Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Two: Breath Becomes Wind and Cloud — Circulating Through the Eight Expanses

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

Pangu's breath — that great tide of air that had moved in and out of his lungs for eighteen thousand years — now escaped his dissolving body and became the atmosphere of the world. It did not dissipate into nothingness; it spread outward, filling every corner of Heaven and Earth, becoming the air that all future creatures would breathe.

His exhalations became the prevailing winds — the great currents of air that circled Heaven and Earth, bearing warmth toward the cold reaches and moisture from the seas into the inner lands. His inhalations became the hollows of air that drew the winds back together, forming the cycles of weather that would govern the world's breath.

The storms, the breezes, the gentle zephyrs of spring and the howling gales of winter — all of them were Pangu's breath, transformed. When the wind whispered through the trees, it was Pangu's voice, too soft to form words but still speaking. When the hurricane roared across the sea, it was Pangu's rage — not at the world, but at the Chaos that had once threatened it, a protective fury that would outlast his own existence.

Breath becomes wind and cloud, circulating through the Eight Expanses. The world's first and most essential gift — the air itself — had come from the lungs of the creator. And with every breath that any living thing would ever take, some tiny part of Pangu would be drawn into new life.