Chapter Forty-Nine: Using His Body to Suppress the Cosmos, Fixing the Four Directions

Volume Two: The Separation of Clear and Turbid — The First Opening of Heaven and Earth

After the Primordial Qi turbulence subsided, Heaven and Earth entered a relatively stable period of growth. But Pangu knew this was only temporary calm. The structure of Heaven and Earth was not yet perfected; any external impact could trigger new upheaval. He needed a more fundamental way to stabilize this world.

Centuries passed. The Celestial Dome continued to rise; the pressure of the Great Earth continued to increase. The provisional method of using his body as a pillar was gradually becoming insufficient to handle the growing pressure of Heaven and Earth. Pangu realized he must implement that method of stabilization he had envisioned since the very beginning of opening Heaven and Earth — using his body to suppress the cosmos.

He resolved to anchor the cosmos with his own form. This thought had flashed through his mind back in Chaos, and now the time had come to carry it out. Using his body as a pillar, he had already achieved. But this cosmic anchoring meant he would use his own body as the frame of Heaven and Earth, supporting the structure of the entire world.

Pangu extended the power within his Innate Bone-Frame outward, like a great tree sending its roots deep into the earth. His Spirit-Soul spread into an invisible net, covering the Celestial Dome above. His Primordial Qi seeped into every corner deep within the Great Earth, like countless bonds connecting Heaven and Earth together.

This process was excruciatingly painful. Extending his own existence into every inch of Heaven and Earth meant he had to bear all the pressure from Heaven and Earth. The tension of every fissure, the impact of every turbulent current, the load-bearing of every inch of ground — all transmitted back through his extended Spirit-Consciousness.

But the effect was also pronounced. After bracing the cosmos with his body, the stability of Heaven and Earth was greatly enhanced. The Celestial Dome no longer easily developed cracks; the Great Earth no longer easily suffered collapse; the Primordial Qi turbulence nearly vanished. The entire world seemed to have gained a soul — and that soul was Pangu.

The Primordial Qi turbulence lasted a very long time. Pangu stood at its center, his body enduring impacts from all directions. Those impacts ceaselessly consumed his physical strength, but he never bent under the pressure. He was waiting — waiting for the turbulence to subside on its own, waiting for Heaven and Earth to find their own rhythm.

In the process of waiting, he continually adjusted his standing posture. The angle at which his legs were spread, the arc of his spine's bend, the height at which his hands pushed upward — every detail was repeatedly fine-tuned until his body found that most energy-efficient, most balanced state.

He had at last steadied himself. The moment he steadied, the turbulence around him also began to weaken. It was as though his stability gave this Heaven and Earth a fulcrum.

Pangu used his body as the center and sent stable will-pulses toward the four directions. Those pulses diffused into the distance along the four cardinal directions of the Heaven-Earth Interlayer. In the feedback of those pulses, he perceived the boundaries of the four directions — the eastern boundary was warm and moist; the south, scorching; the west, bleak; the north, ice-cold. The four directions, with four utterly distinct temperaments, would in the future shape four utterly distinct terrains and climates. Heaven and Earth were not uniform; they innately possessed a tendency to differentiate toward different directions. His task was not to forcibly homogenize them but to let this differentiation unfold in an orderly manner.

The process of holding the cosmos in place triggered reactions within Pangu far deeper than he had anticipated. His bones, at that moment, underwent a qualitative transformation — the skeleton that had originally served merely as the body's support structure now, under the action of his will, began to extend outward, like the roots of a tree spreading through the soil. What extended were not material bones but tendrils formed from the fusion of his bodily strength and his Spirit-Soul will. Those tendrils passed through the Great Earth, soaked into the Celestial Dome, and merged into every inch of Heaven and Earth's structure. From that moment, Heaven and Earth were no longer an external existence opposing him; they had become extensions of his body.

