Chapter 2046 - Transgressors and the Hidden Summit Realm

Bang!

A sudden explosion broke the deathly silence of the eighth floor of the Tower of Ancient Evils, startling the man in the feather coat from his reading.

He looked over and saw that the chessboard placed in front of Su Yi had broken!

“What the...” The man in the feather coat gasped.

He broke the chess composition!?

Meanwhile, Su Yi, who’d been sitting there in complete stillness for half a year, silently opened his eyes, his expression shifted erratically.

“What happened?” the man in the feather coat couldn’t help but ask. “Don't mind the board; the Abundance of Heaven Chessboard was a wondrous treasure, but it was only useful to you. If you cracked the chess position inside it, it doesn’t matter that you broke the board as well.”

Su Yi nodded. “The chessboard doesn’t matter. What matters is that solving his riddle made me realize something. I’m thrilled at this discovery, but I’m also terrified at what could have been instead.”

The man in the feather coat was intrigued. “Might you explain in detail?”

Su Yi’s gaze shifted, and he sighed. “I’ve been planning to break into divinity, but I came dangerously close to going down the wrong path! If solving this chess composition hadn’t helped me realize my mistakes, I’d have undoubtedly gone further and further down the wrong path, to the point that it wouldn’t have been fixable.”

The man in the feather coat was increasingly curious. “What do you mean by ‘the wrong path?’”

“Using the Grand Dao of Reincarnation to achieve divinity!” said Su Yi, calmly but firmly. “Rather, for me, using any existing opportunity to achieve divinity would be a grave misstep.”

The man in the feather coat furrowed his brow. “But if you’ve rejected all available paths to divinity, how do you plan to become a god?”

“Simple,” said Su Yi. “I’ll use my own cultivation base as a seed, relying on no external items or Grand Daos. I’ll use only my own Dao of the Sword to create my own path to divinity!” said Su Yi, his eyes bright.

He’d spent the past three months trying to overcome this challenge. He’d used his powers of the Grand Dao as chess pieces to play against the Grand Daos that formed the chess composition, but no matter how many of them he defeated, he couldn’t break the chess composition as a whole.

No matter how hard he tried to divine a solution, everything proved to be a dead end. Nothing worked.

On countless occasions, he couldn’t help but suspect that the chess composition was fundamentally unsolvable. Nothing he tried worked, so how could he possibly win?

In the end, Su Yi grasped every variable within the chessboard, but he still couldn’t solve the puzzle.

He found this extraordinarily frustrating, but he was convinced that the person who’d built the chessboard wouldn’t have left him an unsolvable riddle.

An ancient text said that “there are fifty Grand Daos, but the Laws of nature consist of just forty-nine. It’s up to man to find the last one.” Similarly, the will of heaven always left a path to survival. In life, there was always a way to succeed, let alone in a mere chess composition!

At least, in theory. Despite his conviction that there had to be a solution, Su Yi couldn’t find it, no matter how hard he tried. The sheer frustration was overwhelming.

He spent a full month repeatedly divining, calculating, and searching for new ways to solve the puzzle, but in the end, he always found himself right back where he started.

It was so frustrating that he almost coughed up blood, and his soul power was almost completely drained!

This was his first time encountering such an unsolvable riddle since he began cultivating.

In the end, he decided to simply think nothing, do nothing, and empty his mind completely. His heart completely transcended the transformations of the chess composition.

He spent days in that muddled state before a powerful impulse overcame him. If there was no solving the riddle of the Abundance of Heaven Chessboard, he’d simply destroy it!

This impulse struck out of the blue, like a bolt of lightning. He instantly understood.

Breaking the chess composition was the only real way to solve it.

When you were stuck in an unwinnable chase game, the only solution was to overturn the table and throw everything into chaos, escaping the game completely. You wouldn’t be stuck in an unwinnable situation then!

Simply put, the path to victory wasn’t within the chess composition. It lay outside it!

When Su Yi realized this, he couldn’t help but break out in cold sweats. He finally understood the true mysteries of the chessboard.

If he used his powers of the Grand Dao to play chess, even if he played to the very end, he’d remain trapped within the chessboard. This was because his powers of the Grand Dao were among the countless Daos that made up the natural order of this world. How could he use them to solve this riddle?

If he simply broke the chess composition, he could naturally escape the chess game!

But how was he to go about breaking it?

Simple.

Without borrowing any external items or walking any existing paths, he’d use his own power to create a path by force!

It was then that Su Yi suddenly realized that there was an enormous problem with the path of divinity he sought.

Even if he succeeded in using the Grand Dao of Reincarnation to prove his Dao, and even if he crushed the gods and Buddhas beneath his feet, he still wouldn’t be able to rise beyond that!

His first incarnation had mastered reincarnation, enabling him to undergo rebirth again and again.

But if mastering reincarnation alone was enough to reach a higher level, why would he have reincarnated in the first place?

Taking things a step further, if Su Yi used the Grand Dao of Reincarnation to prove his Dao and break into divinity, in the end, he wouldn’t be able to avoid treading his first incarnation’s old path once more.

How could he speak of reaching a higher level then?

This awareness was starkly against the Grand Dao he sought, and in an instant, Su Yi’s mentality shifted dramatically. It came as an enormous shock, and he almost lost control!

Fortunately, in the end, he calmed down and found a path to break through.

