전생검신 91권 13화

Ugh, damn it! This isn’t how I planned it!

Internally panicking, I decided not to change my mind. As a result, the spear in front of me quickly vanished, and I felt a mix of confusion, not understanding the intention behind the foreign press.

‘…What’s the big deal about knocking down the Master of the Twelve Joules?’

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that. Noting that everyone around was bewildered as they had no clue what was going on, I swiftly called out to Hong Gil-dong, who was in the back.

“Hong Gil-dong! I accidentally hit the Joule too hard. He shouldn’t be dead or seriously injured, so treat him!”

Tap

At my words, Hong Gil-dong rushed forward to check the Joule’s pulse. Judging by the anxiety in his eyes, it was clear he wanted to jump in sooner but had hesitated, realizing the level of my martial arts. Moments later, he placed his palm on Joule’s back and began a qi treatment, and soon enough, Joule seemed to regain his senses.

“Cough! Cough. Did I faint?”

“……”

“Remarkable. Since I came to this world, aside from dealing with gods, I’ve never been in this state…”

It seemed like the Master of the Twelve Joules was wearing a wry smile. Looking at him, I said,

“Do you really think I can’t understand you just because you keep making dangerous statements?”

“What?”

“I’ve always found that side of you the most annoying.”

…Should I just let it go?

Since it won’t be recorded in history anyway, should I just go for it?

‘If I set my mind to it, I could make him lose even at Go…!!’

I could feel the evil desire wriggling inside me. Normally, I’d be lost in the mystical and aloof demeanor of the Master of the Twelve Joules, but during this 30th life, I’d gathered plenty of clues about him. And it seemed quite possible to incapacitate him without even physically attacking.

“Hey, Master of the Twelve Joules… You’re so…”

“……?”

“…Never mind.”

I barely swallowed the words that rose up in my throat because the purpose of this Go challenge was to improve my skills, not to torture the Master of the Twelve Joules.

‘But somehow, it feels so tempting…’

I controlled my mischief and bluntly said,

“Get your head back in the game, let’s play again.”

“Hm. How brazen of you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You agreed to spar according to the rules of Go, yet suddenly attacked me with a level that isn’t even martial arts. This seems like a clear foul to me, doesn’t it?”

“Ugh…”

I had no retort. It was true that what I just did was a big no-no during a Go challenge.

Once Joule seemed to regain his stability, he spoke in a calm voice.

“But I’ll extend my mercy. It’s not every day you see someone of your skill suppressing their power, so I shouldn’t complain.”

“……”

Oh, this guy’s so irritating!

I’d made the first mistake trying to hold back, and now he’s pushing my buttons!

So I unintentionally shouted, “Sohyun!!”

Roar

As my Lion’s Roar suddenly erupted in the hall, people were left bewildered. Since it didn’t carry much internal energy or hostility, they likely weren’t harmed, but my words must have seemed out of the blue.

“What was that?”

“Sohyun… Who’s that?”

Noticing the reaction of Wind Spirit Sect’s Cheon Woo-jin, along with the secretly spectating Master of the Fire Spirit Techniques, Han Baek-ryeong, and even the Twelve Joules experts and the audience, there seemed to be no one comprehending what I meant. Some might have thought it was a code and tried to analyze it.

However, there was one person in the hall who froze the moment my shout rang out.

“……”

The Master of the Twelve Joules stood there, completely still as if turned to ice. It seemed like he couldn’t even breathe, facing an unprecedented state of rigidity, and I could sense he was fixated on my lips, fearing what might spill out.

Seeing that reaction, my heart finally lightened, and I pretended to be nonchalant.

“…As a Go master would say, one shouldn’t receive help from others when playing!”

As I pretended to be casual, the Master of the Twelve Joules finally seemed able to breathe again. He responded to my words, feigning calmness.

“I see, no help should be allowed. But, why did you suddenly say that?”

“I was just wondering if you were getting pointers from another Master of the Twelve Joules.”

“Pfft, that’s impossible… I wouldn’t risk my name like that.”

“How about that reaction? It seems you know someone living deep in the mountains?”

Playing coy, I noticed the Master of the Twelve Joules flinched slightly but replied nonchalantly.

“I don’t know. How about we resume the game?”

“Heh heh.”

I chuckled slyly. He might have been pretending, but I could feel his composure was wavering more than before.

‘Today, I’ll just give him a taste, Master of the Twelve Joules…’

With that reaction in mind, I was confident.

If there’s a next time… I’ll make sure to let him feel the true agony of hell!

