Cherish the time

After Shinto returned to his country, he devoted himself to the round-robin match between Chess Master and Chi-san—fortunately, the round-robin match for the Throne hadn't started yet, otherwise his schedule would be overwhelmed.

Today, the distance between him and his goal of "seven crowns" is no longer far away, and even the ten-stage title, which is currently the slowest progress, has entered the middle of the qualifiers.

One day in November, Shindo looked through his passbook on a whim, and found that the bonus he had saved had exceeded [-] million, which was enough to realize his original plan for the next step.

So he picked a Sunday morning when there was no game, and came to the Tokyo Red Cross.

It's a pity that after a morning's discussion, Shinto Hikari finally came to a regrettable conclusion - he is not old enough to start a foundation in his own name.

Then, another year came to an end.

Hikari Shinto and Ryo Toya officially graduated from Aquaman, and Akira Fujisaki and others also waved their hands as Bethaase.

This is a year of growth, but also a year of parting. The friends who used to sleep together now have to embark on their own life journeys for different goals.

Neither Shinto nor Taya attended the graduation ceremony that day.

When the students joined hands and sang farewell songs, and took a group photo under the cherry blossom tree full of laughter and tears, they were sitting in front of the chessboard, devoting themselves to this square inch—because their opponents at the moment, Just each other.

——This is the last round of the second stage of the [-]-dan qualifiers, Shinto Hikari [-]th dan vs Taya Ryo [-]th dan.

Such a long-lost confrontation unfolded on such a special day, as if it was scheduled to see them off for the time that had passed away.

It's just that neither of the two people in this game has the leisure to think about such things. All their attention has been betting on the chessboard in front of them, just to defeat the person in front of them.

Beat your opponent.

——Such a sentence is easy to say, but if you want to practice it...it becomes very difficult.

Not to mention the opponent Ryo Taya wants to defeat... Hikari Shindo.

——This is his most familiar friend, and also the most powerful opponent he can meet.

He has seen every existing chess record of Shinto, and has played against him countless times. Over the years, the opponent's tyrannical strength has always been like a mountain lying in front of his eyes.

He admired, he was in awe, but he never gave up his efforts.

He has always followed what his father asked of him.

——Don't question, don't demand, don't be jealous, don't panic.

He has a good grasp of his mentality, so good that he doesn't look like a teenager.

He just worked hard day by day, silently working hard in a place where no one saw him.

And his persistence gradually paid off.

Even for Hikari Shinto, defeating Ryo Toya...has become no longer easy.

This once soft and deceitful boy has become stronger and stronger through the tempering of time.

Last month, when Mr. Ogata was visiting his teacher at Taya's home, Ryo Toya seized the opportunity to ask for a game of chess with him.

On that day, he beat Mr. Ogata for the first time under mutual condition!

It was a difficult game, and it was also a difficult victory. After the final counting was completed, Taya Ryo regained consciousness only felt pain in his palms, and only then realized that he had nothing to do during the game. Consciously scratched his palm.

——Although it was only half an eye away, he still won!

Ogata Seiji, on the other hand, took off his glasses and wiped them carefully, with an inexplicable expression on his face.

He opened his mouth slightly, as if intending to say something, but swallowed the words back in the end, and just bowed silently and left.

Watching the back of Ogata leaving, Toya Yukihiro, who watched the whole game but never said a word, suddenly spoke.

"...you may have unleashed...a monstrous beast."

And one day after this game, Taya received the match arrangement from the Chess Academy, and looked at the word "Shin Teng Hikari" who was ranked on the last day...

Taya smiled.

There is full confidence and expectation in the smile, and the dark green eyes are lit up by the raging fighting spirit, so bright that they seem to cover the sky full of stars.

In this way, two young chess players met again on the field.

Since the qualifiers adopt a knockout system, this means that only one of them can advance to the third round of preliminaries.

Both parties were aware of this fact, but they both ignored it.

——Because what they think in their hearts is one and only defeating each other!

The remaining time on the timer is decreasing bit by bit.

The situation on the chessboard changed from clear to complex, and gradually became clear again.

Shinto occupies the right and middle and lower fields, while Taya controls the lower and left fields. During this period, the forces are intertwined, but they are generally divided. The only entanglement is the remaining piece on the upper left. area.

In this area, both sides have one eye, but the rest are intertwined, entangled and difficult to understand, it can be said that there is me in you, and you in me, making it difficult to start.

For a while, both sides were a little wary.

Just because the two people in the game understand that in the battle for this piece of land, as long as they make a wrong step, the whole game will be lost.

but.

No matter how difficult chess is, there is always a way to get started.

