Not long after he was locked up, the Court of True Gods sentenced the Creditor to death.
His divine power was extracted.
For a True God, that isn't an ordinary savings account. It's the resources left over after an entire existence has been liquidated.
His rights involving more than forty worlds were also taken: for those not yet taken over, the debt claims; for those already taken over, ownership of the world.
All of it went into the Supreme True God's accounts.
Pangu was still waiting for those funds.
——
The month the Creditor's death sentence was carried out, the funds came through.
Shunyi brought in a notice.
"Master, two new items have come into the accounts."
One was the divine power liquidated from the Creditor; the other was a register of the takeover and rescue of more than forty worlds.
Debt claims and ownership were listed separately. The Supreme True God had transferred these rights to Pangu, putting him in charge of governing the worlds that had been seized, and of setting new repayment arrangements for the worlds still carrying debt.
Pangu's own debt contract was in the appendix too.
The debt claim had been returned to him, and the remaining principal and the obligation to pay interest were both canceled. The clause that one late payment would lose him his world no longer hung over New Taiwan.
Pangu read it twice before handing that page to Qianhui.
——
The worlds the Creditor had seized, or whose debt contracts he still held in his grip, were now all Pangu's to handle.
Paid for with the Creditor's life.
——
A True God's whole life takes up just one line in the books.
Lined up with the other numbers, it doesn't look any different.
What Pangu didn't know was that if his second creation had also failed back then, he would have been dealt with the same way.
——
Pangu sat beneath the World Tree and peeled a candied chestnut.
Very sweet.
He didn't peel a second one.