Chapter Thirty-One: The Fissure Pierces Through, the Portal Stands Open

Volume One: The Chaos Egg — An Eternity of Slumber

After the Single-Dawn Awakening, Pangu fixed his Innate Dao-Eyes upon the shell of the Chaos Egg. That fissure — the rift between Void and Chaos — was accelerating its widening with his awakening. No longer passively enduring Void's erosion, it was actively cracking open under the impact of the energy released from his awakening. The fissure spread in all directions like cracks across an ice sheet, splitting the shell of the Chaos Egg, with irreversible momentum, into countless shattered plates. Each plate drifted slowly as the fissure extended, wider and wider gaps of Void appearing between them. Pangu watched the expansion of the fissure and did not stop it — this was the result he had awaited for ten thousand years; the fissure's widening meant the defenses of the Chaos Egg were disintegrating, meant the portal to Void was opening before him.

Clear and Turbid Qi had never ceased their separation. Clear Qi rose ever higher, forming an ever-brighter cloud of clarity in the upper half of the Primordial Qi Sea layer; Turbid Qi sank ever lower, forming an ever-darker sea of turbidity in the lower half. As distinct as the Jing and Wei rivers. Pangu watched all of this with his Dao-Eyes — the separation of Clear and Turbid had occurred irreversibly. No longer a trend, but a reality. The breaches in the Primordial Wall widened further; breath of the Void surged in through fissures from all directions and reacted violently with the Clear and Turbid Qi. Clear Qi, encountering Void, grew lighter and more transparent; Turbid Qi, encountering Void, grew heavier and denser. Void was like a catalyst, accelerating the thorough differentiation of Clear and Turbid each toward their own natures. In that differentiation, Pangu saw the embryonic form of opening Heaven and Earth — Clear Qi rising, Turbid Qi sinking — this was precisely the basic framework of the Heaven-Earth blueprint he had rehearsed countless times.

Chaos struggled. It did not wish to die, but it had reached its limit. Chaos's state grew ever more unstable; the primal qi turbulence in the Primordial Qi Sea layer grew ever more violent, like an enraged titan-beast making its final charge in an iron cage. Each pulse of Chaos was a convulsion, each breath tightened with the dying instinct — the instinctive reaction of a life at its end. But Pangu sensed the yielding seeping through that struggle — Chaos was accepting its fate. Amid this final struggle of Chaos, he felt a complex emotion: Chaos was his mother body, had coexisted with him for ten thousand years. He watched it die.

Pangu knew the final moment was drawing near. He slowly circulated his own power, preparing to meet the complete rending of that barrier. He looked upon this Chaos he was about to end, and in his heart there was no excitement, no fear — only a deep tranquility. This was the endpoint the Eternal Ages had awaited, and the starting point from which all things would begin. During the time he stood before the fissure, the final changes took place within the Chaos Egg — those residual Chaos Qi gathered near the fissure began to form minute spherical structures, suspended in the Primordial Qi Sea, slowly rotating, emitting faint, flickering light. They were the last products of the Chaos Era — the final batch of matter Chaos had condensed with its remaining strength before complete disintegration. Pangu reached out and touched one; it burst the instant he made contact, transforming into a mass of qi brighter than its surroundings and dispersing into space. He touched a second, a third — each burst at his fingertip, like one short-lived flower after another. Chaos was dying, yet the forms of its final hour were extraordinarily beautiful. When the last intact barrier fully opened before him, he saw a sight he had never before beheld: beyond Chaos, that domain called Void presented itself before his eyes with unprecedented clarity. There was no light, no darkness, no up, no down, no boundary. There was nothing there — yet anything could be there. The portal had opened for him.

After the portal opened, Pangu cast his gaze truly into the depths of Void for the first time — the gaze of one about to enter a new world, like a person standing at a doorway about to take the first step, first glancing to see what the world outside looks like. Void indeed looked just as he had imagined — no color, no shape, no boundary. But it gave him an unexpected feeling — that feeling was waiting. Void was waiting. What it awaited was to be used, to be shaped, to be given meaning. Chaos had been adversarial — it compressed him, rejected him, tried to devour him; Void was different — Void neither rejected him nor devoured him; it was simply 'empty', waiting for him to fill it. In that waiting Void, he felt his own importance — he would be the first active existence in this emptiness. Every motion of his would leave an indelible mark upon this blankness, because he was the first being to act within Void. The first act itself would define what action is, just as the first sound would define what sound is.

He withdrew his gaze and refocused his vision on the edge of the fissure. That fissure was his sole passage into Void, and Chaos's final line of defense. The edge of the fissure was not even — it was jagged like torn cloth, the edges still holding the faint light of Chaos Qi, like the embers at the edge of burning paper. Those embers would soon extinguish; the fissure would become completely dark — then he would no longer be able to see Void. He had to pass through it before the embers of the fissure fully died. In those embers of the fissure, he felt Chaos's final plea to stay — a plea to prolong the time of its own existence. He understood that plea — no existence wishes to die. But he had to go, whether Chaos willed it or not.

The fissure continued to widen, but differences in its pace revealed the structural non-uniformity of the Chaos Egg's shell — some regions were thinner, some thicker, some more heavily eroded by Void, some still barely holding their integrity. Pangu recorded those differences with his Dao-Eyes — to find the weakest breakthrough point. He would, at the moment of opening Heaven and Earth, apply his force in the direction of least resistance — and that was a kind of combat wisdom, something he himself had learned through ten thousand years of struggle. When you face a wall, do not ram the thickest part with your head; instead, find that wall's most fragile crack and focus your force upon that point. Chaos had created the world — where Chaos was torn open, there Heaven and Earth would be born.

He traced the edge of the fissure — scanning along it with his Spirit-Consciousness. His Spirit-Consciousness, like a measuring thread, slid along each fine line of the fissure, measuring its depth, width, expansion speed. Those perceptions poured ceaselessly into his consciousness, forming within his Spirit-Sea a complete map of the fissure, every crack and change clear at once. Within that map, he saw the exact place where he must strike — that widest, deepest, fastest-expanding main fissure was precisely the breakthrough point he would attack. Once that place was confirmed, he held his breath — a ritual preparatory act. He was about to attack Chaos from within, at its most vulnerable position. That would be his final strike against Chaos — born of necessity.

At the moment the fissure fully pierced through, Pangu placed his palm against its edge. When his fingers touched the fissure's edge, he felt a texture he had never before known — the edge of the fissure held fine fragments, sharp as the fractured face of stone. Those fragments, under the erosion of breath of the Void, were peeling away at a speed visible to the eye; after detaching from the mother body, they turned into still-smaller fragments and drifted into Void, vanishing from sight. His palm, pressed against that collapsing edge, felt Chaos's final warmth — warm, like a dying hearth-fire. He lingered in that warmth for a moment — feeling. Feeling the true texture of something that was dying. He did not evade this sensation — he needed to remember this temperature, because this temperature represented the fact that his home of ten thousand years, his prison of ten thousand years, was becoming memory. After the warmth faded, only Void remained beneath his palm. He withdrew his hand and clenched it into a fist in Void. The fissure was wide enough now — wide enough for his entire body to pass through easily. The portal was fully open. He no longer needed to wait.