Volume One: The Scroll of New Rain Chapter Twenty-Five: The Evolution of Heaven

“Forget it, I can’t make anything up. I might as well just tell you directly. After all, no matter how mysterious this game is, it doesn’t have a direct connection to cultivation.”

“We don’t cultivate anyway. What we study is mathematics!”

Aunt patted her head, giving up on further pretense and comforting herself resignedly.

“Mathematics?”

Ye Mingke glanced at the stack of drafts “towering” on the small table and suddenly felt that playing blind chess wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

“So, Aunt, what game are we actually playing?” Ye Mingke asked.

Usually so carefree, his aunt suddenly straightened up, her expression solemn.

“Tianyan.”

She slowly uttered the two syllables, as if casting an ancient and profound incantation.

“Tianyan Chess?” Ye Mingke repeated the name in surprise. What a domineering name.

“The very words ‘Tianyan’ contain the ambition of the group who devised this game.”

“Last night, your uncle told you that there exists a group of people who wield a certain power over accidents, or fate itself. Tianyan Chess was created by these people. Among them, there are those who hold a particular belief.”

“All the myriad things in the world originate from the One. The One, following a certain rule, gives rise to Two. Adding that rule, Three comes to be. One plus Two brings forth Four. Four, plus One, plus Two, plus Three, then Five, Six, Seven, and so on, with things interweaving endlessly into infinity.”

“They merged these ideas with mathematics, convinced that the very foundation of the universe lies in a few parameters. If one starts from these parameters, one can deduce the entire past, present, and even the infinite future of the universe.”

“If someone could master these parameters, they even believe it would be possible to reconstruct the universe’s past, present, and future.”

“Of course, from ancient times to now, no one has ever managed it. In fact, most people, in their pursuit, end up despairing, believing the world is utter chaos and impossible to fathom, abandoning the Tianyan arts and dismissing such theories as self-deception.”

“No one can prove or disprove this doctrine. Yet, whenever a follower is on the verge of despair, another emerges who, through these ideas, brings about miracles so profound that even the gods would be envious—miracles worthy of being called the hand of fate.”

“A butterfly flaps its wings—if only at the right time, in the right place—it can stir up a tidal wave. So if someone could calculate everything with precision, even if they were a frail, powerless old woman, how great an impact could they have on the world?”

“Isn’t that a power that stirs the soul?”

“Does such power truly exist? Is there really anyone who can calculate everything?” Ye Mingke’s eyes widened in wonder, lost in thought.

“I once despaired of such power existing, but later I came to believe in it.” Aunt Long looked at him, her eyes gentle yet tinged with a hidden fervor. “Because of you.”

“Because of me?” Ye Mingke lifted his head, unable to hide his confusion as he repeated her words.

***

“Your very existence is a possibility your father spent ten years searching and calculating for. So you can believe that your father loves you. If not, why would he exhaust every effort to seek out the faintest glimmer of possibility in the impossible?”

“Really?” Ye Mingke suddenly remembered that strange dream: the blurred-faced man in his dreams, the unsetting sunlight, and the endless calculations.

Perhaps that was not a dream, but something that truly happened. Perhaps that was his father.

“Tianyan Chess is not the same as the Tianyan arts. It’s a game invented by enthusiasts of the Tianyan theory for entertainment, but it incorporates nearly all the fundamental mathematical techniques in existence. It demands of a person the highest memory, mental agility, calculation speed, and mastery of mathematics.”

“So your upcoming training will be very tough!”

“It’s all right, Aunt. I’m ready.” Ye Mingke looked up, his eyes bright.

Having a father who could brush the hand of fate itself—wasn’t that the coolest thing? Since that was so, as his son, he couldn’t fall too far behind.

From that night on, he began to study Tianyan Chess with Aunt Long.

At first, she taught him the three hundred and sixty-six types of pieces the game originally contained, then the movements of each piece, how to convert between pieces, how new pieces are born, how players compete, and so on.

