Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Eight: Teeth Become Metals and Stones — Buried Deep Underground

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

Pangu's teeth — thirty-two in number, hard as diamond, white as the first light of creation — detached from his dissolving jaw and sank into the earth. Each tooth burrowed deep into the rock, where it transformed into veins of precious metal and deposits of rare stone.

His incisors became silver — bright, gleaming veins that would one day catch the light of miners' lamps. His canines became gold — the most coveted of metals, formed from the sharpest parts of his body. His molars became the foundation stones — granite, basalt, the deep bedrock upon which all other rock would rest.

The teeth did not merely become metal and stone — they became the concentrated essence of hardness, the principle of solidity embedded in the world. Wherever the earth's crust was thinnest, wherever the world needed reinforcement, there the transformed teeth of Pangu provided hidden strength.

Teeth become metals and stones, buried deep underground. The wealth of the world — the gold and silver and precious gems that would one day drive human ambition and adorn human beauty — all of it came from the mouth of the creator, his last smile frozen into eternal treasure.