Chapter Ninety-Six: Savage Fiends, Breeding in Darkness

Volume Three: Supporting the Cosmos Across Eternal Ages — Heaven and Earth Take Fixed Form

The spread of the turbid blight was troubling enough, but even more alarming was what the blight was beginning to coalesce into as it diffused: Savage Fiends — violent destructive entities bred from mutated turbid qi deep underground. Signs of these fiends had appeared as early as the first dawn of opening Heaven and Earth. Now they were stirring anew in the depths, stronger than before. They were the extreme form of Turbid Qi, brimming with primal urges of destruction and ruin. They differed from the Chaos remnant spirits — the latter were Chaos's counterattack, while Savage Fiends were products of Heaven and Earth themselves.

Pangu probed with his Spirit-Consciousness and found the Savage Fiends slowly taking shape deep underground. They gathered in the densest concentrations of turbid blight, growing like embryos wrapped in the blight's shroud. Once they matured and burst their cocoons, they would bring enormous catastrophe upon the world.

He tried to strangle the fiends before they could fully form. But his strength was no longer sufficient to confront so many threats at once. If he suppressed the remnant spirits outside, he could not attend to the fiends within. If he dealt with the turbid blight, the remnant spirits would exploit the opening. He was trapped in a dilemma where he could not cover both ends.

Pangu realized he needed to make hard choices. He decided to prioritize protecting the main structures of the Celestial Dome and the Great Earth. As for the Savage Fiends' gestation, he could only let it be for now. So long as the world's framework held, there would always be a way to deal with the fiends eventually. But if the main structure collapsed, everything would be lost.

Savage Fiends, breeding in darkness. Pangu made desperate trade-offs at the limits of his strength. But would his future self truly have a solution? Even he was uncertain.

One mass of Turbid Qi was coalescing far faster than all the others. While Pangu fought the smaller qi masses, it had devoured vast swaths of Turbid Qi residue, its bulk swelling to match the sum of all the others combined. It lay quietly in a fissure of the earth, disguising itself as an ordinary boulder. But inside it, something was changing — the center of its murky vortex had begun to crystallize, gradually taking on a vague outline: the embryonic form of a Savage Fiend. In the deepest layer of Turbid Qi deposits, Pangu discovered a change he had never seen before. The turbid qi was no longer passive residue — it had begun to actively absorb every usable energy source around it: the earth-fire heat radiating from deep within the Earth Veins, the faint primordial qi leaking from the clear-turbid circulation, even the trace quantities of willpower seeping through the seals he had placed. That absorbed energy was being recombined by the turbid qi in a manner unfamiliar to Pangu, forming something bearing a rudimentary structure — something resembling vitality. In that vitality, Pangu sensed the first stirrings of a savage, untamed life force: the sprouting of a fiend.

Pangu discovered the anomaly deep underground while tracking an especially active mass of Turbid Qi. That mass moved far faster than others of its kind, slithering through the rock strata like a snake pushing forward. Pangu's Spirit-Consciousness locked onto it and followed it thousands of zhang downward. The deeper he went, the greater the surrounding pressure grew, until even his Spirit-Consciousness was compressed nearly beyond the ability to extend. Just as he was about to catch it, the turbid qi mass suddenly accelerated and vanished into a narrow subterranean crevice. Pangu pressed his hands against both sides of the crack and wrenched it open. Rock shattered in his grip, clattering into the darkness below. He saw a deep, downward-slanting underground passage, its walls riddled with coarse pores puffing gray-brown gas. That gas was far hotter than the surrounding rock — as warm as the body heat of a living creature, carrying an ominous warmth.

He vaulted into the passage. It was far deeper than he had anticipated, twisting downward through the darkness, growing wider the deeper it went. Strange patterns began to appear on the rock walls on either side — spiral designs carved into the stone surface by some force. The centers of those patterns all pointed in the same direction: toward some deeper location underground. Pangu raised a hand to touch the patterns. The instant his fingertip met their surface, a sharp, needle-like sting shot up his finger. That sting felt different from the turbid blight — the blight was sticky, a slow corrosion; this sting was direct, hostile, carrying a clear intent to attack. The patterns were actively striking at anything that touched them.

