Chapter 478: The Dream Pure Land Reforged!

Yao and the children's return!

Yao's body shed from the light.

At the moment Sun Wukong reached out and caught her, her toes lightly touched the ground of Wanshen Fenchang.

Just that touch.

The gravel beneath her feet split open a crack.

A green sprout pushed out from the crack.

Sun Wukong froze.

The sprout shot up at visible speed, its leaves unfurling, and at the tip a pale purple flower bloomed.

Then a second.

Third.

Tenth.

One hundredth.

It was as if someone had buried an entire spring underground, and Yao's foot landing woke it up.

Flowers spread from under her feet, following the cracks in the gravel, along the broken temple steps, climbing up the fallen stone pillars, growing wildly all the way.

White, purple, gold—flowers of every color burst forth in this graveyard that had been dead for untold tens of thousands of years.

Wanshen Fenchang.

A place where even the bones had rotted away cleanly.

At this moment it was covered in flowers.

Sun Wukong held Yao, lowered his head to look at the surging sea of flowers at his feet, his mind still dazed.

Bodhi stood a few steps away, his withered right arm hanging down, left hand behind his back.

The old man's gaze fell on those flowers, his brow twitching slightly.

It wasn't him who did it.

It was Yao's own power.

To be precise, it was the remnants of her dream power, released instinctively the moment it touched reality.

What is the essence of the dream realm?

It is hope.

It is a longing for beautiful things.

This graveyard has been dead for too long, so long that even the concept of hope has been wiped clean.

And Yao brought it back.

When the flower sea spread to the edge of the battlefield, it stopped.

The heavenly soldiers and generals kneeling in the ruins had their ankles entwined by flower stems, frightening them into scrambling away.

But the flowers did not harm them.

They simply bloomed.

Quietly, peacefully blooming.

Sun Wukong had no mind to tend those flowers.

All his attention was on the person in his arms.

Yao's breathing was shallow, the rise and fall of her chest pitifully small.

But she was warm.

She had body heat.

She had a pulse.

She was alive.

"Yao."

Sun Wukong's voice sounded like sandpaper, rough and hoarse.

The person in his arms gave no response.

"Yao!"

He called again, his hand shaking badly, afraid to use force yet unwilling to let go.

Bodhi watched from the side, silent.

The old man's left hand, the only one that could still move, lifted slightly; a wisp of gray light drifted from his fingertips and landed on Yao's brow.

Yao's eyelashes twitched.

Sun Wukong's heartbeat skipped a beat.

Those eyelashes twitched again.

Like a butterfly's wings testing to open.

Then, slowly, a pair of eyes opened.

The first thing reflected in her pupils was a monkey face streaked with tears and snot smeared across half of it.

Yao's gaze was blank.

Empty.

Like someone just dragged out of a deep, deep dream, still unable to tell what is real.

Her lips moved.

"Wu... kong?"

The voice was as soft as a mosquito's hum.

Sun Wukong's eye sockets turned red again.

No.

His eye sockets have never been dry.

The iron staff had fallen to the ground at some unknown time, and he lifted both hands.

"It's me!"

His voice was trembling, yet his volume was frighteningly loud.

"It's me! Old Sun! I'm alive! Look!"

He grabbed Yao's hand and pressed it to his chest, that monkey heart pounding like a drum.

"Heartbeat! There's a heartbeat! I'm not dead! You're not dead either!"

Yao's fingers felt that scorching temperature and frantic rhythm.

Her pupils finally focused.

The bewilderment faded.

Cognition returned.

Memories flooded in like a deluge.

Dream Pure Land.

Black chains.

The sight of countless streams of despair surging forth.

The moment she turned herself into a light shield.

The face she thought she would never see again.

"Wukong!"

Yao's voice suddenly rose, tears poured down unstoppably.

She grabbed Sun Wukong's chest armor with her backhand, ten fingers digging into the seams of the armor woven from No Regret Dao Rhythm, as if clutching the last lifeline.

Sun Wukong could no longer hold back.

He suddenly tightened his arms, squeezing Yao entirely into his embrace.

His strength was so great Yao's bones were ringing.

"You damn..."

Sun Wukong buried his face in her shoulder, his voice muffled and indistinct.

"If you dare go off to die alone again..."

He didn't finish.

