LOL: Can’t I play other games professionally?

Chapter 431: The Great Battle Against Shenggong Intelligent?

"Why did Lin Ruo hit so hard? It's the same match against a beginner, but you seem to be much more serious today than in the first round. But she's still a young girl."

"After advancing to the round of 16, do you look forward to playing against many 9-dan players? Ke Jie is currently the number one Go player in China. Do you have any ideas about surpassing him?"

"Your performance has been outstanding all the way. Lin Ruo, have you ever thought that you are now recognized as the favorite to win the championship?"

A barrage of questions swirled in Lin Ruogang's ears as he stepped out of the competition venue, microphones shoved into his face by a swarm of reporters.

These questions are particularly pointed, and almost any answer can spark considerable discussion and reaction in the following period of time.

If it were any other professional Go player, they would probably just use a combination of excuses and stalling tactics to brush it off.

However, Lin Ruo is fine, probably because she has the Deep Blue skill point and won't get humiliated.

"Was my move too heavy? Well, there's nothing I can do about it. Go has never been about age. On the contrary, the younger you are, the more amazing you are. There are world champions who are 15 years old. It's reasonable for a 10-year-old first dan to beat an 18-year-old first dan like me, right?"

"Moreover, she defeated a seasoned professional 5-dan female Go player in the last match, so going all out is both a sign of respect for her opponent and for the game."

Lin Ruo spoke frankly for a while, summarizing that he was also under a lot of pressure, so he used a little more of his full strength in the game.

Are you stressed?

The media reporters didn't see any pressure in Lin Ruo's words, since he played his pieces quickly throughout the game and didn't seem to be under any pressure.

In just over ten moves, he put pressure on the Japanese prodigy girl on the other side.

"Does Lin Ruo believe he can surpass Ke Jie and become the current number one Go player in China?" After getting the answer, the media reporter turned the topic to a more pointed one.

Instead of discussing the answer to the previous question, let's quickly inquire about the possibility of the next one.

In response, Lin Ruo chose to dodge the question and instead launched a counter-attack: "Ke Jie? You know, he has always been my idol."

Go reporters might not understand this reference, but Mingkai from the EDG club would definitely be the first to jump up when he heard this.

Classic fan-beating-up-idol trope, are you about to start again?

As for the question of who the favorite to win the championship is, Lin Ruo was too lazy to answer.

It can only be said that the audience thinks highly of him, after all, so far in the Mengbaihe Cup, he has had the easiest schedule, advancing to the top 16 after playing two professional first dan players.

If other players had such an opportunity, even if they made it to the top 16, they would definitely be labeled as "easy points giveaways".

And the fact that he can still be considered a top favorite to win the championship shows that defeating Park Young-hoon was indeed a significant achievement.

How could Lin Ruo possibly betray the audience's trust? He could only reluctantly try to win the championship.

Well, it's not that he wanted to win the championship, he just didn't want to let everyone down.

Coincidentally, right after Lin Ruo left, Ke Jie, who was also in the round of 32 on the first day, also won a quick victory by defeating the enemy dragon in the middle game.

As he walked out of the venue with his coat in his hand, he was immediately asked by reporters about the interview he had just had.

"Lin Ruo said you are his idol. Ke Jie, what do you think about this?"

Ke Jie, who was also paying attention to the league, frowned and smiled disdainfully: "Hopefully we won't run into each other later. Stacking buffs is useless against me."

He was certainly aware of the joke, but he was more interested in the information revealed by the reporter that Lin Ruo had almost wiped out the Japanese prodigy's pieces in just over 90 moves.

This was quite unexpected for Ke Jie, considering how rare it is to capture all of the opponent's pieces in just over 90 moves.

Ke Jie believes that even someone as aggressive as himself might not be able to do this, let alone in a major tournament like the Mengbaihe Cup.

So much so that he was eager to go back and study the game, to see how Lin Ruo had managed to do it.

In the previous match against European players, Lin Ruo also made a crucial move by turning the tables on the opponent.

Ke Jie watched that game quite a bit, and he had a greater desire to explore than anyone else how many mistakes and strategic moves it took to achieve the scale of the "Twisted Sheep's Head" formation.

For no other reason than that it's really cool to play the Twisted Sheep Head in a match.

Ke Jie couldn't even imagine that if he pulled off such a move in the future, he would have to put on a show after the match to live up to such an astonishing performance.

However, recalling that they first met at the National Games last year, when Lin Ruo was still representing the so-called amateur group in the competition.

This year, he not only transformed into a professional Go player, but also stood on the same stage as him, defeating Park Young-hoon, a professional 9-dan Go player who even he found difficult to deal with, and finally advanced to the top 16 of the Mengbaihe Cup.

