Chapter Two Hundred Seven: Aquatic Life-Forms — The First to Sprout

Volume Six: Spirit-Life in Dahuang — Dao Grace Everlasting

Water was the first vessel to receive life.

After Pangu's blood transformed into rivers, the waters flowed without ceasing — but in those earliest channels, almost nothing visible stirred. Only water, so pure it was nearly transparent, free of any impurity. It gleamed blue-white beneath the sun, like a ribbon of flowing gemstones twisting through the land.

The changes began beneath the surface.

In a stream flowing from the direction of what had been Pangu's left arm, an exceedingly thin, pale green film began to form upon the stones at the bottom. It was not mud, not sediment — it was something alive. It clung to the rock's surface in a fine layer, like a delicate coat of down. When the water flowed over it, it swayed faintly, as though answering the water's touch.

It was algae — the first autotrophic life-forms to appear upon this land. They needed no prey, no movement — only sunlight and the minerals dissolved in water. They absorbed sunlight with their tiny bodies, converting it into the energy they needed to live, and in the process released tiny bubbles. Those bubbles rose from the bottom, broke upon the surface, and produced the first gentle sound — a soft "plop."

In a lake not far from that stream, another form of life was emerging. Slender, translucent, thread-like entities drifted through the water. One end was anchored in the silt of the lakebed; the other swayed gently in the current. Their bodies were so fine as to be nearly invisible, but when they gathered together, they formed undulating forests beneath the surface.

Those threadlike life-forms did not merely live alone — they became homes for even smaller creatures. Beings tinier than the point of a needle darted between the filaments, using them as shelter. Some were round as spheres, some flat as leaves, some trailing a single slender tail as they swam. Each was nearly imperceptible, yet each was undeniably alive.

Beneath the water's surface, an entire miniature world was taking shape.

Xiwei crouched at the water's edge and dipped her hand in. Her fingertips brushed the slick algae coating the stones at the bottom. She withdrew her hand and studied the green substance clinging to her fingers. It glimmered faintly in the sunlight.

"You too were left by him," she murmured to the algae. They would not answer. But they were — the most fundamental nourishment of Pangu's body — the four subtle makings of flesh and breath — had dissolved into the waters during his Dao-Transformation, becoming the raw material from which these algae had been born.

In those streams where algae had first appeared, the underwater world was undergoing changes visible to the naked eye. The algal colonies spread without cease, expanding from that initial thin layer into green carpets that covered entire stones. They grew ever thicker, refusing to be dislodged even under the constant scouring of the current. Filamentous strands of algae dangled from the rocks, drifting in the water like green tresses dancing.

Once the algal colonies had flourished, creatures that fed upon them began to appear. Exceedingly small, nearly transparent life-forms swam through the water — their bodies oval-shaped, one end bearing a slender flagellum that beat ceaselessly, propelling them forward. They swam to the algal colonies and used a tiny opening at the front of their bodies to engulf bits of algae. After consuming the green algae, their translucent interior would glow with a faint green tint, like tiny lanterns drifting through the water.

Right on their heels, predators emerged. Larger life-forms, their bodies conical in shape, began threading through the swarms of algae-eaters. They moved faster, and the front ends of their bodies could open into round mouths. When they encountered smaller creatures, their mouths flared open and swallowed the prey whole. The engulfed creature would thrash for a moment inside the conical body before falling still — digested.

Thus the underwater food chain was established: algae nourished the primary consumers, the primary consumers were hunted by secondary predators, and the secondary predators fought among themselves. The water no longer held only solitary, drifting lives — it contained a complex small world, a world of mutual dependence and mutual competition.

In the earliest-formed lakes, the changes ran deeper. The lakebeds had accumulated every variety of mineral dissolved from Pangu's body — bone-salt, fire-salt, earth-salt, and iron — in concentrations so perfectly balanced they provided the richest nourishment for algae and aquatic plants. The silt on the lake bottom thickened without pause, that silt intermingled with the remains of countless minute life-forms. Living water-creatures swam above; dead ones sank to the bottom and became nourishment for the next generation of life. This cycle turned from bed to surface and surface back to bed, never once halting.

Xiwei came to the water's edge more and more often. She began to know those earliest creatures — learning which algae were most active in the early morning hours, which minute life-forms rose to the surface under the afternoon sun, which water-creatures sank to the bottom at night to rest. She discovered that though these beings were tiny, each one followed its own rhythm. They answered the cadence of sunrise and sunset, adjusting their behavior to the height of the sun. She even noticed that on days when her own light shone especially strong, the light-drinking algae would grow with particular vigor, and the green upon the water would deepen.

"You like the light," she whispered to the green algae. They answered her radiance with ever-lusher growth. Wherever her light fell, life flourished more abundantly. She had become the first living sun upon this land.

One day, she noticed a phenomenon she had never seen before. In a shallower stream, many minute depressions had appeared in the sand at the bottom. She lay prone at the water's edge and observed closely. The depressions were not natural formations in the sand — they had been made by a creature she had never encountered: a flat life-form smaller than a fingernail, using its soft body to cradle grains of sand, carrying them elsewhere, and piling them into tiny mounds. It was reshaping its own surroundings — not passively adapting, but actively altering.

"You have already learned to build things," Xiwei breathed, wonder in her voice. The tiny water-creature ignored her and kept hauling its grains. Each grain of sand it shifted was the beginning of life leaving its mark upon the world.

In a broader river, an even more startling change had emerged. Xiwei found the riverbed dotted with clusters of tubular structures — upright tubes formed from some sticky substance mixed with fine sand grains, one end anchored to the riverbed, the other opening upward. Around the rim of each opening grew tiny tentacles, swaying gently in the current, snatching at the minuscule life-forms drifting past.

"You have built yourselves houses," Xiwei held her breath, gazing at the tubes. They clustered densely upon the riverbed in a miniature tubular forest. Some of the tubes stood astonishingly tall — even longer than her finger. After capturing food, the tentacles extending from the openings would retract swiftly into the tubes; moments later, they would extend again, slowly, waiting for the next meal.

The aquatic creatures were no longer content simply to swim and hunt. They had begun building structures, crafting shelters for themselves. Between those tubular structures, territorial skirmishes occasionally broke out — a tentacle that reached too far would brush against a neighbor's tube, and the neighbor would instantly strike back with its own tentacles. Tiny, fleeting battles, performed in silence beneath the water.

Watching all of this, Xiwei suddenly understood something. The world beneath the water no longer needed her attention to exist. Those creatures already had their own patterns, their own conflicts, their own cycles. They did not know she existed, nor did they care. They lived in their own world, sprouting, growing, fighting, and dying — entirely on their own.

She straightened and gazed toward the distant land. The world beneath the water had already overflowed with life. When would life truly descend upon the land?