Chapter Ninety-Eight: Desperate Survival, a Glimmer of Turning Point

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

At the brink of total Primordial Source exhaustion, a glimmer of turning point appeared. The Savage Fiends he had suppressed underground, in the very process of their gestation, had begun to reversely absorb the harmful substances within the turbid blight. Dangerous though the fiends were, their existence was also consuming the blight's strength.

It was an unexpected discovery. Pangu realized that a self-balancing working might exist between Heaven and Earth — every force had its opposite, and opposites constrained and consumed each other. The Savage Fiends were an extreme product of Turbid Qi, yet their very existence was eating away at the turbid qi's foundation.

He no longer tried to exterminate the fiends outright. Instead, he began guiding their existence, using them to curb the turbid blight's spread. He placed restrictions around the fiends to prevent their excessive growth, but preserved a portion to serve as natural purifiers of Turbid Qi.

This strategy yielded unexpected results. The turbid blight's rate of spread slowed markedly, because a large portion of the turbid matter was being absorbed by the fiends. Though the fiends themselves were also growing stronger, at least Pangu now had more time to handle other problems.

Desperate survival, a glimmer of turning point. On the verge of despair, Pangu had found a new way to survive. He no longer tried to eliminate every threat completely, but had learned to coexist with threats, using threats to combat threats. This was a more mature wisdom.

Just as Pangu's Primordial Source was about to bottom out, an unexpected change occurred. The turbid qi residue he had suppressed had not vanished — it had settled in a specific location deep underground, where it accumulated, fused, and reacted. A new kind of energy had been generated — different from chaotic qi: gentle, honest, weighty. This new energy rose from the depths and automatically replenished the Primordial Source Pangu had depleted. The turning point came at the moment Pangu was closest to giving up. After one prolonged confrontation, he was exhausted to the extreme, barely able to maintain his heaven-bracing posture. And in that very moment, he felt something he had not felt since opening Heaven and Earth — Heaven and Earth remained stable even without his full support. It was a calm, confident stability, as if telling him, 'I can help you share the burden now.' The Chaos Primordial Embryo deep within the world was emitting pulses stronger than usual — pulses that were aiding him in maintaining the world's equilibrium.

After that confrontation, which had lasted three full days and nights, Pangu barely had the strength left to stand. His arms hung limp against the Celestial Dome's underside, draped there — his body's entire weight was borne by his skeleton alone; his muscles could no longer exert any force at all. Eyes closed, he gasped for air, his chest heaving violently. Every breath felt like it had been dragged up from the deepest pit, carrying a bloody, metallic taste — the signal that his internal primordial qi was nearly exhausted. He thought that after this rest, he would straighten his body and continue bracing the heavens. But when he tried to straighten his back, he found that his body no longer responded to his commands as it always had. His back remained bent, his legs still trembling — his body had refused to obey his orders any longer.

And in that very moment, he sensed a subtle, unfamiliar change. Without any exertion from him, the base of the Celestial Dome had maintained its original height — it had not collapsed due to his slackening. Pangu froze, then tried again. He slowly withdrew most of the strength from his arms, retaining only the most basic contact. The Celestial Dome sank barely the thickness of a palm, then stopped. A gentle force, emanating from deep within the Chaos Primordial Embryo, was holding it up. That force was not strong — only about a fifth of his normal bracing power — but it was undeniably there. It was helping him hold up the heavens.

Pangu's breathing halted. He looked down into the earth beneath his feet. Deep within, the Chaos Primordial Embryo was transmitting bracing force toward the Celestial Dome in a rhythm he had never seen before — slow, steady, composed. That force was like a pair of palms, propping up the dome's base from below, sharing a portion of his burden. The Chaos Primordial Embryo was responding to his condition, was bearing some of the load in his place. Heat rose behind his eyes. He did not know why — it was an unfamiliar sensation, like something caught in his throat, rendering him speechless. After such an eternity of solitude and pressure, for the first time, a force besides his own was helping him sustain this world. Those invisible palms reaching up from the depths stirred in him a profound, wordless emotion.

He crouched down and pressed his palms against the earth. Through the ground, he felt the Chaos Primordial Embryo's pulse — thump, thump, thump — and between that pulse and his own heartbeat, a subtle rapport had formed, rising and falling in turn, like two beings breathing in synchrony. The Chaos Primordial Embryo was establishing a new mode of connection with him — bidirectional comovement. The Chaos Primordial Embryo was growing, was learning to do certain things on its own. Pangu's palms lingered on the earth for a long while. He savored the sensation of that pulse reaching his palms — gentle, rhythmic, brimming with life force. It felt like a child, pressing its tiny fingers against his palm from the other side.

In the days that followed, Pangu began to consciously collaborate with the Chaos Primordial Embryo. He discovered that if he aligned his rhythm with it — exerting force when the embryo pulsed, relaxing in the intervals between — his strength consumption dropped by nearly half. It was a new way of bracing the heavens: no longer brute endurance, but riding the world's own rhythm, following the natural flow. He tried to align his primordial qi rhythm with the Chaos Primordial Embryo's pulsation. At first, his timing was always a half-beat too fast or too slow; the two would not match. He adjusted several times, straining to synchronize his pulse with the embryo's, and gradually found that rapport. When the two finally synchronized, he felt a smooth flow — as if a blocked water channel had at last been cleared. That force streamed from his body into the earth, then back from the earth into his body, forming a perfect circuit. The sensation reminded him of his first metamorphosis long ago — like passing from infancy into youth, the relationship between his body and the world entering a new phase.

He began to reassess his situation. With the Chaos Primordial Embryo's assistance, he could free up more energy to deal with the turbid blight and other problems. Though the fundamental issue of his power depletion remained unresolved, at least he now had more breathing room. That breathing room was brief, but every day's respite bought him more time. The Chaos Primordial Embryo's self-moving bracing capacity was slowly strengthening — at first it could only share a fifth of the load; a few days later, it increased to a quarter; and after some time more, to a third. The Chaos Primordial Embryo was growing — by absorbing the loose primordial qi drifting between Heaven and Earth. The Chaos Primordial Embryo had learned its own way of feeding.

During a short rest, Pangu sat on the earth with his back against the Celestial Dome's lower edge. His eyes were half-closed, his breathing steady and deep. Above the dome, the light of the newborn sun filtered through the clouds and fell upon his face. He felt that warmth — pure light and heat, radiated by Heaven and Earth themselves. That warmth was different from the primordial qi flows within his body — it was gentler, carrying no purpose, simply shining upon him in silence. In that warmth, Pangu felt a silent companionship. Heaven and Earth were no longer merely objects that needed his support — they had begun to have their own warmth, their own pulse, their own strength. That strength was still small, still far from enough to replace his bracing, but its very existence already signified one thing: this world he had brought into being was learning, little by little, to stand on its own.