Three days slipped quietly by in the Dao Enlightenment Grove, which seemed cut off from time and space.
For the other prodigies, those three days might have been filled with torment and rewards as they raced against time, struggling to comprehend.
But for Ye Tian, those three days were a journey of the soul, a silent conversation with the sages of ages past.
He walked among the steles, taking no art and comprehending no technique, merely reading the ancient words that bore their joys and sorrows, partings and reunions, glory and regrets.
His footsteps passed moss-covered, broken steles, and his fingertips brushed their cold, hard engravings.
His gaze swept over accounts of lives impassioned or sorrowful, ordinary or unyielding.
From the Sword God who rose from humble beginnings to the Benevolent Emperor who protected all living beings, from the Array Dao Grandmaster whose Dao collapsed while exploring forbidden mysteries to the nameless woodcutter who attained the Dao amid the ordinary...
Endless ages and countless lives slowly unfolded and settled within his heart like a vast scroll.
He seemed to witness with his own eyes the rise and fall of one era after another.
He witnessed the splendor and extinction of one great Dao after another.
This accumulation had nothing to do with increasing divine power or learning divine abilities.
Instead, it fortified something more fundamental: his Dao heart and the breadth of his vision.
At a certain moment after those three days, he stood before a stone stele recording how "Chess Saint Yitian" had used heaven and earth as his chessboard and all living beings as his pieces.
Ye Tian slowly closed his eyes before the stele, which told how a single careless move had ultimately cost the saint the entire game, leaving him to die in despair.
He was