Star Gate-Chapter 1512: A Chessboard of Dao (III)

Echoes of dao remnants appeared in each of the 9,999 squares. A candidate could take a step in any direction. Forwards, backwards, right, left, up, and down. It was a very interesting chessboard that permitted one to travel in all directions.

There were ten thousand squares total, with one hundred squares on each side of the starting spot. Aside from the starting square lacking dao remnants, the others all contained some. If one wished to make it past 9,999 squares, then one would have to walk through all of the squares.

Clearing one thousand meant passing the test.

Li Hao melded his mental strength into his dao mark without further word. He suddenly seemed to be in another world, with different worlds on either side of him. The five elements of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, as well as others were present on all sides. Dao remnants could be found everywhere.

The young man’s eyes widened. This was a marvelous place! Where did this chessboard come from?

It contained all sorts of great dao meaning—similar to a dao universe. Could it be that the chessboard was an astonishing treasure itself, and what he and Drouth were interacting with was just a projection?

Was the shadow that spoke to them the soul of the chessboard or the seat cushion?

Li Hao was suddenly suspicious of who they conversed with. As he’d seen the seat cushion first, he naturally thought that the shadow was the soul of the seat cushion. But now that they were part of the chessboard, he realized that if the chessboard itself was here, it would be a terrifying weapon itself.

Another key to this question is that there are so many dao remnants within it. This chessboard should’ve been refined by an apex powerhouse. So what is it at its core nature? It’s not made from a dao universe, is it?

The young man took a deep breath. There was no helping it, he had to consider the possibility. What normal person could comprehend so many daos? Only a dao universe would contain that many!

Therefore, refining a dao universe into a chessboard was a good idea. It would be easier to create the item that way. Otherwise, a powerhouse would need knowledge of all daos if they wished to create it by themselves.

A person’s stamina was limited. Although Li Hao felt that his potential was excellent, the truth was that he’d only studied a few major daos despite being a third rank. He hadn’t truly studied all of the daos out there.

His moves that contained one hundred and one thousand daos were just surface understanding of the dao. The core daos that he called on were the ones that he used most often.

This is a treasure trove! Li Hao suddenly labelled the chessboard thus. This was a wondrous place in which to comprehend a myriad daos!

Having once grasped a dao universe, he’d tried comprehending a myriad daos before, but it was a very troublesome prospect. They were all jumbled together—just organizing them was an enormous task.

Li Hao had tried to do so once, which was how the river of chaos came to be. He gave it to Hong Yitang later on, but the strength of a myriad daos was too weak. If converted to the modern hierarchy of power, there were mostly the daos of the Mountain and Sea, Sun and Moon level. There were very few daos at the Fused Dao level.

But here, the daos could damage the dao marks of exalted emperors. That meant the daos in the chessboard were all at the exalted emperor level.

That was terrifying!

Even if there were only a few on that level, it represented that all of the daos here had the potential to be as strong as an exalted emperor.

Li Hao gave it no further thought and quickly moved his piece to a nearby square. Flames erupted around him. This was a world of fire!

Fire...

Li Hao permitted the flames in the square to burn him as they would. He shook his head after a moment. They were decent, but a far cry from the dao of fire that the seventh rank had imparted to him.

There was nothing to gain here. Staying was a waste of time.

The young man smoothly moved to the second square. A thousand thunderbolts descended at the same time—a domain of thunder and lightning. Some char marks appeared on the chessboard as the lightning sized into it.

Li Hao had a deep understanding of thunder and lightning thanks to the chaos tribulation. While that was the power of destruction at its core, it was also a type of thunder and lightning. A chaos tribulation was the most terrifying thunder tribulation in existence. This kind of simple thunder tribulation wasn’t useful to Li Hao in the slightest.

The young man was well aware of this, so he moved into the third square.

Next to him, Drouth was going through similar motions. He was a fifth rank exalted emperor at the end of the day. Although he wasn’t versed in other great daos, he possessed a certain degree of understanding of them. He moved faster than Li Hao and jumped a dozen squares in short succession.

Some of the dao strength flaring from the squares wasn’t that familiar to him, but his enormously strong dao mark swept right through them. In this way, Drouth encountered no obstacles on his way to passing the test.

......

The shadow silently watched from the sidelines. The two candidates were respectively a fifth rank and a third rank. Under normal circumstances, they had a hope of making it past one thousand squares.

Running a test that was guaranteed to fail candidates would be needlessly making things difficult all around. Demon Summit did not exist to make life difficult. Although the dark envoy was a dark attribute cultivator, that did not mean his heart was black. He simply felt that his heritage shouldn’t be easily passed along, and so laid down some tests in his dao foundation site.

