Chapter Fifty: Clear Qi Rises, Turbid Qi Sinks

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

After using his body to suppress the cosmos, Pangu had more energy to attend to the self-movement of Heaven and Earth. He discovered that although Clear and Turbid Qi had already completed their initial separation, the process of separation was far from over. Clear Qi was still slowly moving upward; Turbid Qi was still slowly sinking downward.

This phenomenon of continued separation was the inner driving force of Heaven and Earth's growth. Every time Clear Qi rose, the Celestial Dome was lifted a little higher; every time Turbid Qi sank, the Great Earth was thickened a little more. Pangu calculated that if the Clear-Turbid separation continued at this rate, one day the Celestial Dome would rise high enough and the Great Earth would sink deep enough.

But the problem was that the speed of separation was slowing. At the very beginning, the Clear-Turbid separation had been as fierce as a dike-bursting flood. But as the separation proceeded, what remained were those stubborn, hard-to-separate mixed qi. They tangled together and required greater force to be pulled apart.

Pangu decided to accelerate this process. He used his innate Primordial Source to guide Clear Qi upward and used the power of the Great Dao to push Turbid Qi downward. He was like a pair of cosmic bellows, drawing the Clear Qi above the Celestial Dome upward and pressing the Turbid Qi beneath the Great Earth downward. Each act of guidance cost him large amounts of primordial qi, but the growth speed of Heaven and Earth accelerated correspondingly.

Clear Qi rose, Turbid Qi sank, and the space between Heaven and Earth grew ever larger. Standing between the gradually separating Heaven and Earth, Pangu felt a sense of spaciousness unlike any before. So this was what the world had been like from the very beginning — Heaven above, Earth below, and between them, infinite possibility.

Pangu sensed that a stable circulation was forming between Clear Qi and Turbid Qi. It was not one-way separation but was like breathing — after Clear Qi rose, a portion would descend and meet the rising Turbid Qi, mixing and transforming in the middle, then separating again. Each cycle made the Clear and Turbid purer.

After persisting for a very long time, the circulation of Clear Qi rising and Turbid Qi sinking finally reached a dynamic equilibrium — Clear Qi no longer rose infinitely but formed a circulation layer at a certain height; Turbid Qi no longer sank infinitely but formed a sedimentary layer at a certain depth. For the first time, a clear dividing line appeared between Heaven and Earth, and that dividing line was where all future life would dwell. Pangu stood near that dividing line, feeling the two forces, above and below, converging around his body. This was the position he would guard, and the place where all things would grow in the future.

In the process of Clear Qi rising, vertical flow-trajectories were left between Heaven and Earth. Those trajectories were like invisible channels, along which Clear Qi moved from lower to higher. Those trajectories were not evenly distributed between Heaven and Earth — in some regions, the thickness of Clear Qi rising trajectories was very high, meaning those regions were the main channels of Clear Qi flow; in other regions, the trajectories were sparse, meaning the gas mobility there was poor and stagnation was prone to form. The concepts of 'channel' and 'obstacle' thus revealed themselves — the flow of Clear and Turbid could not be without channels; leaving them unimpeded paths was far more efficient than forcibly pushing them.

In the process of Turbid Qi sinking, Pangu discovered a phenomenon that interested him — Turbid Qi did not sink indiscriminately; it exhibited a kind of selectivity as it sank. The relatively pure Turbid Qi sank quickly, directly reaching the very bottom; while Turbid Qi containing impurities sank slowly, getting stuck midway. Those impurities stuck at different depths would, over the long course of deep movement, form different strata; different strata would contain different substances; different substances would support different life-forms. The Great Earth was not a monotonous block of stone but a complex structure layered upon layer.

