Lanke Chess Edge
Chapter 1: The Chess Game

The sounds of birds and fragrance of flowers filled the serene mountains and forests, and the cool temperature by the mountain streams gave off a comfortable air.

A group of people was busy running about and setting up tents to build a camp.

It was a camping activity organized privately by colleagues in the same company. Of course, all of them were young; since they had to carry tents and other equipment for mountaineering and hiking, the older coworkers would not be strong enough.

Originally, everyone wanted the company to organize a camping trip, but the company usually chose to do a group tour every year, with guides and tour buses. This year many people simply decided not to join the company, and let their colleagues with outdoor experience plan the trip themselves. Hence, this mountaineering camping trip.

Ji Yuan had only been working in this software company for two years, and his hair was still black.¹ Naturally, he was one of the aforementioned camping youths, and so was currently playing a mobile game with another colleague after setting up the tent.

“Hey, hey, Ji Yuan, Ji Yuan, give me support, give me support!! Hey! I died!”²

“What’s the use of giving it to you? You’ll die after two seconds. It’s better for me to be able to escape. Now, let’s get a double kill in the bottom lane…”

“Hey, hey… I’ll let you play as a shooter, and I’ll assist!”

“Don’t, don’t…I’ll ask some random person to help…”

This place may seem like it was in the mountains, but the base station was clearly visible in the distance. The two of them could have fun with their mobile phones and there was no delay in the network speed.

Naturally, there were places in China where the signal was extremely poor or even absent, but most people had long been accustomed to having a signal wherever they went. This was a confidence brought by modern infrastructure and convenience, and people easily took it for granted.

They set up their tent on a relatively flat hill with a clear stream on the side, an excellent place for camping in the wild.

There were more than a dozen people in the group who had come along. A large group of people were taking pictures outside, and a few were adjusting their tents. Wang Gang, Ji Yuan, and Li Jun were the only ones of the group who were goofing off.

Wang Gang had been about to use stones to build an earthen stove for barbecue, but he had looked around the camp and noticed Ji Yuan and Li Jun having fun, and decided to join them instead.

“Ji Yuan, Da³ Jun, stop playing games, go find some firewood so we can light the fire soon, otherwise you’ll be eating cold canned food for lunch!”

A colleague called out to the two people sitting at the entrance of the tent from a little further away.

“Got it!!”

“Okay!”

Li Jun and Ji Yuan both replied, and then looked at each other. They getting severely criticized in the chat anyway,⁴ so they quit the game.

The two stood up and walked towards the edge of the woodland, into a denser shade of trees.

There was no shortage of firewood in the mountains and forests, and fallen branches could be found everywhere. Ji Yuan watched as Li Jun picked up a big branch and dragged it around, swinging and stabbing it forwards from time to time and shouting, “take that! Hah!” like an idiot.

He was a little afraid of being accidentally injured by Li Jun’s “amazing” sword technique, so Ji Yuan hurriedly took a couple steps back and kept his distance.

Like most young people in modern times, Ji Yuan’s grandfather had a bunch of brothers and sisters. Because of that, he had lots of uncles and aunts, even though his father was an only son, and he himself was an only child as well.

Perhaps children had become more precious as there were fewer and fewer born: names that were previously thought to be rude such as “Golden Flower” suddenly became poetic in this generation. His grandfather even consulted a Feng Shui master on his name for ages. The Feng Shui master and his parents discussed together, and finally chose the single name “Yuan.”⁵ The whole family was very satisfied.

“Ah! The air in the mountains is good! This is what traveling should be like, going to a place with beautiful mountains and clear waters!”

Ji Yuan sighed. He was not in a hurry to pick up firewood and decided to stroll in the woods first. He would bring it over on the return trip to save effort.

After walking around for only about a minute, Ji Yuan suddenly found several huge trees in front of him. They were noticeably bigger than their surroundings.

“Guys, guys, come and see, I found some super big trees!! Guys!”

Ji Yuan shouted to his friend behind him. He turned to find that the guy was still swinging sticks around, so he ignored him for the time being. He planned to go over first to take a look, and he could show everyone later.

When he got closer, Ji Yuan got an odder feeling from these trees.

The outer base of the tree had many exposed and intertwined roots that twisted into the ground, and some of which looked to be as thick as his thighs.

‘Wow… does such an old tree really exist?’

Niu Tou Mountain was not a well-known tourist destination, but there were many people who came to the mountain for outings and barbecues. Such a large tree would definitely have been posted on the Internet, right?

Ji Yuan didn’t think much of it. He walked around to the other side of the tree, which he couldn’t initially see behind the large trunk.

“What!”

A surprised noise came out of his mouth.

On the other side, in the center of a circle of several other equally enormous ancient trees, there was a chessboard. To be precise, there was a tree stump with a chessboard sitting atop it.

Ji Yuan subconsciously took a few steps forward and came to the side of the stump and chessboard.

He looked around, but there were no signposts for tourists, nor campers, nor any chess players or any people.

Black and white pieces were intermixed and scattered across the chessboard. The black pieces were like a formation, and white pieces were like a dragon. It was a typical game of Chinese Go that was half complete.

Ji Yuan was a little curious. Was someone intending to develop this small hill in Niu Tou Mountain into a scenic tourist spot?

However, the chessboard and its surroundings were covered in fallen leaves and twigs, with bird droppings and rotten fruits scattered about. Regardless of whether it was a real game or a decoration, it had obviously been placed here a long time ago.