Those who passed the first test could usually pass the second as well. The caveat being that they weren’t actually trash.

If they were, then it didn’t matter if they couldn’t pass.

The shadow took another look at the two; they should have a chance of succeeding. When the shadow considered Drouth in greater detail, it frowned slightly. This person was in too much of a hurry.

It was not a good idea to barge around like this. Typically speaking, a fifth rank still possessed numerous reflections about the great dao. Even if the man focused on the dao of darkness, that didn’t mean he didn’t know any others.

Some squares didn’t need to be pushed through like this. He could pause and utilize other daos to balance, counteract, or nurture the dao in the square...

That would lead him to passing that square in a more efficient and safer way. He would also gain something from his efforts. For example, passing the square of life meant that he could absorb some vitality to recover with. That was the true meaning in passing!

Being so focused on quick success was not a good thing for a powerhouse. One who walked the path of darkness needed to be more careful and cautious. The dark envoy was a prudent individual even though he was an eighth rank.

“This person... is in too much of a rush. It might have something to do with the destruction of his world. He’s feeling more pressure because of it,” judged the shadow. It turned its attention toward Li Hao.

The young man’s performance was middle of the road, not overly poor, but in terms of excellence... not quite there either. As for passing through something like the fire attribute in a flash, that should have something to do with receiving the immense heritage of various powerhouses.

The shadow could see for itself that the presences of the fire, water, and body envoys circulated around the young man. For Li Hao, it was easy to leverage the sixth and seventh rank understanding to spontaneously pass those squares.

In the same vein, it was more than simple for Drouth to pass the squares of darkness. However, dao chess was not meant to be used as a simple obstacle course.

The shadow took another look at Drouth—the man seemed to have realized something. He began to swiftly pass through multiple squares, all of them related to the dao of darkness. Some were quite simple, such as the ones of darkness, shadow, invincibility, obstruction, concealment...

These tests were easy for heavyweights of darkness to pass. And yet, the shadow frowned again. Dao chess was an ultimate treasure that many exalted emperors looked to as a way to hone their understanding of the great dao. Passing it was of secondary importance.

Just as Li Hao had thought, it was far more than it seemed and it was indeed refined from a major world—not the dao universe of the young man’s imagination. It was created from both a major world and a dao universe. Its owner was the Skyward master, not the dark envoy.

The Skyward master had not been born to his level of ninth rank, he had his enemies and rivals as well. He’d refined the major world and dao universe of an eighth rank he’d killed into the dao chess.

Later on, the Skyward master left the item here to help the dark envoy comprehend dao. Its strength was more than evident if it proved useful to an eighth rank exalted emperor.

However, what Drouth and Li Hao were using wasn’t the real dao chess. At the same time, they were not the real eighth rank dark envoy either. This dao chess would still be very useful to them. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

......

Li Hao didn’t avoid the great dao systems that he was unfamiliar with. He was willing to take a look at those he hadn’t encountered much before. Instead of walking in a straight line, he meandered his way through an entire section. After finishing all of the squares within, he sat down cross-legged and looked at the area around him, sinking into deep thought.

Bringing one who controlled a dao universe, someone who’d once refined the river of chaos, and a cultivator who’d woven together the river of chaos himself, Li Hao knew something about the myriad of daos out there.

He quickly came to a few conclusions that the various dao remnants in the squares were not randomly scattered. There was an order to them!

The chaos was without order, as was the great dao. What cultivators needed to do was turn unordered dao into ordered dao, then intersperse some weaving to form a river of great dao. However, the repulsion and attraction between various daos that the process involved made this a ponderous undertaking hard to imagine.

It required the cultivator to have a strong understanding of almost all daos, but who would dare boast that?

Perhaps... the Skyward master could. Perhaps the one who’d created this dao chess could.

Li Hao’s eyes widened as he looked around him. Could this dao chess have been fashioned according to a certain order? If that was the case... then the one behind the dao chess was incredible!

“Mutual repulsion, mutual attraction, countering and nurturing, assimilation and integration, the extremities of dao...” Li Hao suddenly took to the air, wanting to see more. Was there a place on this chessboard that exhibited a clash between daos?

It would be terrifying if there wasn’t. In any case, the dao chess likely didn’t belong to the dark envoy. The dark envoy could only make eight thousand steps, so he was not the one to create this treasure. It was very likely to have belonged to the Skyward master.

Li Hao suddenly clenched his jaw, commanding his primary body to jump onto the chessboard. That was permissible as well.

When he jumped in, the river of life and death appeared. Stars floated up from it—360 in total!

The star of life and death was situated in the center, where Li Hao currently was on the chessboard. He began reorganizing the stars according to the layout of the chessboard.