As the game reached its final moments, Wei Yuan suddenly made two major blunders in quick succession. Just as the tide was about to turn, Monk Qiuyue grew visibly displeased and said sternly, “The Dao of Go lies in sincerity; in an honest heart and genuine intent! Your deliberate concession is utterly outrageous! This humble monk has lost this game!”
With that, Monk Qiuyue dropped his stones and conceded defeat.
Caught off guard, Wei Yuan had no choice but to admit his mistake and promise to give his all from now on. Only then did Monk Qiuyue’s expression soften slightly. After that, he silently recited the sutras and deeply repented the near breakdown of his Zen mind earlier.
Wei Yuan finally realized that holding back in front of a grandmaster of Go was tantamount to pointing a finger in their face and taunting them.
However, Wei Yuan also felt a little aggrieved. He truly hadn’t meant to let Monk Qiuyue win just now; the two moves he made just now merely represented his true skill level. To put it simply, it was good enough to engage True Lord Xuan Yue in a back-and-forth battle.
After the game concluded, it was Mister Chen Zhou’s turn.
Mister Chen Zhou’s style was entirely different from Monk Qiuyue’s. Ever-shifting and unpredictable, at times it was solid and substantial; at others, it was ethereal and elusive. Sometimes, it exuded the ephemerality of an immortal, while at other times it brimmed with the down-to-earth vibrancy of everyday life. His play was characterized by boundless variation and complete freedom.
Wei Yuan’s stone formation finally began to look slightly less ugly. His moves were consistently unexpected, yet upon closer inspection, they made a lot of sense.
As the game progressed, Mister Chen Zhou’s expression gradually grew serious. He could already feel the pressure. Even though Wei Yuan’s moves were clearly illogical on their own, when strung together, they weighed on him so heavily that he found it difficult to breathe.
He tried several times in a row to lure Wei Yuan into making a mistake, even deliberately leaving critical points open for the young man to exploit, but he remained unmoved.They were each playing their own game.
In this game, both players were moving at lightning speed. Wei Yuan was drenched in sweat, and he had no choice but to form a red glow above his head to dissipate the heat.
By now, the number of mortals in the Great Realm had exceeded 100,000. In the Realm of Qingming, urgent arrangements were being made to put large numbers of Xu Clan youngsters and human sacrifices to sleep as well. Additionally, several main forces had been pulled back to their barracks to stand by for orders.
The game was extremely tight and fiercely contested. Even True Lord Xuan Yue, watching from the sidelines, felt his blood boil with excitement. He knew every move that was being played was brilliant, even though he couldn’t grasp why. He longed to take Wei Yuan’s place and was tempted to offer a few words of guidance.
At the most thrilling moment, True Lord Xuan Yue tugged at the Seventh Elder and said, “Come, Little Seven! Let’s play a game ourselves.”
The Seventh Elder wasn’t afraid of True Lord Xuan Yue, though. He replied coldly, “Playing with you would only drag down my skill level, Old Scoundrel Chunqiu. It’s fine that you don’t understand the game, but don’t interfere with my viewing of the match! Go stand over there!”
True Lord Xuan Yue was furious, but he couldn’t vent his anger. It wasn’t that he feared the Bao Clan, but rather he didn’t want to make things awkward for Bao Yun. As the saying goes, if you love the house, you gotta love the crows living on the roof as well[1]. To Xuan Yue, Bao Yun was like his own granddaughter right now.
Seeing that the Seventh Elder was about to speak disrespectfully again, True Lord Xuan Yue waved his hand and summoned Bao Yun. This successfully forced the words “Old Scoundrel Xuan Yue” back down the Seventh Elder’s throat.
The Seventh Elder continued watching the game, so Xuan Yue had no choice but to play a game with Bao Yun. Bao Yun played with perfect control—at times letting Xuan Yue suffer a narrow defeat, and at other times allowing him a narrow victory. Consequently, Old Scoundrel Chunqiu’s interest in Go was greatly piqued. He felt that he must possess a natural talent for this Dao, but alas, he hadn’t put in enough hard work to make it shine.
