Without taking the field himself or becoming part of either side, he could not lose.
What Lin Yi wanted was the house fee.
By setting up this Heaven and Earth Chess Game, he would take a profit from it.
As his thoughts gradually fell into order and became clear, Lin Yi slowly let out a breath.
"Come to think of it, there are plenty of ways I can affect how things unfold in Douluo I. For example..."
Lin Yi looked east, in the direction of the Douluo Three Kingdoms. More precisely, he was looking toward where Shrek Academy stood.
"I could make a stop at Shrek Academy and learn about the history of ten thousand years ago. That alone would be enough to cause a huge stir over in Douluo I, wouldn't it?"
After thinking for a while, Lin Yi came up with a few more ways he could influence Douluo I. He committed them to memory, then returned to reality.
"The road has to be walked one step at a time. The gains from those two instances of faith were a pleasant surprise, but I can't let my game fall into disarray."
Lin Yi set off again, his blue robes fluttering with unrestrained ease. His figure flickered like a ghost, swiftly vanishing over the horizon.
Douluo Dalu III: The Legend of the Dragon King.
Yun Ming gazed up at the sky.
He had held that posture for a long time.
Ever since the Heavenly Screen descended and began showing images of Lin Yi's cultivation, Yun Ming had been following its contents.
The more I watch, the more it looks like the cultivation journey of someone from the future who traveled back to the era ten thousand years ago, Yun Ming thought.
Of course, he was not particularly certain of that guess.
Lin Yi had not mastered Soul Spirit technology, nor did he possess the skills a Soul Master from the "future" should have.
That meant professions such as Battle Armor Master and mecha pilot.
If someone from the future really had returned to the past to experience cultivation in that era, their training would surely have involved becoming a Battle Armor Master or mecha pilot.
Even if he worried it would affect his cultivation, he could have gone back to train in those fields after becoming a Limit Douluo.
Yet Lin Yi had never shown any interest in mechas or Battle Armor.
That proved Lin Yi had not returned to the past from the future.
"Could it be a pure simulation?"
Yun Ming was pondering the source of the images shown on the Heavenly Screen.
Their era had already lived through Lin Yi's time, so one thing was clear: there had been no person named Lin Yi in history.
"So that volcano really was the God of Fire's inheritance site? What a pity. By now, not a trace of it remains."
"Is this deity the God of Space? It was hidden within space. How on earth did Lin Yi get in? I watched the footage before and after, yet I still couldn't make sense of it." Yun Ming clicked his tongue. "That fellow's attainments in space are truly terrifying."
The locations of one deity's inheritance after another were being revealed, but Yun Ming did not panic.
In this era, almost every inch of land on the continent had been explored.
There were no hidden divine inheritances left.
Perhaps, back then, when the Federation came to develop the land where those inheritance sites stood, the deities had taken the sites away of their own accord to avoid being disturbed.
It was also possible that the Soul Masters who first developed those places had concealed the inheritance sites and benefited from them.
Either way, all those pure powers had now vanished.
"Never mind the inheritances. Even the Divine Realm itself has disappeared."
Yun Ming's gaze grew distant, his eyes full of regret.
He believed that, with his aptitude, there was no doubt he could become a deity.
Even without a deity's inheritance, he could become a deity and ascend to the Divine Realm by condensing a Godhood!
He had indeed done it. Although he had yet to condense a complete Godhood, he could finish it very quickly if he wished. But doing so would damage its foundation, and perhaps he would only ever possess a third-rate Godhood.
But becoming a god was still becoming a god.
The reason Yun Ming was still striving for a higher realm was not that he was reaching beyond his grasp, but that the Divine Realm was now gone.
He could only try to condense a Godhood while finding a way to create the Divine Realm anew.
It was a fantasy, but Yun Ming could only grit his teeth and follow that one road into the dark.
Even with such a hopeless road ahead, Yun Ming still felt he had merely been born in the wrong era.
Had the Divine Realm still existed, he would definitely have become a god.
But after watching the images on the Heavenly Screen, Lin Yi suddenly felt that perhaps even he might not have been able to become a god.
It turned out that becoming a god depended not only on oneself, but also on the deities of the Divine Realm.
There were people who would block the way.
Although Yun Ming had seen the Sea God obstructing Lin Yi, and as a member of Shrek he did not need to worry about the Sea God blocking his path,
the Divine Realm presumably was not under the Sea God's sole and absolute control.
Various thoughts coursed through Yun Ming's mind, and his gaze grew complicated.
"He's almost at the limit."
In the Heavenly Screen's images, Lin Yi's search for a divine inheritance was not going smoothly.
Time and again he met with setbacks; time and again he resumed his search.
During this process, his Soul Power Level also rose steadily.
Gradually, he broke through to level ninety-nine.
The true limit of a human Soul Master.
The three-Soul-Core limit!
Even after reaching the limit, Lin Yi continued searching for a Godhood Inheritance.
The images shown on the Heavenly Screen obscured Lin Yi's breakthrough to the limit a little.
It had not even singled the breakthrough out directly.
Time passed.
The Heavenly Screen continued showing images for a full hour!
The entire hour consisted of Lin Yi searching for a Godhood Inheritance.
It even showed Lin Yi opening passageways between planes and attempting to communicate with other planes.
He even courted death by opening a demon passageway.
Of course, in the end, he hunted down a demon lord on the other side and then severed the passageway.
The longer the images played, the more irritable Lin Yi appeared, even somewhat mad.
Of course, he had the ability to fall back on if things went wrong.
Unfortunately, search as he might, he seemed to have been shut out by the Divine Realm. No deity was willing to pass a Godhood on to him.
[Yu Xiaogang: See? I said there was something wrong with his Martial Soul. Even after cultivating to level ninety-nine, he still hasn't earned a deity's recognition, has he?]
Yun Ming frowned as well.
"That's true. Lin Yi's Martial Soul is chess. Of the Godhood Inheritances he found, those like the God of Fire's Godhood aren't compatible with him at all."
"And even the God of Space, who was somewhat more suitable, didn't take a fancy to him."
"It really is a pity."
Was he going to fail?
In two eras, countless people looked up at the sky. Watching the figure crossing the expanse between heaven and earth on the Heavenly Screen, they could not help feeling a little downcast.
They had witnessed the rise of this peerless genius.
They had seen all manner of incredible methods.
They had been awed by his Soul Ring Configuration, the likes of which had never been seen since ancient times.
Yet even so, a person like him could not become a god.
Was compatibility really the key issue?
The more they watched, the more they could feel the heaviness in Lin Yi's steps.
Countless people wrung their hands and sighed on his behalf.
The feeling of the road ahead being forcibly snapped in two was like a fishbone lodged in their throats.
"That Sea God truly drives people to despair!"
Everyone could guess that the Sea God was still the key reason so many deities refused to recognize Lin Yi.
The Sea God had failed to seal off Lin Yi's path of cultivation.
That had allowed him to come back to life.
Yet the Sea God seemed capable of covering the sky with one hand in the Divine Realm, making the other deities refuse to pass on their inheritances.