Chapter 1314: Asura Palace

Having left the ancient Dao of Forgetting, Yan Buji returned to the cave of the three forked paths without lingering. The transit token in his hand trembled, pointing to the right‑hand passage engraved with the character 'Punishment', and a faint tug came from it—not urging him to enter, but hinting that deep within this destruction‑filled ancient path there might be an exit or node that could resonate with the token.

After a brief ponder, Yan Buji decided to follow that feeling forward. He needed to leave this relatively sealed ancient‑path network and enter the broader Netherworld Realm to seek greater opportunity.

He did not step directly onto the Punishment path; instead, he infused a wisp of chaos deathly qi into the transit token. The 'Transit' character on the token flashed with a dim light, and a fine light gate just wide enough for one person silently appeared on the rock wall beside the path's entrance—this was the token's granted authority to open a temporary passage at a specific node.

Stepping through the light gate, a familiar sensation of spatial shift came over him, but far more stable than when he had used the broken talisman. The scene before him shifted, and he found himself in an entirely new region.

This was a barren, death‑silent plain; the ground was scorched black, criss‑crossed with huge fissures like the dried‑up bed of a river that had been dry for hundreds of millions of years. In the sky hung ever‑present, leaden‑gray heavy clouds, and streaks of pallid white 'Netherworld Silence Extinction Divine Thunder'—charged with destructive qi—darted like dragons through the clouds, occasionally striking the earth to blast out bottomless pits that spewed sky‑black thunder‑fire.

The air reeked of dense thunder‑destructive force and a sense of all things ending in deathly stillness. Here the Netherworld deathly qi was more violent and more destructive than in the ancient paths.

'What a deadly place…' Yan Buji swept his gaze, feeling the harshness of the local laws. An ordinary ghost king arriving here would likely not survive even a few washes of the Silence Extinction Thunder. But his newly born Chaos Force, already blended with a fragment of the Nine Nether Deathly Stillness origin, had a strange adaptability to this environment; to him the violent thunder‑death qi was more like… a rather coarse supplement.

He followed the faint guidance of the transit token while also relying on his own sense of energy flow, sneaking into the depths of the Silence Extinction Plain. He moved with extreme caution, his chaos aura perfectly restrained, his form like a ghost, avoiding the obvious danger zones where the divine thunder gathered in the sky.

After several hours, an immeasurably vast abyss appeared ahead. The abyss stretched across the land, its width unknown; looking down, one saw only a rolling vortex of the purest Silence Extinction deathly qi and shattered law—a chaos vortex exuding a terrifying suction that devoured everything. The far shore was lost in thick gray mist, invisible.

This was the manifestation in the real Netherworld Realm of the ancient Dao of Punishment, or rather a naturally formed place where the Netherworld's law of punishment and destruction was revealed—the Abyss of Silence Extinction.

And the transit token's guidance pointed straight to beneath this abyss!

'Could the exit be below this deadly abyss?' Yan Buji frowned, feeling that the chaos vortex within held power enough to easily tear apart ordinary experts; he dared not rush in.

He walked along the abyss's edge, seeking other clues. Suddenly his steps halted and his sharp gaze fixed on a spot in the vortex. At the edge of the rolling chaos vortex, near the cliff wall, the spatial structure seemed extremely unstable, occasionally tearing open a fine, almost imperceptible crack for a brief moment.

Through that fleeting crack, Yan Buji caught a startled glimpse: not the opposite shore, nor the abyss's bottom, but a… vast, boundless blood‑red battlefield!

In that battlefield, banners blotted out the sun; countless Asura warriors clad in dark crimson armor were locked in fierce combat with massive, twisted ancient nether beasts exuding thick rot and deathly qi. The fighting far surpassed any clash he had ever seen. Laws collapsed, soul‑light fell like rain, and even powerful Asura warlords could be seen detonating their soul cores, perishing together with mighty ancient nether beasts.

Even more shocking, at the farthest edge of that blood‑red battlefield, high above the heavens, hovered a towering palace constructed entirely of some black crystal. Around it swirled a turbid true Nether River flowing with countless soul shadows. Deep within the palace, a will that made his soul tremble—far older and vaster than Grand Priest Changwu—lay like a slumbering primordial beast, faintly discernible.

'Is that… the Asura Palace?! And… the will of the Lord of the Nether River?!' Yan Buji's heart surged with tumultuous waves. According to ancient legend, the Asura Palace is the core holy land of the Asura clan, and the Lord of the Nether River is one of the oldest and most powerful innate deities of the Netherworld Realm, who governs the foundations of reincarnation and would never manifest under ordinary circumstances.

Why would the Asura Palace appear in the vision of the crack within the Abyss of Silence Extinction? Is that brutal battlefield a war against the ancient nether beasts? And does all this have some connection to Grand Priest Changwu's urgent pursuit of him?

As his mind roiled and he tried to see more clearly, the spatial crack, unable to withstand the internal‑external pressure difference, violently twisted and widened a fraction!

'Hum!'

A clearer, more terrifying surge of battlefield killing intent mixed with the Nether River's deathly will burst forth like a breached dam, flooding out through the widened crack!

Yan Buji, bearing the brunt, felt his mind explode with a 'Boom!' as if millions of battle spirits roared in his ears and an endless river of death sought to drag his consciousness into oblivion. He grunted, and his surrounding chaos deathly qi erupted on its own, forming a gray‑mist shield that stubbornly blocked the impact of that will.

Yet this surge was too strong, like striking a great bronze bell in the dead of night!

'Swish! Swish! Swish!'

Almost instantly, several overwhelmingly powerful divine senses, like icy searchlights, swept in from different directions of the Silence Extinction Plain! One, filled with violent Asura battle intent, was unmistakably the pursuers under Grand Priest Changwu; the others brimmed with the corrupt greed of ancient nether beasts, as well as the curiosity and malice of unknown Netherworld powerhouses secretly cultivating here.

'Exposed!'

Yan Buji's heart sank. He had not expected that merely glimpsing a fragment would draw so much attention!

He made a snap decision, forcibly severing his link to the crack's sensation and wildly pouring Chaos Force into the transit token in his hand!

'Hum!'

The transit token blazed with light, once again forming a temporary light gate before him. Without a glance, he dove straight into it!

In the instant his figure vanished, a blood‑colored giant palm condensed with Asura battle intent, a gray tentacle of corrupt deathly qi, and a silent soul‑thorn struck almost simultaneously at the spot where he had stood, shattering the cliff wall into fragments and sending violent ripples through space.

The light gate dissolved just before the attack reached his body.