Wei Yuan stepped into the quiet courtyard beside the medicinal garden and found Canglong Shi and Monk Qiuyue playing a game of Go. Mister Chenzhou was watching from the side, while Xuanjizi was inside the room studying a game record alone. Meanwhile, the Seventh Elder was speaking with Bao Manshan.
Seeing Wei Yuan arrive, the grandmasters grew exceptionally excited. Monk Qiuyue swept his sleeve across the board, scattering the stones, and said, "Little Friend Wei is here! Let us abandon this game."
Canglong Shi did not mind the monk's petty scoundrelly behavior. With a wave of his robe sleeve, the stones flew back into their respective bowls. Then he said, "Daoist Xuanji and I have both studied your unfinished game. We were utterly awestruck—some of the moves within are simply unfathomable. What Chenzhou said about a living Go immortal was no exaggeration at all."
Canglong Shi waved his sleeve again. Countless black and white stones settled onto the board of their own accord, recreating Wei Yuan's mid-game record.
Xuanjizi stepped over as well, clasping his hands behind his back. "In this game, the slaughter had only just begun—a grand clash for hegemony across the realm. Therefore, Daoist Canglong and I named it the *Record of Striving for the Deer*. We have already had multiple copies printed and sent to fellow enthusiasts across the world. However, regarding how the two-hundredth move ought to be played, Daoist Canglong and I hold differing views, and neither can convince the other. These are our respective approaches."
Xuanjizi and Canglong Shi began to demonstrate on the board. One played in the lower left, while the other insisted on the upper left. Both were ferocious battlegrounds where victory or defeat hung on the slimmest fraction of an inch, making it impossible to calculate which corner was more vital.
Locked in an impasse, Xuanjizi and Canglong Shi had already played out countless variations, trading wins and losses back and forth, truly unable to determine who had the upper hand.
Mister Chenzhou and Master Qiuyue had also conceived solutions of their own, but theirs were visibly inferior to those of Xuanjizi and Canglong Shi, so they had refrained from voicing them.
Yet as the two grandmasters played, sparks gradually began to fly. Neither was willing to yield, so they simply brought out another Go board to play two games simultaneously. On one board, they played Xuanjizi's line with Canglong Shi trying to refute it; on the other, the roles were reversed.
With both grandmasters simultaneously attacking and defending, the games unfolded with breathtaking brilliance, drawing frequent claps of admiration from Mister Chenzhou and Master Qiuyue. The Seventh Elder and Bao Manshan watched with equal excitement, though they understood little of what was actually happening.
As the games progressed, an abrupt shout rang out from the side: "You old fool, how could you play a move there?!"
Everyone turned their heads at once to see True Monarch Xuanyue, who had arrived at some point unannounced. He was craning his neck over the board, his face flushed bright red with agitation.
Fortunately, True Monarch Xuanyue merely suffered from a habitual inability to keep his mouth shut, rather than a genuine lack of self-awareness. He knew full well that in the art of Go, even a hundred of him tied together would not be enough for either grandmaster to warm up against. Having blurted out that single remark, he promptly clamped his mouth shut.
Out of respect for True Monarch Xuanyue's cultivation, the grandmasters said nothing and continued their play.
In the blink of an eye, half a day slipped by. Both games reached the final endgame yose stage, but the positions remained deadlocked. Each held the advantage on one board, making the overall outcome impossible to decide.
Seeing that the positions were settled, Canglong Shi rose to his feet and said, "We have made fools of ourselves. Let us hear Little Friend Wei's solution instead!"
And so, the crowd restored the board to its original state, quietly waiting for Wei Yuan's answer.
As for this unfinished game, Wei Yuan had long since deduced it down to the endgame. His two-hundredth move was unexpected, but according to the analysis of the Fireworks of the Human Realm, it was the single optimal choice; only four or five moves later would other branches emerge.
Without hesitation, Wei Yuan picked up a stone and placed it with a crisp *clack* into the open expanse on the right side!
In this game, the fighting on the left was fiercely entangled, a complex quagmire where each side was thoroughly entwined with the other. On the right, however, lay a vast empty area where neither side had placed many stones.
Xuanjizi and Canglong Shi never imagined that Wei Yuan would play tenuki!
By doing so, Wei Yuan indeed secured immense profit on the right, but the two groups on the upper and lower left instantly became perilously endangered, facing the risk of annihilation at any moment. The entire game seemed primed to fall into passive defense across the board.
