"Boom!" A deafening roar echoed!

The sky above the abyss shuddered violently. Wisps of Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, visible to the naked eye, converged from all directions, gathering and flowing in the high sky to form a massive spiritual funnel. This funnel channeled an immense amount of Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi into the abyss.

Not far from the abyss, within a mountain valley, a giant face materialized on a lush green tree. Its gaze shifted towards the abyss, and its roots began to tremble violently. The entire tree swayed as it moved forward.

Within the valley, the earth and rocks cracked open, and the dense ancient trees on either side retreated, creating a wide avenue for the verdant tree to advance rapidly.

The face on the tree was filled with confusion. After rushing forward for nearly a hundred miles, it suddenly noticed that, in addition to the boundless Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi converging downwards from the direction of the abyss, a torrent of baleful aura was also rising from within the abyss.

The tree's writhing roots abruptly halted, and a hint of apprehension appeared in its eyes.

After a moment of hesitation, this tree demon, whose aura had reached the Taiyi Realm, turned its body and retreated back into the valley without looking back.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles below the abyss, Han Li floated in mid-air, radiating a dazzling golden light like a golden sun. This light kept the dense baleful aura at bay, several tens of feet away.

The dazzling golden light coalesced into strands of golden threads, weaving a golden cocoon that enveloped his entire being, revealing only a hazy silhouette.

Boundless Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, like an enormous golden waterfall, cascaded down from above the abyss, pouring onto the golden cocoon. This formed a massive spiritual vortex, emanating waves of tidal fluctuations.

In the abyss, where light had not shone for countless millennia, the dense baleful aura had not yet completely dissipated. Under the illumination of this golden light, a hazy halo resembling mist rose up, scattering dazzling rays.

This extraordinary phenomenon of a golden waterfall lasted for three full days before gradually subsiding.

At that moment, a joyful long cry suddenly echoed from within the abyss. From the enormous golden cocoon, a blazing golden light rose, cleaving through like a long sword, splitting the entire cocoon in two.

Han Li's figure flashed out from within. His eyes shone with golden light as he opened his mouth and inhaled towards his surroundings.

A gust of howling wind suddenly rose as all the golden light within the abyss rushed back like a river flowing in reverse, converging into his mouth and being completely absorbed into his abdomen. Even the golden cocoon dissipated into golden starlight, flying into his mouth.

Simultaneously, a golden spot emerged on Han Li's back, flickering on and off as it continuously absorbed the remaining Spiritual Qi from the surrounding world.

Finally, the eighty-fourth immortal aperture had been opened!

Like the previous immortal apertures, this one also contained a trace of black baleful aura, even thicker and more pronounced than the others.

Han Li's expression remained calm. With a wave of his hand, a golden light shone from before him, and a massive golden treasure wheel materialized, spinning and releasing waves of golden ripples.

Over four hundred clusters of Time Dao Runes lit up on the golden treasure wheel, emitting dazzling light. Strands of Time Crystal Silk wrapped around the wheel's body, numbering a full eighteen.

Han Li raised his hand, and the eighteen strands of Time Crystal Silk immediately straightened like needles, flying towards him.

As they approached his palm, the golden threads softened and wrapped around his fingers.

Feeling the waves emanating from the Time Crystal Silk, Han Li muttered to himself, "I didn't expect that cultivating the fourth level of the Mantra Wheel Sutra to perfection would condense so many Time Crystal Silk without me realizing it. In that case, the power of the Mantra Treasure Wheel will increase even further, giving me more confidence in facing that Gold Devouring Immortal."

With that, he waved his hand and retrieved the Mantra Treasure Wheel into his body.

As all the golden light dissipated, the surrounding dense black baleful aura spread once more, engulfing him.

Because Han Li had absorbed a considerable amount of baleful aura, the density here was not as intense as when he first arrived. However, deeper into the abyss, it remained a murky black, with the density of the baleful aura hardly changing.

Han Li took a deep breath, sat down cross-legged, retrieved a pill for stabilizing his realm, and closed his eyes to regulate his breath.

…

After three full days and nights, Han Li reopened his eyes and stood up in mid-air.

"The deadline mentioned by that person is not far off. It's time to arrange countermeasures with Fellow Daoist Xie and the others…" he muttered to himself, looking up at the abyss above.

Just as he was about to fly upwards, a familiar voice suddenly appeared in his sea of consciousness: "Fellow Daoist Han, now that you've come this far, don't you want to delve deeper into the bottom of the abyss and see what's so strange about this place?"

Han Li's expression changed slightly, and he frowned as he said, "Mo Guang, didn't I already cut off your external senses? How do you know where we are?"

