The vast expanse between heaven and earth was bleak and boundless, steeped in utter solitude.
"...How did you do it?"
After staring at the pool before him for quite some time, Shi Hei raised his head and looked toward the figure sitting cross-legged beside it.
"This was supposed to be a game between you and me. You were my only opponent, yet you forcibly turned every single Chess Piece on the board into a Chess Player. How exactly did you do that?"
With all living beings as pieces and heaven and earth as the board, this match, delayed for countless years, should have been a contest between two people, one that would determine the future of everything.
That was what Shi Hei believed, and how he had acted. He did not think he would lose, because he was ruthless enough and had no attachments whatsoever. His opponent, on the other hand, had far too many things holding him back.
...But from the very beginning, he had lost completely.
He accepted his defeat in the Dark Era. After all, his opponent had spent such an incomprehensibly long time laying the groundwork, sacrificing so much and nearly overturning the entire void, all just to conceal the fact that [Extreme Darkness] was a Void Oddity. He accepted that loss wholeheartedly.
...After all, who could have imagined that [Extreme Darkness], which had once nearly destroyed the entire void, was actually a Void Oddity?
If his defeat in the Dark Era could be attributed to his opponent's painstaking planning, then how could the later eras be explained?
Those who should have been Chess Pieces became Chess Players one after another. Before his plan could even be put into action, it was utterly destroyed by those pieces as if they had foreknowledge of it all.
Compared