Presently, all grandmasters under heaven fought tooth and nail for initiative; why would anyone willingly surrender sente? For that reason, neither Xuanjizi nor Canglong Shi had ever considered the right side.
Mister Chenzhou and Qiuyue's personal solutions had likewise been focused on the battlefield to the left. Only the Seventh Elder showed a look of delight—he had actually conceived of this very move back then, only two intersections away from where Wei Yuan had placed his stone.
Xuanjizi and Canglong Shi stared at Wei Yuan's move, rendered speechless for a long time. In an instant, their minds calculated endless variations, yet the path forward remained veiled in thick mist, impossible to see clearly.
Canglong Shi suddenly pinched a stone and placed it on the board as a response to Wei Yuan's move. This response fell entirely within Wei Yuan's expectations, so he followed with another stone.
Back and forth they traded moves, their pace growing slower and slower. Canglong Shi unleashed ferocious, sharp attacks against the two groups on the left, while Wei Yuan responded as if treading on thin ice. His groups teetered on the brink of collapse at every moment, yet he managed to preserve a thread of life throughout. When the dust finally settled, Canglong Shi had failed to kill even a single group, while Wei Yuan's tenuki on the right proved decisive, allowing him to pull off an extremely narrow victory.
Following Canglong Shi's defeat, Xuanjizi sat down and began a game against Wei Yuan.
This match was largely similar to the previous one, though Xuanjizi's attacking sharpness was slightly inferior, while his overall strategic coordination was a fraction better than Canglong Shi's.
In the end, Xuanjizi also failed to slaughter Wei Yuan's stones. When he subsequently played tenuki to contest the large points against Wei Yuan, he was half a step too slow. Unable to close the final sliver of a gap, he suffered a narrow loss as well.
With both games concluded, Wei Yuan took his leave, letting the grandmasters digest the results on their own.
In truth, Wei Yuan did not dare linger. His own Go skills were a hopeless mess, barely enough to guarantee a win against Patriarch Xuanyue. Playing by the instructions of the Fireworks of the Human Realm, he knew *what* to play without knowing *why*. Had the grandmasters pressed him with detailed questions, he would have instantly exposed himself.
Hence, Wei Yuan seized the opportunity while they were still reeling from shock to make a swift exit.
The grandmasters did not try hard to detain him; the continuation Wei Yuan provided for the *Record of Striving for the Deer* and the subsequent two matches were more than enough to occupy their studies for a long time.
Leaving the grandmasters' retreat, Wei Yuan headed to the front lines. At the former site of Ding'an City, a hundred thousand laborers and twenty thousand robust Body Casting warriors were hard at work. They were digging trenches across the ground, both to impede any rapid advance by the Shamans and to link the small redoubts together, while also carving out subterranean tunnels to connect all the redoubts into an underground network.
Wei Yuan walked among the new defensive fortifications, observing the progress and occasionally chatting with the laborers. Everyone worked with fiery zeal, fully aware that each extra trench or wall built might save a few lives when war resumed.
Within the Fireworks of the Human Realm, potential trajectories of the war were continuously being simulated. Although the situation appeared to have stabilized by now, and the human forces even held a slight advantage at the Scenery Command level, the Fireworks of the Human Realm deemed this the moment of highest risk.
The influx of displaced refugees from the outside had fallen sharply, with fewer than ten thousand now arriving each day, many of them burdened with young and old dependents.
Furthermore, in the fighting ahead, Scenery Command cultivators could not accomplish much. Only if the human forces retreated within Hanyang Pass would Scenery Command powerhouses find room to deploy their full might.
The Fireworks of the Human Realm determined that the Xu family massing five hundred thousand troops at Hanyang Pass posed an immense threat. Once Qingming's population dipped below a million, that army of five hundred thousand might sweep over Qingming in a single wave. And given the current state of warfare, if the Shamans launched just three more offensives, Qingming's morale would very likely collapse.
Therefore, the Fireworks of the Human Realm proposed that it might be necessary to emulate the Shamans by using Dao arts to suppress morale, having Dao Foundation cultivators deploy puppet techniques to control a dozen or more mortals each on the battlefield.
Wei Yuan had initially wanted to wipe this plan away entirely, but after a moment's hesitation, he instructed the Fireworks of the Human Realm to continue refining it and work out the details. This might well be Qingming's final line of resistance.
