290: Game in the Temple

Li Dong looked at the "Void" barrier before him that devoured all light and concepts, and smiled.

The laughter was not loud, but it carried a sense of familiarity, as if meeting a fellow countryman.

"Using the Void Mother Nest's signature skill to guard the door? Adjudicator, are you lacking creativity, or are you afraid of something?"

He did not draw his blade, nor did he condense any aggressive Law.

He merely extended his right hand, palm forward, with his five fingers spread open.

An invisible vortex formed in his palm; it was not a gathering of power, but a reversal of concepts.

[Void Furnace].

The ultimate killing move, once used to Return to Zero the Void Mother Nest along with its "parasitic" concept, was now summoned by him with ease, yet not for destruction, but for... "feeding."

That Void barrier, which could erase "existence" itself, seemed to have encountered its natural predator.

It twisted and boiled violently, no longer a cold, deathly silence, but instead resembling a pot of boiling black ink.

Strands of the purest concept of "Nothingness" were forcibly torn from the barrier, pulled into thin black lines, and completely submerged into Li Dong's palm.

Mo Chen, watching from behind, felt his eyelids twitch wildly.

He felt as if his perception was being rubbed repeatedly against the ground.

That terrifying entity capable of draining his Soul was, before Li Dong, actually like a dish served to the wrong table, disdainfully packed up and taken away.

The barrier thinned and faded at a speed visible to the naked eye, eventually turning into a transparent ripple and dissipating without a trace.

Li Dong clenched his hand, and the "Void" in his palm had already been kneaded into a pitch-black energy ball, which he casually pressed into the ground beneath his feet.

"Adding a dessert for the world's Origin."

Boom! The entire core space vibrated, and the hungry world Origin let out a satisfied hum, greedily absorbing this "highly nourishing item."

Only then did Li Dong lift his foot and step into the temple.

There were no magnificent golden pillars, nor murals carved with deities.

Inside the temple was an boundless starry sky. Or rather, it was a... chessboard, pieced together from countless broken, dim dimensional fragments.

In the center of the chessboard, a figure had long been seated.

The figure was blurry, as if composed of flowing starlight; its face could not be seen, yet one could feel an ancient and deathly silence that transcended time and space. It sat there, as if it had been waiting since time immemorial.

Dimensional Adjudicator.

A conceptual projection.

"Sit."

A thought, passing neither through air nor sound, was directly branded into Li Dong's mind. It was cold, devoid of any emotion, like a line of System instructions.

Li Dong was unceremonious; his figure flashed, and he appeared at the other end of the chessboard, sitting opposite that figure across the entire galaxy.

He looked down at the chessboard.

The pieces were not black and white, but rather orbs of light pulsating with infinite possibilities—"Variable"—and crystals emitting an aura of absolute deathly silence—"equilibrium".

Each piece was a real world.

The Adjudicator's projection moved.

It did not lift a hand, but merely with a glance, a black crystal representing "equilibrium" slowly moved forward one square.

Instantly, in a corner of the chessboard, a "Variable" piece that had originally been flickering with a faint light suddenly extinguished.

Li Dong's heart sank abruptly.

He "heard" it.

It was not a sound, but a resonance across dimensions. He heard, in that world, the sudden cessation of thought from billions of living beings at the same instant, before they even had time to feel despair. He heard the deathly lament of stars cooling, life withering, and all traces of civilization being forcibly erased.

That was not death.

That was "deletion."

Li Dong's gaze turned cold, and he looked up, staring fixedly at the projection opposite him.

"Is this your game?"

"This is not a game." The projection's thought resonated again, still as flat as a horizontal line. "Variables breed chaos, and chaos leads to destruction. I correct errors and grant them eternal Stasis. This is the supreme order of the Universe, and it is my duty."

"Bullshit duty!" Li Dong laughed in extreme anger. "You are just a self-righteous gardener who thinks flowers blooming too brightly will attract bugs, so you just pour cement over the entire garden!"

Conventional combat had no meaning here.

The opponent did not attack, only played chess. To break the situation, he had to, within its rules, smash its prideful "order" to pieces!

Li Dong took a deep breath, suppressing his churning anger.

He reached out and tapped his fingertip on the nearest light orb representing a "Variable."

[Attunement].

Hum!

The light orb piece moved in response, tracing a brilliant trajectory and landing on another area of the chessboard that had long been dead. There, beside a dim "equilibrium" piece, lay the wreckage of a world that had just been erased.

The moment Li Dong's piece landed, a glimmer of light reignited from the core of that wreckage.

Immediately after, a second glimmer, a third...

