Chapter 645: Life Is Like The Go Game; The Start Is The End.

Sir Bi shut his eyes and spoke slowly, "I was confident that I could win then, but I didn't dare act so brazenly, so I answered, 'What about best of seven games?'"

"The person sitting opposite me said with a laugh, 'You are the Go Saint of this generation, unparalleled in Tianxuan for years; naturally, you would have your unique skills. However, I have immersed myself in this art for more or less a millennium... The outcome isn't fixed in stone - let us do best of nine games. There isn't much going on anyway - we can afford to waste some time."

"I agreed with a nod, and even planned to win four games out of the nine, so that my opponent could win one game to save face."

"What I didn't think of, however, was not only did each game take an unusually long time, it became consecutively longer as we played through our nine games. The first game took an entire day and I won with half a point of territory."

"Throughout the game, I knew that my opponent was not weaker than me at all - he could even have been a Go expert who was much stronger than I was. So I became much more careful. As for my opponent, he probably underestimated me a little in the first game, causing his loss. He became more cautious in the second game as well. Overall, we were both overly reserved in our first game - we didn't do our best!"

"The second game took seven days to complete. Ultimately, I lost with a point of territory. Despite losing, I wasn't upset. I felt only gratification. It was an exchange between ace Go players. It took some time, it was exhausting, but it was still only physical fatigue. I lost the game, but I didn't lose a single bit of competitiveness. I even thought my art had improved a little."

"After the second game, I took a three-day-rest before starting the third game... When it came to the ninth game, the tiebreaker, both sides gave their all. Each step was basically made after a meticulous thought process and the piece was then set delicately. Each step took us at least a few days to ponder upon. When it came to the last game, our ninth game, I realize that it had been a year since we started the first game!"

One year? The trio was speechless as they looked at each other.

They had used a year just to play nine games. This was truly unheard of!

"After the ninth game was done, my opponent was terribly delighted, saying that my Go skills were as good as the rumors made them to be; it was excellent and unique. Then, he asked me to have a look at an incomplete game, passing over a book."

Sir Bi tapped the manual in his hand, smiling meaningfully, and said, "I believe you must have connected the dots by now... You are right - this is the very same book! I remember very clearly that one of the pages in this playbook had a chipped corner and below this corner... it's a knockout threat in the same place where the first game manual is."

As he spoke, he flipped the pages and reached the page - indeed it was a double knockout on the upper right corner of the game illustration. Both sides wanted to remove each other's stone and were only a move away from forcing the opponent into a deadlock, a step before achieving victory.

The chipped location was right where a black stone had been placed securely.

"This knockout threat entails the overall victory, and is the only knockout threat that matters in the entire game."

Sir Bi said, "When he handed me this playbook, he said, 'It has been many years since I had this manual, but there hasn't been a solution all along. No one even knows how to make a move in the first game. Your skill is exquisite and is most likely paramount in this world. You are certainly qualified to analyze this game. Come, let us study it and see if there'll be any breakthroughs.'"

"That was my first time seeing this playbook."

Sir Bi took a deep breath and exhaled. Unable to calm the turmoil in his heart, he inhaled deeply again, a blew his breath out.

The trio was stupefied.

"This manual... doesn't - it mean that... there's a hidden meaning to it?" one of them stuttered.

"Exactly. There's an insinuation; maybe even a coincidence, in its own strange way!"

"On that day, when Yun yang came to the Residence of Crown Prince and stated that he was there to specifically look for me to solve this game, I was initially not too concerned about it. After all, it's been a long time since a Go game could pique my interest. Yet, when he set the game up, I immediately recognized right away that it was the incomplete game I encountered back then. Seeing his subsequent seven steps allowed me to be certain that not only was it the same game, it was the exact same round that the otherworldly expert and I were trying to solve."

"We worked on it for three months, but we didn't manage to solve it."

"Back then, I didn't manage to work out the game and left with deep regret. Since then, I've worked my entire life at the Four Seasons Tower... Surprise, surprise, to this day, I still can't decipher the game."

"If it'd only been the incomplete round, maybe I wouldn't have acted so impulsively - but that manual... I came across the original playbook once again in the crown prince's residence!"

"The reality caused me to decide on the course of action immediately; I would ambush Yun Yang on that very day!" said Sir Bi.

"It never crossed my mind that the ambush I prided for being absolutely foolproof didn't kill Yun Yang, but caused me the lives of sixteen guards, their souls snuffed in the blink of an eye. Only Fang Yun managed to escape and come back. What surprised me more was that Yun Yang didn't kill all sixteen of them. It was fine - the world is unexpected like this, there'll always be surprises and uncertainty. Yet the secondary goal, this manual, had been snatched back. This could hardly be explained as an accident!"

"On that day, I knew that the tribulation of my life had arrived!"

Sir Bi heaved a soft sigh. He did not mention who won the ninth game after all.

One of the three men behind him raised a question with a frown, "Eldest, why didn't you personally act on it if you really wanted to kill Yun Yang? You could have asked the three of us to do it as well! Even if Yun Yang was omnipotent, how would he be able to escape the three of us?"

Sir Bi chuckled bitterly and said, "Man proposes, God disposes - heaven is unpredictable. This unpredictability exceeded my expectations and defeated everything I had planned. This is probably what it means by the saying that everything has its destiny. I have been successful in this life of mine because I have a sense of propriety, but I also lost it all because I was too prudent!"

"When I saw that this manual had returned, I knew that I was wrong; it was a mistake to send those men. Unfortunately, by then, it was too late to change anything."

"I thought I was discerning. Yun Yang is a talented youth, one whose cultivation base is already at the pinnacle of ninth heaven realm. He's a rare gem, but sending Fang Yun should have been more than enough, like slaughtering a chicken with a butcher's knife. With an additional fifteen assistants, such a lineup could have killed ten Yun Yang's without incident."

"Nonetheless, he survived! Isn't heaven unpredictable? Was this heaven's providence? Destiny? Did God intentionally have a hand in this?"

"This was the biggest mistake of my life, and this one mistake caused me everything. One careless move forfeits the entire game!"

"This holds true in the art of Go - and in life."