Chapter 474: The Birth of the Chess Game

The chess game!

Kamikawa Mitsu thought of the terrifying being's identity — "the other player."

As the player of the world's chessboard, from the moment the terrifying being arrived until now, it had never made a single move, showing not the slightest hint of being a "player."

Now the terrifying being had reacted, appearing impatient.

Could it be that the chess game began from this very moment, and the reason for the chess game was that the terrifying being felt… bored, uninterested?

Of course, this was only speculation.

Kamikawa Mitsu still had not seen Shi Qu appear.

Shi Qu, the first player who played chess with the terrifying being — why could he not witness his birth?

Legend has it that Shi Qu was not a being of the past, but came from the future. The first half of this conjecture could be affirmed; the second half was uncertain.

In the past era, Kamikawa Mitsu had found no trace of Shi Qu, which clearly proved Shi Qu was not born in the past. As for whether he truly came from the future, that remained uncertain.

At present, Shi Qu had not yet appeared in the future either.

Therefore, another possibility could not be ruled out: Shi Qu was not a being of this world, and like the terrifying being, came from the void.

Since Shi Qu was not present, the chess game could not have begun, could it? Or perhaps the chess game at the start was one-sided — a single player playing alone. Later Shi Qu joined, then Shi Qu lost the game, and He took Shi Qu's place, becoming the new player.

It was not impossible.

Kamikawa Mitsu did not rush; he quietly watched.

Together with the terrifying being, he observed the changes in the River of Years. From beginning to end, the terrifying being had never attacked him. Combined with the other's words about the chess game starting anew, Kamikawa Mitsu was ninety percent certain the terrifying being would not make a move against him here.

The other still needed him to play against.

Before figuring out His memories and the truth, the terrifying being would not act against him. If it did act, it could only be when the chess game began anew.

The terrifying being was emotionless and desireless, but its thoughts were not impossible to guess. The other wanted to play chess with Him, to relieve the tedium and boredom of this void, to engage in an interesting game on the world's chessboard.

Unconsciously, Kamikawa Mitsu felt he understood a little.

Perhaps… the player who treated all living beings as ants was only the terrifying being. This was the true mastermind toying with the world.

Shi Qu and He were perhaps forced into it.

Unwilling to be oppressed, refusing to be controlled, they could only resist, could only fight for it, compelled to play this chess game against the terrifying being.

Kamikawa Mitsu felt he was close to the truth; what remained was verification.

There was just one point Kamikawa Mitsu still did not understand, and he suspected Shi Qu and He probably did not understand it either — where the terrifying being came from.

This fellow had indeed walked out of the void.

Yet one could not say with absolute certainty that it was born in the void. Was it possible that the void contained more than one world…

The terrifying being came from an even more terrifying and extraordinary world.

Or perhaps… the void itself was a world!

Kamikawa Mitsu thought of the Heaven Within the Pot. If the world inside the pot was the void, then the drops of water within the pot were worlds.

Before Kamikawa Mitsu could think further, the River of Years continued to change, and the terrifying being was no longer merely watching — just as Kamikawa Mitsu had guessed, it intervened.

Since the macroscopic patterns of the River of Years were now known, it had become boring.

Then what needed to be done was simple: turn the boring into interesting.

For example, when one grew tired of a toy, one took it apart. Playing with a toy and taking it apart were both fun, and the nature of each was different.

At the same time.

The future of the River of Years.

An era was born with six Supreme beings — the most brilliant era of the future had arrived. Yet the next era did not decline as expected; it was even more brilliant!

The terrifying being had intervened.

"He wants to see if he can create an era more brilliant than before — an unprecedented golden age," Kamikawa Mitsu said, astonished.

Then, after countless calls, Shi Qu finally appeared before Kamikawa Mitsu.

Shi Qu was born in that most brilliant era. He grew step by step, passed through life and death, blood and fire, and achieved the Supreme. Under the terrifying being's intervention step by step, this era was too brilliant.

All beings were immersed in this unprecedented golden age; even the Supremes of the past side were shaken.

They had not expected the future to be so brilliant.

Kamikawa Mitsu felt an inexplicable sadness at this. Including the Supremes, none of the beings would ever imagine that this so-called unprecedented golden age actually had a mastermind behind it.

The terrifying being had created this unprecedented golden age of the future era.

