Ballad of the True Spirit

In ancient times, the world was a chaotic void. The god Pangu found the murky scene repulsive and resolved to create a different world, one of his own design. He put all his strength into splitting the chaos in two: the upper half became the sky, and the lower half the earth. To keep them from ever merging again, the great god Pangu held up the sky with both hands and pressed down the earth with both feet, standing between them day and night for ten thousand years. As the sky grew ever higher and the earth ever thicker, Pangu's divine power was finally exhausted. On the verge of death, he spotted something glimmering gold, appearing and disappearing as it circled through the mist. Drawn to the strange object, he opened his mouth wide and breathed it toward his lips. It looked like a colorful lotus, with a red stamen and golden leaves, dancing freely and humming softly. Pangu found it exquisitely beautiful and swallowed it. In an instant, his blood surged and his thoughts blazed with strength; he became mighty beyond measure. Another six thousand years passed. The sky and earth were now separated by ten thousand zhang, and Pangu no longer feared they would fall back into chaos. Yet the vast, empty world still weighed on his heart, so he transformed his body into all things in heaven and earth. The divine object had been born from Pangu's thoughts, formed from the essence of heaven and earth. When Pangu's body perished, the object shattered as well. A red stamen fell into the human world, while its divine golden leaves scattered across the Six Realms. Possessing immense power, the object came to be known by later generations as the