CHAPTER 474: CHAPTER 474 YOU MUST FOLLOW THE RULES!_1

The chessboard was already in an endgame, with one hundred black and white pieces on it. Now there were twenty more, but it was as if two completely unrelated games were being played on the same board. One was brimming with killing intent, while the other looked like children playing house.

But Ruan Lan was playing with extreme seriousness. At one point, she was tempted to pull out her phone, find a Go app, and use its AI to analyze the game and compete with her opponent. But if she did that, it wouldn’t be a true victory.

So, after much hesitation, Ruan Lan abandoned the idea. She wanted to win this game with her own strength and then tell Xu Lai—

You stinky brother-in-law! See? I told you to make that move, but you wouldn’t listen!

Out of pure spite, Ruan Lan refused to use any of the standard patterns Xu Lai had taught her, nor any she had learned on her own. She vaguely sensed that the person playing with the white pieces was likely a master who had returned to a state of profound simplicity. When masters competed, they had to be evenly matched; otherwise, a single misstep would lead to a cascade of errors.

And so, the black and white pieces continued to land on the board, but the game was played peacefully. In addition to the one hundred twenty pieces already present, another eighty were played by black and eighty by white, bringing the total to a whopping two hundred and eighty pieces! The board looked utterly chaotic at a glance, yet astonishingly, not a single piece had been captured.

"Impressive, very impressive," Ruan Lan muttered. Her brows furrowed slightly as she hesitated before finally placing a black piece in the farthest corner. The moment it landed, she cursed inwardly. This is bad!

As expected, a white piece drifted down, landing next to a black one. After nearly an hour of play, the first piece was finally captured.

Filled with regret, Ruan Lan blurted out, "My hand slipped! Put the piece you captured back and let me move again!"

The Dragon Spirit was stunned. You can take back moves?

But the real shock came next—it was actually possible. Ruan Lan’s captured black piece returned to the board, but strangely, the white piece that had captured it didn’t disappear.

"Do you even know how to play? My black piece is back, so aren’t you going to take your white piece off the board?" Ruan Lan demanded, her eyes widening with indignation.

Seeing no change on the board, Ruan Lan, feeling completely justified, reached out and swept the white piece aside herself.

The board finally changed. Three black pieces appeared, though one was quite dim. There were also three white pieces, all of them perfectly intact.

Dragon Spirit Xiao Hai was bewildered. What does this mean?

After a moment of shock, Ruan Lan had a flash of insight. "Could it be that each player gets three chances to take back a move?" she asked aloud. She then exclaimed with delight, "You’re pretty clever, even building in a three-move take-back rule. Nowadays, most people don’t allow any take-backs in Go at all."

You were never supposed to be able to take back moves, okay! Xiao Hai was on the verge of a breakdown. Is this really The Supreme Emperor’s sister-in-law? How can she be so shameless? And this chessboard... it’s made of incredibly luxurious Innate Purple Jade, a material so rare that only a fingernail-sized sliver is used when forging Quasi-Emperor Artifacts, yet here it is, carved into a whole board. And the pieces are even more precious, being Reincarnation Stones salvaged from the Samsara Sea, each one imbued with the laws of life and death!

This was why Xu Lai had treated this endgame with such reverence. Even he, the Great Emperor of this era, would not be so extravagant as to create such a board and pieces. In Xu Lai’s mind, only a true saint on the Game of Go Path, one who deeply loved and understood chess, would do something like this. But for the creator of this board to also include an option to take back three moves... If the Go masters of the Immortal Domain ever found out, they would probably dig the Founding Ancestor of the Star Origin Sect out of his grave and curse him for three days and three nights. It was a complete disgrace to all who played the game!

But Ruan Lan didn’t see it that way.

The Game of Go, eh? As long as it’s fun, that’s all that matters. If I felt like it, I could play Go like it was checkers!

