Chapter Fifty-One: Heaven Grows High and Earth Grows Thick, Each Day One Zhang More

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

The continued separation of Clear and Turbid brought a notable result — Heaven grew taller each day, and Earth grew thicker each day. Pangu recorded this change using his own body as the measure. The first day, Heaven rose one zhang — roughly three meters — and Earth thickened one zhang. The second day, again one zhang each. The third day, still one zhang.

One zhang more each day — this rate was astonishingly stable. Pangu discovered that this was the inner law of Heaven and Earth's growth. Just as he had possessed the rhythm of the Ninefold Daily Transformation in Chaos, Heaven and Earth too possessed their own growth rhythm. One zhang per day was the external manifestation of that rhythm.

As Heaven and Earth grew, Pangu's Dao Body was also growing in synchrony. This was the counter-effect Heaven and Earth produced upon him. With each zhang Heaven rose, he grew one zhang taller; with each zhang Earth thickened, he grew stronger. A wondrous synchronous relationship had formed between him and Heaven and Earth.

Though the speed of one zhang per day was slow, under long accumulation it would eventually create a magnificent Heaven and Earth. Pangu did not know how long this process would need to continue — one year, ten years, a hundred years? But he knew he had no choice. He would keep propping until Heaven was high enough and Earth was thick enough to their proper measure.

Day after day, year after year. Pangu counted by day and night, measured by spring and autumn. The first decade slipped by in silence; the first century passed in solitude; the first millennium walked past in stillness. The Celestial Dome had risen a thousand zhang; the Great Earth had thickened a thousand zhang. He still stood there, two hands propping Heaven, two feet planted upon Earth, like a stone statue unchanged since time immemorial.

Heaven grew one zhang higher each day. Earth grew one zhang thicker each day. Pangu grew one zhang taller each day. These three synchronously growing numbers constituted the deepest operating logic of this Heaven and Earth. Pangu had not initially noticed the connection among the three until one day he discovered that the top of his head was exactly pressed against the bottom of the Celestial Dome, and the soles of his feet were exactly resting on the surface of the Great Earth. However much he grew, Heaven and Earth grew the same. He was the measure of Heaven and Earth.

One zhang per day — this rate appeared to Pangu as both fast and slow. Fast, because each day brought change, unlike the Chaos Era where thousands of years passed as one day; slow, because each zhang of growth was only an insignificant small step compared to the ultimate height Heaven and Earth would reach. In that day-after-day growth, he learned patience — not the passive endurance of the Chaos Era, but conscious participation in a slow yet certain process. So long as he persisted long enough, the endpoint of Heaven's height and the endpoint of Earth's thickness would, on some day, arrive simultaneously.

Pangu's body, through the daily synchronous growth, was also quietly undergoing changes. The lines of his muscles grew ever sharper; every muscle could answer his frame in bearing the weight. His spine, through day-after-day stretching, grew ever more elongated; the gaps between his joints, in the process of growth, were continuously filled with new bone matter, making the entire spine ever sturdier. His fingers, from prolonged upward-propping, grew thick and powerful; the skin at his knuckles, under long-term pressure, formed thick calluses — the traces of years that Heaven and Earth left upon this body.

He noticed that the growth of his height was not evenly distributed throughout the day — most of the growth occurred late at night, when the temperature between Heaven and Earth dropped to its lowest point, and his body would quietly lengthen in that cold. At dawn, when he opened his eyes, the height of the Celestial Dome was exactly one zhang higher than the day before, and the top of his head was exactly one zhang higher than the day before. Everything was exactly synchronized, without deviation, without delay.

Within that synchrony lay a feeling Pangu could not put into words — he was not independent of Heaven and Earth; he was a part of them. Heaven and Earth felt growth through him; he measured time through Heaven and Earth. One zhang per day was both the rhythm of Heaven and Earth and his rhythm. It was not about achieving some grand objective but about witnessing, through each day's tiny growth, Heaven and Earth progressing from embryonic form toward completion.

