Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The central city of the Capital of God was a garden world. Giant buildings blended into the vegetation. Wizard servants walked along the cloisters. Countless fairies flew inside, beating their glowing wings and chatting joyfully. The heavenly city was filled with happiness and the beauty of nature.
On the top level of the central Witchcraft Garden, Verthandi arrived. Another goddess was already standing next to Lu Zhiyu. It was Kelly, the Goddess of Light. She had left the Major God Kingdom and arrived at Lu Zhiyu’s Capital of God one step ahead.
Lu Zhiyu took the Sword of the King from Verthandi. The weapon shone brightly with silver light. The long-lost divine artifact with the power to rule part of the Major God Kingdom had now finally been returned to him. Lu Zhiyu looked to Verthandi.
“Never let someone steal it again!” he scolded. “This is not a children’s toy. Luckily I did not give it complete authority like before. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been just the underworld and Swirl Continent that were affected!”
Verthandi blushed. “What do mean ‘let someone steal it,’ Dad? I took it! I took it from my own home!” she said.
Delmedi walked past Lu Zhiyu and sat where he usually sat. Lu Zhiyu grabbed Delmedi’s ear and dragged her out of his seat.
“Ouch! Dad! What are you doing?” she protested. “I went down there personally and caught all those who escaped from the underworld! I also brought Lynn Ahenaten, the troublemaker, back to the underworld! The judgement of justice awaits him!”
Lu Zhiyu glanced sideways at Delmedi.
“The judgement of justice?” he said, “I need to bring you to trial first! All this happened under your watch. If you don’t clean up the mess in the underworld, all sorts of disasters are going to happen in the main world!”
Lynn Ahenaten was eventually eliminated from the candidates for a god’s name by Lu Zhiyu and sealed in the underworld. Unlike the Star Kingdom, the underworld was a crucial part of Maria’s World. It controlled the deaths of all lives and the reincarnation of all souls. As Maria’s World developed, the supernatural powers grew stronger and the system of the gods was perfected.
The underworld had now become the most important half bitwall other than the main world. The main world was the kingdom for the living, while the underworld was the land for the dead. All those who had died, and all creatures of the dead, lived in the underworld. It was no longer just a place for reincarnation, but a world that controlled all ghosts and powerful monsters.
It was inevitable. As long as there were living, there would be dead. Lu Zhiyu could not wipe out the dead from this world. Therefore, he could not blame Delmedi for this disaster, or the system of the underworld created by the demi-emperor, Cetisius.
As for the underworld, it was designed solely for the reincarnation of souls, not for the controlling of ghosts. At the time it was designed, the system of the gods was not fully developed, and ghosts and death creatures were still manageable. Therefore, Lu Zhiyu had not thought about perfecting the underworld.
The only solution was to alter the current system of the underworld. It would be made into not only the home for souls but a kingdom for the dead so that it could control all ghosts. It needed to embrace the system of the dead and utilize all their power to strengthen the underworld.
Nevertheless, Delmedi needed to learn a lesson. She was barely seen in the underworld even though she was the Goddess of Death.
“I was visiting my sister’s kingdom! I am just a guest!” Delmedi said.
“You were either in your sister’s kingdom or messing around in the Major God Kingdom. You were running around in the main world or just slacking in my Capital of God. You haven’t done any work at all!” said Lu Zhiyu.
“What’s the point of working so hard!” Delmedi said. “You don’t care about any of the worlds. Stupid god’s name, it’s worth nothing. No one could ever be more powerful than Dad.” She rubbed her ear. It was not painful at all, but she pretended to be pathetic.
Lu Zhiyu’s harsh criticism kept Delmedi’s head down. Despite all of her flaws, however, Lu Zhiyu did not wish to appoint someone else as the God of Death. It was a crucial role for Maria’s World. Even if Delmedi was incompetent and slacking, she was still family, which made her better than anyone else. Lu Zhiyu would never give a god’s name to someone who was not close to him.
