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Chapter 629: Nine Hells Abyss
🕑 Added 2025-09-01 13:00:30 +0000 UTCTianyi didn’t choose to come to the Nine Hells Abyss out of the blue. From his knowledge, he had learned that the devils had caused the destruction of the Primordial World, fracturing it into the three thousand realms that formed the current system. It could have been an extremely powerful divine devil that committed the act, but Tianyi didn’t think the Three Pure Ones would have stood by and watched this happen.
He was more inclined to believe that the devil had something that could destroy systems. It would be even better if he could find a method to destroy or suppress the Heavenly Dao from the devils.
Tianyi didn’t know. He had already asked the Concealed Emperor. Those who managed to survive did so by sheer luck. The first prerequisite was to be away from the epicenter of the battle that shattered the Primordial World, and only then would a divinity have a chance at survival.
Most of all life also perished. The humans who survived lost all their civilization and returned to the Stone Age.
From the Concealed Emperor’s narration, the Heavenly Dao entered a period of dormancy after the Primordial World’s destruction. If he could replicate the effect, Tianyi thought he would have a chance to expel the Heavenly Dao from Mengfei’s body—or hinder its progress, at the very least.
It wasn’t like he made the decision in the heat of the moment, either. The All Pantheon Alliance had started investigating and culling the Nine Hells Abyss. Of course, this had happened after the representative deities of the top ten rankers in the devil hunt in the Nahui Ollin System had competed against each other and determined their ranking.
Because of his many conduits and cross-universe teleportation ability, Tianyi had been requested to find a location far away from any system as the arena for the divine competition. As such, he was present and a witness to each pantheon’s divine might.
The representative of the Ma’at System was their current god-king, Horus. He ranked average—not too high, nor too low—the sixth out of nine participants. The Three Thousand Immortal Realms System also ranked in the top ten of the devil hunt, but they voluntarily withdrew from the competition between deities. Though that did not lower their importance, thanks to Tianyi’s presence.
At that time, Tianyi had not stepped into the Divine Realm in terms of law, but the experience gave him many new insights. The only problem was that he did not glean much. The laws displayed by the divinities were perfect. Perfection meant no weakness, meaning that it didn’t reveal any flaws as a springboard for him to comprehend. It was akin to someone seeing how a phone worked, but not the circuit board.
In the contest of gods, only one could reign supreme. That god was God King Herakles. It was obvious to all that God King Herakles and God King Thor were a cut above the rest. Even Perfected Huanglong, who came to spectate, admitted as much.
Though that did not discount the fact that some divinities may have been hiding their true power and simply deigned not to reveal it in order to win a higher status in the All Pantheon Alliance.
Back to the main point—both Herakles and Thor displayed impressive might. Tianyi estimated that each of their full-power blows could instantly annihilate one of his conduits. This wasn’t in the Three Thousand Immortal Realms System, so each of his conduits had power beyond level three. That was how strong their attacks were.
Herakles had transformed into a titan, with lightning streaking across his skin and Thunderbolt in hand. In contrast, Thor simply wielded his hammer, Mjolnir. He was gigantic beyond doubt compared to normal humans—especially against the titanic Herakles—but the two fought evenly.
Certainly, size did not matter for divinities.
It was a clash straight out of myths. None of Tianyi’s previous experiences with divinities could equal it. Even the battle between Perfected Huanglong, the Concealed Emperor, and Divinity Yanxu could not compare.
The battle started out equal, with Herakles holding the upper hand. However, it tilted toward Thor’s side as it continued. God King Thor received more and more injuries until divine blood continuously leaked from his wounds, but the more injured he was, the more ferocious and stronger he became. At the penultimate moment, he lost all reason—a berserker.
Normally, it should have been child’s play to defeat a foe with no rational mind, but it was the complete opposite for the god-king of the Norse Pantheon. Losing his mind did not slow him down; it only enhanced his abilities. It was like his body automatically reacted to everything around him without his brain needing to process anything. The reactive actions taken were not simple, either—extremely complex operations were performed in an instant.
It looked like God King Herakles would lose. If that had happened, the Norse Pantheon would have taken the top position instead of the Greek Pantheon.
Just as it seemed that God King Thor would bag the victory, God King Herakles turned the tide and instantly clinched victory. His actions appeared as if he had expected God King Thor’s berserker state and behavior. Everything he had done before was mere preparation for the win.
Either God King Herakles was a supreme strategist or tactician, or he had someone guiding him.
There was another All Pantheon Conference, once again held in the Herakles System, where God King Herakles was crowned the Leader of the All Pantheon Alliance. Since then, a false system was created near the Nine Hells Abyss as a base and transit point to cull the devils.
There were three such false systems. Each one had a divinity helming it. The Thorson and Herakles Systems each led one. The third and final one was still being distributed. It was a simple scheme to have the various pantheons compete. Either it would force them to go against each other and make it easier for the Herakles System to rule, or it would reveal the secret alliances.
