Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 501: Chapter 497 Exquisite Chess Game

Huo Sining frowned and moved her hand little by little across the chessboard. When she touched a point where the horizontal and vertical lines intersected, she paused for a moment.

Only then did she discover that beneath that black intersection, there seemed to be a tiny hole, invisible because of the paint that covered those intersections.

When Huo Sining first touched this chessboard, she didn’t pay attention to those minute holes, thinking they were tiny cavities caused by gas bubbles during the granite’s formation process, so she disregarded them.

But upon touching it this time, she found something amiss: there were fifty-six of these tiny holes irregularly distributed across the intersections of the lines, some round and some square.

Had there been merely two or three holes, one might attribute it to coincidence, but over fifty holes, all at the intersections, demanded skepticism.

Huo Sining retrieved a thin wire from the basement’s toolbox and forcefully inserted it into one of the holes, but found that the chessboard showed no reaction.

She looked at the massive rock, puzzled, unable to decipher the purpose of those holes. Did they require some special method to be unlocked?

After some thought, she called Yan Feng, who was playing with Lei Shi and Heitan in the yard, ”Yan Feng, come and take a look, I’ve found something strange here.”

Before Yan Feng could ask what Huo Sining had found, she had already hung up the call.

Soon, Yan Feng arrived in the basement. By then, Huo Sining had prodded all fifty-six holes with the wire, having tested each one, yet the chessboard remained immobile.

”What’s this?” Yan Feng entered and saw Huo Sining fiddling with something, which made him somewhat perplexed.

Huo Sining shared her suspicion about the chessboard stone’s lack of wear over many years and told Yan Feng about the fifty-six tiny holes she had strangely found on it. Only then did she mention that with Heavenly Eye, she saw that the chessboard stone concealed an odd stone within.

”Your goal is to take that stone out, isn’t it?” Yan Feng straightforwardly pierced Huo Sining’s intentions.

Huo Sining laughed hehe, not at all embarrassed.

Even if Huo Sining had not mentioned it, anyone with a bit of knowledge would realize that there was something curious about this chessboard stone.

While Yan Feng wasn’t into antiques, he was into stone and woodcarving. No one would bore over fifty holes into a rock for no reason, especially not when the stone itself was worthless. The most likely explanation was that there was more to the Chessboard Stone than met the eye.

So, after listening to Huo Sining, a glint of interest couldn’t help but appear in Yan Feng’s eyes; he too had grown curious about the peculiar Chessboard Stone.

He touched around the Chessboard Stone and then, following Huo Sining’s lead, poked the holes with a wire. When finding no movement in the chessboard, he rubbed his chin in thought for a moment, then suddenly stared at the fifty-six tiny holes with furrowed brows.

”I counted them; there are fifty-six holes, twenty-four of which are round, the rest square. Although they seem to be randomly distributed, they are actually closely clustered in the center of the chessboard.”

Huo Sining continued to explain, and at this point, she paused, hesitated, and then carefully chose her words before adding, ”Do you feel that these fifty-six holes, if filled with chess pieces, resemble an unfinished game?”

”An unfinished game?” Upon hearing Huo Sining’s words, Yan Feng’s eyes instantly brightened.

He was surprised to find that the distribution of the fifty-six holes, seemingly haphazard, actually followed a pattern.

Moreover, with the round and square holes easily distinguishable on this chessboard, the explanation of an unfinished game was the most logical one.

In fact, this was merely a guess of Huo Sining’s. At a certain moment when she saw the chessboard, a thought suddenly flashed through her mind. She didn’t know why, but she suddenly thought of the unparalleled chess strategy in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils—the exquisite Linglong Chess Game conceived by Xiaoyao Zi in his search for a successor.

Xiaoyao Zi’s disciple, Su Xinghe, was also extremely intelligent. He took on eight disciples, each specializing in different arts, ranging from music, chess, calligraphy, and painting to various esoteric skills and ingenious trickeries.

However, Su Xinghe spent thirty years pondering over one chess game and ended up with nothing.

In the Linglong Chess Game, maneuvers like ”Golden Rooster Stands Alone” and ”Mouse Steals Oil” intertwined ingeniously, making every move and strategy a potential death trap—yet it all came to naught when facing a lousy monk who neither understood Go nor played by the rules.

With Xu Zhu playing conservatively at the second and third lines, black pieces suddenly counter-attacked and plucked out sixteen characters of white pieces. By a stroke of sheer luck, with one cut of the white pieces, he brought forth life from certain death, devouring all eighty points of the black pieces.

Of course, this chess game was nothing but a creation from Mr. Jin Yong’s pen, not entirely the same as the chessboard in front of Huo Sining.

Huo Sining was unclear why she had thought of that, but her words evidently served as an important reminder for Yan Feng.

Without suitable chess pieces in hand, Yan Feng’s gaze fell upon the pile of jade stones that Huo Sining had picked up from the corner.

A few Wind Blades flew past, shattering the jade stones to pieces, and the chess pieces rolled out with a clatter.

Huo Sining’s mouth twitched as she picked up more than fifty chess pieces from the rubble, then started to fiddle with them on the chessboard.

White pieces were placed on the circular holes, black pieces on the square holes. When the chess formation was fully laid out, both Huo Sining and Yan Feng were astonished as they beheld the board, Yan Feng even gasping in disbelief.

Nobody expected that Huo Sining had actually guessed right.

This was indeed a residual game!

When it comes to playing Go, Huo Sining’s skills were truly lacking, but in observing game records, she could still discern some patterns.

The layout before her seemed gentle, but in reality, every move was fraught with lethal intent.

Although it appeared that the white pieces were at a disadvantage on the surface, in fact, the black pieces had already fallen into a trap set by the white pieces.

Imagining herself commanding the black pieces, Huo Sining helplessly felt as if she were in a cage, struggling in vain to tear a hole through the white pieces’ encirclement. Even if she managed to break out, there remained another cage outside of the first.

”A game within a game, is this a dead game?!”

Perspiration appeared on Huo Sining’s forehead. Faced with such a chess arrangement, she unwittingly felt a pressure rising within and couldn’t help but take a deep breath.

This game hinged on just one move—if the black piece could just make one more step, it could turn the tables.

Yet, it was this very step that was missing, leaving Heizi in total desperation, confined to a fight with no way out. No matter how hard attempted, escape was impossible...

Although Jin Yong’s chess game was fictional, upon seeing this chess arrangement, Huo Sining didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. She had just thought about it casually—who could have known that she would actually hit the mark.

Wasn’t this residual game just like the exquisite Linglong Chess Game described in Mr. Jin Yong’s work—crafted so delicately that it was as unbreakable as a cage?