Chapter Ninety-Seven: Primordial Source Depleted Further, Exhaustion Laid Bare

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

The unrelenting double crisis — internal and external — drained Pangu's Primordial Source at an accelerating pace. His Spirit-Platform Sea had dimmed to an unprecedented degree. Where once a resplendent sea of stars had blazed, now only a few faint glimmers remained. His Spirit-Consciousness, which had once blanketed the Eight Expanses, had contracted sharply, able now to sustain only perception of the core region.

The decline of his physical body was even more evident. Pangu could feel that his sinew and bone no longer possessed their former strength. His arms would tremble involuntarily while bracing the Celestial Dome; his legs would bend slightly under the weight of supporting the Great Earth. He had to exert himself ever harder just to maintain the same posture.

What troubled him more was that his recovery capacity had dropped to nearly zero. Before, the strength he consumed could recover somewhat over time. Now, there was only outflow with no replenishment. His body had become a leaking vessel, Primordial Source draining from him continuously with scarcely any replenishment.

With exhaustion laid bare, Pangu no longer stood as tall and straight as before. His form was still colossal, but the aura of one who upheld the heavens and trod the earth had greatly diminished. He stood between Heaven and Earth like a weary traveler who had walked far, far too long, yet could see no end in sight.

Primordial Source depleted further, exhaustion laid bare. Pangu continued to endure at the extreme limit. He did not know where the end lay, but he knew he could not stop. The moment he stopped, everything would collapse.

The cost of battling the Chaos remnant spirits was far greater than he had anticipated. Every suppression of a counterattack wore his Primordial Source thinner. His body began to show signals he had never seen before — his joints crackled when they moved; his vision occasionally blurred for brief moments; his hearing could no longer capture the faintest vibrations on the Celestial Dome as it once had. The further depletion of his Primordial Source was affecting him across every dimension. He found he needed to insert longer and longer recovery intervals between actions. Before, he could handle problems across Heaven and Earth continuously without pause; now, after every more significant task, he needed to stop and catch his breath. The time needed to catch that breath was stretching out bit by bit — from a few breaths at first to the span of an incense stick, and from an incense stick to longer still.

Only a handful of star-points still glimmered in Pangu's Spirit-Platform Sea. Those star-points had once been the most brilliant primordial qi cores within his body, each one carrying the strength of a mountain range. Now their light had dimmed nearly to invisibility, like candle flames guttering in the wind, liable to extinguish at any moment. He sank his Spirit-Consciousness into the Spirit-Platform Sea to inspect it and found the seabed covered with desiccated fissures. Where once liquid primordial qi had brimmed, now it was entirely consumed, exposing the barren color of the seabed beneath. The fissures radiated in every direction, bottomless, as if the earth had cracked open at its deepest point. His Primordial Source was leaking ceaselessly through those cracks — like water seeping from the fissures of a broken bowl, slow and irreversible.

He raised his right hand and looked at his palm. The lines on his palm were deeper than before, because the skin had lost its former fullness. Those lines were like sun-cracked mud on a dry riverbed, rough and slack. The veins on the back of his hand jutted out more prominently than before, blue-purple channels rising and falling across the back of his hand like the exposed roots of an ancient tree. He clenched his fist hard and felt a rough, grating friction at his knuckles — the lubricating fluid between bone and bone had thinned; every grind of contact brought a small spike of pain.

His legs were in even worse condition. Pangu looked down at his thighs, where the muscles trembled faintly — a persistent, fine tremor, like the low hum of a bowstring drawn to its breaking point. It took willpower to stop that trembling, but his willpower itself was being consumed. Every time he commanded himself to stand straight, the trembling would temporarily vanish, but the moment he loosened his attention even slightly, it would return. He tried adjusting his posture, shifting his center of weight from his left leg to his right. His right leg immediately protested — a creaking noise came from the knee, like an old wooden door being pushed open. That sound echoed through the empty expanse between Heaven and Earth, traveling far before bouncing back, reverberating beside his ears.