Meanwhile, the game between Mister Chen Zhou and Wei Yuan had reached its climax.
Wei Yuan’s place was flawless, and the half-point gap between them remained unbridgeable. In the end, Mister Chen Zhou was forced to concede defeat.
It was Monk Qiuyue’s game to play again. Mister Chen Zhou sat nearby and closed his eyes, mentally reviewing the game he just played.
Having played one game against Wei Yuan and observed another, Monk Qiuyue now felt confident that he could win. He altered his opening strategy and employed every possible variation to gain an edge. Traces of famous games such as the Lanke Game, the Blood Splat Board, and the Path to Heaven could be seen throughout the game.
In this game, Monk Qiuyue reached a level of play he had never achieved before, growing increasingly elated as the game progressed. But suddenly, Wei Yuan ignored a fiercely contested area on the board and placed a stone on a random corner. Only then did he return to the fray.
This singular move enraged the monk and shattered his Zen composure. He nearly lost control and rebuked the young man. But in the end, Monk Qiuyue suppressed his anger and launched a fierce attack against the area they were contesting. He was determined to make Wei Yuan understand just how grave a mistake it was to give up the initiative while playing against him.
Monk Qiuyue’s mental composure was actually exceptionally formidable. It was simply that he couldn’t quite remain as composed while playing Go. It was his final weakness.
As both sides continued to fight fiercely, Mister Chen Zhou’s expression grew graver and graver, while the Seventh Elder’s expression alternated between deep concern and teeth-gritting frustration. The battle soon spread from that corner of the board to the entire board, gradually closing in on the single stone Wei Yuan had played out of turn.
Monk Qiuyue’s hand abruptly froze in midair, his entire body stiffening. Moments later, cold sweat actually poured down his face!
Only then did he realize that no matter how he played next, he could not avoid that one out-of-turn stone Wei Yuan had played. It had singlehandedly and completely blocked his path forward!
How could this young man possibly plan this far ahead?
While Monk Qiuyue was struggling to place his stone, the Seventh Elder wore a puzzled look. He had come up with several possible responses during this period and didn’t think the situation was as difficult as the monk was making it up to be.
Meanwhile, True Lord Xuan Yue was in the thick of a fierce battle against Bao Yun, shouting and cheering as if he were fighting a peerless opponent in the Beyond.
Suddenly, Mister Chen Zhou sighed and said, “The outcome is already decided. Why obsess over it?”
His words snapped Monk Qiuyue out of his mood like a breath of enlightenment, and his spirit altar grew crystal clear. He resigned the game afterward.
The Seventh Elder was astonished, unable to understand how Monk Qiuyue had lost. From his perspective, Monk Qiuyue clearly held the advantage.
Mister Chen Zhou remarked slowly, “This is a game for the ages!”
No one knew that the singular move had not, in fact, been calculated by the mortals—It was Yin Yang. She had used a method of fortune to calculate that that spot possessed the densest concentration of fortune before directing Wei Yuan to place a stone there.
In the next game, it was Mister Chen Zhou’s turn again. Just like Monk Qiuyue, he demonstrated skills beyond his usual level and played yet another game for the ages. However, he was constantly pressured throughout the whole game and eventually lost in the mid-game.
During the course of these several games, the fundamental method the mortals in the Fire of Humanity used to calculate their moves had changed three times. It had also been optimized to specifically work against Monk Qiuyue and Mister Chen Zhou’s play styles. By this point, the Fire of Humanity was completely different from what it had been at the start of the games.
Yin Yang was gradually revealing her terrifying potential as well. Her rate of deduction was in no way inferior to that of the True Lord. Spurred by her, the major immortal plants were beginning to improve as well.The collective spirituality of the entire Fire of Humanity was steadily rising.
After Chen Zhou withdrew, Qiuyue took over once more. When Qiuyue was defeated, Chen Zhou took over again.
In the blink of an eye, the two sides had reached their seventh game, with Qiuyue and Chen Zhou losing a total of six games in a row. This time, the two men chose to join forces.