Then his eyes swept to a strange object sitting behind the chess game. There was a metal lump next to one of the old trees, bulged and deformed due to excessive rust.

Ji Yuan took a few steps forwards to take a closer look. After much deliberation, it felt like a very rusted axe.

‘This keeps getting weirder and weirder! Could this be the legendary Lanke⁶ chess game!?’

The idea made Ji Yuan laugh. This whole scene really looked similar to the legend, which only made Ji Yuan more interested.

He returned to the chess game and took a closer look. Inspecting the board full of black and white stones, Ji Yuan, despite not really understanding the game of Go very well, suddenly felt that the big dragon formed from the white pieces was in a very awkward position. There was a potential to overturn the situation if white could just find the missing link, but it was also in danger of being completely surrounded by the seemingly chaotic black pieces.

For some reason, the missing link of the white dragon made him feel a little twitchy. He glanced at the two wooden boxes of chess pieces next to the chessboard a few times out of the corner of his eye, before finally reaching out and taking a white stone.

This chess piece was surprisingly heavy. The weight was like a lump of iron, but the texture was like ceramic. Ji Yuan weighed it in his hand, looked left and right with a guilty conscience, then reached out and placed the white piece in the center of the chessboard, called the “Tian Yuan,” or “Origin of Heaven” position in Go terminology.

“Yes! It feels much more comfortable now!”

Ji Yuan clapped his hands, took out his mobile phone from his trouser pocket, and tried to take a few photos, record videos, and so on before inviting everyone to take a look.

It’s just that he kept pressing the unlock button on his phone several times, but the unlock prompt didn’t pop up.

“Damn it! What’s happening? It’s really out of power!?”

The phone was really out of power. When he held down the power button, the phone lit up, vibrated, and turned off automatically.

When he had stopped playing mobile games with his friends earlier, the phone still had at least 80% of the battery. But now it automatically shut down without him realizing.

Ji Yuan turned his head and looked outside the circle of trees, but he didn’t see his friend playing with the sticks like before.

‘Forget it, let’s go back and get a power bank! ’

With this thought in mind, Ji Yuan walked back towards the camp. After walking a few steps, he realized that the sky was getting a little dark.

After walking for a few minutes, Ji Yuan was stunned. He saw the trickling stream and the flat hill, but… where was the camp?

Not only was there no one around, but even the tents were all gone. What the heck⁷ was going on?

It wasn’t April Fool’s Day, and it was pretty hard to set up a tent and build a camp, so only a fool would immediately dismantle it all to play a prank.

Ji Yuan looked around and saw two people in some kind of uniform resting by the stream in the distance, so he approached and asked.

“Excuse me, did you see where the campers went? We just set up the camp not too long ago!”

The two of them jumped in shock, startled by the sudden sound.

They spun around and looked at Ji Yuan in amazement. Although they had been resting just now, they had also been paying attention to their surroundings. This person suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

At Ji Yuan’s question, one of them subconsciously answered.

“Camping? Just now? No one has been camping in Niu Tou Mountain these past two days, we are busy looking for a missing person.”

“What?”

Their answer made Ji Yuan even more confused.

“Someone disappeared in the mountains?”

Before they went on the camping trip, he had done some research. There was nothing out of the ordinary here, and even the weather was fine.

“Yeah, he’s been missing for over half a month. It’s a young man named Ji Yuan who went out to camp with his colleagues from the company. By the way, who did you come to the mountains with? Haven’t you heard about the search and rescue investigation?”

The search and rescue team carefully observed the person in front of them as they spoke and felt that this person’s appearance was somewhat familiar, but Ji Yuan was stunned when he heard their answer.

‘Missing? Me? More than half a month? ’

Ji Yuan’s first reaction was that it was too absurd, and his second reaction was that something was wrong.

Before the startled Ji Yuan could say anything in response, he was hit with an intense dizziness.

His vision went dark, and Ji Yuan seemed to have lost all physical strength in an instant. A strong feeling of weakness and disorientation came over him. His legs became weak and he collapsed.

During this whole process, Ji Yuan’s body lost weight at a speed visible to the naked eye. His lips became extremely dry and cracked, as if they were rapidly weathering.

“Sir? What’s wrong, sir? Be careful!”

“Hold him up, hold him up!”

“Not good!! Hurry up and call for reinforcements!!”

The last sound Ji Yuan heard in this life was the shouting of two search and rescue team members that seemed to come from very far away.

1. i.e. hair still hasn’t fallen out from stress. Amusingly, one of the comments on the original story asked, “How can you become stronger without being bald?” which I find flipping hilarious. ↩︎
2. They’re playing either “League of Legends,” the Chinese equivalent “300 Heroes,” or something like it, so there’s some references that I can’t translate exactly because I don’t play these games ↩︎
3. Honorific that means “big” or “big brother,” an informal way of calling someone who is senior. Similar to “Xiao,” which means “little,” and is an informal way to refer to a junior. ↩︎
4. Lit: “sprayed like a dog by their teammates” ↩︎
5. Which ironically translates to “Fate.” ↩︎
6. Lanke, or Ranka, is a reference to this Chinese legend wherein a woodcutter encounters two immortals playing chess, and becomes so entranced by watching them that he doesn’t realize decades have passed. Suspiciously like the plot of this story! 😀 ↩︎
7. In the original, there are a lot of censored words. I find that it hinders immersion, so I will replace the “****” I come across with something that makes sense. ↩︎