Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Six: Sinews Become Earth Veins — the Mountain-Vein Network

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

Pangu's sinews and tendons — the connective tissue that had held his massive frame together — now became the Earth Veins: the deep subterranean channels through which the world's energy would flow. These were not physical rivers of water, but rivers of qi, carrying the vital force of the world from its deep heart to its surface.

The network of Earth Veins was a direct tracing of Pangu's meridians. Every major meridian became a major energy channel; every collateral branch became a lesser vein. The acupuncture points — the nodes where qi had gathered and transformed within his body — became the world's spiritual focal points, places of power where future cultivators would one day build their temples and train their arts.

The Mountain-Vein Network was the world's hidden channel of feeling, and it carried within it the last echoes of Pangu's will. When the world's energy needed to flow toward a wounded region, it was Pangu's residual intention that guided it. When the qi needed to gather at a point of crisis, it was his ancient instinct that directed it there.

Sinews become Earth Veins, the Mountain-Vein Network. The world was alive — not merely in the sense of bearing life, but in the sense of being itself a living whole, animated by the same meridians that had once sustained the body of a god.