The Go Player

Xie Wujiu was a master of both music and strategy, wandering freely through the world. He couldn’t keep track of his accounts, but he always kept his word. He cared nothing for whether a sect was righteous or wicked; he would only place a stone when someone killed in front of him.

Ten years ago, he lost by half a point at the Mount Tai Go tournament, and the jianghu gained a wandering player of the game. Ten years later, a fragment of the Tianyuan Go manual surfaced. A black stone knocked a sword off course, drawing the Blood Garment Cult, the Tianheng Sect, the Tianji Institute, and the Line of Weighers into a game that had been underway for twenty years.

His master’s grave was empty, and there was another coffin beneath it. His mother stopped playing after the fourth game, then threw herself into the Qinhuai River. The scales’ accounts had been weighed for thirty years: those who weigh others will one day be weighed themselves. With a zither on his back and one black stone and one white stone in hand, Xie Wujiu set out to find the final move in this game. The black stone had returned, but the white stone had not. When black and white are back in their places, the loser will be the one who wins.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.