The conversions and movements quickly led into complex mathematics. That was when the draft paper on the desk came into play. Often, by the end of the night, the room was covered with dense mathematical formulas.

Yet the drafts were only aids for beginners. Aunt Long required him to memorize all the variations of the board, demanding ever higher levels of mental calculation during his deductions.

At this point, his years of blindfold chess training began to show results, so the new challenge did not feel especially difficult for him.

With each conversation, the game in his mind evolved, while formulas snaked their way across the paper. In this way, many nights passed.

During the day, Ye Mingke still chopped wood and climbed the mountain as before, even more focused and determined than in previous years. Especially when chopping wood, he could feel himself drawing ever closer to his goal.

Each day, at the first light of dawn, he went out to chop wood. Sometimes, at sunrise, he paused to look at the beautiful crimson sun rising in the east.

He looked forward to the day he would reach his second goal and learn the story and clues about his father.

Now, though there were still many unsolved mysteries, lurking illnesses, and hidden dangers, he had friends, Uncle Jian, and Aunt Long. And he knew there was a father who loved him, or at least once did.

All the things ordinary people had, he possessed as well.

The world had already been kind to him, hadn’t it?

But what he didn’t know was that the cruelty and gentleness of fate lay in the fact that you see only the tip of its iceberg, that it gives you hope...

Two years passed in the blink of an eye. The season turned to winter.

Somewhat to his surprise, two years later, he still had not achieved his second goal.

***

The afternoon climb remained the most difficult challenge. The highest he had ever reached was nearly halfway up the mountain, but in the end, he always fainted just a few steps short.

Because fear still lingered within him. Sometimes he wondered, did only those utterly without fear make it up that mountain? But was there truly anyone in the world without fear?

At night, the goal Aunt Long set for Tianyan Chess was for him to win with an opening of three hundred and thirty pieces against her opening of one hundred and ten.

But the mathematics involved in the game was too profound. Having not yet fully mastered the algorithms Aunt Long knew, he found it hard to win even with the advantage at the start.

The only task that seemed likely to be completed soon was chopping wood each morning. It was the most monotonous training, with no room for shortcuts, and also the most ruthless.

It demanded proficiency—proficiency in technique, in the use of strength, in achieving perfect control through sheer repetition. There was no trick. However much you lacked, that was how much you lacked. The only way was to move forward, step by step.

Two years ago, Ye Mingke felt he was close to succeeding. A year ago, he thought he was still missing something. Then, after a while, he felt he was just a thread away. Lately, it seemed he was only a hair’s breadth short.

He could sense that between his hand and the blade, there was still that last sliver of difference.

On this dark, cold winter morning, he gripped the firewood cleaver that had accompanied him for over a decade and pushed open the door to the courtyard. The frigid north wind swept the dead leaves, howling against his face and the hand holding the blade.

Gazing at the low growl of the wind outside the window and the darkness before dawn, he tightened his grip on the cleaver. Suddenly, a moment of clarity arose within him—the gap between him and the cleaver had finally closed.

In the cold wind and darkness, he lit half a stick of incense, and then, as he had every morning for the past five years, walked to the log pile before the chopping block, his gaze calm.

He raised the cleaver high.

In the next instant, the clear, lingering note that rang out when Uncle Jian had first swung the cleaver five years ago echoed once more in the small courtyard.

When the note faded and the gleam of the blade vanished, a thousand identical pieces of firewood lay stacked neatly together.

He turned around just in time to see the last bit of ash drop from the incense into the wind, the final spark flickering out in the darkness.

Five years. He had done it. He did not, as he once imagined, leap up with a cheer. Instead, he slowly released the cleaver, reverently laying it on the block.

Then he sat quietly on the ground, waiting for dawn, ready to watch the sunrise in careful detail.

Afterward, he would push open Uncle’s door in search of that second answer.