Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Two: Legs Become Mountains — Bearing Up the Earth

Volume Five: Body-Perish Dao-Transformation — Myriad Realms First Born

Pangu's legs were the first major part of him to transform. They had borne the weight of his body and the earth itself for eighteen thousand years, and now, as they dissolved, they became what they had always been: the pillars of the world.

His thighs became the great mountain ranges of the south — massive, rolling chains of peaks that would stand for all eternity as a reminder of the strength that had once held up the sky. His calves became the highlands and plateaus of the north — broad, stable, unshakeable. His feet, which had been planted in the earth for so long they had become one with it, sank deeper still and became the bedrock upon which all other mountains would rest.

The transformation was slow and solemn. Rock crystallized from dissolving flesh; stone condensed from fading bone. Mountain after mountain rose from the place where Pangu's legs had stood, forming the great ranges that would one day be revered as the bones of the world.

When it was done, where Pangu's legs had once stood, there were now mountains that reached halfway to the sky. They were not dead stone — they pulsed with a faint, residual warmth, the last echo of the life that had once filled them. The mountains would stand forever. And in their standing, they would remember whose legs had first held this world upright.

Legs become mountains, bearing up the earth. The foundation was laid — not of flesh, but of stone, eternal and unyielding.