Film and Television: Starting with Using AI to Solve the Rare Chess Puzzle

The entrance to the Killing City is located outside an unnamed town on the northwestern border of the Star Luo Empire.

The town has no name, and there is only one tavern in the town.

Lu Ming arrived in the town at dusk. The blood-red sunset dyed the entire town a dark red, as if it were soaking in a basin of congealed blood. Several rope loops hung from the old locust tree at the entrance of the town, swaying gently in the wind, with a few pieces of dried flesh still remaining at the bottom.

The tavern was dimly lit and quite cold. A dozen or so Soul Masters, dressed in various styles, sat in several groups, not speaking to each other, but their eyes were cold and they were warily watching their surroundings.

Lu Ming ignored him and walked to a table to sit down. A short while later, a waiter dressed in black came over.

"What would you like to drink?!"

Lu Ming turned and scanned the people around him. "Want to enter the City of Slaughter? Do you just have to kill them all?!"

"You little brat, you're asking for it!"

Before the waiter could speak, the fallen ones around him couldn't sit still any longer. They summoned their martial spirits and unleashed their soul skills to attack Lu Ming.

"brush……"

Lu Ming drew the Autumn White sword hidden at his waist. In an instant, the sword light flashed continuously, and the soul skills that attacked Lu Ming were instantly shattered. In just a breath, the sword light dissipated, and all the fallen ones around him had fallen to the ground, their blood staining the ground of the tavern.

The waiter simply watched all of this coldly, then took a glass of blood-red wine from the bar and placed it in front of Lu Ming.

"Drink this, and you can enter the City of Slaughter!"

Lu Ming frowned slightly. He had no habit of drinking human blood. He then looked down at the ground below the bar. He sensed the abnormality there. In the original story, Tang San also forced his way in.

That being the case...

He flashed to the bar and instantly appeared beside it. Then, with a single step, a dark hole appeared beneath the bar. Ignoring the waiter's gaze, he jumped straight in.

Following the lightless passage, they soon came to a huge city with a purple moon hanging above it, which looked eerie.

Ahead of him was a group of knights, the leader of whom rode a warhorse and was covered in a thick layer of black armor.

"You've broken the rules. To enter the Killing City, you must drink Bloody Mary." A deep, cold voice came from the leader.

"Sorry, I don't have the habit of drinking blood!" Lu Ming said nonchalantly.

"Then accept the punishment, defeat me, and you can enter the Killing City."

As soon as he finished speaking, the knight saw a fist appear in his eyes, and it grew bigger and bigger.

"Bang!"

The knight felt an immense force strike him, followed by the sound of his armor shattering and an indescribable pain. He was sent flying hundreds of meters away, crashing heavily to the ground.

He tried to get up, but all the bones in his body had been shattered. If the person opposite him hadn't shown mercy, that punch would probably have killed him.

Upon seeing this, a soldier in the group tremblingly handed Lu Ming a tag with a skull on it, bearing the number 9517.

After Lu Ming left, another knight quickly arrived. He drew his longsword and beheaded the previous knight with a single stroke, the blood seeping into the black earth below.

The calendar in the Killing City is made of piled-up corpses. After receiving the guide's explanation, he immersed himself in the Killing Arena.

Lu Ming soon stopped keeping track of the days. His unit of time became the match – in the thirty-seventh match, his opponent began to use psychological tactics to disrupt his pre-match silence; in the fifty-second match, for the first time, someone poisoned him before the match; in the sixty-eighth match, a Soul Emperor feigned surrender during the match, attempting to stab him in the waist at close range with a short knife, but Lu Ming countered by pushing the back of the knife into his collarbone.

He began to notice things he wouldn't have paid attention to before.

He began to understand that death doesn't happen instantly. Death is a process, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the ending for each person is different. Some end in anger, some in fear, some in regret, and some even show a relieved expression in their last moments before they breathe their last.

And this process began to seep into his instincts.

The people of the killing city also began to call him "Death".

The sixty-ninth match featured a burly man at the Soul Saint level. His Martial Soul was the Brain-Eating Beast, and he was said to have won forty-three consecutive matches without a single defeat in the Killing Arena.

In the third breath after the battle began, Lu Ming used the tip of Qiu Shui's sword to shatter the man's Adam's apple. It wasn't because he had found an opening, but because the moment the burly man unleashed the strongest attack of the Brain Eater, Lu Ming "saw" his death—the spot where his Adam's apple would be exposed, the breath he was about to choke on, the point at which death was inevitable.

He didn't foresee the future. He simply... understood death.

Match 78. All the players on the field were attacking Lu Ming. Compared to their previous lack of coordination, they were now devising tactics and cooperating seamlessly, clearly having gathered together to discuss before going on stage.

Unfortunately, it didn't work!

Whether it's speed, strength, defense, or skill, the gap between Lu Ming and them is simply too great. He only needs to swing Mo Yuan, and streaks of sword energy like ink wash will rage across the arena. In less than a breath's time, only Lu Ming will remain alive in the arena.

He used to kill people simply because he knew they were dead. Now, when he kills, he can sense how they died, whether their death was complete, whether they suffered, and whether it was quick or slow. Death is no longer an outcome for him, but a process that can be perceived, dissected, and controlled.

His sword began to grow cold.

This wasn't a coldness in terms of temperature, but a coldness of atmosphere. When Mo Yuan swung his sword, a faint black trail would remain in the air, like the edge of a dead man's outdated robe brushing against the mortal world. And the wounds pierced by Mo Yuan would stop bleeding—not because the blood had congealed, but because an aura of annihilation seeped into the wounds, directly extinguishing the life force within the blood.

On the night after the eighty-seventh match, Lu Ming leaned against the windowsill of his room, looking at the purple moon. He had been sitting by the window for two hours, neither drinking nor feeling sleepy, but simply trying to perceive that thing called "killing intent"—was it an emotion, an instinct, or some kind of pure power that transcended both?

No one in the City of Slaughter could stop him anymore. Even if six Soul Douluos were assigned, they wouldn't last more than a few breaths before he killed them all and drained their soul power.

Now, there is a gap of more than a month between his matches. It's not because he doesn't want to play, but because the King of Slaughter doesn't know who to assign him. During this time, the Slaughter Messenger has approached him many times, telling him that as long as he gives up Hell Road, he can obtain a position second only to the King of Slaughter.

Lu Ming refused without even thinking. He came to the City of Slaughter only for the God of Slaughter Domain; staying in the City of Slaughter was never an option for him.