Three years later, Emperor Tomb Village.
Xiang Weisha slowly opened his eyes within Ascension Reincarnation, his gaze settling on the Apotheosis Trial panel floating before him.
[Ascension Reincarnation]: Exclusive stages cleared: 7 (Jiaodi, Elephant Heaven Merging Power, Concealing the Edge, Adversity, Watching Chess, Outsider Path, Conquest). Cost to begin the eighth lifetime: 100 million sacrificial power.
Ever since his defeat by the Divine General, he had settled down to devote himself to refining his path.
In his daily life, he managed the Fourth Arena for the Divine General as its Champion Fighter, earning Duel Soul derived energy.
Occasionally, he faced challengers with 29 victories, killing powerful foes to build his reserves of sacrificial power.
Once he had accumulated enough sacrificial power, he returned to the Apotheosis Trial platform to resume his interrupted reincarnation cultivation.
By now, he had completed seven reincarnations, personally experiencing seven entirely different, complete lives, each bringing new insights.
The fifth reincarnation had been labeled on the panel as: Watching Chess.
No supernatural powers existed in that lifetime.
He had been born in the Great Liang Dynasty and entered a chess academy at eight, beginning his life as a chess apprentice.
From apprentice to player, then to a national master, and finally the greatest chess player in the world, he had spent a full forty-three years reaching the summit.
But after he reached the top, boundless emptiness swept through his heart.
At those heights, he had no equal left to face, nowhere to put his mastery to use.
While sorting through old chess records in his twilight years, he found an annotation he had written himself, tucked between the layers of a damaged scroll. The ink had dried, the forceful strokes penetrating the paper: "Enter the game to observe the killing, step outside to wield