Watching Magnus' soul and body be completely consumed by divine fire, Chu Hao withdrew his attention from the fifth layer of the Endless Abyss.
At the same time, the spatial gates he had created with his will collapsed with a thunderous roar.
All passages from the bottom layers of the Abyss to the fifth layer were immediately closed!
The countless abyssal creatures gathered near the remnants of the gates let out unwilling roars.
The opportunity they had longed for—to climb upward—vanished before their eyes.
For these creatures who had always lived in the bottom layers of the Abyss, the feeling was one of indescribable despair and rage.
The environment of the Endless Abyss is unique: the deeper one goes, the harsher the conditions become, and the rules grow increasingly chaotic.
The lower layers are far more terrifying.
Moreover, creatures attempting to climb toward upper layers are extremely vulnerable to attacks.
A single misstep could make them prey for other abyssal beings.
In their eyes, even the fifth layer, filled with toxic mist and swamps, was an unreachable "paradise."
Not to mention the soft, non-toxic flesh of the fallen alien soldiers on the fifth layer—an exquisite delicacy they could never normally obtain.
All of this made the abyssal creatures crave it intensely.
---
As for the creatures that had reached the fifth layer and survived the war against the invading aliens, they were fortunate.
They not only survived but entered a world with relatively low survival pressure, gaining abundant evolutionary opportunities.
Among them, the stronger ones had a chance to eliminate the remaining abyssal creatures, giving birth to numerous offspring and potentially dominating the entire layer.
Amid this surge, the fifth layer of the Endless Abyss—the place where the 13th Legion fell and Magnus perished—welcomed a celebration of life.
All surviving abyssal creatures eagerly joined this carnival, none absent.
Their entry ticket was their own lives.
This is the Endless Abyss.
After every war, it would flourish anew, like wild grass in the upper dimensions, growing endlessly.
---
However, Chu Hao was not focused on these matters.
His primary concern was the greatest gain from this final assessment: the method to exploit the Endless Abyss to plunder divine fire and faith from other worlds, and thereby completely destroy mortal faith.
"Truly invaluable experience."
Recalling the moments before Magnus' death, Chu Hao spoke with a sense of reflection.
"I finally have the chance to witness why faith allows ordinary mortals to resist the corruption and temptation of the Abyss."
Previously, Chu Hao had deliberately prolonged the war to let these mortals quickly decay and fall into the Abyss.
Given the harsh environment and the fearsome, killing-driven nature of the abyssal creatures, ordinary soldiers should have struggled to resist the corrupting temptations from the darkest corners of their souls.
Yet the experiment yielded unexpected results.
The entire Magnus Legion did not begin large-scale faith collapse until the mid to late stages of the war.
"Before, I thought faith was similar to the corruption in the Abyss, a kind of unconscious impulse from the soul. But now…"
Chu Hao's expression grew serious.
"My previous guess was clearly hasty."
"True devout faith is actually a divine fire derivative born when a semi-divine being plants a seed in a mortal's heart."
"The more devout someone believes themselves to be, the more divine fire they generate, and the more faith derives from it."
"All along, these people were not using their own power—they were channeling the power of higher beings!"
"This explains why those seemingly powerful priests, despite having stronger divine abilities, did not undergo any physical transformation!"
During the battle, Chu Hao had carefully observed the battlefield priests.
He found that their abilities, when casting spells, rivaled many strong magical abyssal creatures.
Yet their bodies remained fragile, no different from ordinary mortals.
This puzzled Chu Hao.
No matter the species, one's physical form should change after gaining such immense power.
Even the Abyss' Eyemons, famous for their fragile bodies, began evolving in form after mastering abyssal magic.
Although their bodies remained easily broken by Abyss standards, they were indeed evolving toward higher life forms.
However, priests of both ordinary and high rank showed no such physical change.
This was illogical and abnormal.
---
Chu Hao found the answer at the moment Magnus burned himself to ash.
As Magnus ignited his soul with divine fire, Chu Hao observed the changes within his soul.
A seed, seemingly the source of faith, protected Magnus' heart from corruption, allowing him to preserve his soul and resist further decay.
In other words, if Chu Hao could corrupt that seed within the Endless Abyss, any being could theoretically be corrupted.
This would exponentially increase Chu Hao's divine fire count.
Yet a new question arose:
"What exactly is that seed, and how can I corrupt it?"
No one currently knew the answer.
Most divine worlds rely on the faith-generated divine fire to grow.
But no one has studied how to let their world's inhabitants fall, as it is a precious source of divine fire.
Typically, the approach is to use deception and false pretenses to make mortals more devout, generating more divine fire.
Corruption… that is only Chu Hao's concern.
---
Chu Hao took a deep breath to calm himself.
At the Abyss' bottom layer, he reopened his eyes and withdrew his will from the depths.
"This problem… can wait for the next opportunity to experiment."
"In any case, the third assessment is now complete."