"Women, you should never trust them."
A tall man with a heavy build sat before a small table, with a GO board placed on it.
He had no expression on his face, watching the young man before him, who was now playing the GO game with him. Even in his sixties, he was looking like a man in his prime. He was full of vigor and aura, though there was a slight change in the way he was breathing.
He was wearing gold-plated armor, which had scratches here and there.
"Father, you shouldn't let your wife hear you."
A man in his forties, with a beard and mustache covering half of his face. His long hair was let loose behind his back. He sat with great poise and serene posture, a noble upbringing evident.
Both father and son were playing the game for the whole night, and it started after their duel.
Father, Durong Yang, and Son Shenjin never spent much time together, nor did they share any moments.
The early duel they had, for the people watching, was just a friendly duel between son and father, but to his father, it was to determine if his son was stronger than he was.
And he found out. His son had won against him.
The battle lasted a full day, and the place where they had fought had turned into dust.
It was the battle that attracted the immortals from all over the realm, as the father was known as the heavenly lord of the Crimson Dracon Sect.
There was complete silence as they played; the courtyard behind the large pavilion was filled with certain dread, but it was unknown for what reason.
"She is aware that I never trust her," he said.
"She had known that fact since the beginning of our marriage."
He picked up the white stone and rolled it once between his fingers as he stared at the board.
Then he set it down with a decisive clack that sealed off a corridor that Shenjin had been building for the last forty moves.
"And it is the reason I say it, because if I don't say it, she would know that she had won."
Shenjin raised his head to look at him and for a moment, he just studied his father's face.
Then he let out a laugh; it wasn't loud, but his father understood.
His father frowned as he had never seen his smile even a little.
Shenjin never shared a good bond with his father unlike his other siblings. He couldn't recall sitting before his father for about five minutes.
"Then she had won," his son said.
"Yes, she did. And I have simply been preserving my dignity in the years since," Durong Yang agreed without any doubt.
He gestured slightly toward the board and said, "Your move."
The sunlight had not yet decided to arrive. The sky above the pavilion was that of a particular dark blue that existed for twenties minutes each day.
After his father moved, Shenjin had made his.
Durong Yang studied it, and there was a slight compression at the corners of his eyes, like he found something interesting.
"Your mother wrote to you," Durong Yang said after a moment of silence.
Shenjin replied, "Yes, she did."
"You did not reply."
Shenjin stayed silent.
The white stone came down and another corridor closed. Durong yang was not playing to win, and Shenjin understood that fact.
It seemed like he just wanted to see Shenjin and the reason was hazy.
Every move was designed not to defeat but to reveal, to watch Shenjin respond when space was taken from him. To see whether his son tightened his field or expanded the field, whether he fought for what was already lost or created something new.
It was what Shenjin realized by this time.
"As you are not responding to your mother's letters, she is asking me," Durong Yang said, still watching the board.
"She's worried about you."
Shenjin listened but didn't respond.
He placed a stone, blocking a line, opening a new pressure in the south corner.
"You should know more about me. So you should have assured her that I'm doing fine."
Durong Yang picked up his stone and held it.
"Well, what would a good father do? Like you said, I told her that you are doing fine, probably enjoying your married life."
Shenjin tilted his head to the side and narrowed his gaze on his father.
The stone in his hand came down, not where Shenjin expected but somewhere lateral that didn't address the immediate threat but instead quietly promised a catastrophe six moves later.
The sky had turned darker and slowly and silently lightning roared through those dark skies.
Shenjin looked at the board for a long time, his thoughts elsewhere.
Durong Yang set down his next stone; the south corner pressure dissolved—absorbed, redirected, and turned into something that now threatened Shenjin's center instead.
He looked up for the first time, staring at his son with the full weight of eyes that had seen more decades than most cultivators survived.
"When I say never trust women, once you do, you have to be careful of what it can do to you, what her trust makes of you; you will spend the rest of your life in debt to it, and you will never once regret the debt."
He smiled faintly as he added, "You will be surprised by the size of it as the years pass."
He looked at the board and said, "Your move."
Shenjin looked down at the board; the center was compromised and the south was lost, and the east corridor that he had been so proud of three hours ago had been quietly surrounded, not killed but contained, made irrelevant by his father's patient, lateral, apparently unconnected placements across the lengths of the night.
He had lost the game.
He had lost around the fourth hour and had only just understood it in the seventh. He placed his stone anyway - not to change the outcome, which was settled, but because a man finishes what he begins.
It's not how you start things, but how you finish matters.
He placed the stone.
"Your wife, " he said, "did not watch the duel."
Durong Yang looked at his son with a black expression.
"No," he replied. "She was unwell."
The old man's jaw slightly shifted.
"Teng Yaohu has always had a sensitive nature," he said with the specific warmth of a man describing something he knows better than he should.
"She's too empathetic, and its her gift and—" he paused, almost gentle, "her difficulty."
Shenjin's eyes sharpened at the way his father spoke.
"Yes," he said, "I know her well."
A beat.
"As does Father, it seems."