Heavy death energy churned ceaselessly, and sinister winds howled through the Demonic Grotto's valley.
Annihilating black mist shrouded the entire valley year-round. There was neither sun nor moon, neither life nor spirit, only an ancient, undispersing malice of decay, piled layer upon layer between heaven and earth.
Make, the Highgod overseer, hovered in midair, cold patterns of law flowing across his pitch-black demonic armor.
Those were restraining Divine Runes forcibly branded upon him by the Demon Domain—not authority, but shackles.
His Highgod pressure weighed heavily upon the surroundings, not to display his strength, but merely as the sliver of disciplinary power the Demon Domain granted its prisoner overseers.
He had probed Shiheng several times with his divine sense just now, but every attempt had been silently blocked by the other man's restrained, profound resonance of the Way.
Layer after layer of divine sense sank like stones into the sea, unable to uncover even the slightest trace of his foundations.
Over his thousand years guarding the Demonic Grotto, Make had seen far too many prisoners who studied the Death Law.
Over hundreds of millions of years, countless Lowgods and Midgods naturally attuned to the Great Way of annihilation had stumbled into this place.
Yet no prisoner could escape the fate engraved into the Demonic Grotto-they could scrape by, but could not advance; they could gain insight, but dared not absorb.
The Death Otherworld Flower was formed from the condensed death essence of the heavens, its medicinal properties overbearing and its malice overwhelming.
Ordinary deities who cultivated the Death Law could, at most, passively bathe in thin death energy, slowly comprehend the Death Law, and delay the erosion of their divine souls. That was all.
If they dared absorb the Other Shore Flower's essence directly, the violent power of annihilation would shatter