Chapter One Hundred Forty-Four: The Source of the Fiends — Hidden Deep Underground

Volume Four: The Dao Gives Rise to Myriad Things — Life First Sprouts

After suppressing the immediate threat, Pangu took the time to trace the Savage Fiends to their ultimate source. He found it in the deepest stratum of all — a place where the original turbid qi from world-opening had never been fully transformed, compressed over eighteen thousand years into a primordial cancer at the world's core.

This was the price of creation. When he had separated clear from turbid, the turbid had not all sunk peacefully into the earth. Some of it — the densest, foulest, most concentrated dregs — had been trapped, compressed, and left to fester. The growth of life on the surface had agitated it; the Wuxing cycle had provoked it. What had been dormant had now awakened.

Pangu understood then that the Savage Fiends were not invaders from outside — they were part of the world he had made. They were the shadow cast by his act of creation. Every world born from Chaos would carry such shadows within it; every act of order would generate its own opposition. This was not a flaw in his design. This was the nature of existence itself.

He could not destroy the source without destroying the world. The cancer had grown too deep, too intertwined with the earth's foundations. All he could do was contain it — seal it, suppress it, buy the world time to grow strong enough to resist it on its own.

The source of the fiends, hidden deep underground. Pangu added yet another burden to the weight he already bore. He had braced the heavens; now he must also hold back the darkness beneath. His body, standing at the center of the world, had become the lock on a door that must never be allowed to open.