The chaos remained empty, save for the fairy palace and the black ship.
Restoring a secondary world was a simple matter for Zen, but he needed to maintain order and decide
what to revive and what no longer needed to be revived.
"The Pear Hill!"
Splash!
Loose earth and rubble gathered back together into boulders and land forms.
Trees and plants sprouted from the soil and grew rapidly.
Buildings rose from the ground until entire cities were made whole again.
The human race, the Snake Goddess race, all manner of creatures, great and small, were resurrected
in a flash.
The Pear Hill had been destroyed not by the downgrading, but because of the erosion of the Extreme
Form energies and the invasion of the Troubled Creatures from the Burial Land.
The newly revived creatures were thus still so gripped by fear of the already vanquished Troubled
Creatures that they just milled around warily.
Zen nodded to the Snake Goddess. "It's your turn," he said.
"Okay."
The Snake Goddess' eyes lit up. The Pear Hill meant everything to her. She had been devastated to
see it destroyed. But now it had been revived, so had her zest for life.
Whoosh!
In a flash, the Snake Goddess stood on the jadeite platform.
"My dear people, the worst is over for the Pear Hill!"
The people in the Pear Hill were unaware of what had happened, but they began to realize that the
Troubled Creatures had disappeared. The Snake Goddess' words were the final assurance to put them
at ease.
What happened next still left them too dumbfounded to celebrate, however. "Source World, restore!"
Zen had revived the Source World. And the Pear Hill was returned to its original place in it!
The inhabitants of the Pear Hill gasped as a blue cover reappeared in the clear sky above them.
"Are we back in the Source World?"
"Oh, my God! I can't believe it!"
"It must be a miracle!"
Zen had chosen to bring everything back to the way it was after the Evil God had killed the Yellow
Thearch and the Divine Farmer. The Source World and its countless creatures now continued on with
existence as if nothing had changed.
"The divine land, restore!"
"The Ruin Graveyard, restore!"
"The Other Shore, restore!"
"The chaos, restore!"
"The chaotic energy, restore!"
"The six Chaos Ancient Gods, restore!" Zen brought everything back in quick succession.
He recognized that even the chaos and the chaotic energy played an important role in the ecosystem
of the world. Zen, however, saw no need to bring back the Burial Land, the downgrader, or the Snake
Spirit King. They were better off in oblivion.
Zen waved his hand, recreating the bodies of the Primeval Lord of Heaven, the Grand Supreme Elderly
Lord, Ziya, the real Snake Goddess, the real Fuxi, Eastern Emperor Taiyi, Zhurong, Gonggong, and the
real Emperor Charm then infusing them with their energy souls. They materialized in the fairy palace.
Then Zen proceeded to bring back Chiyou and the Nine Li race. Even restoring people from different
eras like that proved no difficulty for him.
People were shell-shocked upon resurrection. Ziya, for one, clearly remembered dying in the fourth-
grade world. Now, he suddenly found himself in the fairy palace. Everyone was caught in a state of
bewilderment. It took some time before it finally sank in, and for the joyful revelries to begin.
It was three days before Zen could hold a banquet in the fairy palace.
Nearly a thousand people showed up to join the celebrations.
Among them were Yasamin and Flamine, who busied themselves all throughout dinner playing
matchmaker for Zen.
Hence, three months later, a grand wedding banquet was held in the Bloom Divine Province of the
Source World.
Dignitaries from the various provinces traveled thousands of miles from across the Source World to
attend. Nearly a hundred thousand people witnessed the momentous occasion.
Three years later, Zen had six new children, three boys and three girls.
Life was good and completely at peace for the next three decades.
One day, Zen was at the top of the Deep Space.
He stared thoughtfully at the gray soil before him, hands behind his back.
In the past thirty years, he had studied the gray soil closely. Based on his memories, Clarence had
done the same before.
Zen, like any other human, had an infinite desire for knowledge.
He hadn't understood before why Clarence had created Mastema, but now he had.
For Clarence, there was no difference between the World of Nothingness and the perfect land.
If there was no choice or challenge to freedom, it just started to feel like a boundless imprisonment.
In the past thirty years, there had been no limits to what Zen and his loved ones could pursue.
However, none of these pursuits made him feel fulfilled.
He spent more and more time on the gray soil, searching for something he could not quite understand.
The search had proved futile so far.
Zen sighed.
He sat cross-legged in the air, hovering in deep thought over the gray soil.
It was then that he noticed a thin black crack over the earth.
Zen's eyes widened. He floated hurriedly down to the crack.
The crack couldn't have just appeared naturally. The gray soil was rock-hard and didn't easily break. As
Zen came closer, he realized there was a dark green liquid seeping out of the crack.
Zen reached out his hand. The moment his fingers made contact with the liquid, Clarence's voice rang
out in his mind.
"I have left the perfect land, Zen.
I knew you would be curious about the world outside the perfect land eventually, so I left this message
for you through the liquid, the only thing that can penetrate the gray soil.
I couldn't find where the black soil ends, but I did find an underground cave of unknown depths.
By the time you receive the message, I would have already left through this secret passage.
If you also ever want to leave the perfect land, the only way out for you is to turn to the Evil God."
The message ended there. The dark green liquid quickly solidified and turned into ashes. The black
crack quickly closed and disappeared, as if it had never been there.
Zen mulled over what Clarence had said. "The Evil God, huh?" Zen murmured to himself.
He disappeared from the spot, reappearing the next moment at the hillside of the Pear Hill.
In a clearing in the forest stood a simple thatched hut. This had been Edna's residence for the last thirty
years.
All this time, she had just been waiting for the Creator to fulfill his promise of reviving the Evil God.
She had never thought to pressure Zen, however. She chose to wait patiently. She could wait for
endless years.
Edna was startled to see Zen, but the surprise on her face soon gave way to a faint smile. "Is it time to
revive him?"
Zen nodded. "Yes."
"But he's very dangerous," Edna reminded.
"Danger gives meaning to life," Zen replied, with a small shrug.
Energy began to surge in the void.
Substances began to condense.
A body began to take form.
A heart began beating.
The man opened his eyes slowly, a knowing smirk pulling at the corners of his lips.
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