Its brilliance lay not only in the emergence of outstanding talents, not only in the birth of Supremes, but more in the fact that this era gave birth to the Only One!

Shi Qu became the Only One.

With his powerful willpower, mind, talent, and wisdom, he stood out in this unprecedented golden age and became the Only One.

Immediately after.

Having become the Only One, Shi Qu finally met the terrifying being and learned the truth.

That moment — how despairing it was.

He thought he had become the Only One in the world, the undisputed first. Yet the unprecedented golden age had come about through another's intervention. His own efforts to become the Only One were true, but from beginning to end, those efforts were merely the result the mastermind desired.

The mastermind wanted to create an unprecedented golden age.

Honestly, the moment the truth was known, let alone the Supremes, even Shi Qu was moved.

He met the terrifying being, but the terrifying being paid no heed to Shi Qu and intended to continue intervening.

Because he had found pleasure in the River of Years, which had become boundless, and now he wanted to continue this pleasure — to create, again and again, golden ages more unprecedented than Shi Qu's era.

Kamikawa Mitsu understood why Shi Qu was called Shi Qu.

Therefore, from his era onward, the River of Years had already passed away; the future had already passed away. There was no longer a future; the future was no longer free evolution. It had become the terrifying being's pleasure.

Whatever it wanted this era to be, so it would be.

Everyone wants to challenge higher, never satisfied. The terrifying being was the same — he wanted to create an even more unprecedented golden age.

It's just... an unprecedented golden age isn't something that can be so easily engineered.

In the era after the Departed, the Terror intervened, but the changes it brought were not entirely satisfactory; they did not surpass the brilliance of the era the Departed belonged to. On the contrary, the Terror's intervention was excessive, causing that era to descend into absurd chaos.

That was an unprecedentedly frenzied age, with supreme beings slaughtering each other and corpses strewn across the land.

A dark future!

Such an era was not the outcome the Terror wanted to see. It failed to break through to an unprecedented golden age; instead, things turned worse. This outcome is like playing a League of Legends promotion match—a do-or-die game where you run into trolls and lose the life-or-death match, failing to advance.

That feeling is very annoying, and the frustration runs deep.

The Terror is heartless and emotionless, but that doesn't mean it doesn't know anger. It was equally irritated, feeling that the era had failed to meet its expectations—and that was a kind of sacrilege.

Provoking a being that even the One must be wary of—the consequences go without saying.

That era went mad, becoming a mass grave. The Terror vented its fury, making that frenzied age even more frenzied, so tragic it was hair-raising, the cruelty surpassing even the original battlefield, already beyond any words to describe.

After venting, the Terror did not destroy the River of Time, but chose to continue. A single failed promotion naturally wouldn't make one uninstall the game—one would keep going.

But it can be foreseen that the future will almost certainly have no future.

The Terror will not be satisfied with merely an unprecedented golden age; it will create one again and again, surpassing all previous ones. To surpass the prior golden age, it would do anything—even intervening in the past if that's what it took.

It's just that a golden age isn't so easy to create. Perhaps you can create one, two, three—but can you create them countless times?

Impossible.

It's like you climbed to number one on the national server—what then? Surpass number one? You can't; you've already reached the limit.

And when that time comes, the Terror will once again find it boring.

No one knows what will happen when the Terror grows bored, but one can imagine the consequences won't be pleasant—they will be very cruel.

Kamikawa Mitsu realized this point.

The Departed also realized this point, knowing he had to do something.

The chess game was conceived at this moment.

The Departed knew he had to do something, unwilling to watch the world that bore and raised him沦为 a plaything, where the final outcome would be either destruction or being completely altered by the Terror. At that point the world would no longer be a world, truly becoming what is所谓的 a world within a gourd—utterly despairing.

So he proposed a chess game to the Terror, wanting to contend with it.

The board for this contest was this very world.

What interested the Terror was this world, these sentient beings. The chess game could only use the world as its board and sentient beings as its pieces—this was the only method the Departed could think of, and the only way to persuade the Terror.

The chess game thus began.

As for the outcome of the chess game later on, the clues have already been given.

The Departed lost the chess game; he did not defeat the Terror.

The Terror was too powerful, and this power was not merely in terms of strength—otherwise it would have been impossible for an unprecedented golden age to be born under its intervention.