Thus, separated by a river of time spanning nineteen eras, Ruan Lan began her "game" along the Game of Go Path with the pinnacle Quasi-Emperor Founding Ancestor of the Star Origin Sect.

You’re taking back a move? Don’t panic. I’ll take one back too. What? You’re trying to capture your own piece? Did you make a mistake? It doesn’t seem like it... Hey, that’s going too far! You’ve completely shattered the rules of Go! You can’t play like that!

"This is totally improper! You have to follow the rules!" Ruan Lan protested indignantly.

Xiao Hai silently retreated. From the moment take-backs were allowed, the game had ceased to have anything to do with rules. Or rather, the rules had been thrown out from the very beginning, with that four-by-five pile of twenty black and white pieces.

Although she complained, Ruan Lan was thoroughly enjoying herself. Soon, however, her face paled. "You’re taking back another move? You’ve already used your three chances, so how do you have a fourth?" she cried out. "Wow, you’re going too far! You’re blatantly cheating! I want a fourth take-back too! We have to be fair!"

***

「The next morning.」

Xu Lai slept until dawn. When he woke up, he saw that his wife had somehow found her way into his arms, her serene sleeping face incomparably beautiful. He couldn’t resist leaning down for a kiss, but the small gesture unexpectedly woke Ruan Tang.

She rubbed her bleary eyes and said lazily, "You came back a little late last night. I fell asleep waiting for you, but I couldn’t sleep well and kept waking up."

"Sorry, I’ll come back earlier next time," Xu Lai said apologetically.

"Mm, it’s okay. I’m not blaming you." Ruan Tang sat up and stretched, the impressive figure under her pajamas incredibly alluring.

Without another word, Xu Lai pulled Ruan Tang into his arms. "Let’s sleep a little longer."

"Sleeping in is fine, but shouldn’t your hands be a little more... behaved?" Ruan Tang chided playfully.

Xu Lai pretended not to understand and changed the subject. "By the way, Ruan Tang, do you have work today?"

"Mhm," Ruan Tang nodded. "And Yiyi is starting school as well." She sounded a little dejected. "The wonderful vacation is over just like that."

The nearly month-long holiday, from before the new year to after, had allowed her to fully relax her body and mind. Most importantly, she had grown even closer to Xu Lai and their daughter Yiyi. But all good things must come to an end, and there’s no such thing as a permanent vacation.

"I guess I have to go to work too?" Xu Lai raised an eyebrow, having just remembered.

Ruan Tang stifled a laugh. "Xu Lai, when you first brought our daughter to me, I told you to find a job. Didn’t you say you wanted to work at ’Above the White Clouds’? Want to give it a try?"

Hope gleamed in her beautiful eyes. If he did, she could be with him every day. They could even drink tea and chat in the office during their breaks. But knowing that flirtatious man’s disposition, he definitely wouldn’t be well-behaved. Perhaps...

At that thought, Ruan Tang bit her lip as a soft blush crept onto her cheeks.

"Never mind." Xu Lai shook his head. "Your company is full of women, so it wouldn’t be convenient for a guy like me. Besides... absence makes the heart grow fonder."

"We’re not even married and you already want distance? Fine. You can sleep on the sofa tonight. How’s that for distance?"

That wasn’t what I meant at all, Xu Lai’s face darkened. He pretended to be angry and flicked Ruan Tang’s forehead. "I’m going downstairs to cook. I’ll come back and deal with you later."

Downstairs, Xu Lai unconsciously glanced at the chessboard as he passed by it. "I’ll take this with me to school today," he said casually. "I refuse to believe I can’t solve this endgame!"

He entered the kitchen and began to make breakfast, but he felt that something was a bit off, though he couldn’t quite figure out what. When breakfast was ready, his pupils suddenly constricted.

He knew what it was: the endgame on the chessboard had disappeared!

SWOOSH!

Xu Lai hurried into the living room, his expression one of astonishment. The one hundred pieces of the endgame on the board had vanished. This meant... the endgame had been solved