Legend spoke of a giant sal tree beneath the eighteenth level of hell that kindled hellfire with its own body. The pillar of the underworld, the tree shouldered the full weight of hell itself.

Or rather, the Tome of Life and Death had imparted this story to Lu Yun just moments prior, and it was now persistently reverberating in his mind. The tree in front of him was the very same Sal Tree of Life and Death!

He also finally realized what the netherworld that lay beyond the Gates of the Abyss was: Hell.

Earth’s legends spoke of a world of immortals, an underworld, and the eighteen layers of hell. Having arrived in one of the legends, Lu Yun had seen no evidence of hell all this time. He’d also come up empty-handed from digging through the memories of his four envoys. Nothing was recorded in the chronicles they’d perused of times before the great war,...