“My lord, it’s time to make some changes in the underworld,” Kelly said as she looked to Lu Zhiyu. “The current system can no longer control the growing amount of ghosts. If Kings of the Dead rose up later, it would be difficult for the underworld to control them.”
Kelly and Lu Zhiyu had already had a long conversation about the underworld the last time she’d visited the Capital of God. The final decision had been to divide the underworld into nine levels, each level a different death world. The deeper the level, the more dangerous and powerful ghosts would be constrained within.
After an internal competition, a King of the Dead would be selected for each level as a side-god for the Goddess of Death. They would be responsible for their level, controlling the rules and authority of that level, as well as the power of the bitwall. In this way, the system of the dead could be part of reincarnation.
Other than souls, all ghosts were now under the control of the Goddess of Death, which significantly increased her authority and responsibility. Anyone else would be thrilled, but Delmedi had become lazier and more and more like Lu Zhiyu these days. Lu Zhiyu felt his hands were tied.
Lu Zhiyu reached out, and the entirety of Maria’s World was immediately projected on the screen on the wall. The enormous world was like a giant, translucent egg of chaos. The bitwalls wrapped around the entire world, looking like a polyhedron. The sun within shone brightly. Lights were reflected and refracted. The whole world was embraced by dreamlike shine.
Inside the world, apart from the enormous main bitwall and the Star Kingdom was the huge half bitwall of the underworld. It was as if a giant bubble had grown out of the bottom of the world, controlling all deaths. The giant sun and the dark land of the underworld were visible within.
Lu Zhiyu reached out, the semi-perpetual bio-optic brain in the center of the Capital of God gave out dazzling beams of light. All data of the underworld was calculated by its power, and all the details of the underworld were projected accurately in everyone’s sight.
“Divide the bitwalls. Define the reincarnation,” said Lu Zhiyu.
Immediately, the structure of the entire underworld started to crumble from the surface to its core. The oval-shaped bitwall transformed into nine layers of concentric circles.
Each layer had completely different landscapes and environments. Some had erupting volcanoes like the lava realm. Some were freezing cold like the icy land of the North Sea. Some were covered completely by black oceans, reeking of putrefied, rotten despair.
The closer to the core, the harsher the environment. In the center, there was nothing but endless darkness. This was the world of void, the divine palace of the Goddess of Death and the Deathbringers, and the giant City of Souls, Rom.
The River Styx ran across the nine realms. The enormous entrance to the underworld stood at the entrance of the outmost layer, at the end of the river.
The guardian of the entrance to the underworld, the soul-eating Goat Devil Haem, came back to life in confusion, without a clue about how this world had been changed. Standing on the giant entrance to the underworld, Haem trembled, watching the entrance shift and crumble as the Styx extended. It seemed like the entire world was collapsing.
“Oh! What’s going on?! Everything is collapsing!” shouted the denizens of the underworld.
The ghosts that lived within felt the sky and earth spinning around as the entire world revolved and changed. It was as if they were sucked into a giant whirlpool.
“We are doomed! What is happening? Is this the end of the world?” they cried.
“The world of death is now doomed!”
Countless ghosts and powerful creatures of death who lived deep down in the underworld screamed in fear and tried to flee, but they were still trapped within and fell down into the bottom of the underworld as it transformed.
When everything quieted down at last, ghosts and creatures of death crawled out of the reborn land and realized that the entire underworld was now completely changed.
“The underworld was the place of reincarnation! Now this is Hell!” they exclaimed.
“The Kingdom of ghosts and souls, Hell!”
Lu Zhiyu stopped. The Kingdom of the Dead was now completely different, more complex, and more sophisticated. With the new system in place to control the souls, the land of the creatures of death was now combined into a perfected half bitwall. This was now a world with its own unique rules.
With the adjustments finished, Lu Zhiyu felt that the entire world had taken a step forward. The World Perfection Plan was now in motion.
