A Turtle from the Start, Beyond the Sages' Divination
Modern office drone Lin Zhou drops dead from overwork.
When he opens his eyes again, he has become an innate Black Tortoise left over from the Dragon-Han Calamity, sprawled three thousand zhang beneath the Yellow River. His shell is bigger than his living room back home.
The good news: his Water and Earth origins are perfected, and his Earth Immortal cultivation lets him crush Celestial Immortals like chickens. The bad news: the Chan Sect is searching the entire Primordial World for Earth Immortals, and the Shangqing Heavenly Secrets Mirror has swept right over his head. Worse still, Qingxu Zi has doubled back, clutching a Jade Void Golden Seal.
The sages want to invest the gods, and every living thing is a piece on the board. Becoming a Celestial Immortal and entering the Celestial Register means certain death; becoming a Golden Immortal and landing on the Investiture of the Gods is a one-way trip to the grave. But he is different. He will not become a Celestial Immortal, enter the immortal registers, or get entangled in fate and karma. The sages' divinations cannot see his destiny. In the entire Investiture of the Gods game, he is the only dead piece absent from the list.
But he refuses to die.
He keeps sleeping beneath the Yellow River until a young man carrying bamboo slips walks across the muddy ground of Qingqiu, with grass seeds sprouting behind him. Si Wenming, the future Yu the Great, leader of the human race, who will tame the waters and establish the Nine Provinces. And Xuanyuan is the very root of Water and Earth.
When the sages force him into the game, he flips the board. When the Chan Sect hunts him, he turns the tables and kills his pursuers. When three Golden Immortals surround him, he leaves them chewing sand in quicksand for three days. Above the Earth Immortal realm, he opens a new realm of his own: the Profound Immortal realm. On the Investiture of the Gods, the space for his name is blank. The Heavenly Dao cannot write it in.
An modern engineering graduate transmigrates into the Primordial World. He uses fluid mechanics to chart the waterways and structural mechanics to withstand the Golden Seal. Don't talk to me about following the Dao of Nature. I'll tell you about finite element analysis.
The Four Seas have put out a warrant for me? Come and get me.
The sages are getting involved? I'll take them on.
Beneath the Guixu, a tombstone from the previous age of civilization bears these words: Only the root of Water and Earth can cross the tide of annihilation.
