Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Seven: The Name of Dahuang — Passed Down Through the Ages

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

Those apes were no longer apes. They had learned to stand for long stretches on their hind legs, learned to perform ever finer work with their forelimbs. Their vocal organs had grown more developed, capable of producing a greater variety of syllables.

One day, a young one pointed toward the endless mountains and plains in the distance and spoke a string of clear sounds.

"Da — Huang — "

Its companions followed the line of its finger with their eyes. That land — where the mountains rose and fell in the distance, where the rivers rushed near at hand, where the forests covered vast tracts and the grasslands stretched to the limit of sight. It was the place they lived, the place they foraged, bred, slept, and dreamed.

"Da — Huang — "

The sound began to spread among these Living Beings. They used it to name the ground beneath their feet.

Dahuang. Henceforth, that was the name of this land — the land reaching from what had been Pangu's left leg to the ends of his right arm, from the foot of the Sky-Pillaring Peak to the farthest horizon.

Once it had a name, the land began to become different. It was no longer a vague, boundless wilderness — it was Dahuang. A place with a name was no longer merely wild.

Once it had a name, those beings also began to see themselves differently. They were no longer simply that troop of apes — they were the Living Beings who dwelt in Dahuang.

The size of the community swelled rapidly in this period. From a few dozen it grew to above a hundred, then from above a hundred to several hundred. A single group could no longer contain so many members — there was not enough food to go around, not enough cave space to shelter them all. At last, one spring, the group divided.

One portion followed the river eastward. Another remained in the original valley. A small band headed toward the rolling hills to the north. Each sought new dwelling place and began an independent life.

But the separation was not a complete rupture. Every year, when the moon was fullest, the different groups would return to their shared point of origin — the old cave — and hold a gathering. They exchanged food, exchanged information, and exchanged memories of their ancestors. That cave became the first sacred site in Dahuang.

And the creation story was told again and again at those gatherings.

That year, an elder — the oldest in the community, the one whose memory was best — told the story in a new way at the gathering fire.

He did not use only sound and gesture as before. He crouched down, extended a gaunt, bony finger, and began to draw in the sand.

First he drew a circle. Sky, he said.

Then he drew a horizontal line beneath the circle. Earth, he said.

Next, between Heaven and Earth, he drew a standing human shape — two vertical strokes for the legs, two diagonal strokes for the outstretched arms, a small circle for the head.

Him, the elder said. He paused, then added a syllable: Pangu.

The Living Beings gathered around the fire watched the picture in the sand in silence. It was the first time they had seen an image of Pangu — a giant holding Heaven and Earth apart, sketched in the simplest lines.

The elder's finger continued to move across the sand. Above the human figure, he drew short lines radiating outward — light. Below the figure, wavy lines — water. On either side, jagged lines — mountains.

He became these, the elder said, biting off each word.

The firelight fell upon the sand, and those crude lines seemed to come alive. The circle loomed like the true Celestial Dome, sheltering all beneath. The horizontal line bore all upon it, like the true earth. And the human figure between them stood holding Heaven and Earth apart, arms spread wide, supporting the sky.

A young one reached out a hand and, with great care, touched the human figure in the sand. Its fingertip smudged one of the vertical lines, blurring it. It snatched its hand back at once, as though fearing it had damaged something sacred.

The elder smiled — he rarely smiled. With his finger, he retraced the blurred line, then looked at the young one and nodded, slow and solemn.

That night, the picture in the sand was traced and retraced too many times to count. Whenever the fire dimmed, someone fed it more wood; whenever the wind scattered the sand, the elder drew it again. By dawn, several imitations had appeared around the fire — imprecise, but the basic structure — sky, earth, and the figure between them — had been preserved in every one.

It was the first picture in all of Dahuang.

From that night on, drawing in the sand became a fixed ritual at the gatherings. The elder sat beside the fire and drew Heaven, Earth, and Pangu in the sand with his finger. The young sat in a ring around him and attempted clumsy imitations with twigs upon the ground. At first only a few tried to learn; in time, every group had someone who could draw that picture.

The earliest tribes were formed at such gatherings. They were no longer groups bound only by blood — they were communities linked by shared memory and shared belief. They called themselves the people of Dahuang.

That elder who crouched beside the fire drawing pictures in the sand did not stop presiding over the gatherings until he was very, very old. His fingers trembled with age; the lines he drew were no longer straight. But the last time he traced that image in the sand, all the Living Beings watching knelt in silence. They knelt not to him, but to what he had drawn — that figure standing upright between Heaven and Earth.

His son inherited his place. The young man's fingers were steadier; the lines he drew were straighter. He added more detail to his father's foundation — he drew small dots around the human figure for the stars, curving lines at its feet for the rivers. The story grew richer; the picture grew more detailed.

But the core never changed: Heaven above, Earth below, Pangu standing between them.

By then, the name Dahuang had spread to every corner of the land. Every group, every tribe knew that the ground beneath their feet was called Dahuang. They called it with different syllables, with similar sounds. And if some being high above had looked down upon this land, it would have seen: across the vast expanse formed from Pangu's body, points of firelight were scattered among the valleys and plains. Beside every campfire, Living Beings were telling the same name.

Dahuang.

Pangu.

Heaven and Earth.

The Myriad Things.

These sounds drifted on the night wind, rose into the starry sky, and merged into Dao Grace.

And the picture that elder had drawn in the sand — scattered by the wind countless times, redrawn countless times — was eventually carved by one being who had learned to engrave onto the stone wall of a cave. It was the first mural in Dahuang. The cuts were shallow; the lines were crude. But they withstood wind and sun and never vanished.

That picture is still there to this day.

By the twilight of that generation of Living Beings, Dahuang was no longer a simple name. It carried memory, faith, fear, and hope. It was mother, it was home, it was the backdrop of every story. When those who had learned to speak opened their eyes for the last time on the verge of death, what they saw was still the same sky, the same land.

Dahuang, they said softly. And closed their eyes.