288: Chess players and pieces

Above the ruins of the high tower, a warm breeze blew, carrying the sweet and fishy scent of fresh mud and tender sprouts.

The sunlight was no longer the gray, ashen hue of the eternal twilight, but a true, warm golden yellow that stung the eyes, yet one couldn't bear to close them.

Mo Chen stood on a broken metal plate, gazing blankly into the distance.

In the city, people were like children just waking from a long dream—at first dazed, then tentative, and finally filled with irrepressible ecstasy.

Someone was singing loudly on the street; it was horribly out of tune, yet sweeter than any heavenly music.

Someone was wailing, holding onto a relative they had lost and regained, their face smeared with snot and tears.

Others, just like him, picked up the simplest tools and smeared paint on the broken walls, drawing the sun, drawing rivers, drawing those most vivid colors that had been imprisoned for ten thousand years.

"Mr. Li Dong, is... is this real?" Mo Chen's voice was hoarse from crying. He looked back at the man beside him, who was idly kicking a pebble with his toe.

Li Dong shrugged, "New version launch, there's always an adaptation period. Don't worry, no bugs."

He was about to say something witty, but the relaxed expression on his face vanished instantly.

It wasn't solemnity, but rather the annoyance of having one's peace disturbed.

Hum—

The whole world seemed to have been pressed on mute.

Singing, crying, the sound of hammering... all movements belonging to "life" were forcibly suppressed by an invisible force at this moment. The rising sun in the sky dimmed, a layer of invisible gray coating its golden luster.

Mo Chen felt as if his heart had been gripped by a cold, giant hand, his breathing became difficult, and even his thoughts began to slow. It was a fear rooted in the instinct of life, as if an ant were looking up at the sky collapsing upon it.

"This... this is..."

"Shh." Li Dong made a silencing gesture and looked up at the edge of the sky. There was no fear in his eyes, only the indifference of one who has been provoked. "The main act is here, a bit faster than I thought."

The next second, a will that could not be described in words crossed the boundaries of dimensions and locked onto Li Dong with precision.

It had no form, no sound, yet it was more oppressive than any thunderous storm.

That will rushed directly into Li Dong's Divine Soul, without any testing, and arrogantly unfolded a scroll so magnificent it induced despair.

It was a chessboard.

A boundless chessboard with dimensions as squares and worlds as pieces.

Li Dong saw countless "cages" similar to the world beneath his feet, displayed on the squares of the chessboard like glass beads. In some worlds, life was ruled by "Absolute Order," like marionettes; in some worlds, time was frozen, and all things remained in the instant before destruction, becoming eternal "art"; in other worlds, emotions were treated as "viruses," and all living beings operated efficiently and numbly without expression.

Every world was a chess piece.

And now, he, Li Dong, along with the world he had just "cured," had become one on this chessboard.

A chess piece that had just been activated, yet remained insignificant.

Immediately after, a cold concept devoid of any emotion resounded in Li Dong's Divine Soul:

[Identification: Unknown Variable.]

[Behavioral Analysis: Execute "Return to Zero" operation, destroy the "Absolute Equilibrium" attribute of the chess piece "Twilight City".]

[Designation: Dimensional Adjudicator.]

[Description: I am the manager and corrector of ten thousand dimensions. Your actions have disrupted the stability of the chess game.]

[Invitation: Given that your "Attunement" ability possesses a certain degree of spectacle, I invite you, as a special chess piece, to continue your performance. Let me see what kind of trajectory you, this "Variable," can carve out on this chessboard.]

The information transmission ended. The massive will receded like a tide, but left behind a faint "gaze" high in the sky, like a high-and-mighty spectator watching the stage with great interest.

The world regained its sound, but Mo Chen shook even harder. Although he couldn't understand what had just happened, the cold aura that had flashed on Li Dong made him feel as if he had fallen into an ice cellar.

"Mr. Li Dong..."

Li Dong curled his lips, and a light laugh rolled out of his throat, breaking the frozen atmosphere.

"A chess game? A manager? What big talk."

He looked down at his hands, the brilliance of the [Attunement] Law flickering at his fingertips.

