Chapter 283: Anti-Meme and Life Return

Outside the ruins of Guiyun Peak, a crimson pillar of fire shot straight into the clouds, no one knew how far it would reach.

And near that world-ending pillar of fire, a dead zone spread for a thousand li in every direction, shrouded by countless gale-force thunderstorms.

But within that dead zone, there still existed a peach-garden space cut off from the world, untouched by the chaos outside.

"Hiss… what a fine game."

Curled up in the small space formed by the inheritance, Yi Tianxing watched Fang Can place another piece before him, so delighted he scratched his ears and cheeks, sighing again and again.

Yi Tianxing had already weathered eight hundred and sixty-nine springs and autumns.

When he was born, fifth-revolution figures could still be seen within the various nations, and even traces of sixth-revolution were not entirely absent.

From the age of three, the first time he saw Go, he fell deeply under its spell.

After winning first place eight consecutive times in the Great Zhou Mortal Realm Go Tournament at sixteen, he was noticed by the Chess Pavilion — whose highest member at the time was only second-revolution — and formally stepped into the circle of martial artists.

From that moment on, he saw a far vaster world.

Those martial artists, whether in the height, breadth, or depth of their thinking, utterly crushed ordinary mortals.

He who had been proud of his Go, on his very first day as an initiate was given a harsh lesson by his senior brothers and sisters, successfully making him rein in his heart completely and resolve to study martial arts.

The martial path is a basket — anything can be stuffed inside.

So long as you have something you excel at and are passionate about, and can weave it into the martial path, your cultivation speed will be like flying.

After becoming a martial artist, he took the Dao through Go, cultivating both chess and martial arts.

In just three years he stepped into first-revolution; afterward he entered second-revolution at thirty, third-revolution at fifty, and at merely two hundred became the first fourth-revolution cultivator in the history of the various nations to take the Dao through Go.

And the Chess Pavilion he belonged to rose with him on the tide.

From being confined to a single nation of Great Zhou, it became a holy land of the Go world linking all the nations, and every year geniuses aspiring in Go came here to study.

Following that came the Great Migration.

Suddenly, a person from beyond the domains arrived, certified by the previous generation's Hundred-Knowledge Scholar.

It was a six-person squad, the strongest among them possessing fifth-revolution power, claiming to come from the Nightmare Space, here to carry out a mission in this realm.

They said they could invite everyone to a vaster world beyond the domains for adventure.

So long as one's strength reached fourth-revolution, there was a chance of being taken away, and afterward one could also have the chance to return.

This offer immediately shook the fourth- and fifth-revolution martial artists of the nations, for to those above fourth-revolution, the nations were truly far too small.

In at most a single hour, a fourth-revolution cultivator could cross all five great nations — roughly the size of a small county.

And in that Endless Sea, they say there are people, but to this day none have been seen.

Now that there was a person from beyond the domains, almost all fourth-revolution-and-above martial artists accepted the invitation.

And after departing, in order to prevent the Dao lineages of the nations from being severed, after taking away their respective sacrificial artifacts, they left a single fifth-revolution-grade sacrificial artifact at the Brahma Sound Temple.

After all, that group of Buddhist cultivators had trustworthy character; give it to another faction and they might well start a dictatorship.

At the time, Yi Tianxing also received the invitation, but he simply declined, no longer being accustomed to fighting and killing.

And with the departure of all fourth-revolution-and-above martial artists, the entire Dongfang Wujie immediately fell into a state of desolation.

A bunch of juniors whose highest cultivation was only third-revolution, holding a few fourth-revolution sacrificial artifacts left by their ancestors without knowing what to do with them — he instead became, for the time being, the strongest in the world.

But life finds its own way out.

After several decades of silence, one after another new figures rose like comets, and all manner of upheavals unfolded in turn.

In just a few hundred years, twenty or thirty fourth-revolution cultivators no weaker than their predecessors had appeared in Dongfang Wujie.

Returning the view to the present, Yi Tianxing had already set aside the matter of life and death, staring at the board before him with a fanatical expression.

How long had it been — since the Great Migration of martial artists, how long since he had met a worthy opponent?

Fang Can's moves before him were like an avalanche: at first, his tactics were unfathomable and ever-changing, like flying snow, drawing one into their depths.

But by the time one reacted, one was already trapped within, watching helplessly as the great momentum swept down from the peak of the snow mountain.

The feeling Fang Can gave him at this moment was simply more terrifying than that one game he had been fortunate to play against a sixth-revolution cultivator hundreds of years ago!

Bottomless!!!

Yi Tianxing slowly raised his head, gazing through the livestream at the youth with a calm expression inside the space within Ji Donglai's body.

The despair of certain defeat shrouded his heart; he could only feel that, in the unnamed heights behind Fang Can, there was an unspeakable existence looking down upon him with an indifferent expression.

Moreover, he felt that this game of Go was still far from its peak.

This was less a life-and-death match than Fang Can playing a teaching game against him.

The Go skill Fang Can displayed depended on how much of his own level he could bring out — the stronger he was, the stronger his opponent became.

Things having come to this — play!

At this moment Yi Tianxing had already gathered his spirit, his gaze fanatical within the game, throwing himself into it with all his heart.

At this moment, life and death were both set aside; he only wanted to enjoy the joy of Go with all his heart.

He would do everything in his power to squeeze out Fang Can's potential to the utmost.

Along with the thought, Yi Tianxing's already aged appearance began to continue deteriorating at a speed visible to the naked eye; his once lustrous flesh began to wither, his hair turning from jet-black to salt-and-pepper.

"This is… Life Return!"

