The heavy stone door crashed down.
The instant it shut out every glimmer and sound from outside, the entire stone tower fell deathly silent.
Darkness and cold stretched before Li Yun.
Li Yun suppressed the instinctive surge of emotion in his heart and calmly surveyed his surroundings.
This was only the stone tower. It was not the Dark Abyss itself.
The tower existed solely to seal the entrance between the Dark Abyss and the surface.
To enter the Dark Abyss, he still had to find its entrance and step through it. Only then would he truly reach the First Layer.
Even so,
the air inside the tower was bone-chilling, and it carried a deeply unsettling presence.
Fortunately, his cultivation was profound. With a slight stir of Saint Power, he kept that presence away from his body.
Li Yun looked up. A long stone passage ran into the depths, where a pitch-black ancient gate floated, spanning the tower's entire width.
The gate was covered in dense, ancient golden imperial runes. Though countless ages had passed, their patterns still shone brightly, holding back the boundless darkness beyond.
This was the first Imperial Seal Gate of the Dark Abyss, separating the mortal world from its infernal depths.
As he stood in the stone passage, everything Yu Huafeng had told him about the Dark Abyss echoed through Li Yun's mind.
The Dark Abyss had originally been a natural cavern on the Imperial Star. No one knew how it had formed.
All anyone knew was that a terrifying Evil Defilement Power arose naturally within it. That power could corrode a Martial Artist's body, Saint Power, Divine Soul, and even Dao Fruit.
Thus, countless ages ago, the Ancient Emperor Changqing had personally sealed the cavern with supreme imperial techniques and reshaped it. He had prevented the