Chapter One Hundred Forty-Eight: The Millennium Stalemate — the Fiends Gradually Weaken

Volume Four: The Dao Gives Rise to Myriad Things — Life First Sprouts

A thousand years passed. The Savage Fiends, though relentless, were not infinite. Each eruption consumed their reserves; each sealing by Pangu's will diminished their reach. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the tide began to turn.

The intervals between surges grew longer — from decades to centuries. The violence of each surge diminished — from world-shaking cataclysms to localized outbreaks. The black lake at the heart of their web shrank, its level dropping inch by agonizing inch across the centuries.

Pangu tracked these changes with the care of one who had measured the growth of Heaven itself. He knew the fiends were weakening. He also knew they would never truly be gone — the source was too deep, too fundamental to the world's structure. But they could be reduced to a manageable threat, a background danger that the world's future guardians could handle.

The surface world recovered between each surge. Plants regrew; the green returned; the first simple animals — tiny things that swam in the water and crawled in the soil — multiplied and spread. Life was resilient. It had inherited that resilience from its creator.

The millennium stalemate, the fiends gradually weakening. Pangu, looking out across a world that had survived its greatest trial, allowed himself to believe that the worst was over — that the foundation he had laid would hold.