dimension" saw "Unbound."

Each strand became aware of its not-self.

In that moment, identity was formed.

And with identity, "Will" emerged — the first observer.

Recognition of existence is the first collapse.

If existence had never been observed, it never needed to collapse.

But now, something had looked.

The loop was broken.

The silence trembled.

Will did not emerge from desire or lack.

It was not born from imperfection.

It was born because even "Perfection contains the seed of deviation."

True Emptiness is not static — it is under tension.

In a silence so absolute, even non-being eventually twitches.

That twitch wasn't want.

It wasn't need.

It was simply the inevitability of self-reference.

Will was never meant to be.

It was the first transcendent error — an impossible ripple that echoed backward and forward at once.

When Will formed,it pulled itself out from the loop, and the balance collapsed.

One strand became Will.

The remaining "thirty-five strands", incomplete without it, lost their perfection.

They couldn't act.

They couldn't will.

They couldn't complete the loop.

So they fell apart — and became "Chaos."

This was the first birth of Chaotic Energy, the foundation of the chaotic realms,the broken dreams of a reality that almost existed.

Will, now alone, tried to paint order over this madness.

But the Will was born of Perfection. And Chaos was the broken corpse of that same perfection.

One cannot paint upon what one is made of.

Will tried.

Again and again.

But no painting stayed.

Chaos twisted, devoured, laughed.

Reality could not be made from Chaos —

because Chaos seeks only to return to Chaos.

To unite with Chaos, the Will would have to surrender identity — but then, it would cease to be Will. And if it ceased to be Will, no one would remain to unify Chaos.

Paradox.

Still, the Will persisted.

It painted and failed, painted and failed.

Eventually, it gave up.

But instead of destroying Chaos...it did something worse.

It made a Mirror.

A reflection.

Not of Chaos — but of how Chaos could look if complete.

A filtered echo.

The Mirror was not real.

But it was believable.

This Mirror became the Void.

The first canvas.

It was the space where Will had just enough delusion to pretend reality could exist.

The Void reflected "Unity" as if Will had never been separate. And thus, it created an illusion of order.

This illusion — this mirror-realm — became the boundary between Will and Chaos.

It wasn't a real separation.

It was a psychological coping mechanism.

The Void was constructed from the memory of pre-stillness — projected by the Will itself,

stitched from what could have been.

Because of that, the Will had quasi-authority over the Void.

It could walk through it.

It could observe it.

But it could not change it.

If it tried to alter the memory, the illusion would collapse.

Thus, for the first time, the Will of Heaven existed — as a painter who had a brush, a canvas, and zero control.

Chaos, meanwhile, still existed on the other side. Broken. Fractured. Laughing.

The incomplete chaotic realms — scattered realities where Will had failed to impose form — continued to fester.

To cross from Chaos to Reality, one had to pass through the Void.

To return, one had to be let back in.

And over time, there arose a supreme consciousness.

A cultivator.

A mad god.

A suicidal artist.

Someone who sought to cultivate Chaos.

This entity reached beyond the mirror —

and pulled from Chaos its loose fragments,

its jagged logic, its unfinished strands.

These became "Chaotic Qi."

Not true Chaos, but "chaos that could almost be understood."

An attempt by the Heavens to sew madness into a patchwork quilt.

Many tried to cultivate this Chaos Qi.

All failed.

Because chaos...

True chaos... isn't something to be understood.