Fifty-six years after Chen Daolin arrived on the Ancient Burning Continent.
In the depths of the roaring, surging Endless Blood Sea, within a dark, lightless expanse, a black-haired young man floated through the seawater with his eyes closed, as though asleep. Yet his body trembled from time to time, proving that he was enduring some kind of painful torment.
Over the years, Chen Daolin had remained more than ninety thousand kilometers beneath the sea, constantly enduring the soul-pressure assaults and baleful energy corrosion from the Endless Abyssal Sea. Whenever his will was breached, he would fall into an illusion.
For an ordinary demigod, having their will broken and falling into an illusion meant risking the loss of reason, becoming a mindless shell or a lunatic. But Chen Daolin was different. Every time he became trapped in an illusion, it tempered his soul, will, and mind.
No matter how terrifying the illusion was, he could always break free in the end, while continuing to descend deeper and deeper.
Over forty years, Chen Daolin had descended another 1.25 million meters. Only the last hundred thousand meters remained before his target of one hundred million meters.
Yet those hundred thousand meters had troubled Chen Daolin for a full decade, becoming a bottleneck for him.
After breaking free from another illusion, Chen Daolin floated in the dark, lightless waters. His hair drifted around him, and beneath his bangs, his black eyes remained stained with fading blood-red.
"Sure enough... it still isn't enough?" Chen Daolin panted and muttered.
Chen Daolin had never felt this way before. It was as though he faced an unbeatable opponent. No matter what methods he used or how desperately he charged forward, he could not shake that bottleneck.
As he tempered his soul and will over that long span of