A dying world, under the injection of "possibility," actually began to evolve in reverse! The withered land sprouted new buds again, the frozen oceans began to flow once more, and from the ruins of the dead civilization, a brand new spark of wisdom was born!

It did not return to its original state, but instead moved toward a branch full of the unknown, filled with unpredictable vitality.

The Adjudicator's projection, its head composed of starlight, showed a slight fluctuation for the first time.

It seemed unable to understand.

In its logic, "deletion" was irreversible.

It moved an "equilibrium" piece again, and a denser Law of deathly silence, like a large net, shrouded the world Li Dong had just revived, attempting to suppress and format it again.

Li Dong snorted coldly, his fingertip flicking lightly across the chessboard.

[Dynamic Equilibrium].

The moment that net of deathly silence approached the world, it was pulled and deflected by an invisible vortex force, eventually sliding past the edge of the world and striking the empty Void nearby.

Ineffective!

"Your 'equilibrium' is merely a weight on one end of the scale. And I am the scale itself." Li Dong's thought, like a sharp sword, pierced directly into the opponent's core logic, "I can bring everything into equilibrium, including your 'equilibrium'!"

The chess match had completely turned into a battlefield of concepts.

The Adjudicator's projection began to play pieces frequently, each representing a cold "correction" Law. Deletion, Stasis, Return to Zero...

And Li Dong countered every move.

With the concept of [Song of Creation], he imbued every one of his "Variable" pieces with a layer of indestructible "vital resilience."

With the logic of [Anti-Devour], he decomposed the negative Laws brought by the opponent's pieces on the spot, converting them into nourishment for his own pieces. Every time the opponent's "equilibrium" piece attacked, it instead made Li Dong's "Variable" piece brighter and stronger!

The Adjudicator's projection fell into a long silence.

Its "correction" and "deletion" appeared so clumsy, inefficient, and even ridiculous in the face of Li Dong's rogue tactics of "turning waste into treasure" and "recycling."

Outside the temple.

Mo Chen was pacing anxiously. He could not see the scene inside, but he could feel two completely different wills colliding wildly.

At times, he felt a coldness and despair emanating from the depths of his Soul, as if the end of the Universe were right before his eyes, leaving him without the strength to even pick up his paintbrush.

At other times, he felt a scorching heat and hope like a wildfire spreading, making him unable to suppress the urge to shout, to paint this unyielding will, and tell the whole world!

With trembling hands, he spread out a piece of drawing paper and, using that most primitive charcoal, vented the storm of emotions he felt onto the paper, stroke by stroke.

He was not painting people or objects.

What he was painting was a war. A war between "color" and "gray."

Inside the temple.

The chess match had reached its final chapter.

On the chessboard, the black crystal representing "equilibrium" had been forced into a corner by Li Dong's "Variable" orb, emitting a lonely, faint chill.

"It's over."

Li Dong stood up, looking down at the projection that was still trying to calculate a way to break the deadlock.

He did not pick up the final piece to "checkmate."

He reached out and covered the entire chessboard.

"You are wrong. Variables and equilibrium were never enemies."

[Multivariate Variable]!

In Li Dong's palm, billions of possibilities erupted simultaneously. This power did not attack any single piece, but like a spring breeze bringing life-giving rain, it shrouded all the "equilibrium" crystals on the chessboard.

Crack... crack...

The surfaces of those crystals, which symbolized absolute Stasis, began to develop cracks, but what shone through from the cracks was not the light of destruction, but... the light of life!

They were not destroyed, but "Attuned"!

They were forcibly twisted from "Absolute Equilibrium" into "Dynamic Equilibrium"!

The black crystals shed their deathly silence, transforming into brand new, colorful pieces that were both stable and contained infinite vitality.

The entire chessboard came alive!

"Im... possible... logic... error..."

The Adjudicator's projection let out a chaotic and unwilling roar for the first time. Its entire body began to flicker and distort, like an image of a crashing program.

Its worldview, its order, was completely overturned by Li Dong in a way it could neither understand nor accept.

Boom!

The projection ultimately could not withstand the impact of this logical paradox, and after a violent flicker, it turned into specks of light across the sky and dissipated completely.

Li Dong stood quietly before the chessboard, looking at the galaxy composed of countless worlds, but his gaze pierced through the temple, looking toward the depths of a higher, more distant dimension.

He knew that this was just the beginning.

An appetizer before the meal.

Just then, a cold, grand, and infinitely furious will, like a supernova, exploded above all dimensions, precisely locking onto his existence.

"You have dirtied my chessboard."