Great-Dao tier / Beyond Heaven’s Way

Before the chaos had divided into heaven and earth, Pangu woke among the green lotus and the primal vapour, took up the Pangu Axe and struck at the boundless dark. The axe-light parted the clear from the turbid; the clear rose and the turbid sank, and the first heaven and earth of the world appeared.

They still tended to close again, so Pangu stood between them with the blue sky on his head and the earth beneath his feet, growing ten feet taller each day. After holding them apart for an unknown span of years, the clear and turbid at last stood fixed, and his strength was spent and he fell.

After Pangu’s death his eyes became the sun and moon, his blood ran into the rivers, his bones rose as mountains, and his breath became wind and cloud. In the Honghuang account the Three Pure Ones and the Twelve Ancestral Witches were engendered from his primordial spirit and his blood as well.

A being who can open a world before any Heaven’s Way exists and whose own body becomes the ten thousand things is usually placed at the Great-Dao tier, beyond Heaven’s Way; apart from Pangu, only a few late figures of particular novels ever reach that position.