293: The beginning of the chessboard

Space was not torn, and time was not distorted.

It was a "displacement" of a higher order.

The moment before, Li Dong was still standing in the center of the newborn dimension formed by the remains of the Adjudicator, feeling the joyful song of the Law of all things reviving.

The next instant, he and Mo Chen, as well as those newly reborn Souls, were "taken" from where they stood by an incomprehensible and irresistible great power, and then "placed" in another location.

It was just like The Chess Player picking up a chess piece from a chess box and placing it on the chessboard.

The action was understated, yet the piece had already traversed the cosmos.

"Cough, cough..."

Mo Chen began to cough violently; he was not injured by the power, but his throat was itching from the hot, dry dust rushing toward his face.

The air was permeated with the smell of stones that had been baked by the sun for thousands of years, as well as... a certain rotten, despair-like odor.

He opened his eyes, and his entire body stiffened.

There was no more brilliant galaxy, no more vibrant vitality of the newborn dimension.

As far as the eye could see, there was a boundless, yellowish wasteland.

The sky was a sickly gray-white, with a listless sun hanging in it, emitting weak light and an unnatural, dry heat.

The distant mountains were bare, like the remaining skeleton of a decayed giant beast.

Dry riverbeds carved hideous scars across the cracked earth.

Dead silence.

Everything here seemed to have been forgotten for countless epochs; even the wind blew listlessly, and the dust it kicked up was permeated with a stale Death Qi.

"Where... is this?" Mo Chen's voice was dry, and the joy and hope on the faces of the newly reborn beings behind him were fading rapidly, replaced by a sense of bewilderment and oppression stemming from the environment.

Li Dong did not answer.

His gaze pierced through the facade of this desolation, directly touching the "underlying code" of this world.

There were no glaring Law chains like those of the Lord of Equilibrium, nor the cold, harsh logical axioms of the Adjudicator.

The rules of this world were more insidious, and also more "natural."

It was like a chronic, deep-seated poison.

[Barrenness].

[Withering].

[Decay].

[Despair].

These negative concepts were not imposed here, but woven into every grain of sand, every wisp of air, and deep within the Bloodline of every living creature.

They were the innate "background setting" of this world.

Here, effort yielded no reward, and hope was destined to fail. From the moment life was born, it was heading toward a predetermined ending called "Withering."

This chessboard was a hundred times more vicious than Twilight City.

Twilight City was a cage, but at least the specimens maintained a polished appearance.

But this place was a farm that drained everything dry, squeezing out even the last bit of oil from the marrow, just to maintain a sickly aesthetic of "all things withering" for The Chess Player to admire.

Their landing point was on the edge of a dilapidated village.

Rather than a village, it was more like a pile of mud-mounded graves.

The walls had collapsed, the roofs leaked daylight, and a few sparse wisps of cooking smoke rose crookedly, only to be quickly blown away by the wind, as if even the scent of human life did not deserve to exist here.

A few ragged villagers poked their heads out from the broken houses.

Their skin was the same yellowish color as the land, dry and lusterless.

Their eyes were empty.

That emptiness was not the numbness of being imprisoned in Twilight City, but a dead silence left only after all emotions had been drained, leaving behind nothing but biological instinct.

A child fell in the dust at the doorway; he did not cry, but just lay there. After a while, he slowly crawled up, his face covered in dust, his eyes still hollow.

A woman sat on the threshold, holding an equally thin and small child in her arms, her gaze staring blankly into the distance, as if looking at something, yet as if looking at nothing at all.

Mo Chen's heart felt as if it had been gripped tightly by an invisible hand.

The paintbrush in his hand, the one that had once painted the flame of life, was now trembling slightly.

It felt the lamentation of this land.

It craved color, craved life, and craved to completely repaint this deathly gray world before it!

Just then, a figure walked tremblingly out of the most intact mud house in the village.

It was an old man, hunched over, leaning on a polished wooden staff, each step seeming to exhaust all his strength.

In his cloudy eyes, there was first a flash of vigilance toward Li Dong and his group of "outsiders," but that vigilance was quickly submerged by a deeper despair.

He sized up Li Dong's group.

They were dressed neatly, their expressions out of place with this world, like a drop of clean water dripping into murky oil.

"Outsiders... leave."

The old village chief's voice sounded like two pieces of dry tree bark rubbing together.

"There is... nothing here that you are looking for, no water, and no food... there is nothing."

In his words, there was not even the strength to drive them away, just a statement.

A statement of an immutable fact.

Li Dong looked at him.

At this very moment, the world seed formed by the heart of the universe deep within his Divine Soul vibrated slightly.

It sensed it.

Deep within this land covered by the Law of [Barrenness], at the very bottom of the Souls of this group of people permeated by the concept of [Despair], there still remained a trace of vitality, so weak it was almost about to be extinguished.

It was craving.

Craving to be awakened.

Li Dong understood.

The first step of this chess game had already been chosen for him by The Chess Player.

Survival.

The most basic, and also the most fundamental, match.

He ignored the old village chief and walked straight toward a patch of land at the entrance of the village that was cracked like a spiderweb.

The soil there was the worst, the cracks the deepest, and it looked completely dead.

The villagers' gazes were drawn by his actions.

In their numb eyes, there was finally a trace of fluctuation.

It was confusion.

What was this outsider trying to do?

Li Dong squatted down, reached out his finger, and gently touched the scorching and hard earth.

The Law of [Attunement] probed in silently.

He felt the "memory" of the soil.

It had once been fertile, and had once nurtured waves of wheat and fruits.

But that lingering Law of [Barrenness], like billions of invisible straws, had taken root in every inch of soil, greedily sucking up all vitality, and turning "no harvest" into the "truth" of this place.

Li Dong withdrew his hand.

He opened his palm.

A seed appeared out of thin air.

It did not come from this world, but was a wisp of the pure "concept of life" separated from the Origin world seed gifted to him by the heart of the universe.

This seed was crystal clear, as if it contained an entire spring.

He did not chant the songs of creation, nor did he invoke the Laws of destruction.

He just performed the most ancient action.

He gently pressed that seed deep into the cracked soil.

The action was very light.

Yet it was like a heavy hammer striking the center of this dead, silent world.

It also struck before the grand will that was watching the chess game in the dark.

The old village chief was stunned.

All the watching villagers were stunned.

Their eyes, from numbness, to confusion, and then to a trace of a flame—weak as a candle in the wind—that they themselves had not even noticed.

They were asking.

Asking with those eyes that had been dead silent for who knows how many years.

On this land where even weeds were stingy about growing...

In this land of despair forgotten by the gods...

Could it really...

...have something grow out of it?