The process of suppression was also a process of perceptual extension. When his will spread to cover the Four Poles of Heaven and Earth, he truly felt the full extent of this Heaven and Earth for the first time — it was not boundless; it had boundaries. Each of the four directions had insurmountable limits; beyond those limits was the Void left after the egg shattered. The boundaries of Heaven and Earth were like a bubble wrapped in eggshell within Void — rounded yet irregular, faintly expanding and contracting with the flow of Clear and Turbid. Standing at the center of Heaven and Earth, simultaneously perceiving the state of the four boundaries, Pangu became, in that moment, the central will of Heaven and Earth — all information converged upon him, and all commands issued from him.

The stability of the four directions was not uniform. The eastern edge was the most stable, as though supported from without by something. The western edge was the weakest; from time to time, fine Chaos Qi would seep in from Void. The southern edge had the highest temperature; the activity of Clear Qi there far exceeded other directions. The northern edge had the lowest temperature; there, Turbid Qi settled at the fastest rate. Pangu adjusted the intensity of his suppression according to the different characteristics of the four directions — increasing will-pressure on the west, reducing Clear Qi guidance to the south, accelerating Turbid Qi circulation to the north, maintaining the status quo in the east. Different problems required different solutions; applying a single solution to all problems was ineffective.

With the cosmos steadied by his form, Heaven and Earth were like a ship that had found its helmsman — no longer drifting with the currents, but advancing in a fixed direction. Pangu stood at that helm position, feeling the faint resistance Heaven and Earth produced as they operated according to his will — Heaven and Earth would not fully obey; they had their own inertia, and he needed to guide rather than command them. This wisdom of guidance was far more subtle and far more effective than the brute-force suppression he had initially imagined.

His will, at the eastern edge, encountered a warm, moist obstacle — not resistance, but a soft, water-like, embracing elasticity. After his will passed through that elasticity, it made contact with a vast, gentle energy field — the eastern boundary had been reinforced by some force he could not understand. It was not his own power, nor the power of Heaven and Earth, but some structure left from the Chaos Era, providing support to this newborn Heaven and Earth. So before him, some things had already laid the groundwork for Heaven and Earth. He was not facing this Void alone.

The weak western edge, under his will's suppression, emitted a low hum. Within that hum was a kind of resistance — not intentional resistance, but the vibration produced when passively compressed. He intensified his will somewhat, like pressing a stone upon a cloth corner lifted by the wind. That hum gradually weakened and finally vanished. But he knew this would not be a once-and-for-all fix — the weakness of the west was structural, not something a single suppression could resolve. He would periodically check that direction and reinforce it in advance before disturbances reappeared.

His will switched back and forth among the four directions, like four invisible tendrils simultaneously sensing the conditions of all four directions. That multi-line perception subjected his Spirit-Soul to enormous pressure — like simultaneously using four eyes to watch four different directions, each direction's image clear and complete. The initial adaptation period was excruciatingly difficult; his Spirit-Soul, under fourfold perception, often experienced brief confusion — mistaking signs from the east for signs from the west, taking southern energy fluctuations for northern. But through continuous correction and adjustment, his Spirit-Soul learned to switch freely among the four perceptual channels, like a skilled spider moving effortlessly among four threads.

In the process of suppression, corresponding changes also occurred within his body. His bones began to produce a faint, sustained vibration — the natural resonance generated by his skeleton in the process of sustaining that cosmic suppression. That resonance made his bones denser and harder, like iron gradually becoming steel under repeated hammering. His skeleton was transforming from the soft structure left by his Chaos body into a sturdy structure capable of bearing the full weight of Heaven and Earth. It was not a transformation that could be completed in a day or two but a metamorphosis gradually accomplished through a thousand years of sustained suppression.

Suppressing the cosmos brought not only changes in power but also changes in perception. Pangu discovered that his body's mode of perceiving Heaven and Earth had undergone a fundamental transformation — before, he had perceived Heaven and Earth externally through touch and sight; now, through the conduction of his bones, he directly felt every pulse of Heaven and Earth. Every faint tremor of the Celestial Dome, every subsidence of the Great Earth, every flow of Clear and Turbid — that those signs no longer needed to pass through sight or touch before entering his consciousness but was directly conducted through his extending skeleton to the depths of his Spirit-Soul. He no longer needed to 'look at' Heaven and Earth; he was himself Heaven and Earth.