God King Herakles likely didn’t intend to fully commit. Likely, many systems would not reveal their secret alliances for this or thought better of creating an antagonistic relationship. Still, that mattered not to Tianyi.
He appeared on the first layer of the Nine Hells Abyss. Based on size alone, it exceeded the Herakles System several-fold. It had no atmosphere, no oxygen—nothing that would indicate habitability for normal life like humans. The sky was an everlasting night, showing the endless stars eternally sparkling in muted brilliance. Their light could not reach hell.
Tianyi glanced around him. All the devils in the immediate vicinity would sense an invader’s presence. Those mindless fiends would have scrambled to bite off and devour the invader’s flesh. Even divinities could not hide their presence in the Nine Hells Abyss.
It seemed that his special constitution allowed him to avoid that. He didn’t think it strange. Not even divinities could sense his body when he reined in his energy.
Because it was his first time, and because of caution, Tianyi did not act recklessly. His eyes scanned the devilish form from afar. Not a second later, his form changed. His hair disappeared, his skin expanded, and his robes turned into scales. Now, he looked like a scaled shadow with goat-like horns, a twisted smile, and clawed hands.
Tianyi moved, getting used to his new skin. He had always acted as a human, so suddenly changing his shape took some getting used to. Movement was easy to adapt to, but only true combat would tell if he had really mastered his new form. Not that he wanted to get used to looking like a devil.
His figure blurred as he scoured the land. Most of the devils he met were mindless beasts. They would devour invaders, but they would do the same to their own kind at the drop of a hat. Pure devils they were. They may not have the same wisdom, but their sheer power more than made up for it. Once they devoured enough of their own kind, it might awaken their spirituality.
However, Tianyi’s goal wasn’t to harvest such mindless fiends, but to collect intel—though he doubted devils could keep history. His best chance was to find a devil that had survived the Godsfall War, but such devils would inevitably be difficult to subdue. So, he aimed at the abyss lords for now.
Although it was said the Nine Hells Abyss was crawling with devils, it was only to the point that there was about a density of one per ten kilometers. Doing his part, Tianyi killed and pretended to devour any devil he met.
Abyss lords weren’t common on the first level, but Tianyi did not want to go to the second level before he gathered more information. Granted, the All Pantheon Alliance had collected the various records regarding the Nine Hells Abyss from all systems and given them to all members—most of the information, at least. There was some confidential information that the leaders decided was better off not known.
The problem was that all this information was from before the Godsfall War. So it was highly likely that much of it no longer applied to the current Nine Hells Abyss.
The All Pantheon Alliance had done a preliminary scouting of the first level. It was possible to become an abyss lord, but abyss lords on the first level usually did not last long. Those who survived ventured onto the second level. If they could control a territory there, they would abandon the one on the first level. Although such abyss lords weren’t exactly known for their wisdom, even a child would know to seek greener pastures.
Tianyi scanned his surroundings. It was desolate, with nothing more than rocks. All in all, it resembled the surface of the Moon or Mars—if the land was pitch black and no light existed. It didn’t just look barren, but the devilish energy in the air was also thin. No wonder the abyss lords of the first level all wanted to reach the second level.
Even if they became abyss lords, Tianyi doubted those devils could revive with their weak sense of self.
His eyes flickered when he caught the edge of a shadow out of the corner of his eye. Tianyi pretended not to see it and walked forward like a mindless devil. He didn’t have to wait long, as he felt something jumping at him from behind. His figure blurred and disappeared.
“Huh?” the devil blinked in confusion when he crashed into the ground, his claws empty. He didn’t look like a scaled shadow like Tianyi’s current form, but an upright insect sans the compound eyes.
Tianyi grabbed its neck from behind and pushed it onto the ground. The insectoid devil wanted to resist, but Tianyi simply pushed harder. The body released cracking sounds as it was pushed into the ground. A second later, the subdued devil disappeared, as did Tianyi.
Minutes later, the insectoid devil reappeared—at least, that was what any devil that saw him would assume.
Tianyi frowned. The insectoid devil was clueless. It had recently gained a sense of self and become an abyss lord. It was still in the process of searching for the entrance to the lower level before meeting Tianyi. Of course, “recently” was relative. For these devils with infinite lives, time was meaningless. For all Tianyi knew, the insectoid devil had existed for more than three million years.
He didn’t think too deeply. Since this abyss lord did not give much information, Tianyi continued to search. He met countless devils. Some of them were more powerful than the first abyss lord he saw, but they were still mindless fiends in the end. He also met other abyss lords, more powerful and more shrewd than the insectoid devil.
Decades passed before Tianyi found one of the entrances to the second level of the Nine Hells Abyss. At this point, Tianyi’s form had changed several times. He looked like an upright rhinoceros beetle. However, his form wasn’t bulky and gave off the feeling of a slim but powerful figure. Coupled with his six arms, he resembled an insectoid asura.
Tianyi only hesitated a moment before he stepped through the entrance.
