The first game concluded. The white light in the southeast corner of the board dimmed slightly. Dashan’s move—the “Sacrificial Stone”—had ceded control of a few plots in Old City, but it had successfully jammed the throat of the capital encirclement.
“Dashan, you can hold the formation, but you cannot hold the heart,” Wan Changqing’s holographic image murmured.
The pixelated eyes shifted, locking onto Ruyi.
“Round Two: Ownership of the ‘Rose Garden’. Ruyi, this round is yours. When your mother passed, the thing she worried about most was your pair of ears… always listening to the wind.”
Ruyi stepped forward. The hem of her black qipao swept across the board’s micro-light, like a flowing shadow. She did not sit respectfully like Dashan. Instead, she leaned casually against the table, her fingers caressing the cold obsidian stone. Her touch was so fierce it seemed as if she intended to grind the stone into dust with her bare fingertips.
“Father, don’t use Mom to pressure me,” Ruyi said, her voice cold as a needle scraping across ice. “In your algorithm, Mom was merely a sacrifice burned to exchange for the Wan family’s ‘Talking Jade’. But to me… she was an opera star who never finished her song.”
Clack!
Ruyi dropped her stone.
It landed not on a strategic point, but on the flank of the Tengen (Center Point). It was an aggressively invasive move, bordering on suicidal. In Go terminology, this is called ‘Kosumi’ or a direct ‘Contact Fight’—a signal for close-quarters combat.
“You want to fight me hand-to-hand?” Changqing’s tone carried a tremor akin to logic overload. “Ruyi, have you forgotten? Every trajectory of your emotions is in my database. Your elopement at seventeen. Your betrayal at twenty-two. Even that silver needle hidden in your sleeve right now… Before an algorithm, you have no secrets.”
“Father, you are wrong.”
Ruyi suddenly smiled. It was a smile filled with an almost absurd pity.
“An algorithm can calculate a person’s choices. But it cannot calculate a person’s ‘Disgust’.”
She leaned forward, her eyes burning. “You play this game because you believe power grants immortality. I play this game because whenever I close my eyes, I can still smell the grease and smoke that has lingered in this house for thirty years. This nausea… does your code contain a variable for it?”
As the stone settled, the white light on the board began to vibrate violently.
It represented the core asset of Wan Corp: the land rights to the “Rose Garden” ruins. In the digital world, Ruyi was forcibly “overselling” this asset at a reckless, catastrophic pace.
Outside the wall, Zhao Tianqi’s monitoring screen erupted in chaotic red alarms.
“Mr. Zhao! Ruyi is going berserk trying to seize control!” the technician screamed. “She’s not defending! She’s committing financial suicide! She’s listing the ‘Rose Garden’ at a negative value! She’s attracting every short-seller on the net to crash through Wan Changqing’s defense wall!”
This was Ruyi’s “Needle”.
She didn’t care about saving the assets. Her goal was to churn the board into mud, forcing Wan Changqing’s AI system—which pursued “Perfect Order”—into a Logic Death Loop caused by this “Irrational Self-Destruction”.
Wan Changqing’s pixelated image began to distort. The virtual armchair seemed to shake under the strain.
“Ruyi…” the AI whispered, its voice glitching. “You are destroying the Wan family.”
“No, Father,” Ruyi whispered back, leaning in until her face was inches from the phantom. The cold glint of the silver needle flashed between them. “I am dismantling your cage.”
“This game,” she hissed, “you calculated that I would kill to win. But you never calculated… that I would flip the entire room just to stop playing.”
[SYSTEM ALERT: ASSET VALUATION ERROR.]
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
[VALUE: NEGATIVE INFINITY.]
[LOGIC CONFLICT: SELF-PRESERVATION PROTOCOL VS. USER COMMAND.]
[WARNING: IRRATIONAL AGENT DETECTED. INTENT: PURE CHAOS.]
[CRITICAL FAILURE IMMINENT.]
Zhao Tianqi watched in horror as his screen displayed a cascading failure. The “Rose Garden” asset wasn’t just losing value; it was becoming a black hole, dragging the surrounding financial data into a vortex of nonsense.
Inside, Ruyi sat back, picking up another stone. Her hands were steady, but her eyes were wet.
“Your move, Father,” she said softly. “Try to calculate nothingness.”
[CURRENT SCORE: WAN DASHAN (1) - RUYI (1) - EVERGREEN AI (0)]
[NEXT ASSET: THE BIO-COMPUTE CORE (FATHER’S SOUL)]
She listed the family's most precious asset at NEGATIVE VALUE! ?? Why? Because you can't calculate DISGUST. The AI is trying to process 'irrational self-destruction' and its brain is melting! ????
"You calculated I would kill to win. You didn't calculate I'd flip the table to stop playing." — Best line ever? ??
Next Chapter: The Final Round. The asset at stake: Father's Soul (The Bio-Compute Core). Dashan and Ruyi vs. The Ghost in the Machine. Will they save him, delete him, or set him free?
Question: Is it better to win the game or break the board? What would you do? ??????