"Fellow Daoist Han, please don't misunderstand. It's not my fault. It's just that the baleful aura accumulated in your body suddenly increased sharply, which strengthened my connection with the outside world a bit, but that's all," Mo Guang quickly explained.

"Baleful aura? Isn't Fellow Daoist Mo Guang a Heavenly Devil? How can you use baleful aura?" Han Li raised an eyebrow slightly and asked.

"Baleful aura is not limited to humans or demons. Anyone who commits acts of killing can condense it on their own. And we, the Heavenly Devil race, are more sensitive to these negative energies than you humans," Mo Guang chuckled and explained.

While talking to him, Han Li secretly examined his own condition and that of Mo Guang, and found that there was indeed nothing unusual, so he relaxed slightly and asked, "Fellow Daoist Mo Guang, you suddenly suggested that I explore the bottom of the abyss. Have you already discovered something?"

"Well… to be honest, I haven't found anything concrete. I just have a faint feeling that there's something very special down there. I'm just making a suggestion. If Fellow Daoist Han doesn't think it's worth seeing, then forget about it and don't take it seriously," Mo Guang said before falling silent.

"Since Fellow Daoist Mo Guang has a feeling, it wouldn't hurt to take a look," Han Li said after a moment of silence.

With that, he leaped down and continued to fly downwards into the abyss.

After descending several hundred miles, the surrounding baleful aura became even denser. Even with Han Li's current cultivation and strong spiritual sense, he still felt some discomfort.

He had now cultivated to the late stage of the Golden Immortal Realm, and prolonged exposure to the baleful aura while impacting immortal apertures had caused subtle changes in both his physical body and his spiritual soul, allowing him to gradually merge with this baleful environment.

However, with the deadline approaching, he didn't plan to continue using the baleful aura to increase his cultivation, so he had already decided that if the baleful aura became too dense for him to bear, he would stop descending and return immediately.

But at that moment, a gigantic, emerald-green skeleton suddenly appeared in his line of sight.

Compared to what he had seen on the mountain wall earlier, the size of this skeleton was almost the same as that of the Gold Devouring Immortal.

Its body was long and narrow, with a spine arching like a mountain ridge in the middle. Rows of ribs lined each side, and the lower limb bones were still intact, standing upright without any collapsing. It looked as if it were still maintaining its standing posture from when it was alive, without any change.

Han Li flew down from the skeleton's back, and his feet finally landed on the ground.

According to his estimation, he was now at least two thousand miles away from the pit entrance above.

A pit two thousand miles deep was unheard of in the past.

As he pondered, he bypassed the mountain-like body of the skeleton and came to the front. He saw that the head of this alien beast skeleton was drooping on the ground. Black baleful aura was constantly rising from the large eye sockets, dissipating into the surrounding void.

Its head was wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, and at the front of its protruding snout, there were two door-panel-like giant teeth. It looked somewhat like a giant rat.

Han Li immediately thought of the green giant rat he had seen in the baleful aura illusion before, and thought to himself, "Could this be the remains of that giant rat?"

In the center of the giant rat's forehead, there was a neatly severed wound that ran all the way to the back of its head. It looked as if it had been pierced by some weapon, and it should have been the fatal wound that led to the death of the giant rat demon.

There was clearly no spiritual energy fluctuation from its skeleton anymore, but when Han Li stood in front of it, he still felt a tremor in his heart, and a sense of insignificance like standing before a mountain arose in his heart.

In particular, the giant rat's two door-panel-like giant teeth were different from the emerald green color of its body. The color was darker, showing a dark green color like duckweed, and there were obvious fluctuations of laws emanating from them.

As he was wondering, he was about to step forward for a closer look when his eyes narrowed slightly. He suddenly discovered that behind the giant rat's head, there was actually a male corpse lying there, wearing a purple robe.

"This is…" Han Li raised an eyebrow and muttered to himself in surprise.

He saw that although the male corpse's human form was still intact, his skin was purplish-blue, and he looked emaciated. The clothes on his body were already tattered, covered with a layer of black particulate matter like dust.

Han Li walked past the giant rat's head and went forward, immediately feeling an extremely strong baleful aura rushing towards him, causing his footsteps to stop and his brow to furrow.

His eyes flickered as he looked at the male corpse's cheeks, only to realize that his appearance was not old, but because his cheeks and eye sockets were deeply sunken, he looked like a gray-haired old man.

In his deep-set eye sockets, a pair of eyes had not been closed, and they looked as if he had died with unresolved grievances. What surprised Han Li the most was that his pupils were gray and white, like a dead fish, without any brilliance.