Then Gungun rose from the cloud, flew down to the Forestwood Demon God's physical body, and reached out a paw to stroke its trunk. "Demon God, how much of your strength did you recover after receiving that merit?"
"Creak, creak~" The towering tree swayed slightly, answering Gungun through its thoughts: seventy to eighty percent.
Seventy to eighty percent.
That was no small figure, especially for a demon god. Even seventy to eighty percent of its strength-its physical strength alone-was a height many mighty beings throughout the heavens could never reach in their lifetimes.
And so Gungun felt reassured. It lowered its paw, turned around, and surveyed the Primordial World as it now stood.
The Four Seas were calm, and life had returned to the eight wildernesses. Yet...
The resentful qi filling the sky and the endless piles of bones told it, in the starkest terms, how wretchedly all living beings had suffered through this kalpa!
"Whoosh!" Above, Ao Yue had finished familiarizing himself with his new cultivation realm. He streaked down as a beam of light and landed beside Gungun, gazing into the distance with it. After a while, he sighed. "With such terrible casualties, who knows how long it will take for the Primordial World to regain the prosperity it enjoyed before the War of the Liches?"
"Perhaps it'll never reach those heights again. Well, perhaps not," Gungun said.
Ao Yue did not argue. After a moment of silence, he asked, "Fellow Daoist Gungun, the Witch-Demon Calamity has passed. What... do you intend to do now?"
"Now..." Gungun scratched its head, looked up toward the Heavenly Court, and smiled. "Didn't I tell you? I'm going to be Heavenly Emperor. That throne is mine for the taking. Why turn down something free?"
"Are you serious?" Ao Yue asked with a