His vision was beginning to blur. At first, it had only been an occasional and brief fogging — his eyes as if covered by a thin gauze, the scenery in his line of sight turning hazy and soft. A blink would clear it, leaving only a mild dizziness. But lately, that fogging was appearing more and more often, and each episode lasted longer. Once, he opened his eyes and found the world before him had gone completely dark — his eyes had lost all function, and he could see nothing. That darkness lasted for over a dozen breaths before slowly, like a tide receding, it recovered bit by bit. In that moment, he felt true fear for the first time. Not fear of death, but fear of helplessness — if his eyes never saw again, could he still guard this world?

The roaring in his ears grew ever more frequent as well. It was not sound from the outside world but noise rising from within his own body — the rush of blood flowing, the thump of his heart beating, the hiss of breath entering and leaving his lungs. Before, those sounds had been silent, physiological activities that required no attention. Now they had grown so loud he could not ignore them. He could hear his blood laboring through his vessels — like a river in the dry season, its volume insufficient, its flow sluggish, crawling forward haltingly over the riverbed. He could hear his heart beating in his chest — its force far weaker than before, as if something was pressing down on it, every contraction requiring its utmost effort just to pump the blood out.

His digestive order had begun to betray him as well. In the past, his body could absorb primordial qi from the outside world to replenish itself. Now, that absorption channel had nearly completely sealed shut. Most of the primordial qi he took in simply passed through his body, with only a minuscule fraction retained for use. It was as if he were putting food into his mouth but unable to swallow — the primordial qi circulated once through his body before dissipating from his skin back into the air. He could feel the speed at which that primordial qi left his body — it was as if it had a will of its own, unwilling to stay inside him. All he could do was watch helplessly as it drained away.

The mental exhaustion was harder to bear than the physical. His thinking had slowed. Before, he could process a hundred matters simultaneously — sensing the condition of the Four Poles, maintaining the Celestial Dome's stability, tracking the flow of Turbid Qi, monitoring the Chaos remnant spirits' movements — all at once, like a hundred threads weaving together in his hands. Now he could manage barely a dozen matters at a time, and each one demanded his full concentration. His attention was easily absorbed by a single task, leaving gaps in the others. Several times, he had been so focused on clearing the turbid blight from the ground that he neglected his support of the Celestial Dome, causing the southeastern dome to collapse by three or four zhang. He rushed to brace that section again, but those three or four zhang of loss meant that all his prior efforts had been in vain — the heavens would have to grow tall all over again, and his time bracing them would stretch even longer.

For the first time, he felt an emotion called 'dejection.' It was not as violent as rage, not as profound as sorrow — it was a dull, sticky, draining feeling, like something lodged in his chest that he could neither spit out nor swallow. Pangu had never experienced an emotion like this before. The only feelings he had known were pain, exhaustion, loneliness — clear, direct sensations that could be faced and endured. But dejection was different. It was a stifling frustration with nowhere to vent, an anxious restlessness at seeing the destination yet being unable to reach it. He struck his own chest hard with a muffled thud. His chest did not hurt, but the dejection did not vanish either — it was like a shadow, utterly unresponsive to his defiance, merely following him in silence wherever he went.

When deep night fell, the stars upon the Celestial Dome lit up one by one. Those stars were the embers his Primordial Source qi had left upon the firmament — every star corresponded to a portion of his consumed strength. Their light flickered in the darkness like candle remnants stirred by wind across the land. Pangu looked up at those stars and suddenly realized something — their brightness was diminishing. A year ago, when he had gazed upon those stars, their radiance had been far brighter than now. Back then, he had not yet faced the Chaos remnant spirits, not yet endured the turbid blight's erosion, not yet ventured deep underground to probe the stirring of those fiends. The stars were dimming one after another, just as his strength was fading bit by bit. He did not know how much starlight he still had left to burn. All he knew was that so long as a single star still shone, he would continue to hold on.