Star Gate-Chapter 1513: Spontaneous Death (I)

Outside the chessboard, the shadow’s eyes snapped to a new point of interest. A dao river had appeared!

It imitated the layout of the chessboard while utilizing a star of life and death as the primary star. The river was controlled by a cultivator of life and death!

Has he finally discovered it?

The shadow laughed. This, too, was normal. Li Hao wasn’t the first one to realize the true nature of the second trial. Yet, however far he could walk, however many arrangements he could make, and however much he could see was up to him.

Only when one took a step forward could one see what dao was present in the next square. Dao chess was the summation of the Skyward master’s lifetime accumulation of dao. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was absolutely a manifestation of his comprehension of great dao. Dao chess itself was a fortuitous opportunity!

The second trial was a reward after candidates passed the first test. It was up to the individual whether or not they could take ahold of it!

As for the Exalted Drouth Emperor...

The shadow frowned slightly after taking a look at the man. This person wished to cultivate and strengthen the dao of darkness. There was an opportunity related to those goals found within dao chess as well. The man simply needed to consolidate all of the daos related to darkness and lay them out according to the chessboard. His opportunity would arrive then!

There would be no need to comprehend the dark envoy’s dao heritage. The dark envoy’s dao was his own.

Everyone’s dao was different. Passing one thousand squares and studying the dark envoy’s dao might not lead to a harvest greater than the one from dao chess. It might limit one instead.

After all, the dark envoy’s dao could not be copied wholesale. Its core nature must be understood instead.

Dao chess depicted organizing the ordered and unordered myriad of daos. Only the Skyward master could accomplish such a feat. Drouth was tossing away pure gold for a handful of mud!

......

Li Hao’s eyes gleamed brightly. He’d sent his primary body into the chessboard as the river of life and death so he could rearrange it. When it came to arrangement and assembly... many had spoken of the notion before.

The New Martial supreme had written of it in his records and the Human King’s sister had utilized a similar method in the Accounts of Evenround. All of them stemmed from the War Sovereign. He was the first one in Yin and Yang to speak of the core nature of great dao. In essence, the great dao was a certain order of all daos.

Li Hao had never read the War Sovereign’s book, but New Martial was influenced by the War Sovereign and Silver Moon influenced by New Martial. He’d still sensed many things numerous eras later.

The ordered and unordered daos were an arrangement in and of themselves. If one was to speak of the core of the War Sovereign’s methods and daos... it might be ‘arrangement’. And through dao chess, Li Hao once more detected the commonalities of premier powerhouses!

The order of a myriad daos!

The Sword Sovereign’s move of all daos being one and the integration of the Eternal Sword intent was also a kind of dao arrangement.

Everything pointed to the fact that this dao was critical and would extend for a great distance. The stronger one was, the more clearly they could sense it. New Martial’s Supreme Zhang, Human King, and Sword Sovereign all utilized this method.

And today, Li Hao sensed it once more in Skyward, in a dao foundation site of an eighth rank exalted emperor and from a treasure very possibly forged by the Skyward master.

This was a type of acknowledgement for the young man, New Martial, and the War Sovereign. A ninth rank exalted emperor was describing great dao in a similar way!

Li Hao had been attempting to do the same on Silver Moon. Whether it was the combination of supernatural characters, rivers of dao, a river of chaos, life and death, or time... He’d been trying to use the methods of combination and integration to achieve a similar effect.

That was how his river of life and death, bridges of life and death, and integration of life with death had come to be...

“How interesting! My opportunity is at hand!” Li Hao joyfully took step after step. Although the impact of dao strength from these squares was slightly hard to bear and consumed much of his reserves to mitigate, the young man chose to stay on the chessboard.

He wanted to know how he might calm these dao remnants. It would be very helpful for his future endeavors and would help him consolidate the rivers! Whether it was the river of time or life and death, both needed stabilizing. An unsteady river was clearly unsafe.

And so, the young man’s speed slowed down. He made it past fifty squares in half a day, whereas Drouth had exceeded two hundred squares. He blasted through the obstacles with tremendous dao strength, growing more excited as he did so. He was having an easy time of things.

The shadow observed both of them from a vantage point overhead. Li Hao’s decision was quite correct, and while it couldn’t say that Drouth’s was incorrect, it was just...

It would be fine if Drouth’s dao was related to force. But if he sought to develop and bring the dao of darkness to new heights in this manner... that would be a pipe dream!

You’re just a fifth rank, not a ninth rank. If you were a ninth rank, you would be correct in barreling through like this. But the man was not, so this display became a show of incompetence in the shadow’s eyes.

