Exhausted by the eighteen-thousand-year labor of holding heaven and earth apart, Pangu finally died, and his body's transformation completes the world's creation. His breath became the wind and the clouds, his voice the rolling thunder, his left eye the sun and his right eye the moon. His four limbs and torso became the four cardinal directions and the mountains that anchor them, his blood the rivers that run through the land, and his muscles and veins the roads and fertile fields that people would later till. His hair and beard scattered to become the stars strung across the night sky, his skin and the fine hairs on his body became the grasses and trees, his teeth and bones the metals and rock, and his marrow became precious jade and stone.
In some versions of the story, the parasites living on Pangu's body, warmed and nourished by the wind, are transformed into the first human beings, though this detail is recorded later and less consistently than the rest of the transformation. The Pangu cosmogony is notably later in written record than most other major world creation stories, first appearing centuries after texts like the Daodejing had already discussed cosmic origins in more abstract terms, and some scholars have proposed it may show influence transmitted along trade routes from South or Central Asia, a question that remains unsettled.