Where Is This a Treasure? These Are Two Monsters!

By the end, Wang Rui's voice had grown weaker and weaker. He lowered his head, somewhat afraid to look at Chen Jiaming.

Chen Jiaming had placed great hopes on him, but last year, he had suffered a crushing defeat in the Go league. After a year of honing his skills, he had been preparing to show what he could do in this year's league, only to be asked to step down.

Filled with unwillingness to accept defeat, he challenged his replacement.

Yet this game had turned out like this too, with him being slaughtered and routed completely.

Looking at the dispirited Wang Rui, Chen Jiaming fell silent.

As a teacher, he should have offered Wang Rui some words of comfort at a time like this and told him to pull himself together.

But he had watched this entire game from beginning to end.

From start to finish, Black had been crushed by White. Every attack had been effortlessly neutralized by White, while every defense had seemed helpless beneath White's surging, ferocious assault!

He simply couldn't imagine what kind of blow a game in which Wang Rui had been strangled from beginning to end, without the slightest power to fight back, would deal him.

The disparity reflected in this game was enough to make anyone nearly despair.

Moreover, Chen Jiaming knew very well that Wang Rui had already given it everything he had in this game.

But having clearly given it everything and still being defeated with ease by his opponent, seeing a gap that seemed beyond his reach—that was what made it most frustrating and painful.

So he truly couldn't bring himself to say some lofty, empty words like "Don't be discouraged."

"You played very well."

After a moment, Chen Jiaming finally spoke.

Hearing this, Wang Rui was slightly stunned. He raised his head and saw Chen Jiaming looking at him with a smile.

"Perhaps you didn't do your absolute best, but you played at your own level."

Chen Jiaming shifted his gaze back to the Go Board and said, "The end of one game is the beginning of the next. This isn't everything, nor is it the true end."

"In every game, you don't need to play as well as possible. You only need to play as well as you possibly can."

"And besides—"

Chen Jiaming smiled, then turned to Wang Rui again and said, "Although you lost this game, and lost miserably, I saw it."

"I saw the effort you put in. I saw your progress. Your Go skills have improved tremendously compared to a year ago. Your efforts this past year weren't in vain. I'm very gratified."

Hearing this, the emotions that Wang Rui had suppressed for so long could no longer be held back. Scalding tears burst from his eyes.

"Teacher..." Wang Rui choked out.

"You're not a child anymore."

Chen Jiaming smiled helplessly and said, "All right, wipe your tears. This game is over, so let's take a look at the other two games."

Hearing this, Wang Rui nodded forcefully. He roughly wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve, then stood up.

Only then did Chen Jiaming finally walk to the table where Xu Ziqin was sitting and look toward the Go Board.

Xu Ziqin was Playing Black in this game.

Just one glance at the game was enough to make Chen Jiaming start in surprise.

"Black cut White in half right through the middle?!"

It was obvious that Black held an overwhelming advantage at this point, having cut White in half right through the middle. White's shape was constrained everywhere.

"White was actually forced into this position?"

Chen Jiaming glanced at Xu Ziqin in astonishment, then looked through another five or six moves.

Xu Ziqin played her stones as swiftly as flying, while the boy sitting across from her looked more and more grim as the game progressed.

"Although Black has the advantage, she hasn't attacked recklessly. If Black were to launch a fierce attack against White, White probably wouldn't be able to withstand it."

"Black is using a dull knife to slowly carve up White, gradually killing White through exchanges and invasions without giving White any opportunities. Even if White can make the large dragon on the left wing live, he'll probably still lose."

"So calm, and her overall vision is so strong. She hardly seems like a female Go player!"

"After the simultaneous games this morning, I thought she was better at attacking and killing. But judging from this game, that isn't all she can do!"

"She's incredibly strong too!"

Chen Jiaming couldn't help raising his head to look at Xu Ziqin.

Xu Ziqin gazed down at the Go Board with lowered eyes, her bearing cool and detached. She was focused entirely on the game and hadn't noticed Chen Jiaming at all.

"This level of Go strength..."

"She's like that, and so is that child named Yu Shao. The new first-year students this year are outrageously talented."

Earlier, the principal had told him that Jiangling First High School had struck gold.

But now, it seemed that this wasn't merely striking gold. They had picked up two monsters!

Finding one such student in ordinary times would already be remarkable, but this time there were actually two.

With Go strength that even made him feel ashamed, Chen Jiaming had no idea how this year's Go league could possibly lose.

As an Amateur Fifth Dan, he could still barely guide Wang Rui and the others through their games. But facing Yu Shao and Xu Ziqin, he felt that even if he took the board himself, he probably couldn't beat them.

Beside Chen Jiaming, Wang Rui was also speechless as he watched this game.

While feeling a sense of shared misery, Wang Rui secretly let out a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness I'm not the only one who lost that badly.

However, although Wang Rui could also sense the obvious gap between himself and Xu Ziqin, that gap, even if enormous, was still visible.

Unlike his game against Yu Shao, in which he had felt nothing but profound powerlessness and despair.

Thinking of this, Wang Rui clenched his fists involuntarily.

"This is too outrageous..."

"He didn't come from a Go academy. How could he possibly have this kind of strength?"

After a moment, Chen Jiaming walked toward the final table—the game at Zhong Yufei's table.

Like Xu Ziqin, Zhong Yufei was also Playing Black at this table, while his opponent was Playing White.

On the Go Board, the black and white stones were locked in a fierce struggle. The battle was intensely contested and evenly matched, with neither side gaining the upper hand. It would probably be difficult to determine a winner anytime soon, and most likely the game would continue all the way to the endgame.

After seeing the position on the Go Board at this table, Chen Jiaming and Wang Rui unexpectedly relaxed at the same time.

If the third table had shown one side crushing the other just like the first two games, it would have been too terrifying.

Now this is what a normal game between amateur high-school Go players should look like!

At that moment, Yu Shao finally returned to the activity room from the restroom.

Seeing Chen Jiaming and Wang Rui both focused on Zhong Yufei's game, Yu Shao walked over as well and began watching.

After patiently observing a few moves, Yu Shao couldn't help frowning.

To be honest, it was painful to watch.

Both sides had made some bad moves, but not many. They still had a certain level of skill. It was just that both sides often played moves that looked perfectly reasonable at first glance but were actually unimportant to the overall position—slow moves that wasted time.

Besides that, Black and White occasionally played moves too casually. They couldn't exactly be called mistakes, but there were clearly better ways to play, and they had lost opportunities to expand their advantages.

Wang Rui had these problems too, but in this game, the issues on both sides were more obvious and more numerous.

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