That was rejecting external power and all pre-existing paths, casting aside all Grand Daos, and using himself as a seed instead. He’d use his Dao of the Sword to cleave open an all-new path to divinity, one all his own!

Thus, Su Yi broke the chess composition and emerged. In doing so, he shattered the Abundance of Heaven Chessboard.

When Su Yi thought back to his experiences solving this chess composition, he couldn’t help but feel a thrill of delayed terror.

But when he really processed what he’d learned, he realized that he’d opened the door to a whole new world. Unbelievably wondrous realizations welled in his heart.

For instance, he suddenly understood that even if Reincarnation and Profound Ruin were far more taboo and heaven-defying, he still had to fuse them into his Dao of the Sword.

Ordinary people used Epoch Fragments to prove their Daos and achieve divinity because they needed the Epoch Laws therein to condense their Godheads.

He, on the other hand, would use his attainments in the Dao of the Sword as a furnace to fuse his powers of the Dao and create an altogether different kind of Godhead!

The crux of this effort still lay in the Dao of Reincarnation and Profound Ruin, but when the time came, his body, vitality, and Dao of the Sword would all combine to form his Godhead!

He’d use himself as a seed and cleave open a path to divinity with his sword!

They said that “a man who learned the truth in the morning could die that evening without regrets,” and indeed, Su Yi felt as if the clouds had finally parted and all was suddenly bright and clear.

It was only by exiting the chess composition entirely that he effectively escaped the cage of the heavens. This was a path he created for himself with his sword. It was naturally unparalleled and unprecedented!

It was completely different than the paths even his past selves had walked!

The more Su Yi thought about it, the more excited he felt, and the more terrified of what could have been.

If not for this unsolvable chess composition, he would have been doomed to walk the same old path as his first incarnation. To him, someone who’d reincarnated repeatedly in search of greater heights, that would have been a grave misstep!

No matter how strong he became, he’d at best be comparable to his first incarnation. That would make reincarnating all those times meaningless.

This was the source of Su Yi’s delayed terror.

“You’re going to use your Dao of the Sword to cut open a path to divinity...?” The man in the feather coat murmured, his eyes increasingly radiant and his expression full of irrepressible shock. “This goes against both the heavens and the Dao. If you succeed, you’ll be the first person in history to have achieved divinity without an Epoch Fragment or comparable treasure!”

A moment later, he calmed down and said, “This path won’t be easy to walk.”

Su Yi nodded. “It’s especially difficult because no one’s ever done it before, and there are no examples to draw on or old paths to retrace. I’ll have to seek it out for myself! But that only makes me all the more eager!”

The man in the feather coat sighed, a complicated look in his eyes. “No wonder you managed to solve this chess composition.”

Su Yi took a sip of wine and said, “My first incarnation left it for me, didn’t he?”

“He did.”

“And he was also the one who told you to watch over this place, wasn’t he?”

“He was indeed.”

Su Yi felt enlightened. “No wonder. Only he could have foreseen this dilemma.”

“Yes, but foreseeing it was all he could do. He had no way of knowing whether you’d be able to solve this riddle or not,” said the man in the feather coat, but as soon as the words left his mouth, it hit him that Su Yi and the swordsman he’d once known really were the same person.

When Su Yi solved this puzzle, it meant that one of the swordsman’s pre-emptive measures had succeeded!

“He planned this chess composition for a day countless years and numerous lifetimes in the future, all to point out the correct way ahead. Only your first incarnation could have pulled something like this off.” The man in the feather coat sighed. “How fortunate was I to have witnessed it?”

Su Yi looked at him. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me who you are?”

The man in the feather coat stood, straightened up his clothing, and clasped his fist. “My surname is Gongye, and my given name is Futu. I’m a trivial figure of little importance, no more than an errand boy for your first incarnation.”

He sounded modest, but Su Yi knew that his first incarnation was an existence who stood above the River of Destiny. If Gongye Futu had served his first incarnation, and he was still alive after all this time, then how could he possibly be a “trivial figure of little importance?”

Su Yi rose, then asked, “Just what kind of existence was my first incarnation?”

The man in the feather coat shook his head. “I cannot tell you.”

“...”

Su Yi e suddenly recalled Chen Pu and his father, Chen Xi, as well as Lin Jinghong and Demon God Lin. They and their origins were as nameless as the Grand Dao, too. They could not be spoken of out loud!

“Forget it. I won’t ask any further questions.” Su Yi waved. He’d naturally get his answers eventually.

Gongye Futu said, “There’s one more thing I must do before you proceed to the ninth floor,” said Gongye Futu.

“What is it?” asked Su Yi.

Gongye Futu took out a jade slip and gave it to Su Yi. “This records a hidden realm of cultivation between the Path of Divinity and the Great Realm. They call it the Hidden Summit Realm. The name is pretty self-explanatory: It's a peak of the Immortal Dao that is unknown to everyone but a select few. Only Transgressors can reach it.”

“Between divinity and the Great Realm? Like Demigods?”

Gongye Futu’s expression filled with disdain. “Demigods’ Daos are flawed. Although they’ve crossed the threshold of divinity, barring heaven-defying good fortune, they can forget about ever becoming gods.

“The Hidden Summit Realm is different. It’s a hidden realm one can only step into after breaking a taboo and violating an ironclad rule. Despite the passage of countless years and the alternations of numerous epochs, only a tiny handful of people have ever managed to take that step.

“And those people are known as ‘Transgressors!’”