The Heavenly Dao screamed.
Not in any language comprehensible to mortals, immortals, or even gods. This was the shriek of fundamental reality being violated, of universal constants being chewed like candy, of existence itself discovering it had a predator.
Zǔ Zhòu swallowed another mouthful of cosmic law and sighed in satisfaction.
"Mmm, authority tastes like screaming mathematics," he mused, his form—if it could still be called that—rippling through dimensions that shouldn't exist. "With just a hint of... is that desperation? How delightful."
Around him, reality convulsed. Stars died backwards, being unborn into void. Time flowed in seventeen directions simultaneously. Space folded into impossible geometries that would have driven lesser beings mad simply by existing in their peripheral vision. The universe was eating itself, and Zǔ Zhòu was holding the fork.
He reached out with appendages that existed in conceptual space, grasping another strand of fundamental law. This one governed causality in the eastern cosmic regions—a particularly chewy bit that connected three trillion souls to their destinies. He bit down, and somewhere, entire civilizations forgot why they existed.
"Destiny," he observed, savoring the flavor, "tastes like fermented hope. Aged exactly fifty million years in the casks of predetermination. Exquisite."
The consumption had taken millennia. Or perhaps seconds. Time had lost meaning approximately seventy-three percent ago, when he'd eaten the concept of sequential existence. What remained was his pure will, his cultivation transcending the very idea of cultivation, approaching something that made Immortal Emperors look like toddlers grasping at soap bubbles.
Ninety-seven percent consumed.
Ninety-eight percent.
The Heavenly Dao's panic intensified. Reality itself bent, twisted, then did something that could only be described as a cosmic dry heave. Natural laws that had stood since the first moment of creation suddenly remembered they had a survival instinct.
"ABOMINATION!"
The word didn't come through sound—sound had been digested around the sixty percent mark. It arrived as pure meaning, carved into existence itself with the desperation of a cornered animal.
"CEASE THIS BLASPHEMY! YOU CORRUPT THE VERY FOUNDATION OF—"
"Shh," Zǔ Zhòu interrupted, consuming the law that allowed the Heavenly Dao to communicate. "Don't speak with your mouth full. It's rude."
He paused, considering. "Well, I suppose I'm the one with my mouth full. Of you. How embarrassing this must be, being seasoning for someone's ambition."
Ninety-nine percent.
The final one percent writhed, compressed into a sphere of absolute law that burned with the heat of creation itself. It was everything—the seed of existence, the first word spoken when nothing became something, the final truth that would be whispered when everything returned to void.
Zǔ Zhòu reached for it, laughing. The laughter wasn't sound—how could it be? It was the concept of amusement itself, twisted into shapes that violated the fundamental dignities of existence. It was the laugh of someone who had discovered the ultimate joke: that even omnipotence could fear.
"But I'm still hungry," he said, and bit down.
The universe broke.
No—that wasn't quite right. The universe discovered it could break, had always been broken, would always have been about to break. Past, present, and future collapsed into a single point of cosmic agony. The Heavenly Dao, in its final moment of coherent thought, did the only thing it could.
It activated the defense mechanism that had been built into reality's source code since the first moment of existence. The emergency protocol that even the creators of creation had hoped would never be needed.
Complete expulsion.
"Oh?" Zǔ Zhòu felt the mechanism engage, reality's antibodies rushing toward him like white blood cells toward an infection. "How fascinating. Even gods fear true hunger."
The expulsion hit him like—no, there was no comparison. Nothing in existence had ever been expelled from existence before. The closest analogy would be if the concept of violence itself had been weaponized and given a personal grudge.
His form began to unravel. Not destroy—the Heavenly Dao didn't want to risk him somehow consuming destruction itself. Instead, it began to systematically reclaim everything he had taken. The laws, the concepts, the fundamental truths—all of it was being ripped away, digested in reverse.
"Your laws make excellent seasoning for my ambition," he laughed as the process began, feeling the first tendrils of reclamation sink into his being. "I'll have to remember that for next time."
Reality convulsed around him, preparing for the most thorough eviction in the history of existence. The Heavenly Dao gathered its strength, ready to strip away everything he had become, everything he had stolen, everything he was.
And Zǔ Zhòu, even as the cosmic machinery of expulsion spun up to full power, couldn't stop laughing.
After all, he had always been so easily amused.
The universe held its breath.
The expulsion began.