Pangu pulled back his finger and saw a needlepoint-sized black dot on the tip. The dot was spreading along his fingerprint — infiltrating inward, extending toward his bloodline. He sealed his fingertip with primordial qi and forced the black mote out of his body. The spot fell to the ground and sizzled as it corroded a small pit. He stared at that pit, his brow furrowing. This thing was more proactive, more aggressive than any form of Turbid Qi he had ever known. It was not merely filth — it had its own intent.

At the passage's end lay a vast underground cavity, thousands of zhang in diameter. Its walls were covered with those spiral patterns, glimmering with a dim phosphorescence in the gloom. At the cavity's center hovered an enormous vortex of Turbid Qi — its diameter many times his own height, rotating with slow, powerful momentum. At the vortex's center was a black crystal the size of an egg, its surface alive with flowing luster, like the eyeball of some creature slowly turning.

Pangu stepped closer. The black crystal abruptly ceased its rotation and turned toward him, as if it had sensed something. Pangu felt the illusion of being stared at — the crystal was 'looking' at him, sizing him up through some means beyond vision. That gaze carried neither benevolence nor malice, only a pure, curious scrutiny. Yet the very fact of that scrutiny unsettled Pangu — a truly dead thing would not 'scrutinize' anything.

He extended his hand, attempting to probe the crystal's nature with primordial qi. The instant his primordial qi touched the vortex's outer edge, the entire cavity shook violently. The spiral patterns on all four walls lit up simultaneously, a piercing black light devouring every trace of phosphorescence. The black crystal emitted a sound — a vibration that acted directly on the Spirit-Consciousness, like fingernails scraping across his Spirit-Platform Sea. Pangu's Spirit-Consciousness swayed under the impact, and he had to press his palms against his temples to steady himself.

The vortex began to accelerate. Turbid qi at its edges was flung against the walls, splashing outward before flowing back toward the center along the spiral patterns. The entire cavity had become a giant vortex order — turbid qi cycling, concentrating, growing ever denser within it. At the vortex's heart, the black crystal pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. Pangu felt a resonance between that pulsing and his own rhythm — a discordant, antagonistic interference. The crystal was trying to suppress the rhythm of his primordial qi.

Pangu retreated several paces. The vortex slowed somewhat. He retreated further, and the vortex nearly returned to calm. Pangu stopped and looked at the now-quiet turbid qi vortex. A heavy realization rose in his heart — this thing reacted to his presence. Draw near and it grew frenzied; retreat and it subsided. This meant it already possessed some minimal degree of self-awareness — a passive, instinctive ability to react to threat. But Pangu knew its self-awareness was still developing toward a higher level. For now, it was still acting on pure instinct, but it was learning. It was memorizing him, studying him, searching for his weaknesses.

He withdrew from the cavity. At the last moment before turning away, he glanced back — a fine crack had appeared on the surface of the black crystal, and through that crack shone a thread of dark red light. That light came from within the crystal. In that thread of red light, Pangu sensed a savage, primal hunger — it wanted out, it wanted to devour, it wanted to destroy.

As he returned to the surface, a sensation seeped across his back — not pain, but a deeper, instinctive alertness, something akin to premonition. It rose from the base of his spine, creeping upward along his vertebrae to the back of his skull, making his scalp tingle faintly. He looked back at the ground behind him. There was nothing there — but deep underground, something was watching his retreating figure.

He returned to his heaven-bracing position, both arms once again supporting the Celestial Dome. The instant his palms touched the dome, he felt another impact from the Chaos remnant spirits — a thunderous crash, force traveling from his palms through his entire body, rattling his bones until they crackled. He withstood the impact firmly, but his knees visibly buckled. Something was growing underground; something was hammering from beyond the heavens. His body stood between them, a stone being squeezed by two forces at once. Pangu closed his eyes and drew a deep breath — that breath lingered long in his chest, carrying a silent, stubborn refusal to bow to fate.