After getting in my petty revenge, I started the Go match again.

Click

Crash!!

After only about twenty-five moves, I realized one chilling fact.

‘I lost…’

Now, my eyes could see the blatant signs of defeat. Although I hadn’t lost the main piece yet, I had already relinquished a corner and felt like I had lost a couple of small skirmishes here and there. I’d literally been taken out twice in front of everyone.

It might reveal more if I kept playing, but the feeling of having lost was too strong in my head, and that feeling probably wasn’t wrong. In fact, just realizing it late was a sign of my lack of skill.

“……”

Would it even matter to keep going after already losing?

As I hesitated and couldn’t make the next move, the Master of the Twelve Joules spoke.

“Your martial arts skills don’t match your foundation at all. Even if you tried hard, you’d only be at level 2… You’d fail as a trainee and yet dared to face me in Go…”

The Master of the Twelve Joules muttered as if finding it absurd.

“Is there any point in continuing this? Unless your skill in Go matches ours perfectly, playing further would just be wasting time.”

“Ugh…”

“If we fought with martial arts, I wouldn’t be able to win, but this match was your mistake.”

Was this just a foolish endeavor?

Am I doing something that’s completely meaningless right now?

‘…Wait a minute?’

If our skills are flip-flopped?

I registered something in the depth of my thoughts and said to the Master of the Twelve Joules.

“Hey… Are you saying if you switch colors and play, you can turn this around?”

It looked like an obvious lost game!

Looking again, I thought I could never win even if I came back from the dead!

Not believing it, I asked back, and the Master of the Twelve Joules casually responded.

“Of course!”

“Don’t talk nonsense! Are you trying to mess with me?”

He provocatively spoke as if seizing the opportunity.

“Then how about this? If I can’t turn it around after switching colors and playing, I’ll give you my whole Twelve Joules.”

Murmurs

People seemed shocked. Well, it was hard to believe someone would have that much confidence.

Who would risk everything for a game of Go?

However, I could coolly accept the Master of the Twelve Joules’ proposal since I didn’t really need the Twelve Joules.

‘This jerk! With a strong AI backing, he thinks he can manage anything?!’

I already knew.

The Master of the Twelve Joules was actually equipped with Mephistopheles, the strong AI!

Given he possessed Mephistopheles, it was practically impossible for me to defeat him in Go! My skills weren’t that remarkable, but even the number one Go master in China, the Heavenly Dragon Inspector Yu Geon, would struggle to win against the Master of the Twelve Joules in a match. That’s because the AI’s Go skills had reached a level that a human could never catch up to.

I could understand why he made such a reckless proposal. After everything, he likely wanted to avenge the humiliation of being hit by me earlier.

‘From the very beginning, I knew the skill gap in Go. Knowing that, I still accepted this challenge… it’s not just about pride.’

I recalled my mindset when I first faced off against the Master of the Twelve Joules in Go.

Then I closed my eyes and thought for a moment before speaking.

“No need for that. Let’s just continue playing.”

“Hmph, that’s boring. I won’t go easy on you for it.”

“You don’t have to!”

After a brief moment, the match resumed. After the Master of the Twelve Joules made his move, we exchanged martial arts, then I unwittingly tore my gaze away from the Go board.

Actually, I closed my eyes.

‘Either way, there was nothing I could do even if I looked. Let’s give up understanding it with my eyes and brain.’

If people read my thoughts, they would call my actions foolish.

Logically, how could someone win in Go without looking at the board?

‘This situation defies logic.’

But at this point, it was all the same for me. Right now, I was at a level where even giving the Heavenly Dragon Inspector Yu Geon a nine-point handicap wouldn’t let me defeat him, yet the Master of the Twelve Joules could overwhelm anyone who had the same handicap!

Mephistopheles’ Go skills were nothing less than that of a Go god!

The difference had been absurd from the very start; thinking about sifting through this in my head wouldn’t lead to finding a solution.

Before entering this match, I recalled the words the Heavenly Dragon Inspector Yu Geon had once told me.

[Do the same in Go. In Go, black and white are battling with martial arts, and if you look closely, you’ll see the opponent’s desired [flow]. If you can read that [flow] ahead of time and cut its pulse, you will rapidly increase your skills.]

…Flow.

I’d exerted tremendous effort to read that flow throughout my match with the Master of the Twelve Joules. But having not been able to grasp even a single flow, I felt perplexed.