The Chess Pavilion disciples watching this scene through the livestream widened their eyes, their gazes filled with disbelief.

The so-called "Life Return" was a secret art of the Go Dao.

By sacrificing everything of oneself to strengthen the brain's computing power, once performed it would at the least shorten one's lifespan, at the worst cause one to die of old age on the spot.

And now, after Yi Tianxing performed "Life Return," the computing power that had remained unchanged for hundreds of years at the mature stage of fourth-revolution began to skyrocket; conversely, his flesh began to melt away bit by bit, absorbed by his brain.

Eyes, hair, keratin, skin, heart…

Every bodily tissue except the brain was being drained of life, all of it supplied to the brain.

And as his computing ability surged madly, the moves of the game before him were also seen through by him bit by bit.

'Damn it, this fellow can't be relied on after all — truly useless.'

In the battle with Ji Donglai, Xiang Hongtu watched coldly as Yi Tianxing continued to decline, having roughly grasped the current situation.

And with Bai Xiaosheng's live broadcast, he had also learned almost everything about the situation on Fang Can's side.

First was Ji Donglai, who possessed the ability to strengthen his body by spending money and to teleport.

As long as he held out, either draining the opponent's savings or waiting for other Fourth-Realm martial artists from the Chu State to arrive as reinforcements, the situation would reverse.

Then there was this fellow Fang Can, who possessed a luck ability; his chess play was even stronger than the Fourth-Realm Yi Tianxing, yet he remained hidden inside Ji Donglai's space, refusing to come out.

If he had known this earlier, when Ji Donglai appeared at Guiyun Peak, he should have used the Formless Backflow to kill him directly, rather than being so passive now.

There was also an ability user who could suppress all ability users below the Fourth Realm, an ability user who could strengthen other ability users, and an ability user who could mimic other ability users...

'All of them are trouble.' A slight irritation rose in Xiang Hongtu's heart.

Because Fang Can kept teleporting to attack him, forcing him to use the Formless Backflow to dodge and counterattack.

He could only move a distance of 0.3 seconds at a time, far less than the space Ji Donglai could shift with his Wealth-Transcends-Gods ability; he couldn't even run away.

Although his Formless Backflow had no cooldown, it could not be used indefinitely; it required constant consumption of Mental Image.

Even with his current top-tier physique, the Yin-Yang Sacred Fetus, stacked with the doubled Mental Image reserves of a peak Fourth-Realm realm, and the doubled recovery effect.

Plus the extra 0.3 seconds of Mental Image recovery time gained each time he reversed time, at the current battle intensity, he could cast the Formless Backflow hundreds or thousands of times per second.

Every second that passed was equivalent to him recovering 300 seconds of rest time, but this was only enough for him to activate the flow of real time for 10 minutes, roughly 15,000 uses of the Formless Backflow.

'10 minutes... can that drain Ji Donglai's assets?' Xiang Hongtu pondered in his heart.

The answer was impossible; even if Xiang Hongtu used the Formless Backflow to attack Ji Donglai multiple times within a second, Ji Donglai would only suffer the damage from the single largest hit.

That meant Ji Donglai's deduction per second was only 200 billion, plus the 100 billion consumed to increase strength; aside from that, the cost of each teleport consumed almost no money.

10 minutes was 600 seconds, 1.8 quadrillion in GDP, less than one-fifteenth of Ji Donglai's 30 quadrillion GDP reserves.

This was without even counting the enhancements from Lan Huowang and the Divine One.

At this moment, as Fang Can watched this fellow constantly flashing across the time scale, a hint of doubt arose in his heart; wouldn't this guy get tired?

From Fang Can's perspective, this fellow kept flashing through time, as if he would never grow weary.

Thinking of the opponent's ability, the Willpower King couldn't help but guess: 'This guy has the ability to reverse time; did he remove the cooldown and mana cost?'

These words made Fang Can frown; he felt the opponent was unexpectedly tenacious, then he recalled a certain time-related joke from the internet.

You ask about mana cost? I reversed space and time, so what mana would I spend?

You ask about cooldown? I reversed space and time, so where would a cooldown come from?

But immediately Fang Can rejected this thought, because his intuition told him this was unrealistic; how could a Fourth-Realm cultivator be this heaven-defying?

But dragging it out further would only become more disadvantageous; after eight minutes, Fourth-Realm reinforcements might arrive.

Should I increase the budget?... Fang Can immediately rejected this notion.

The gap between a peak Fourth-Realm and a peak Fifth-Realm was ten thousand times; the attack consumed too much; to break through Chi Xiao's Golden Body, at least half of the GDP reserves would have to be drained, so how would the subsequent battle be handled?

As his thoughts flashed like lightning, Fang Can suddenly looked at Lan Huowang and communicated via Mental Image: 'Is the Anti-Meme ready?'

'OK, the three-second delay is ready; we can enter the Anti-Meme state at any time,' Lan Huowang said with a smile.

'Alright, next you and I will go together.' As Fang Can nodded, his gaze turned to Yan Chuqing in the live broadcast room, who was in the Endless Sea: 'First, take down this second-easiest target.'

And as Fang Can transmitted the message via Mental Image, three Fourth-Realm martial artists were already standing before a Third-Realm shaman in the Great Chu.

'Quickly use spatial shift to send me before the Chu Emperor.' A temperamental Fourth-Realm cultivator, gripping the Third-Realm's neck, threatened with a hostile tone via Mental Image.

'It's... it's no use,' that Third-Realm cultivator hurriedly argued. 'The area around His Majesty the Chu Emperor has been sealed by an ability user with a Magic-Suppression Domain; teleportation below the Fourth Realm simply cannot reach there.'

(End of this chapter)