The moment they joined hands, the situation changed abruptly.
Wei Yuan played a stone on the 3-3 point, and Mister Chen Zhou immediately countered with a stone of his own. The two engaged in a fierce battle from the very beginning right through the end. But during this time, Qiu Yue and Chen Zhou began arguing over how to play the next move, and neither of them refused to yield to their partner. In the end, they took out another board so that they could play both strategies against Wei Yuan.
They did not win.
After three such chaotic games, they reached the tenth game.
In the tenth game, the flow of the game suddenly underwent an abrupt change. Wei Yuan continued to move erratically—often employing moves not found in any kifu—but the relentless, aggressive intent from before was gone, instead becoming as calm as water. He slowly built up a slight advantage, which he then maintained unremarkably until the end of the game.
But Mister Chen Zhou and Monk Qiu Yue looked ashen-faced. Throughout the game, they hadn’t been given even the slightest chance of winning. At this point, they finally realized that their playing abilities were no longer on the same level.
There was no need to continue, so the match ended there.
Mister Chen Zhou rose to his feet, bowed deeply to Wei Yuan, and said, “Words cannot describe how honored I am to have witnessed the entire process of a Go immortal descent to the mortal realm, and rebirth as something even greater. Today is truly a day to be remembered in the world of Go. When I return, I swear to compile these matches into a kifu so that future generations may revere it for ages to come!”
Monk Qiuyue also bowed deeply and said, “In learning, there is no distinction between senior and junior. All enlightened ones deserve to be teachers. This humble monk has benefited greatly from these ten games, and my state of mind has been enriched as well. Thus, please allow me to address you as Master.”
Wei Yuan was stunned to say the least. He never imagined he would receive such high praise. Is it just me, or has the situation gotten a bit out of hand?
After all, his true skill was only slightly better than that of the founder. On his own, he could not have beaten a single known Go player.
The Seventh Elder was equally astonished. He never expected the games to reach such a level; a level that he could not comprehend.
As for Founder Xuan Yue, he had originally prepared a bellyful of sarcastic remarks to denigrate Mister Chen Zhou and Monk Qiuyue further. But seeing how the two were acting, he felt that it would be crossing a line.
Meanwhile, fire was literally shooting out of Wei Yuan’s head in a furious blaze—in fact, it had been doing so since a while ago. It wasn’t until now that it finally began to slowly die down. For this bout, the Fire of Humanity had mobilized a total of 200,000 mortals. Although everyone was utterly exhausted, they had all achieved tremendous growth.
The ten games against Chen Zhou and Monk Qiuyue had squeezed out the full potential of the Fire of Humanity. As a result, its spirituality was surging, and it had already completed about a-third of the journey to perfecting the spirit-cultivating stage.
These ten games were later compiled into a single volume. The first three games in this kifu still contained various errors and omissions and felt human so to speak, but the subsequent six games were almost entirely free of hesitant moves and slow play. Each game was utterly spectacular and was hailed as the pinnacle of achievement attainable by mortal grandmasters.
The tenth game, though, was wholly different. Each move was cold, unremarkable, and detached from worldly concerns, as if an immortal were looking down upon the mortal realm. It was no longer a game that ordinary humans could play—without exaggeration, it had transcended the mundane and reached the realm of the divine.
When the ten games were presented together, it was as if one had witnessed the entire process of a Go immortal breaking free from his cocoon and transforming into a butterfly, gracefully descending into the mortal realm.
Since the formations in these ten games were mostly rigid and ugly, it came to be known as The Scribbles, evoking the image of a cold’s freehand doodles and natural, childlike charm. It also prompted a reevaluation of the conventional standards for judging Go formations. From then on, it stood alongside the Lanke Game, the Blood Splat Board, and more as one of the world’s most renowned games.
But that is another story for another time.
1. There’s an English idiom called, “Love me, love my dog.” And I had to triple-check to see that I wasn’t dreaming it up. What the hell even is this idiom lol? ☜