A light drizzle suddenly drifted down from the sky like mist and cloud. Walking through the drizzle for a time left Wei Yuan's face and body wet, sticky, and slick. He wiped his face, left the front lines, and returned to his quarters.
At that moment, a Palace of Grand Beginning cultivator was setting a stack of intelligence reports on Wei Yuan's desk. Wei Yuan picked them up and examined them one by one.
Today's intelligence concerned events transpiring in the Western Jin court, comprising official court gazettes as well as reports sent by Consort Yuan, the Marquis of Xiang, Li Weisheng, Sun Chao'en, and others.
Over the past few days, several articles penned by Cai Shizhi had circulated widely across northwestern states such as Jin and Zhao. Their core thrust was to condemn Wei Yuan for ruthless cruelty, accusing him of using common mortals to plug the battle line and treating human life like grass.
In the Western Jin court, because Li Weisheng's proposal for "a court filled with upright men" had won deep favor from both the King of Jin and the Left Prime Minister, the King of Jin had aggressively promoted a cohort of so-called principled scholars in recent years. This flock of literati now launched frenzied daily attacks against Wei Yuan in the court, with some even clamoring to dispatch an army on a punitive campaign and volunteering to lead the troops themselves.
About two-thirds of the stack consisted of memorials impeaching Wei Yuan.
The Crown Prince took this opportunity to strike, demanding that an imperial commissioner be dispatched to Qingming to investigate whether the allegations were true. With the Crown Prince taking the lead and numerous civil officials and censors raising an uproar, the King of Jin had no choice but to yield to popular sentiment and issue a decree sending an imperial commissioner to investigate.
The commissioner had almost always been Zhao Tong, but how could the Crown Prince let Wei Yuan off so easily? After a heated debate—and with most civil officials harboring disdain for the eunuch faction—it was ultimately decided that the newly appointed censor Zhu Xiaocun would serve as imperial commissioner, departing shortly for Qingming to inspect the people's livelihoods.
Wei Yuan put down the final intelligence report, narrowing his eyes slightly as he murmured, "The Crown Prince?"
Wei Yuan had nearly forgotten about him.
During his several visits to the royal capital for audiences, Wei Yuan had had little interaction with the Crown Prince, nor had the Crown Prince ever made overtures to recruit him. Among the King of Jin's sons, Wei Yuan had dealt most with Prince Wei. In addition, he found Prince Fu thoroughly grating—for no particular reason other than an instinctive distaste for the boy's stubborn, perverse nature.
As for the Crown Prince, his presence had always been remarkably subdued; who would have thought he would suddenly leap out at a time like this? Could it be because of the infant Prince Chu?
The Shamans on the front line were already pressing down so hard that Wei Yuan could barely catch his breath, and now trouble was brewing in the rear.
Wei Yuan suddenly sneered. Those noble lords far away in the royal court might think this was nothing more than an ordinary factional struggle. But in Wei Yuan's eyes, stabbing him in the back at a time like this was a blood feud of life and death.
Wei Yuan felt it was high time those lords in court learned this truth.
Stepping before the map, Wei Yuan gazed at Qingming, ringed by wolves on every side. He pondered for a long time before finally settling on a plan. He first returned to the grandmasters' retreat.
Xuanjizi and Canglong Shi had not expected Wei Yuan to return so quickly. They had barely analyzed a fraction of the two earlier game records, while Mister Chenzhou and Qiuyue were busy drafting commentary. Among them, Monk Qiuyue had slightly lesser Go skills, but his prose was the finest, making him the chief contributor to writing the game record.
Greeting the grandmasters, Wei Yuan said, "In half a month, or once the next major battle concludes, I intend to host a Treasure Appreciation Assembly and invite individuals of virtue and prestige from the surrounding regions. I would like to ask you seniors to remain a few days longer to grace the assembly with your presence."
"A Treasure Appreciation Assembly? What sort of treasure warrants such elaborate preparations?" The grandmasters were immediately intrigued. Anything that prompted Wei Yuan to convene such a gathering was bound to be extraordinary.
Wei Yuan retrieved an object and said, "This very treasure."
When the grandmasters got a clear look at what rested in Wei Yuan's hand, every one of them drew a sharp breath of cold air!
What Wei Yuan held was none other than a Yin Bomb.
Chapter 524