Chapter 286 - 283: Anti-meme and Life Return

Chapter 286: Chapter 283: Anti-meme and Life Return

Outside the ruins of Guiyun Peak, a crimson pillar of fire shot straight into the clouds, its height immeasurable.

And near that world-ending pillar of fire, a thousand-mile radius had transformed into a Death Realm, shrouded by countless astral winds and thunderstorms.

But within this Death Realm, there was still a hidden, peach-blossom garden-like space, isolated from the world and untouched by the external turmoil.

’Hiss... What a game.’

Huddled in the small space created by the inheritance, Yi Tianxing watched as Fang Can placed another stone on the board. He was so delighted he scratched his ears and cheeks, sighing in admiration again and again.

Yi Tianxing had lived for eight hundred and sixty-nine years.

When he was born, one could still see figures of the Fifth Turn within the various nations, and there were even faint traces of the Sixth Turn.

From the first time he saw the game of Go at the age of three, he became deeply fascinated by it.

After winning first place for eight consecutive years in the Great Zhou’s mortal Go league, at the age of sixteen, he was scouted by the Chess Pavilion—whose strongest members at the time were only at the Second Turn—and officially entered the world of Martial Artists.

From that point on, he saw a much vaster world.

Those Martial Artists, in terms of the height, breadth, and depth of their thinking, completely crushed mortals.

Proud of his Go skills, he was taught a harsh lesson by his seniors on his very first day in the sect, which made him completely humble himself and prepare to practice martial arts.

The Martial Dao was a basket; you could put anything in it.

As long as you had something you excelled at and were passionate about, and could integrate it into the Martial Dao, your cultivation speed would be as fast as flying.

After becoming a Martial Artist, he entered the Dao through Go, pursuing Dual Cultivation in both chess and martial arts.

In just three years, he reached the First Turn. He then reached the Second Turn at thirty, entered the Third Turn at fifty, and at a mere two hundred years old, he became the first Fourth Turn in the history of the nations to have entered the Dao through Go.

As he rose, the Chess Pavilion he belonged to also rose with him.

It grew from an organization confined to the single nation of Great Zhou into a sacred ground for Go that connected the various nations, with aspiring Go geniuses coming to study there every year.

Then, the Great Migration occurred.

Suddenly, an outsider, certified by the previous generation’s Bai Xiaosheng, arrived.

It was a six-person squad. Their strongest member possessed the power of the Fifth Turn, and they claimed to be from the Nightmare Space, here to carry out a mission.

They said they could invite everyone to venture into the vaster world beyond their own realm.

Any Martial Artist who had reached the Fourth Turn would have a chance to be taken away, with the opportunity to return in the future.

This offer immediately shook the Fourth and Fifth Turn masters of the nations. After all, for those above the Fourth Turn, the nations were simply too small.

A Fourth Turn could cross all five great nations in two hours at most, an area roughly equivalent to a small county.

And as for the Endless Sea, it was said there were people there, but no one had ever seen them.

Now that an outsider had appeared, almost all Martial Artists at the Fourth Turn and above accepted the invitation.

After they left, to ensure the martial lineages of the nations would not be broken, they took their own Sacrificial Artifacts but left a Fifth-Turn-level Sacrificial Artifact with the Brahma Sound Temple.

After all, this group of Buddhist cultivators could be trusted. If it were given to any other power, they might have established a dictatorship.

At the time, Yi Tianxing had also received an invitation, but he refused, as he was no longer accustomed to a life of fighting and killing.

With the departure of the Martial Artists at the Fourth Turn and above, the entire martial world immediately fell into a state of decline.

A group of juniors, the strongest of whom were only at the Third Turn, were left holding several Fourth-Turn Sacrificial Artifacts left by their ancestors, not knowing what to do. As a result, he, by contrast, temporarily became the strongest in the world.

But life finds a way.

After several decades of silence, one newcomer after another rose like a comet, and all sorts of turmoil unfolded in their wake.

In just a few hundred years, twenty to thirty Fourth-Turn masters emerged in the martial world, their strength no less than that of their predecessors.

Returning to the present, Yi Tianxing had already cast aside all thoughts of life and death, his gaze fixed fanatically on the Go board before him.

How long had it been? Since the great migration of Martial Artists, how long had it been since he had faced a worthy opponent?

Fang Can’s style of play was like an avalanche. At first, his moves were unpredictable and varied, like falling snow, drawing one deep into the game.

But by the time one realized what was happening, they were already trapped, forced to watch helplessly as the overwhelming momentum swept down from the mountaintop.

The feeling Fang Can gave him in this moment was even more terrifying than the game he had been fortunate enough to play against a Sixth-Turn master hundreds of years ago!

Utterly unfathomable!!!

Yi Tianxing slowly raised his head, gazing through the live broadcast at the calm-faced young man inside Ji Donglai’s internal space.

A sense of despair, of certain defeat, enveloped his heart. He felt as if, from some nameless height behind Fang Can, an indescribable existence was looking down on him with an indifferent gaze.

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

This was less a life-and-death match and more of a teaching game, with Fang Can guiding him.

The level of skill Fang Can displayed depended entirely on the level he himself could reach. The stronger he played, the stronger his opponent became.

’So be it. Let’s play!’

Yi Tianxing now focused his mind completely, his fanatical gaze locked on the game as he threw his entire being into it.

In this moment, life and death were cast aside. All that mattered was immersing himself completely in the joy of Go.

He would do everything in his power to force out Fang Can’s full potential.

As the thought formed, Yi Tianxing’s already aged face began to decay at a visible rate. His once-radiant flesh started to wither, and his black hair turned streaked with white.

"This is... Life Return!"

The Disciples of the Chess Pavilion watching this through the broadcast stared with wide eyes, their faces filled with disbelief.

