Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Nine: Body-Perish Dao-Transformation — Myriad Things Begin

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

The transformation completed. Pangu's body, which had stood between Heaven and Earth for eighteen thousand years, dissolved entirely into light. That light spread outward in all directions — not a violent explosion, but a gentle radiance, like the first light of dawn on the first morning of the world.

His breath became the wind and clouds. His voice became the rolling thunder. His left eye became the sun; his right eye, the moon. His hair and beard became the stars scattered across the firmament. His four limbs became the Four Poles that held the world stable. His torso became the sacred mountains at the world's center. His blood became the rivers and seas; his sinews became the veins of the earth; his flesh became the fields and soil. His body hair became the grasses and trees; his teeth and bones became the metals and stones; his marrow became the pearls and jade. His sweat became the rain and dew that nourished all growing things.

And the spark that had been his consciousness — the first consciousness, the creator's mind — did not die. It fragmented into a million pieces and scattered across the world, settling into the Spirit Resonance, into the plants, into the creatures, into the very fabric of existence. Every living thing that would ever exist in this world would carry within it some infinitesimal fragment of Pangu's awareness — a spark of the Creator's fire, a memory of the first light.

Body-Perish Dao-Transformation, the Myriad Things begin. The age of Pangu was over. The age of life had begun.