Seeing Old Master Zhou get angry, the surrounding young men all followed suit, expressing anger with their eyes. Zhou Jiang lowered her head and bit her lower lip.
“—Look at this move of yours, how poorly played it is!”
Huh? The angry young men froze, and Zhou Jiang also raised her head.
“Which one?” Zhou Jiang walked over quickly, standing beside her grandfather to look at the chess manual in the anthology. “Impossible, I won this match.”
Old Master Zhou grew even angrier: “You still won’t accept it? So what if you won? Look at how you played this game, dragging things out. You won this time because your opponent’s chess skills were poor, not because yours were good.”
As he spoke, he pointed his finger at one spot.
“What if the opponent had played this move instead?”
Zhou Jiang looked down at the match diagram. With Old Master’s finger pointing, the situation of the game changed dramatically in an instant. She frowned and pondered for a moment, finally giving up: “Then I wouldn’t have won.”
Old Master Zhou snorted: “At such a young age, don’t be so conceited.”
Zhou Jiang lowered her head and acknowledged, tears inexplicably falling.
These past few days, though she had been reprimanded by her family, she hadn’t cried at all. But at this moment, this one sentence from Old Master made her unable to hold back any longer.
Was it because of being scolded? No, it was because—
“Why did you come out to play chess with people then?” Old Master Zhou glanced at her, not asking why she was crying, only asking, “Are you very close with that Chu Zhao? Standing up for her?”
Zhou Jiang shook her head: “No, I’m not close with Chu Zhao. We’ve hardly spoken.”
Old Master Zhou smiled ambiguously and asked again: “Then were you showing off? Wanting to display your skills in front of people?”
Zhou Jiang shook her head again: “How would granddaughter care about that? If I really wanted to show off, I would do so at home now.” She glanced at the men standing under the corridor.
The men were angered by this glance. What did that mean?!
Old Master Zhou laughed: “Then why?”
Zhou Jiang said: “At that time, that man spoke arrogantly, ‘little woman’ this and ‘little woman’ that, saying a little woman who won a few matches had become conceited. I couldn’t stand such behavior. Hadn’t he also just defeated one little woman? How could he be so conceited? There are always people better than oneself, the sky beyond the sky. Learning is endless. If Chu Zhao was being arrogant, wasn’t he being the same?”
Old Master Zhou laughed heartily: “Using chess to bully people—weren’t you afraid you’d lose?”
Zhou Jiang said: “If I lost, I lost. I’ll just study harder in the future.”
Old Master Zhou nodded: “Good. Daring to lose and daring to win—worthy of being my granddaughter.” Having said this, he raised his hand: “Go. Let your grandfather see just how many consecutive wins you can achieve before you lose.”
The reason she had shed tears earlier was because Old Master Zhou’s words made her feel that Grandfather hadn’t blamed her. This feeling turned out to be true, and not only that—Grandfather was even letting her continue—
Zhou Jiang looked at her grandfather, reached out and threw her arms around his neck—since Grandfather had forbidden her from studying chess, this was the first time she had hugged him.
“Grandfather, just watch me,” she said loudly, then lifted her skirts and ran off happily.
Old Master Zhou coughed a few times: “This little girl has too much strength, she nearly strangled me.”
The others under the corridor were all dumbfounded. They swarmed around him: “Grandfather, what are you doing?” “Grandfather, if you have A’Jiang go to Chu Garden to fool around with that Chu Zhao, won’t that anger the Third Prince?”
“What fooling around!” Old Master Zhou slapped the table to quiet them. “My Zhou family has always had superior chess skills. My granddaughter playing chess—how does that anger the Third Prince? What do chess and the relationship between ruler and subject have to do with each other? Back when I played chess with His Majesty, I never once let His Majesty win, and His Majesty never cut off my head!”
Having said this, he stood up, had a maid take down the birdcage, and strode away.
The group left behind looked at each other, then their gazes converged on the middle-aged man with the short beard.
“Elder Brother A’Zhe, it seems you won’t be Grandfather’s chief disciple after all.”