Chapter 20: The Car Thief

Cannon two to six? Palace-crossing cannon? Is this kid trying to play blindfold chess? To play blindfold chess is neither too difficult nor too easy. It's not that hard because the board only has thirty-two pieces, and as long as you remember the position of each piece as it changes, it's manageable. But it's not easy because you need to keep track of every piece's position in your mind and calculate not just the next few moves, but perhaps a dozen or more ahead. This puts a huge strain on memory, and many players, even if they can play blindfold, cannot perform at their usual level—often dropping a whole tier in strength.

This youngster is really bold, isn’t he? Daring to play blindfold against me—it’s as if he assumes he’s at least two levels above! Fine, let’s see how this goes! In the living room, Professor Dai felt indignant, sitting on the black side of the board. He played cannon two to six for red, then moved a knight for himself and called out, “Knight eight advances to seven!”

Palace-crossing cannon against the Screen Horse Defense—though one was in the living room and the other in the study, their moves remained perfectly coordinated. At this moment, Wen Xiaocheng was reading his seventh book, still something on criminal law or criminal procedure. When he read the first book, it was like entering a new world—so many unfamiliar processes and articles became clear. By the second book, a collection of cases, his pace slowed, as he compared details with the first and found more to ponder. But as he read on, his speed quickened. After all, law revolves around reason—whether in legislation, enforcement, or judgment, it doesn’t defy common sense, and the law itself strives to prevent miscarriages of justice. After two or three books, a grand legal framework had taken shape in his mind. Reading other works of the same kind now merely filled in a few gaps, refining the system he’d already built. Thus, his reading speed increased.

Playing blindfold was no obstacle at all for Wen Xiaocheng. With his photographic memory, a massive virtual board hovered before his mind’s eye. He focused on his book, and each time he heard Professor Dai call out a move from outside, he spared a sliver of attention to update the virtual board. For him, the game was a simple matter of deduction. After a dozen moves, he saw through Professor Dai’s level—it was mediocre at best. Among the elderly chess enthusiasts in parks and alleys, he might be a master, but set among professionals, he’d be eliminated in the first round.

By midgame, the old man outside was feeling the heat. He racked his brains for a move, called it out, only for the boy inside to immediately respond with the next. It was back to his turn again—his mind got no rest. The battle at the riverbank was raging, pieces interlocked in a deadly struggle. His opponent’s knight leapt forward, upending his formation. However he calculated, it seemed he was about to lose that piece.

He thought long and hard, but couldn’t save his knight. Yet, in the chaos of exchanges, he managed to push a pawn across the river. A lone pawn for a rook! The situation was passive, but not hopeless.

In top-level play, the loss of a single piece almost always determines the outcome, unless the opponent blunders. Between equally matched players, there is rarely suspense. As expected, next the red pieces advanced like a rolling tide—three fronts pressing in, troops at the gates—leaving the old man flustered and scrambling. Just as he was about to make another move, he heard from inside, “Knight two advances to three—you’ve lost!”

Looking at the board, the old man saw his black pieces truly were at a disadvantage, but it didn’t seem hopeless enough to resign. If he could weather this attack, a draw wasn’t impossible. Unconvinced, he shouted toward the room, “How have I lost? You haven’t checkmated me yet!”

Wen Xiaocheng didn’t even look up. “Don’t you enjoy studying endgames? This is a forced win for red—the quickest is seven moves. You can study it yourself!”

Seven moves? This kid calculated seven moves ahead blindfolded? Is that possible? The old man, skeptical, began working it out on the board: the knight jumps for a check, I move my general, he slides his cannon and checks again, I block with my cannon, or perhaps the elephant, then there are no more checks. Step by step, he puzzled over it again, and finally realized—though it wasn’t a sequence of checks, there was a double attack, and once the rook took the central file, it cleared the way for a bottom-rank cannon mate on the left, and a high-hanging knight on the central file—two lines of attack, and stopping one meant falling to the other.

The boy had settled the outcome seven moves in advance, blindfolded, while he had to work it out over and over to see it—playing chess with this kid was pure masochism! The old man was about to flip the board in frustration, when a mischievous thought occurred. His inner child awakened; he sneakily removed red’s rook from the board and called out, “Hey kid! Come out here—the old man hasn’t lost at all!”

Wen Xiaocheng’s voice was still languid from inside the room: “Knight two advances to three—how do you respond?”

“I retreat my advisor to four!”

“I move cannon four to three!”

“I slide cannon six to two!”

“I move rook two to six!” That’s the double attack.

“What rook do you have on the second file?” Professor Dai lied shamelessly, eyes wide.

“I moved my rook to the second file on move thirty-one, from six to four, and on move thirty-five, it retreated three squares and captured your pawn. How could it not be there?” Wen Xiaocheng remembered every piece on the board, every move played, so he wasn’t about to be vague.

“Come look for yourself!” the old man insisted, refusing to admit defeat.

Wen Xiaocheng put down his book and walked out, already knowing what had happened—the old man was cheating.

“Look, there’s no rook on your second file.”

Wen Xiaocheng smiled. Sure enough, every piece was where he remembered, except the rook on the second file, which had vanished.

He could have reconstructed the entire game move by move, leaving the old man speechless, but he didn’t. He just smiled and said, “Oh, I see, earlier I moved rook two to nine, so the rook ran off the board.”

In Chinese Chess, the board only has nine files. Moving from file one to file nine is the furthest a rook can go. To move to file nine from file two is impossible—the rook would be off the board.

Hearing this, the old man felt a little embarrassed, but he could only stiffen his neck and protest, “I don’t have such a good memory—I can’t recall when you lost your rook, but look, you didn’t win, did you?”

“No, sir, I’d still win without the rook. Let’s continue.” Wen Xiaocheng said, sitting at the red side, picking up the red cannon and moving cannon two back to four.

Earlier, in the midgame, Wen Xiaocheng had gained an advantage—after a series of exchanges at the river, he’d come out a knight ahead. But in Chinese Chess, a rook is generally worth double a knight or cannon. Sometimes, if you have a rook and your opponent doesn’t, even with an extra knight and cannon you can feel constrained. Now, with one more knight but down a rook, Wen Xiaocheng was clearly at a disadvantage.

The game went on, this time face to face, so there was no way to cheat pieces. Old and young sat across from each other, chatting idly as they played.

“It’s only June, isn’t it? Do students get out for break this early?”

“Break’s still over a month away!”

Professor Dai was surprised—he’d seen Wen Xiaocheng two days in a row and thought school was out. Otherwise, why would this kid be wandering around town on a weekday?

“I skipped class.” Wen Xiaocheng grinned.

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It’s chapter twenty already—you should have a feel for this novel’s style by now. If you check in every day, your IQ just might break 300.