It looked at Li Hao again. While the young man was slow, speed was not a factor when it came to dao chess. It didn’t matter how slow one was. Let’s see if he can make it past one thousand squares with what he has in mind.

......

Time passed bit by bit; Li Hao increasingly slowed down. When Drouth reached five hundred squares, Li Hao only reached one hundred. The young man didn’t care about the increasing gap between them, he was very excited.

The layout of stars over the river of life and death had changed drastically. They seemed to be more harmonious than before; minute changes had taken place among the one hundred stars.

Within the river, Number Two lifted its head for a peek, then glanced at Li Hao. It twitched its tail before going back to sleep. A corner of its mouth was upraised. There seemed to be a hint of the one who taught in the young man!

That one loved these kinds of methods and techniques the most. Number Two remembered clearly how he loved to play games of creating order out of nothing and forming all sorts of fun things from them.

It was so interesting!

And now the annoying brat seemed to be walking the same path... Number Two felt a close kinship resulting from these actions. I’ll let him off the hook for sloshing the river back and forth.

......

What was the great dao?

It was something neither Li Hao nor anyone else could explain clearly. Was it a type of comprehension? A way to use energy? Some sort of knowledge?

No one could say for certain and everyone’s understanding of dao was different. In the young man’s eyes, dao was a way to use strength, a type of individual perception and a tangible way to utilize power.

This method could be categorized as life and death, yin and yang, time, and a variety of other systematic daos. The process of learning about energy and the world was enlightenment.

Utilizing limited energy to maximal effect was a type of dao, but not all of it.

Similar to how chemistry reactions might result in unfathomable amounts of energy, an inconspicuous dao might be elevated or integrated with another dao in the same fashion. When it came to cultivation breakthroughs due to comprehending dao, that was an advance in understanding to Li Hao.

If a chemistry reaction worked, then the chemical formula was correct. The cultivator could complete the upgrade and finish the experiment. But if the formula was incorrect, then one would not be able to undertake the enhancement.

Such were cultivation levels.

Cultivators could succeed with one go or still fail after thousands of tries. The latter meant that the cultivator was not familiar with this chemical reaction. Since it was unknown, then one needed to start anew.

This was the great dao as it meant to Li Hao. Other people might have a different understanding compared to him.

Lectures of dao were simply a sharing of one’s own theories. It was up to the audience whether they agreed or not. Of course, the interconnection of great dao meant that there was only one answer, just as there was only one chemical formula for one reaction.

Such was the commonality of dao! But the process might be completely different.

That had always been Li Hao’s attitude toward lectures of dao. He was simply listening in on different processes to see if they came to the same conclusion. The massive dao chessboard had provided an enormously long chemical formula for him today. It was giving him an answer, but it may not be the ultimate answer!

Regardless, this was all new to him. For the moment, he experimented with this formula to see if he could put it to his own use. Whether it was the Accounts of Evenround or the Logs of Zhang Discipline, they were basic chemistry. They were so elementary that they were meant for heavyweights that were yet to become exalted emperors.

Therefore, while a high schooler such as Li Hao could make use of them, their knowledge was a bit behind the times.

But today, a sophisticated formula of the university level unrolled on and on in front of him. He was unable to verify it in its entirety, but it would broaden his horizon and add to his knowledge.

Such was dao!

The result of this formula was that all daos were one in a way that made logical sense. Every single powerhouse was chasing after this one, be it Li Hao, the Human King, Sword Sovereign, or supreme. Whether it was the book of dao, internal world, Eternal Sword, or anything else, they were all in pursuit for that final combination of dao!

The chessboard was one such example of that result. It was the most simplistic of sophisticated formulas. Li Hao wouldn’t understand it if it was any more complicated. He didn’t need something too abstract or profound. What was in front of him was enough.

He craved knowledge and wanted nothing more than to make it past all 9,999 squares. But his knowledge was shallow. Even though he was a third rank exalted emperor now, it still wasn’t enough.

He needed to comprehend everything bit by bit and experiment. He couldn’t just watch others—that option did not lead to understanding. He needed to proceed in a methodological way, following the formula, then recording his next step.

He might not need to do so when he was familiar enough with the process, but that was clearly not the case at the moment.

So although Drouth was furiously smashing through all of the squares, Li Hao paid no attention to the man. He tried in slow progression, assimilating and reorganizing everything he should.

It didn’t matter what the results were; he just needed to remember the knowledge at hand. That would be his greatest gain from this trip to Demon Summit.

But at the moment, he encountered a difficulty. He had neither comprehended, understood, integrated, or even encountered this dao before. Hence, he was stuck.

What kind of dao was this?