Apotheosis

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 la

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.