"Treating me as a piece, treating the people I worked so hard to save as props for a performance?" He raised his head, his gaze seemingly piercing through dimensions, meeting that high-and-mighty "gaze." "When you play chess, have you ever asked the chess pieces for their opinion?"

Mo Chen listened with his heart in his throat and swallowed nervously: "That... that 'Adjudicator'... are we going to go to war with it?"

In his view, such an existence was simply not an opponent on the same level. That pressure just now was a thousand times stronger than the "Lord of Equilibrium."

"Go to war?" Li Dong shook his head, his expression becoming somewhat strange. "No, he's right, this is a chess game. Flipping the table directly is too unrefined and doesn't fit my identity as a 'Tuner'."

He paused, his tone shifting, his eyes flashing with a near-maniacal light.

"He said he wants to watch me play chess? Fine, then I'll let him see how I, Li Dong, play chess."

Li Dong closed his eyes, his Divine Soul sinking into the torrent of information that had just been forcibly injected.

The "Dimensional Adjudicator" intended to show its power and arrogance, but it also exposed a part of its own Law structure.

In front of Li Dong, this was like a detailed instruction manual.

He used the [Attunement] Law as a scalpel and began to reverse-engineer this massive amount of information. He didn't touch those solid barriers, but instead looked for the gaps in its logic and the inflection points of its concepts.

"Using 'Absolute Control' as the Foundation, pursuing a static, predictable eternity... Heh, turns out he's a control freak."

Li Dong's Divine Thought traveled through the opponent's Law labyrinth and soon found the core point of conflict.

The philosophy of the "Adjudicator" ran contrary to the [Dynamic Equilibrium] he mastered. One pursued a "perfection" of deathly stillness, the other embraced the "life" of change. This was an opposition at the root.

"Logically self-consistent, but the Foundation is wrong. The world is not a specimen; it is alive."

Li Dong opened his eyes, his gaze clear.

He had already found the "lesion" of his opponent.

"Mo Chen."

"Ah? Yes!" Mo Chen jumped in surprise.

"Do you want to make this world a little livelier?"

Mo Chen was stunned for a moment, then nodded vigorously.

Li Dong smiled. He reached out, his palm facing upward, and glowing "World Seeds" appeared out of thin air; these were the gifts he had received from the "heart of the universe."

"Then... let's begin."

He gave a gentle push with his palm, and dozens of "World Seeds" turned into meteors, shooting toward the areas in every corner of this world that were still dead and had not yet recovered.

As the seeds landed, visible vitality spread wildly like a green tide. Oases grew on the withered deserts, vitality surged in the dried-up dead seas, and the mountains, laden with Death Qi, were draped in emerald robes once again.

The recovery process of the entire world was forcibly accelerated by him by a hundred times!

This was his first move in the game.

A move not for killing, but for "life."

He watched all this and spoke softly to the air, as if explaining to Mo Chen, or perhaps declaring to that "spectator":

"I won't leave here, at least not for now. I want to watch this world grow from a 'specimen' into a towering tree with my own eyes. I want to watch the people here create a unique civilization and write their own epic."

"This is my 'chess style,' did you understand? Mr. high-and-mighty 'Adjudicator'."

High above in the sky, that "gaze" fluctuated.

Another conceptual message came, this time, it was no longer a cold declaration, but carried a hint of... an indescribable emotion.

[...Interesting Variable.]

[Looking forward to your next move.]

That gaze did not disappear, but instead became even more focused.

Li Dong didn't care, he patted Mo Chen on the shoulder.

"Let's go, rebuilding a home is a big project, we still have a lot to do. For example, teach everyone how to reclaim wasteland and farm?"

Mo Chen stared blankly at the breezy smile on Li Dong's face, then looked at the land in the distance that was frantically bursting with life, the fear in his heart replaced by a burning passion before he knew it.

He knew that a war involving thousands of dimensions had quietly begun in a way he could not understand.

And he, along with this newborn world, had the fortune to become the... first chess piece of this game.

No, in Mr. Li Dong's words, the first chess piece that dared to punch The Chess Player.