The so-called "Life Return" was a Secret Technique of the Go Dao.

It enhanced the brain’s computational abilities by sacrificing everything else about oneself. To use it was to shorten one’s lifespan at best, or die of old age on the spot at worst.

And now, after Yi Tianxing activated "Life Return," his computational power—which had not increased for hundreds of years while he was at the peak of the Fourth Turn—began to grow rapidly. In exchange, his flesh and blood started to melt away, absorbed by his brain.

Eyes, hair, nails, skin, heart...

Every part of his body except for his brain was being drained of life, all of it fed to his mind.

And as his computational abilities skyrocketed, he began to see through the patterns of the game before him, bit by bit.

’Dammit, looks like this guy is a lost cause. What a waste.’

In the midst of his battle with Ji Donglai, Xiang Hongtu coldly watched Yi Tianxing’s continuous decline and got a rough grasp of the current situation.

And thanks to Bai Xiaosheng’s broadcast, he had also learned most of what there was to know about Fang Can’s side.

First, there was Ji Donglai, who had the ability to strengthen his body by spending money, as well as teleportation.

As long as he held on and drained his opponent’s funds, or waited for the other Fourth-Turn Martial Artists from the state of Chu to arrive as reinforcements, the situation would be reversed.

Then there was that guy Fang Can. He had some kind of luck-based ability, his Go skills were somehow even better than the Fourth-Turn Yi Tianxing’s, but he was always hiding inside Ji Donglai’s space and wouldn’t come out.

’If I’d known, back on Guiyun Peak, I would’ve just used Unenlightened Backflow to kill him the moment Ji Donglai appeared. Then I wouldn’t be in such a passive position.’

There was also an ability user who could nullify the powers of anyone below the Fourth Turn, one who could strengthen other ability users, one who could imitate others’ abilities...

’They’re all a pain in the ass.’ Xiang Hongtu felt a trace of annoyance.

Because Fang Can was constantly teleporting to attack him, forcing him to use Unenlightened Backflow to dodge and retaliate.

He could only move a distance of 0.3 seconds at a time, far less than the space Ji Donglai could traverse with his "Wealth Connects to the Divine" ability. He couldn’t even run away.

Although his Unenlightened Backflow had no cooldown, it couldn’t be used indefinitely either. It required the constant consumption of his Heart Image.

Even with his top-tier Yin-Yang Holy Fetus physique, which, combined with his peak Fourth-Turn Realm, granted him double Heart Image reserves and double the recovery rate...

...and even adding the extra 0.3 seconds of Heart Image recovery time from each time reversal, at the current intensity of battle, he was using Unenlightened Backflow hundreds or even thousands of times per second.

For every second that passed, he effectively recovered 300 seconds’ worth of rest. But this was only enough for him to operate for 10 minutes of real-time, which equated to roughly 15,000 uses of Unenlightened Backflow.

’Ten minutes... Is that enough to drain Ji Donglai’s fortune?’ Xiang Hongtu wondered.

The answer was no. No matter how many times Xiang Hongtu attacked Ji Donglai with Unenlightened Backflow in a single second, Ji Donglai would only take damage from the single strongest hit.

In other words, Ji Donglai was only being "charged" 200 billion per second, plus another 100 billion to increase his power. Beyond that, each teleport barely cost anything.

Ten minutes was 600 seconds. That would cost 180 trillion in GDP, which was less than one-fifteenth of Ji Donglai’s 3,000 trillion GDP reserve.

And that was without factoring in the enhancements from the King of Jank and the Godly One.

At this moment, as Fang Can watched this guy who was constantly flashing across the temporal scale, a sliver of doubt appeared in his mind. ’Doesn’t this guy get tired?’

From Fang Can’s perspective, the man was blinking in and out of time, seemingly without ever getting exhausted.

Thinking about their opponent’s ability, the King of Willpower couldn’t help but guess, "This guy can reverse time. Don’t tell me he’s negated his cooldowns and mana costs too."

The King of Willpower’s words made Fang Can furrow his brow. The opponent was unexpectedly tenacious. He was suddenly reminded of a certain time-related joke from the internet.

You ask about my mana cost? I reverse time, what mana cost?

You ask about my cooldown? I reverse time, what cooldown?

But Fang Can immediately dismissed the idea. His intuition told him it wasn’t realistic; how could a mere Fourth-Turn possess such a heaven-defying ability?

But the longer this dragged on, the more disadvantageous it would become. In eight minutes, Fourth-Turn reinforcements might arrive.

’Should we increase the spending?’ Fang Can immediately rejected the thought.

The gap between the peak of the Fourth Turn and the peak of the Fifth Turn was ten thousandfold. The cost of an attack that could break through Chi Xiao’s golden body would be too high—it would drain more than half of their GDP reserves. What would they do in the battles to come?

As his thoughts raced, Fang Can suddenly looked at the King of Jank and said via his Heart Image, "Are the anti-memetics ready?"

"OK, the three-second delay is set. We can enter the anti-memetic state at any time," the King of Jank replied with a grin.

"Alright. You’re coming with me." As Fang Can nodded, his gaze shifted to Yan Chqing, who was in the Endless Sea according to the broadcast. "Let’s take down the second-easiest target first."

Meanwhile, as Fang Can transmitted his message via Heart Image, three Fourth-Turn Martial Artists were already standing before a Third-Turn shaman in Great Chu.

"Quick, use your spatial transposition to send me to the Chu Emperor!" one of the hot-tempered Fourth-Turns threatened, grabbing the Third-Turn’s neck and speaking with a hostile tone through his Heart Image.

"It’s... it’s no use," the Third-Turn stammered in defense. "The Chu Emperor’s location has been placed under a Forbidden Demon Domain by an ability user! Teleportation below the Fourth Turn can’t get through."