After using one hand to rob material, Taya entered the game first with one hand, separating the two parts of Jinteng's chess pieces, with a fierce intention, it seemed that he wanted to cut the sunspots in two, and then divide them into pieces, gradually nibbling into his stomach.

This is a good move.

In response, Shinto did not take the counterattack, and he was not inferior to Toya in terms of ferocity.

However, this move failed to completely resolve the crisis of one's own side. At first glance, it is not brilliant, but if you think about it carefully, it is a far-reaching and amazing move. With this chess as the axis, all directions can be considered properly, both offensive and defensive. It can be used-although it is late, it is enough to control people.

The battle on the chessboard intensified.

The eyes compete with each other, step by step.

Both parties are people with clear intentions and refined ideas.

Every chess piece that falls often leads to several or even dozens of subsequent moves.

The most exciting and fiercest duel between the two is being staged in the tenth stage qualifiers.

And to support such a game, the amount of calculations required can only be described as terrifying.

Based on the fact that Taya Ryo has an average of 50 seconds per move, each move needs to be counted to the next ten moves, and there are no more than five changes in response to each move, he has to calculate more than sixty possibilities per second. Most of them are existences that can be discarded intuitively after one or two hands, and the remaining number is still very considerable.

Under such tremendous pressure, small beads of sweat gradually appeared on the tip of Taya Ryo's nose, and his brain, which was functioning to the extreme, even caused dull pains in his head—it was just that these discomforts were all suppressed by him who had reached the limit. to be completely ignored.

Now, all of Taya Ryo's attention was focused on the chess game in front of him.

Perhaps because his nerves were tense to the limit, many new ideas that he had never thought of flashed into his mind one by one, making him more excited and tireless.

Shinto Hikari could feel that the boy sitting across from him was hitting his bottleneck at this stage.

This is good.

But if you want to rise to a higher level -

The corners of Jin Teng's lips curled up slightly, his wrist turned lightly, and he made an extremely dangerous move.

If someone was watching at this time, they would definitely sweat coldly at his audacity.

Playing this kind of chess will immediately bring both sides of the game into an extremely dangerous situation... As long as anyone misses one point before making a move, he will die and complete the opponent.

——The calculation difficulty of this chess game has reached another level.

Ta Yaliang gritted his teeth, the unyielding belief in his heart was unprecedentedly high, and the calculation ability that should have reached the limit showed signs of breakthrough again.

Looking at Taya's dark green eyes burning with fierce fighting intent, Shinto congratulated silently in his heart, but he didn't stop making moves, and seemed to be quite comfortable.

And in fact it is.

For Taya, this game is close to the limit, but in Shinto's view, it is only at the upper-middle level.

From the beginning to the end, he can clearly see the direction of this game of chess, and he can even list three more plans to lead this game of chess to different directions.

Just because this level of calculation is nothing to him.

It's like asking a high school student to do ordinary junior high school calculation problems, there is almost no difficulty.

Of course, such an analogy is inappropriate.

To describe it more properly-

——As long as the opponent makes a chess piece, he will naturally know where his next move should be... that is the best.

In the midst of the two people's unyielding battle, the battle around the upper left corner gradually came to an end.

At this important moment, Ta Yaliang felt as if his heart had been lifted into his throat.

"Plop", "Puff", "Puff"...

At this moment, the sound of the heartbeat was amplified infinitely, Taya Ryo's entire world was occupied by the beating rhythm of the heart, and there was no sound other than that.

And what became clear with the increasingly noisy heartbeat was the desperate cognition of "I will lose"...

At this moment near the end, his computing power finally reached the level that this game should have, and he finally understood the many foreshadowings laid by the opponent along the way.

And in front of him, the landing point of the black pawn in Shinto's hand will determine the outcome of this game... the final outcome!

Shinto Hikaru's hand gradually approached the urgent place——

In the short time of less than a second, in this suffocating tense atmosphere, it seemed to be stretched and lengthened by a pair of invisible big hands——

That chess piece, seeing it, is about to fall on that criss-cross point under the control of Shinto Hikaru——

Ta Yaliang felt as if his heart was tightly grasped by a pair of invisible hands, and the blood in his whole body seemed to freeze.

Finally... Is it over...

The moment this idea appeared, the nerves that had been tense for a long time seemed to have received some kind of signal, and they were ready to relax.

--next moment!

An unbelievable mutation has happened!

Shinto Hikaru's fingers loosened, and the chess piece he was holding slipped from his fingers, hit the chessboard and rolled onto the adjacent line!

——Bai Zi is safe!

Taya Ryo didn't feel happy at all.

He suddenly looked up at Shinto Hikari's expression.

I saw the young man staring blankly at his right hand hanging in the air, and a rare expression similar to bewilderment and relief appeared on his youthful face.