Boundless deathly silence. Darkness that had endured for all eternity.
Li Yun did not know how long he had sunk into it. It felt like an instant, and yet like an age without end.
A violent ache and bone-piercing cold finally dragged him out of his dark stupor.
He choked out a breath of stale air. His eyelids felt impossibly heavy; only with tremendous effort did he slowly pry them open.
What met his eyes—
Pure, utter darkness, without a trace of anything else.
There was not a glimmer of light, but he sensed nothing sinister, either.
Deathly stillness and darkness seemed to have congealed around him. All color and life had been stripped away, leaving only the heavy dark to envelop him.
Bitter cold burrowed through every limb and bone, eating into his flesh and numbing his Divine Soul.
Li Yun struggled upright. Only when his back touched the hard, cold stone did he faintly hear a drop or two of water slipping down the cave wall.
"Is this... a cave?"
"No..."
"Before I passed out, I think I heard a voice?"
"Something like... 'Sinner judged by darkness, welcome to the Endless Dark Abyss'?"
Through the haze, Li Yun suddenly recalled that strange whisper he had heard just before losing consciousness.
His heart jolted.
"So... this place is called the Endless Dark Abyss?"
"It sounds a little like Dark Abyss in the Evergreen Ancient Domain, but it's even darker here. As if this place can't tolerate the slightest bit of light?"
At that thought, Li Yun instinctively tried to call upon the Saint Power within him.
As a human being, he could neither get used to nor much liked such darkness.
If there was no light here, he would make his own.
But in the next instant, his expression