Legend has it that in ancient times, when heaven and earth were undivided, the entire universe resembled a giant egg, with chaos reigning inside—a pitch-black void where up, down, left, right, east, south, west, and north were indistinguishable. Yet within this egg incubated a great hero, none other than Pangu, in Chinese Mythology, the creator of heaven and earth.
Pangu incubated within the egg for a staggering eighteen thousand years, until finally awakening from his slumber. Opening his eyes, he found himself surrounded by darkness, overwhelmed by scorching heat, and unable to breathe. He attempted to stand, but the eggshell tightly enveloped his body, rendering even the slightest movement impossible. Enraged, Pangu seized a colossal axe that had been with him since birth and swung it with all his might. With a deafening roar, the colossal egg suddenly shattered. Light and clear substances ascended upwards, forming the heavens, while heavier and murkier substances gradually sank, forming the earth. Pangu had thus opened up the heavens and the earth, filled with immense joy. However, fearing that heaven and earth might recombine, he propped up the sky with his head and anchored the earth with his feet, demonstrating his divine powers and undergoing nine transformations every day. With each passing day, he grew taller by a zhang (a Chinese unit of measurement), causing the heavens and the earth to also rise and thicken by a zhang. This continued for eighteen thousand years. By then, Pangu had become a towering giant, with a body spanning ninety thousand li (another unit of measurement). For countless more years, he endured, until finally, the heavens stabilized and the earth solidified, no longer at risk of recombination. Only then did Pangu finally relax. However, the heroic creator of heaven and earth was utterly exhausted, lacking the strength to support himself any longer. His colossal body collapsed with a thunderous roar.
As Pangu approached death, his body underwent tremendous transformations. His left eye turned into the blazing sun, his right eye into the silvery moon. His final breath became the wind and clouds, his last sound the thunder. His hair and beard transformed into glittering stars, his head and limbs into the four poles and towering mountains of the earth. His blood became rivers, lakes, and oceans, his veins roads, his muscles fertile land. His skin and hair became flowers, grasses, and trees, his teeth and bones transformed into gold, silver, copper, iron, jade, and precious stones. His sweat became rain and dew. And thus, the world came into being.
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