The law of one zhang per day maintained a stable rate across the long ages. Pangu began to use this law to predict the future of Heaven and Earth — at this rate, after ten thousand years, the Celestial Dome would rise over thirty-six thousand zhang, and the Great Earth would thicken by the same measure. By then, the space between Heaven and Earth would have become extraordinarily vast — so vast that, standing at the center, he would not even be able to see the boundaries clearly. The future scale of Heaven and Earth was far more magnificent than this newly formed world of the present. Everything now was only the beginning.

The synchronous growth of Heaven, Earth, and Pangu left distinct traces upon his body. His body, through day-after-day expansion, was stretched ever taller and sturdier — his head nearly touched the bottom of the Celestial Dome; each time he lifted his head, his chin would graze the surface of that membrane. His feet were sunk deep into the sedimentary layers of the Great Earth; his toes had already touched the bedrock at the very bottom. He was becoming an existence of the same scale as Heaven and Earth — not him catching up to them, but Heaven and Earth growing around him. He was the eternally unshakable core of this world.

At daybreak each day, Pangu would lower his head and glance at his shadow. That shadow shortened from extremely long at sunrise to extremely short at noon, then lengthened again at sunset. In the day-after-day changes of that shadow, he intuitively felt the movement of light for the first time — when light came from the east, the shadow pointed west; when light came from the west, the shadow pointed east. Wherever light reached, shadow faced the opposite way. Where there was light, there was shadow; where there was brightness, there was darkness; the two could not exist alone.

Heaven was growing, and he was growing too. But Pangu's body, through day-after-day stretching, was no longer growing as uniformly as it had in the Chaos Era. His arms grew faster than his legs, because the upward pull of the Celestial Dome far exceeded the downward pressure of the Great Earth. His fingers grew more markedly than his wrists, because his fingertips directly bore the contact pressure from the bottom of the Celestial Dome. The fastest-growing parts were the parts under the greatest force. His body was the stress-map of Heaven and Earth.

The speed of one zhang per day was slow and constant, but Pangu's perception of that speed was not constant. In the first thousand years, he felt each day's zhang-increase was a great stride; Heaven and Earth were growing rapidly. By the fifth millennium, he began to feel that though the growth was still steady, the perception of speed was no longer as distinct as at first — like a building growing taller each day; the changes of the first few floors were the most noticeable, but above the tenth floor, each added floor was less visually striking. His mindset, through that change in perception, underwent a transition from excitement to calm — from marveling each day at the growth of Heaven and Earth to ordinarily accepting that growth as the norm.

As the Celestial Dome grew ever more distant from the Great Earth day by day, Pangu now had to tilt his entire upper body backward to see the highest point of the Celestial Dome. His backward-tilted neck was like a bowstring drawn to its limit, every muscle fiber stretched straight. When Heaven and Earth finally took their complete form, he might already need to lie fully back to see the whole of the Celestial Dome. That change in posture was the most direct marker of Heaven and Earth's growth — from level gaze to upward gaze, from upward gaze to backward tilt, from backward tilt to lying beneath the boundless firmament.

In the waiting, he learned patience. In earlier days, he had passed time by counting the Celestial Dome's growth — how many zhang today, how many zhang tomorrow. Later, he stopped counting — not because he had forgotten the habit of counting, but because counting itself had no meaning. The growth of Heaven and Earth would not accelerate or decelerate because of his counting; it would only advance according to its own rhythm. His attention shifted from zhang and chi to macro cycles — how many rounds of the Ninefold Transformation his body had undergone, how many cycles of crack-repair the Celestial Dome had experienced.

The growth of his body was most pronounced in the deep stillness of night. When the faint light between Heaven and Earth faded to its dimmest and the cold of the day-night alternation was heaviest, he could hear his bones emitting, in the darkness, a low sound of extension — not the sound of breaking, but a sustained sound like bamboo shooting up, carrying resilience. That sound echoed through the night, like the watch-bell of Heaven and Earth, tolling the growth of each day.