The stabilized flow of Clear and Turbid caused Pangu's body to enter a new state as well. The rhythm of his breathing synchronized with the flow rhythm of Clear and Turbid — when he inhaled, Clear Qi rose; when he exhaled, Turbid Qi sank. Each breath was a fine-tuning of the order of Heaven and Earth, and each breath also deepened his connection with Heaven and Earth. It was not the death-still peace of Chaos, but the peace of equilibrium within motion.

The processes of Clear Qi rising and Turbid Qi sinking were not isolated; they carried out some subtle exchange in synchrony. In the process of rising, Clear Qi would release a portion of cool energy, which was absorbed by the sinking Turbid Qi; in the process of sinking, Turbid Qi would release a portion of warm impurities, which were carried away by the rising Clear Qi. This exchange allowed Clear Qi and Turbid Qi, even as each grew purer, to each acquire a small portion of the qualities that had originally belonged to the other — Clear Qi thus gained a trace of warmth and moisture; Turbid Qi thus gained a thread of nimbleness. Completely absolute separation was impossible; between all things there was always exchange and permeation, and it was exactly this exchange that made Heaven and Earth a living whole rather than two rigidly opposed blocks.

The Clear-Turbid circulation formed a great spherical qi-field between Heaven and Earth — Clear Qi flowed from below upward to the Celestial Dome, spread outward along the dome's surface toward all sides, cooled and descended at the dome's edges, met the rising Turbid Qi in midair, exchanged, and then separated again. It was a complete circulation, like an invisible giant hand driving all movement between Heaven and Earth. Pangu stood at the center of that circulation — he was both part of the circulation and its driver. He was the will of Heaven and Earth, and Heaven and Earth were the embodiment of his will.

The air currents produced by Clear Qi rising brushed past his skin, bringing an upward, gentle tactile sensation — like something lightly stroking across the surface of his skin, the direction of every air current clearly distinguishable. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell where the air currents were accelerating and where they were decelerating. His skin was a sensory web covering his entire body, every inch simultaneously transmitting the information of Heaven and Earth to his consciousness.

His toes spread slightly apart, feeling the changing texture of the Great Earth beneath his feet. Those slowly solidifying Turbid Qi sedimentary layers grew dense from soft under pressure. His toes embedded in that gradually hardening substance were like marks left on cooling wax. Those marks would not disappear — they would be permanently preserved as the Great Earth solidified, becoming the earliest fossils upon this earth — the traces of his standing.

In the process of Clear Qi rising, an exceedingly thin, semi-transparent qi-layer formed at the bottom of the Celestial Dome. Under the faint light, that qi-layer displayed a pale blue luster, like a thin gauze covering the inner wall of the Celestial Dome. That pale blue was unlike the murky darkness of Chaos and unlike the pure black of Void; it was an entirely new color belonging solely to this Heaven and Earth. Blue was the color of the sky, the color of Clear Qi, a chromatic symbol unique to a world in the process of forming.

After Turbid Qi sank to deeper reaches, some subtle changes appeared on the surface of the Great Earth — those originally soft sedimentary layers, under pressure, began to show faint textures, like the palm lines of the Great Earth, distributed in irregular net-like patterns across its surface. The thickness of those texture distributions was uneven — some places were as dense as spiderwebs, others as sparse as the outlines of distant mountains. Hidden within those textures of the Great Earth were the embryonic forms of future mountains and river valleys — those textures would, under the long action of deep movement and through millennia of the wearing of wind and rain and transformation, gradually form the diverse terrain of the Great Earth's surface.

Under the long-term action of the Clear-Turbid circulation, those Chaos odors that had once lingered between Heaven and Earth were gradually vanishing. Pangu drew a deep breath — the crispness in the air was even purer than before; the faint sour-rotten smell emitted by Chaos residues in the air had completely vanished, replaced by a fresh air carrying a trace of faint sweetness. It was the self-purifying capacity of Heaven and Earth — without him needing to act, the Clear-Turbid circulation was already purifying every corner on its own. It was one of the earliest signs that Heaven and Earth were beginning to operate independently.