The Heavenly Dao Chess Game drew to a close.
Yet neither side was satisfied with the outcome. Silence fell as they replayed the game in their minds, searching for ways their opponents might have interfered with its threads of cause and effect.
They did find a few.
"Yuan, you should make more concessions!"
A mighty cultivator of the Myriad Beasts Immortal Sect, a wild-looking man, spoke bluntly. "At worst, we lose one mortal body. Six or seven thousand years from now, even if the Law-Annihilating Poison damages our souls, we'll recover completely within ten thousand years at most."
"But you—and all of your people—will die."
His voice was chilling as he looked toward Divine Mechanism, Myriad Mechanisms, and the hundreds of millions of Immortal Sect Fleet cultivators. The threat in his words was ice-cold.
"We do not fear death," Yuan said evenly.
"You don't fear death?"
"What a grand claim!"
"From ants and mortals to the lofty true immortals who endure ten thousand calamities unscathed, what living creature dares say it doesn't fear death?"
"If you don't fear death, why not die right now?!"
The Myriad Beasts Immortal Sect cultivator sneered. "And even if you don't fear death, are you saying these hundreds of millions of cultivators in your battle formation don't either? Don't bother trying to frighten us with a lie like that."
"At worst, we fight and give you the deaths you ask for."
Silence held the starry cosmos for a moment.
"You have a point," Yuan said after some thought, nodding. "But I still won't yield. Neither will our citizens."
"We're afraid of death."
"But countless lessons from history have taught us that concessions cannot buy peace. Only war—only a fight to the death—can bring true peace."
Though Yuan had appeared to be thinking alone, it was