Shang didn't pay close attention to the world anymore.

He had comprehended whatever he wanted to comprehend.

From now on, he would only look at the world when he got bored.

While Shang entered some kind of hibernation, Abaddon, Gregorio, and the Archivist started to create life.

First, they started by scattering a lot of Life Mana across the world.

However, there was an issue.

Life Mana needed actual life to hang onto. Otherwise, it would just disperse.

So, they created many different kinds of small organisms.

They had seen the tiny organisms that had lived all over the old Aterium.

However, they didn'tjust copy them.

After all, they needed new life.

So, they made several changes.

Naturally, there were uncountable numbers of failed experiments.

Sometimes, the organisms just fell apart.

Sometimes, their copies became more and more distorted until they couldn't even split anymore.

Near the beginning, creating new life hadn't seemed that hard. After all, the Archivist and Abaddon had done that many times before.

But then, they quickly realized that things weren't as easy as they had been back then.

Back then, they had only needed to design a species to fit into an already existing environment.

Now, they needed to create everything from scratch.

Designing a world was extremely difficult.

In fact, it seemed almost impossible.

As tiny bits of life returned, time also mattered again.

For over 10,000 years, the three of them only managed to create some small, isolated areas with life in them, and the life wasn't even very diverse or original.

Even more, the more the life stretched across the world, the harder it was to keep the life going.

This wasn't like Earth, where the life adapted to the environment.

No, in such a grey and dead world, the environment was adapting to the life.

This made things so much more complicated and difficult.

After another 10,000 years, the three of them finally managed to get the hang of things.

After such a long time of trial and error, they had finally gotten some kind of feeling for what worked for life and what didn't.

Naturally, the one with the strongest feeling was Abaddon.

Another 10,000 years later, they managed to populate about 1% of the continent.

Surprisingly, the Eternal Ocean was already starting to fill with life.

The reason for that was that designing life for the Eternal Ocean was quite easy since there were far fewer different environments inside an ocean.

Another 10,000 years later, they filled over 25% of the world.

And another 10,000 years later, the world was teeming with life again.

However, everything was different.

There were different mountains, different crevices, different forests, different deserts, and so on.

One animal barely gave off any Elemental Mana, but all of them combined gave off a lot of Elemental Mana.

At this point, the engine of life had effectively become self-sustaining.

The three of them didn't need to add anything new anymore.

New plants and animals were appearing on their own.

They had done theirjob.

The world was filled with life again, and every bit of Mana that had been hogged by the unfathomably powerful beasts and humans from the past era was up for grabs again.

A new opportunity for the world.

Eventually, one of the animals would learn how to use a tiny bit of Mana to harden its skin by a tiny bit, giving it an edge against its competition.

That would be the first beast.

Then, more and more beasts would learn how to do that, and eventually, they would unlock the ability to actually gather Mana in their bodies and permanently transform and change them.

And at some point, something would attain sapience.

They would become the iteration of humans in this new world.

But all of that was for the future.

When the engine of life had become self-sustaining, a form of enlightenment had entered into the minds of the three of them.

The level six Concept of Life, Genesis.

Even Gregorio had comprehended it.

Sadly, since Gregorio didn't know all the other Concepts of Life, the power of his Concept of Genesis was very weak.

If he wanted it to be as strong as the one from Abaddon, he would need to comprehend the other Concepts of Life first.

They were done.

As Gregorio watched across the world, teeming with life, he felt like he had done the right thing.

This world is so much more hopeful than the last one. It was so beautiful and pure.

Meanwhile, Abaddon was redesigning his Path.

Since he now had access to every single Concept in existence, he could finally perfect his Path.

Eventually, Abaddon created a small sphere.

It was a tiny world, and everything was present in it.

The next moment, Abaddon closed his eyes and put the sphere to his forehead.

Ding!

Some kind of magical sound reverberated throughout the world.

This sound even managed to pull Shang out of his isolation.

Abaddon smiled in excitement as Shang looked with interest at Abaddon.

Right now, Shang could feel that Abaddon had achieved some kind of perfect connection with the world.

In fact, Abaddon's Spirit Sense had stopped being constrained.

Just like Shang, Abaddon's Spirit Sense had encompassed the entire world.

But while Shang had dominantly forced his power and will on the world, Abaddon was working together with the world.

The world was helping Abaddon, and Abaddon was helping the world.

It was almost like Abaddon had taken control of the world!

But then, Abaddon started to frown.

The next moment, Abaddon looked at Shang.

"I think I found that God of yours," he said.

Shang grinned.

"Some kind of force or being is controlling Aterium," Abaddon explained. "It feels like some kind of powerful hand is forcefully grabbing the sphere of Aterium."

"This force comes from an empty place with no Mana.'

"This place is located in some kind of sub-dimension."

Shang looked with interest at Abaddon.

"Is there a way to get there?"

Abaddon just nodded.

"I can create a portal."