Proving the Dao Through Chess

On the Tianyuan Continent, people cultivate the Dao through chess, and millions of cultivators abound. Lu Xuan and Qin Lie, two youths from Cangwu Town, are born with a natural chess sense, but their spiritual roots are incomplete. Everyone considers them useless, incapable of cultivating immortality. In the year they turn seventeen, the mysterious elder Master Xuanji appears at their chess club and opens up an unprecedented path of chess cultivation for Lu Xuan: using his chess sense to comprehend the laws of heaven and earth, then condensing chess power from those laws to bypass the limits of his spiritual roots and reach the source of the Chess Dao. After joining the Tianxuan Sect, he makes a name for himself in the outer-sect tournament. During an expedition into a secret realm, he obtains a chess piece of heaven and earth in a life-or-death struggle. He plays against the Dragon Palace, searches for chess pieces in the Southern Wastelands... Lu Xuan journeys across the Tianyuan Continent, gathering the seven chess pieces of heaven and earth scattered throughout the world. Meanwhile, Yan Wuji, sect master of the Dark Chess Sect, cultivates forbidden blood-chess arts, intending to overturn the world with the power of the Celestial Chessboard. In the battle between good and evil, his close friend Xie Wuya sacrifices a piece to form a winning position, protecting him with his life. Amid his grief, Lu Xuan’s Chess Dao undergoes its ultimate transformation. On the Celestial Chessboard, he defeats Yan Wuji with the move “Heaven and Earth as One Board.” He then passes the trial of proving his Dao through his realization of “a draw,” but ultimately chooses to give up becoming an immortal and return to the mortal world. Chess is like life: once a piece is played, there is no taking it back. This is the story of a youth with incomplete spiritual roots who proves his Dao through chess and discovers the meaning of life through the game.