Because he couldn't go on.

His throat was blocked.

Yao was choked by him, unable to breathe, yet she didn't struggle at all.

Her hand loosened from his chest armor, slowly climbing up his back.

She tightly encircled him.

The two just held each other like that.

In the center of the flower-filled Wanshen Fenchang.

Around them it was so quiet only the sound of wind blowing petals could be heard.

Plus the sound of a monkey sniffling.

Bodhi stood aside for a while, feeling like a conspicuous lightbulb.

The old man stroked his sparse chin beard, the curve of his mouth unable to be contained.

"Young people."

He muttered to himself.

"Really full of vigor."

As his words fell, a strange sound came from the distant void.

Some of the billions of light points Bodhi had released with a wave of his hand earlier were now converging here.

Not souls.

They are consciousness.

More precisely, they are the consciousness fire seeds of the Blue Star Federation.

Those fragments of civilization that Yao had once protected in the Dream Realm with the Dream Pure Land.

With Yao's resurrection, they regained a passage back to reality.

When the first cluster of light fell, it turned into a blue light orb in the flower sea.

Inside the orb there was sound.

Very small, like an infant's wail, yet like the hum of a machine starting up.

Then came the second.

Third.

Fourth.

Increasingly more light orbs fell into the flower sea, arranging themselves in a sheet on the ground.

Each orb carried a complete consciousness community.

The surviving scientists, engineers, artists, and ordinary citizens of the Blue Star Federation, tens of thousands of consciousness fire seeds.

They had lain dormant in the Dream Realm for too long.

Now, the dream woke up.

When the largest of the light balls cracked open, an aged but excited voice came from inside.

"Detected……external environment change……Dream Realm agreement terminated……we……are back?"

Then came more voices.

"Alive? Is this real?"

"I saw flowers! Flowers! Not a Dream Realm simulation!"

"Federation core data preservation rate……ninety‑seven percent!"

"Where is the Creator? Is he here?"

Cheers rose and fell.

Those civilization Debris that had waited in the dark for who knows how long, upon confirming they had returned to reality, burst into the wild joy of having survived a catastrophe.

Sun Wukong lifted his face from Yao's shoulder.

His face was still wet with tears and snot, not yet wiped clean, when his ears perked up.

He heard those voices.

"Creator."

Those little fellows of the Blue Star Federation that he had personally pinched into existence.

He had initially wanted to toss them away because they were a hassle, then he couldn't bear to, and later he almost gave his life to protect them.

They lived.

They all lived.

Sun Wukong cracked open his mouth, revealing two rows of white teeth.

Tears still hung on his face, but his smile had already stretched to the base of his ears.

Ugly as hell.

Yao was in his arms, made to both cry and laugh by his tear‑ and snot‑streaked grin.

"Let go of me……I'm about to be smothered to death……"

Sun Wukong loosened his grip a little.

Just a little.

Yao took a deep breath, lowered her head, and saw the sea of flowers beneath her feet and the distant flashing blue light balls.

She froze.

"This is……"

"Your children."

Sun Wukong's voice still trembled, but it carried a smile.

"They've all come back."

Yao's tears welled up again.

Bodhi watched this scene, his gaunt body leaning against a broken stone pillar.

His disabled right arm hung limp at his side, unmoving.

But the smile on the old man's face was genuine.

It was not mockery, not jest.

It was the contentment of an elder who sees his children safe and well, rising from the depths of his heart.

"Enough, enough."

Bodhi spoke, his tone scornful yet laced with undisguised indulgence.

"Have you cried enough?"

"My old arm's still useless, but you guys are having a celebration here."

Sun Wukong laughed heartily.

He supported Yao with one hand, picked up the iron staff from the ground with the other, and hoisted it onto his shoulder.

Tears still streaked his face, but his smile shone as bright as the sun.

Then he heard it.

In the farthest reaches of the void.

That aged voice sounded again.

"Junior Brother, your courtyard is very lively."

"May I come over and sit? I hope you don't mind."

Bodhi's smile faded.

The old man slowly straightened his body, his gaze sweeping past the flower sea, past the ruins, toward the distorting region at the edge of the void.

Sun Wukong also felt it.

An aura older than Hongjun, older than the Original Mistake, was approaching.

It was drawing near.