Chapter Forty-Eight: Primordial Qi Turbulence, an Unstable World
Volume Two: The Separation of Clear and Turbid — The First Opening of Heaven and Earth
The primordial qi between Heaven and Earth, in its initial stage, was exceedingly chaotic. The energy released from the Chaos Egg had not yet found its own rhythm. It rampaged through the Heaven-Earth Interlayer, forming one after another of invisible turbulent currents.
Those turbulent currents had little effect on Pangu himself — his body was already hard enough to withstand those impacts without injury. But their effect on the Celestial Dome and the Great Earth was obvious. When turbulence struck the bottom of the Celestial Dome, the dome would bulge upward; when turbulence struck the surface of the Great Earth, the ground would raise clouds of dust filling the sky.
Pangu stood at the center of the turbulence, watching the world he had only just created continuously deform under the impact of primordial qi. He had no way to stop those turbulent currents — their power came from the energy release of Chaos remnants, and the energy of Chaos remnants was not something he could control.
All he could do was stand firm. So long as he did not fall, the Celestial Dome and the Great Earth would not completely collapse in the turbulence.
The primordial qi turbulence rampaged through the Heaven-Earth Interlayer for a very long time; its force was strong enough to cause undulating fluctuations on the surface of the newly formed Great Earth. While steadying himself within that turbulence, Pangu was also observing the movement patterns of those turbulent currents — primordial qi turbulence was not entirely random. Influenced by the temperature and pressure differences between Heaven and Earth, they formed fixed circulation channels between hot zones and cold zones. He learned to predict the direction of the turbulence and could adjust his posture in advance to reduce the additional drain from the impacts.
In the turbulence, Pangu steadied his body, his legs spread shoulder-width apart, his center of gravity pressed low. His heels sank deep into the Great Earth; his toes gripped the motes of the ground, fixing himself into an unshakable base. As the turbulence howled past his sides, his clothing — those thin garments condensed from Chaos Qi on his body's surface — snapped and fluttered loudly. His hair scattered in the wind like a black banner streaming in the violent primordial qi. But his body, like a nail, did not budge in the slightest.
The time-span of the turbulence was far longer than Pangu had predicted. That primordial qi was not exhausted in a single release but surged in wave after wave, each wave different in strength and direction. Some waves swooped down from above, pressing him inward with their full force; some waves surged up from below, trying to lift him off the ground. Pangu, amid those changing impacts, learned to adjust his center of gravity — lowering it to resist the swooping, shifting it forward to resist the surging. His body, under forces from different directions, was like a reef in the great sea; no matter how the waves struck, it remained utterly unmoved.
After the turbulence had continued for some time, Pangu discerned its patterns — the movement of primordial qi, though appearing chaotic on the surface, was gradually revealing directionality within that chaos. Those air currents that had originally dashed wildly in all directions began to show a primary direction, shifting from patternless, scattered movement into ordered flow along specific directions. primordial qi was self-organizing, walking a path out of Chaos toward order. He did not need to manipulate or suppress them; he only needed to serve as a stable anchor point in this process, giving primordial qi a reliable reference in its self-organization.
The turbulence, under Pangu's stabilizing presence, finally began to weaken. Those manic air currents, as though infected by the stable aura his body radiated, gradually quieted. The region closest to his body was the first to calm; then the calm spread outward from him as its center like ripples, expanding ring by ring. The weakening of the turbulence was not abrupt but gradual, like the decrease of wind-force as a storm subsides — first dropping from hurricane to gale, then from gale to strong wind, then becoming a breeze. He had transmitted stability to Heaven and Earth.
In the gaps between turbulence, Pangu noticed those minute motes stirred up by the turbulence. Those motes came from the surface of the Great Earth — the not-yet-fully-solidified portions of the Turbid Qi settled layer, torn into fine dust under the impact of turbulence and mixed into the air currents. That fine dust drifted between Heaven and Earth with the movement of the air currents, presenting a faint gray-brown color at the confluence of Clear Qi and Turbid Qi. This fine dust would not remain suspended forever — as the turbulence weakened, it would gradually settle and fall back to the surface of the Great Earth, becoming the first layers of fine sediment upon the earth. And in the process of settling, they would release some of the energy carried by the turbulence to various parts of the Great Earth, making the energy distribution more even.
When the turbulence finally subsided, the air between Heaven and Earth had become unprecedentedly limpid. All the fine dust stirred up by the turbulence had already fully settled; in the air, almost no floating impurities could be seen. Pangu drew a deep breath of this limpid air and felt as though he were truly breathing for the first time — the air passed through his windpipe and entered his lungs without any resistance, as though directly merging with his body. It was the tranquility after Heaven and Earth had passed through crisis — like the sea surface after a storm has passed, so calm one forgets the wild winds and giant waves of moments before. But he had not forgotten. He knew Heaven and Earth would encounter yet more upheavals; what he had to do was grow steadier through each one.
His hair streamed backward in the turbulence, like a banner unfurled by the wind. Those strands of hair, under the impact of the air currents, rubbed against each other, producing a faint rustling sound. His scalp, under that sustained pulling, felt a tautness — not pain, but like something pulling outward at the root of every strand of hair. It was the force of the wind — not the arm-strength he used to prop up Heaven, but another kind of force, lighter, more invisible, yet equally powerful, a force on the surface of his body rather than within.
After the turbulence subsided, Pangu's ears captured a new sound — the rustling of the fine dust stirred up by the turbulence slowly settling above the Great Earth. That sound was exceedingly fine, so fine that he would not have noticed it at all if his hearing had not greatly improved through the Ninefold Transformation. Those fine mote of dusts fell back to the ground flake by flake, like the finest snowflakes drifting down in near-windless air. It was the transition from violence to tranquility — not an abrupt halt, but a gradual weakening, like raindrops after a storm going from dense to sparse, from sparse to ceasing.
The turbulence occasionally swept along some extremely minute motes; when those motes struck his skin, they brought a needle-point-like pricking sensation. Those motes were not the dust of the Great Earth — they were minute energy condensations produced by the high-speed friction of Clear-Turbid air currents, like the sparks from air-current friction solidified into tangible objects. The instant a mote struck his skin, it emitted an almost inaudible crisp crack, then shattered into still finer powder and dispersed into the air. Even in chaos, new substances were ceaselessly being produced.
The energy of the turbulence, under Pangu's steady will, attenuated layer by layer, like ocean waves gradually weakening due to friction as they approach the shore. The air in the Heaven-Earth Interlayer shifted from violent torrents to gentle streams, and from streams to an almost still calm surface. That calm was not death-stillness but a tranquility brimming with life-force — like a deep lake, its surface ripple-less, yet deep below, undercurrents slowly surged.
After the turbulence had fully subsided, Pangu flexed his ten fingers. The finger joints, after maintaining the same posture for so long, emitted faint cracking sounds — the subtle pop of primordial qi in the joint gaps being abruptly compressed. His fingers, after moving, regained their flexibility — each finger could bend and straighten independently. It was the tiny but genuine freedom of his body still belonging to his own control.
After the turbulence had settled, Pangu noticed that the surface of the Great Earth now bore something that had not been there before — an exceedingly thin layer of floating soil deposited from the fine dust. The color of that floating soil was neither the black of Turbid Qi nor the white of Clear Qi, but a gray-brown hovering between the two. The floating soil was powder-fine to the touch, dispersing at the lightest pinch, yet these seemingly harmless fine motes would, in future wind and rain, gradually accumulate and become the first true soil sedimentary layers upon the Great Earth.