BDSMST -Chapter 136 The Second Trial — The Zhenlong Go Puzzle

Beyond the newly opened stone door lay a long corridor. At the end of the passage, the space suddenly widened, revealing another circular stone chamber—one even more magnificent than the previous one.

The floor of the chamber was a massive Go board paved with enormous black and white stones. Scattered across it were hundreds of stone pieces the size of human heads. Black and white stones intertwined, forming an extremely complicated game position.

At one end of the board stood a stone seat, clearly meant for the player. At the opposite end there was no opponent—only a smooth stone wall carved with the description of the second trial:

“The Zhenlong Puzzle. Stones as pieces, earth as the board. One wrong move, and the whole game is lost. The key to solving the puzzle lies not in victory, but in ‘life.’”

Jiang Suisui stared at the board, her scalp tingling.

Although she knew how to play Go, her level was only that of a casual amateur. She had never seen such a strange and complicated formation. The black and white stones interlocked like jagged teeth, entangling one another. Traps were everywhere, and deadlocks filled the board.

The white stones appeared completely surrounded by black with no path to survival. Yet the black stones themselves were also fragmented and cut apart by the white stones, hanging on the verge of collapse.

It was essentially a mutual destruction deadlock.

“How am I supposed to play this?” she murmured.

She tried picking up a white stone and searching for a place to place it. But after long mental calculations, she realized that no matter where she played, it would trigger a chain reaction that caused an even larger collapse of white’s position.

Even sacrificing stones didn’t help; it only tightened the black side’s encirclement.

This puzzle seemed completely unsolvable.

Just as she was feeling utterly stuck, a familiar voice suddenly echoed through the empty chamber.

“This isn’t a trial meant for just one person.”

Jiang Suisui turned around sharply.

To her surprise, Gu Yan, Bai Yutang, and Bai Ling’er had somehow appeared at the entrance of the corridor.

“How did you get in here?” she asked, both shocked and delighted.

“The vortex outside didn’t disappear,” Gu Yan explained. “The High Priestess said that although the Medicine King’s trials each have their own focus, they never forbid assistance from companions. Medicine may be your specialty, but strategy might benefit from hearing other perspectives.”

At that moment, Bai Yutang was already completely captivated by the chessboard before him. He hurried over to the board and bent down to examine it carefully, clicking his tongue in amazement.

“Remarkable… truly remarkable!” he exclaimed. “This puzzle uses self-entanglement as its eye and mutual survival as its theme. It appears to be a dead end, yet it secretly hides a path to life. This must be the legendary Zhenlong Go Puzzle!”

Clearly an expert, he quickly finished a round of analysis and confidently picked up a white stone, placing it on the board.

The moment the stone touched the board, however, a burst of red light flashed across the surface.

“Ah!” Bai Yutang cried out as a sudden force pushed him backward several steps, nearly causing him to fall.

The region where he had placed the stone instantly collapsed—white stones that had already been in danger were completely captured by black, making the overall situation even worse.

“One wrong move and the whole board is lost… just as the inscription says,” Bai Yutang said with a bitter smile, shaking his head. “My thinking still fell into the trap of seeking victory. The key to this puzzle isn’t how many stones you capture, but how to stay alive.”

Bai Ling’er also leaned over the board, analyzing it with the logical reasoning of a Mohist disciple.

“If we treat each stone as a mechanical component,” she said thoughtfully, “then this entire board is like a huge chain-lock mechanism where every part restrains another. To unlock it, you can’t force any single piece open. You must find the central pivot of the whole mechanism.”

Her reasoning gave Jiang Suisui some inspiration.

But where exactly was that pivot?

Everyone fell into deep thought.

Only Gu Yan behaved differently. From beginning to end, he hadn’t studied the sequence of moves or analyzed any Go theory. He simply stood at the edge of the board with his arms crossed, looking down at the entire formation as if he were examining a military sand table.

After a long while, he suddenly spoke.

“Suisui, look here.”

He pointed toward the lower-left corner of the board.

“Here, the black stones have formed an encirclement, like a cavalry unit that has advanced too far into enemy territory and cut off the connection between white’s two wings. But the problem is that this cavalry unit’s supply line is too long, and it relies on only a single support point.”

As he spoke, he traced imaginary lines in the air with his finger.