In repeated matches against the Heavenly Dragon Inspector Yu Geon, the flow had gradually become clearer; so why couldn’t I read the [flow] against the Master of the Twelve Joules?

Now, I realized the reason. The Heavenly Dragon Inspector Yu Geon was in the position of teaching me. He intentionally showed me certain moves to allow me to read the flow during matches. However, the Master of the Twelve Joules encountered me as a complete foe, entirely devoid of hesitation, deploying only his strongest moves to annihilate me, preventing me from gathering enough insight into the flow as I was instantly overwhelmed.

‘One more reason… is that the Master of the Twelve Joules’ style in Go… feels completely formless.’

Formless!

The peculiar discomfort I had felt from earlier—a stark contrast to the Heavenly Dragon Inspector Yu Geon’s well-defined strategies—seemed to stem from the Master of the Twelve Joules’ Go technique, which I had never encountered before that was chaotic without any discernible rules. He employed uniquely unprecedented methods without any set patterns.

Though I sensed it only belatedly due to my poor skill, this was likely a fundamental trait of the Master of the Twelve Joules’ Go prowess stemming from the powerful AI, Mephistopheles.

‘Mephistopheles has the computational power to interpret celestial bodies of the entire solar system… possessing the ability to read all of that; essentially, Mephistopheles has experienced thousands of trillions of Go matches—or even beyond that—and knows everything in advance.’

With the astronomical experiences learned via deep learning, Mephistopheles’ tendencies had to be formless. The sheer volume of experiences rendered any traces or patterns completely non-existent. In all likelihood, no Go master could exist in this universe who would be more perfect than Mephistopheles.

But…

I firmly believed in a thread-thin possibility.

‘…I can still give it my all until the very end!’

Keeping my eyes closed, I focused all my mental energy to visualize the Go board in my head and started over from the beginning. With every single move I made, I analyzed and reanalyzed the game. In the midst of that, I suddenly felt something and finally made a move.

Tap.

“…Ooh.”

For the first time, the Master of the Twelve Joules seemed interested in my move. Unlike before, when I played, he’d immediately respond without a second’s hesitation, this time he stroked his chin and stared at the board for a moment before eventually speaking up.

“Now that you’ve played, attack with the corresponding martial arts. That’s the rule of this match, so why aren’t you making a move?”

“……”

But I remained still, not moving an inch. After some silence, I sighed.

“…I won’t attack with martial arts. I have no choice but to ask for permission.”

“Why’s that?”

“I can’t express this move with martial arts…”

“Ha ha ha!”

Suddenly, the Master of the Twelve Joules let out a strange laugh. Then he said,

“Very well. I too want to see if that move you just made was by chance or not.”

I could grasp the situation from the Master of the Twelve Joules’ words.

‘…I’ve been played.’

I didn’t know if the move I just made was the best one. After all, I didn’t have the ability to analyze the critical situation.

But the reason my move evoked a response from the Master of the Twelve Joules was solely because—

It was a move that read the [flow].

‘Switching colors. That means…’

What I gained from his earlier provocation was practically the insight I needed.

Indeed.

If I can’t win with my skill, then I’ll consider it from my opponent’s perspective!

‘By trying to read the opponent’s [flow] through empathy! I might not be able to play Go, but my opponent is the greatest master!’

As I mentally replayed the game with the Master of the Twelve Joules from the first move to now several times, I vaguely began to sense the [flow], and without thinking about whether it was correct or incorrect, I blurted out my move. Without any understanding, I couldn’t embody that move in martial arts, hence I requested leniency from the Master of the Twelve Joules.

Thud.

The next move from the Master of the Twelve Joules was placed, and I could only sense its position through Qi perception without looking directly. Even after identifying its position, I intentionally ignored my thoughts and simply focused on the pulse in my mind. The next moment, I sensed the Master of the Twelve Joules’ attack coming at me.

Clang – !

I easily deflected the attack from the Master of the Twelve Joules. And at that moment, I began to grasp something.

‘Ah.’

So Go really is martial arts?

For the first time, I felt I had grasped a clue to understand the Heavenly Dragon Inspector Yu Geon’s teachings. However, what should I say about this realization…? I didn’t know how to express it.

Indeed, putting into words this tingling, metaphysical insight with my poor expression was just beyond me.

But after much struggle, I could finally figure out a way to articulate it.

‘…The Master of the Twelve Joules and Mephistopheles are different. They have hearts (心)…… thus they cannot become truly formless (無形).’

Perhaps, this was the only way to defeat the Master of the Twelve Joules in Go.