As Shang thought about his future, Aterium fell into shock and hope.

For the longest time, the truly powerful beings had been under immense stress.

Shang.

Abaddon.

The Abominations.

The war.

So many dangerous things were happening.

But now, there was finally some hope!

The Empress of Death had announced that she had found a way to stop Abomination Lords from appearing!

When the other Emperors heard that, they almost couldn't believe it.

This was too good to be true!

They had already felt extremely stifled and frustrated when they saw how the Lightning Manor didn't need to deal with Abomination Lords and Ancestral Abominations while they had to commit over 50% of their entire force to deal with them.

And even with all of this, the losses were still more than devastating.

If there were truly a way to prevent Abomination Lords from appearing, they could finally let their Mage Kings do something other than just constantly watching over their Empire!

Yet, exactly because it was too good to be true, the Emperors became skeptical.

Did Kali truly manage to do something like that?

Everyone had tried to find a solution to the Abomination problem for literally hundreds of thousands of years.

Ever since Lucius had become a God and had gotten rid of all the powerful Abominations, the Emperors had tried to find a way to also deal with the lowest three Realms of the Abominations.

Sadly, without any success.

That was until Gregorio found a way, but by then, Gregorio had already become their enemy.

Originally, they would have been just as skeptical about Gregorio succeeding in solving this problem as they were about Kali, but after they had seen the black booklet and Gregorio's power over Anti-Magic, it became more believable.

But Kali?

A Death Affinity didn't seem very useful in dealing with the Abominations.

Kali addressed these concerns with only a single statement.

"I will deploy these measures in my Empire first. Give me a couple of years, and you will see that no more Abomination Lords will appear."

The Emperors accepted that proposal.

For now, they wanted to see what would happen before talking about measures to deploy these things in their Empire.

During the tournament, Kali's conduct hadn't been perfectly in line with their goals, which made them a bit suspicious.

However, Shang was now dead, and he hadn't become a Sword King.

Maybe, she had actually done the right thing.

With time, the enmity and suspicions would vanish, but for now, they were still rather fresh.

While the Emperors were being skeptical, Gregorio told Shang that he could move towards the Judgment Palace.

Shang had only needed to wait for barely four months.

"Sure," Shang answered before cutting the connection.

Now, how would Shang get into the middle of the Judgment Palace without alarming anyone? After all, Shang also had to hide himself from the Mage Kings.

Surprisingly, Shang wasn't worried about that.

Shang, specifically, had the perfect skillset for that.

BANG!

The Eternal Ocean beneath Shang exploded as he shot toward its depths.

In an instant, Shang had already descended over 100,000 kilometers, and he slowly noticed that the silver wall was curving towards him.

Shang put his feet on the wall and used them to run downward.

After reaching a depth of a million kilometers, the pressure had already reached terrifying levels.

A Peak Mage Lord would lose more Mana from protecting their bodies with a Mana Shield than they would recover.

Meanwhile, Shang just kept advancing.

Surprisingly, the curvature of the silver wall became much more pronounced than one would expect, but Shang had already known about that.

Back when Shang had gone to consume the Spacetime Beast, he had already noticed that the shape of the silver wall wasn't completely spherical.

It was more like an ellipsoid.

The continent was 20 million kilometers wide, and from its edges, another 10 million kilometers of ocean stretched out for a total of 40 million kilometers.

However, the ceiling and bottom were not 20 million kilometers away from the center of Aterium.

Instead, the top was only about 10 million kilometers above the center of Aterium, half as far away as the horizontal edges of the ellipsoid.

So, Shang wasn't very surprised when the silver wall curved in more than expected.

When Shang had reached a depth of two million kilometers, things became a bit troublesome.

The pressure of the water slowed Shang down significantly, and Shang even started to feel a headache coming on.

Shang's torso and limbs had no issues in withstanding the pressure since they were far more powerful, but Shang's head was already feeling the pressure.

After another 500,000 kilometers, Shang became annoyed and started to sneer, the pressure of the water cracking his teeth and bones.

His other limbs still had no issues, but his pathetic human head was already on the verge of imploding.

With a snort, Shang activated his Domain of Entropy.

In an instant, the highly pressured environment vanished, replaced by a dense cloud of Neutral Mana.

Naturally, since Shang wasn't just standing still, the Neutral Mana quickly left his Domain of Entropy and was flooded by the insane pressure of the thick Water Mana around it.

The sheer strength of the Water Mana transformed the Neutral Mana back into Water Mana.

Because of that, the Mana Density of the Eternal Ocean or the atmosphere didn't change.

However, Shang was no longer under the effect of this immense pressure, and his speed multiplied again.

In just a little bit, Shang reached a depth of around seven million kilometers.

At such a depth, not even Peak Mage Kings could survive indefinitely.

At this depth, Shang finally saw the silver wall getting buried beneath compressed sand, which meant that he had reached the furthest underground edge of Aterium.

The coastline was still three million kilometers or so away, but the depth of the Eternal Ocean was already receding.

However, Shang just continued running forward, and his Domain of Entropy turned the compressed sand into Neutral Mana as well.

While some extremely powerful beings would have still been able to see Shang earlier, now, he was invisible.

Shang had entered the underground of Aterium, and he would continue running forward until he reached the middle of the continent, the Judgment Palace.