“If white places a stone here, it would look like walking straight into the tiger’s mouth—black will immediately capture it. But placing that stone is like driving a nail into the enemy’s supply route. Even if the nail is quickly removed, it will buy the white forces on the right wing a moment to breathe.”

“Then the white forces on the right shouldn’t think about counterattacking. Instead, they should immediately contract their defensive line and form a pincer formation with the friendly forces above.”

Gu Yan didn’t know any Go terminology at all.

Everything he described came purely from battlefield strategy—supply routes, flanking forces, and pincer formations.

Listening to him talk about logistics and battlefield tactics left Bai Yutang and Bai Ling’er completely bewildered.

But Jiang Suisui understood.

Following the direction of Gu Yan’s finger, she looked at the board again—

And suddenly, everything became clear in her mind.

That was it!
The way to solve the puzzle was not about victory, but about survival.

The ultimate goal of Go is normally to surround territory—whoever controls more land and keeps more stones alive wins. But this Zhenlong puzzle wasn’t testing victory or defeat at all. What it demanded was the ability to find a sliver of life within a desperate situation.

Gu Yan’s line of thinking had completely broken free from the constraints of the chessboard. He treated the game as if it were a real battlefield.

In war, the goal is not to kill every enemy soldier—it is to preserve your own forces and achieve the final strategic objective. Sometimes a small sacrifice is necessary to ensure the survival of the main army. Sometimes taking a step back creates room for a greater strategic advantage.

“I understand now!” Jiang Suisui’s eyes lit up.

Following Gu Yan’s reasoning, she picked up a white stone and decisively placed it on that seemingly suicidal spot.

The moment the stone touched the board, the chessboard lit up again. But this time the glow was a gentle white light.

Just as Gu Yan had predicted, the newly placed white stone was immediately captured by black. Yet its sacrifice opened a tiny path to survival for a large group of surrounding white stones.

The previously stagnant board suddenly came alive.

“There’s hope!” Bai Yutang exclaimed excitedly, clapping his hands.

From that point onward, the game became a joint operation between Jiang Suisui and Gu Yan.

“Here, the black stones are closing in from three directions. We can’t resist them head-on,” Gu Yan said, pointing toward the center of the board. “Abandon these two outer stones and concentrate our forces to defend this inner territory.”

Jiang Suisui immediately placed a stone according to his instructions, shrinking the defensive line and forming a solid stronghold.

“The enemy’s attack is too fierce. We need to send a surprise force to harass their rear, so they can’t focus on both fronts,” Gu Yan continued, his gaze shifting to an inconspicuous corner.

Jiang Suisui followed his guidance and dropped a seemingly idle move in that corner. Yet the move forced a massive chain of black stones to divert attention and defend themselves.

One person proposed grand strategic ideas from the perspective of battlefield warfare, while the other translated those strategies into subtle and precise moves on the Go board.

Their cooperation was seamless.

Bai Yutang watched from the side, completely mesmerized. He realized that every “command” Gu Yan gave violated Go principles, even breaking several major taboos of the game. Yet when Jiang Suisui executed those ideas on the board, they somehow produced astonishing results.

This was no longer a simple game of Go.

It was a magnificent epic about survival.

As time passed, the situation on the board began to transform in a strange way.

Although many white stones had been captured, the remaining ones connected together to form a patch of living territory that could never be completely killed. Meanwhile, the black stones occupied most of the board, yet they could never eliminate white entirely.

The game entered a delicate balance.

When Jiang Suisui placed the final stone, the entire board burst into brilliant light.

All the black and white stones slowly dissolved, turning into countless points of starlight that floated upward.

On the floor at the center of the stone chamber, four new characters appeared:

“Innate Wisdom Achieved.”

At the same time, the third door slowly opened in the stone wall before them.

Beyond the doorway lay a bottomless darkness, as if it could swallow everything.

Gu Yan walked to Jiang Suisui’s side and took her hand.

“The final trial,” he said softly.

“Mm.” Jiang Suisui gazed into the darkness, yet she felt unexpectedly calm.

Turning back to Gu Yan, Bai Yutang, and the others, she smiled.

“This time… I’m afraid I’ll have to go in alone.”

The bamboo scroll had clearly stated it: the third trial was to face one’s true heart. It was something no one else could substitute for—a battle that belonged to her alone.

She gently released Gu Yan’s hand.

Under his worried gaze, she stepped forward—one step at a time—into the deep, endless darkness.