300: Vibration of the chessboard

Li Dong looked up.

The sky was still that washed-out azure, but something was different.

That scrutinizing gaze had stripped away all pretenses.

Curiosity, playfulness, interest... these emotions had vanished completely, leaving behind only a gaze as cold as a surgeon looking at a lesion.

"Error."

"Correction."

Two pure intentions, not conveyed through sound, not through the Soul, but branded directly onto the underlying logic of the world.

And so, the chessboard trembled.

The first to notice the anomaly was the source of life in Newborn Town—the withered well that Li Dong had enlightened.

The spring water, which had originally gushed like a small waterfall, visibly thinned—from the thickness of an arm to a wrist, then to the size of a teacup’s mouth.

The spring water remained clear, but that abundant vitality was waning.

Immediately after, it was the fields.

The endless golden wheat shimmered with a sacred luster under the sunlight, but at this moment, the roots of the wheat stalks in the outermost ring began to show an ominous, withered yellow.

Deep within the soil, the golden veins woven by the concept of life were being savagely attacked by an invisible force.

It was a concept of "withering," a Law of "ending," meant to make this land recall its original fate—death.

The wind, too, changed its scent.

It was no longer a breeze carrying the fragrance of grass and trees, but a breath laden with irritability and scorching heat, blowing against people's faces as if to evaporate every drop of moisture in their skin.

At the entrance of the village, a child playing suddenly fell to the ground without warning and wailed.

His mother ran over to pick him up, only to discover with horror that the child's forehead was scalding hot, and strange, gray, withered tree-ring-like patterns were appearing on his face.

This was not an illness.

It was a curse.

A curse directed at "life" itself.

The bustle of Newborn Town cooled, bit by bit.

The joy and hope in people's hearts seemed to have their temperature forcibly siphoned away by an invisible hand.

An inexplicable panic and suspicion quietly sprouted among the crowd.

A refugee who had just received new wheat seeds looked at the plump seeds in his hands, but a glint of greed and resentment flashed in his eyes.

"Why do they live in big houses while we live in thatched huts?"

"That Mayor Van Er was a man-eating devil before; what is he pretending to be a good person for now?"

"I heard that Lord Li Dong isn't human, but a monster. The grain he grows will eat our Souls!"

These thoughts appeared out of thin air, yet they felt incredibly real, like poisonous snakes hidden in the deepest, darkest corners of everyone's hearts, collectively awakened by a single command.

Neighbors who had once been as close as family due to working together now looked at each other with a hint of wariness.

Conflict was on the verge of breaking out.

Mo Chen’s brush paused in mid-air; he felt the malice permeating the air, and the halo of "hope" that had just condensed on the scroll was dimming.

He looked at Li Dong under the towering divine tree.

Li Dong was very quiet.

He simply reached out and caught a leaf blown down by the irritable wind.

In his palm, the leaf withered, curled, and turned into a pinch of dust at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Natural disaster, man-made calamity."

"Wanting to use 'withering' to counter my 'vitality,' and 'chaos' to disintegrate my 'balance.'"

Li Dong smiled.

He took a step, and his figure vanished from where he stood.

The next instant, he appeared beside the spring with the weakening flow.

He did not inject more energy; he simply gently reached his hand into the cold spring water.

The power of [Attunement] unfolded silently.

His consciousness dove into the level of Law and instantly captured the "withering" concept that was causing the mischief.

It was like a cold, constantly contracting black hole, crazily devouring the vitality within the water vein.

Li Dong did not destroy it.

He simply used his fingertips to gently pluck at the core of that "withering" concept.

Just like plucking a string.

Hum!

The underlying logic of the entire "withering" concept was forcibly tampered with!

Its definition was distorted from "evaporate all things, return to dead silence" to "extreme condensation, extract essence"!

In an instant, a sudden change occurred!

The scorching, irritable wind, instead of causing the land to crack further, forcibly condensed the thin moisture in the air into visible white mist, enveloping the entire wheat field.

The roots of the withered yellow wheat stalks regained a jade-like luster the moment they touched the white mist.

Above the sky, the scorching sun that should have brought drought had its rays distorted, turning into the purest life energy, showering down upon the earth!

The so-called "drought" natural disaster, at Li Dong’s single thought, turned into an unprecedented, all-weather, no-dead-angle "irrigation of Spiritual Qi"!

Meanwhile, in the square of Newborn Town.

Because a refugee child took an extra wheat cake, a conflict completely erupted.

Stone, the young man who was once the most impulsive, was now the captain of the patrol team; his eyes were red as he gripped the refugee's collar tightly.

"Put it down! This belongs to everyone!"

"We worked hard to clear the land, and the moment you arrive, you want to take more than your share?!"

The refugees also gathered around, their eyes filled with the anger and grievance that had been stirred up.

Just then, a calm voice rang out simultaneously in everyone's minds.

"Look up."

Everyone subconsciously looked up at the sky.

The sky had turned into a giant mirror.

Inside the mirror, it was not their reflections that appeared, but... scenes from the past.

It was the scene of them in rags, gnawing on grass roots in the wilderness.

It was the image of them fighting wild dogs for half a moldy piece of black bread.

It was the despair of them kneeling before Golok’s horse, kowtowing like pounding garlic, only to be kicked away.

Scene after scene, frame after frame, all were their most unbearable memories.

Immediately after, the scene shifted.

The mirror showed a future where Newborn Town caught fire, people killed each other to snatch food, and finally, corpses littered the field, turning back into that silent wilderness.

Everyone was stunned, and the irritability and suspicion in their hearts were instantly extinguished by a bone-chilling coldness.

The illusion in the sky dissipated.

Li Dong’s voice sounded again, devoid of any emotion.

"The path is beneath your feet."

"Whether to return to the past or walk toward the future, choose for yourselves."

A deathly silence.

After a long time, Stone let go, and he looked at the refugee opposite him, who also had a face full of lingering fear, and spoke in a hoarse voice.

"I'm sorry... I... I was possessed."

The refugee also lowered his head. "It was me... it was my fault, I shouldn't have been greedy."

An internal conflict that could have torn the entire Newborn Town apart was thus dissipated into nothingness.

The wariness in people’s eyes turned back to clarity; they spontaneously began to discuss how to distribute more fairly, and how to help newcomers integrate faster.

A virus of "chaos," instead, gave birth to an antibody of "order."

Outside the dimension.

Several light shadows composed of pure geometric lines floated in the Void Realm.

They were higher-order "Adjudicators."

They watched everything happening on the chessboard, and for the first time, incomprehensible redundant data appeared in their logical cores.

"'Correction: Withering'... has been converted by the target into 'Buff: Nourishment'."

"'Correction: Chaos'... has been converted by the target into 'Evolution: Order'."

"Report... Correction failed. The target's 'Variable' attribute is increasing exponentially; he is devouring the 'Correction' itself."

"Logical conflict... unable to understand... Requesting... final judgment."

Li Dong stood on the ridge of the field, feeling the cheers of the wheat seedlings, feeling the cohesion of human hearts.

He looked up at the Void Realm again.

A cold arc hooked at the corner of his mouth.

"Nutrients delivered to my door; I accept."

"So, what is the next dish?"

Before the words faded.

The sky of the entire world went dark in an instant.

It was not the arrival of night, but light being "deleted" by something of a higher order.

Three thrones of light, vast beyond description and composed of runes of absolute order, slowly emerged above the dark firmament.

The final judgment had arrived.