Ke Jie couldn't help but feel a sense of感慨 (gan3kai3, a complex feeling or emotion), as he suddenly felt old, because another genius had emerged in the Chinese Go world.

The last genius was him.

Although Lin Ruo has not yet won the world championship, Ke Jie is confident that as long as Lin Ruo continues to persevere, winning the world championship is only a matter of time.

There's no way around it; as a professional Go player, having watched just a few of Lin Ruo's representative games, Ke Jie has to admit that Lin Ruo's strength is indeed quite terrifying.

In this year's Mengbaihe Cup, he has many strong opponents he wants to face, but since today, the only opponent Ke Jie wants to face is Lin Ruo.

Without him.

Not only does Lin Ruo share a similar unconventional personality with him in terms of playing style, and doesn't follow the conventional thinking of AI, but more importantly, Ke Jie also wants to see what new things Lin Ruo can come up with.

When he presented this new material, Ke Jie hoped that his opponent would be the one sitting opposite him, so that he could accept the challenge immediately.

...

"Wow, are we going to capture all of the opponent's pieces in just over 90 moves?"

Not long after, Park Jung-hwan, who had just finished the match, was so shocked by the news that he was speechless and didn't know what to say.

As for the biggest dark horse that might emerge in the Mlily Cup, especially after defeating his old domestic rival Park Young-hoon, Park Jung-hwan had already done relevant research on the competition well in advance.

Based solely on the strength shown in that game, Park Jung-hwan fully acknowledged that Lin Ruo possessed all the potential to win the world championship.

The fact that the reporter told him today that he had captured all of the opponent's pieces in just over 90 moves seemed to further confirm the probability of this possibility coming true. Although his opponent, a Japanese prodigy girl, was only ten years old and just a first dan, this could not conceal the terrifying nature of the dragon-slaying feat in just over 90 moves.

This makes Park Jung-hwan's current thought to quickly go back and study this game to find out the truth.

As a typical representative of the "Korean style" of modern Go, he has always been good at playing with a balanced and stable approach, while also possessing profound calculation ability and flexible tactical adjustments.

Knowing himself and his enemy, Park Jung-hwan understood his own weaknesses better than anyone else.

That is, his traditional solid style of play is somewhat conservative in terms of speed and local innovation. He often faces opponents who play a quick kill or an unusual move, even in the increasingly popular fast chess format.

Park Jung-hwan, who is already starting to decline due to his age, is almost unable to keep up with his efforts, which is the main reason why he is often suppressed by "Shin Kong Intelligent" in the country.

The appearance of Lin Ruo, who always plays a fast-paced, aggressive style, especially with his strong opening and calculation abilities, seems to be more effective at countering Park Jung-hwan than anyone else in terms of playing style. It's impossible for Park Jung-hwan not to be worried.

At this moment, all he wanted was to get back quickly and study the situation, hoping to find some clues about the enemy so that he could prepare adequately for any potential confrontations later on.

Unlike Shin Jinseo, who didn't have a match today, he had already watched the entire event live from his hotel room and had done a lot of research.

The reason why Lin Ruo attracts the special attention of all the popular players is always the same: this player plays too fast.

It's fast and has very few errors. What kind of computing power could possibly make it so impressive? It's impossible for it not to attract attention.

Professional chess players have to pay attention to everything, let alone the general audience who only know that the players are very good.

As the first day of the competition concluded, countless news reports spread across the internet in China, Japan, and South Korea. As the three countries that pay the most attention to Go, no spectator was anything but astonished.

The shock is self-evident.

It's not that beating a so-called young girl is so impressive, but rather that the various statistics presented are indeed a bit too impressive.

Start slaying the dragon in 15 moves!
The dragon was slain in just over 90 moves, without a single noticeable mistake from beginning to end!

The Go enthusiasts, who had finally started paying attention to the international competition, couldn't help but curse Lin Ruo again while marveling at his terrifying abilities.

Is it really fair to bully a child like this? What if they crush the genius chess player that their country has finally produced?
It was clearly the Chinese organizers who invited us, yet they made our players suffer such a humiliating defeat.

I'm not participating.

The Japanese audience unanimously expressed their resistance to international competitions, questioning the point of participating in a competition with a style so different from their own.

Instead of playing their own games behind closed doors, the Japanese don't think their Go is backward. On the contrary, the current popularity of AI and the super-fast style of Go are the real backwardness.

In their view, this completely violates the rules that have been in place for thousands of years. Go represents etiquette, and it is only worth watching if a game is played every two days.

Who plays a serious Go game in three hours? In their eyes, Lin Ruo is a devil. He must be using an alien's brain, otherwise he wouldn't have such a strong thinking ability.

In the eyes of South Koreans, this is much more normal, since Lin Ruo's breakthrough match was against their veteran national player Park Young-hoon.

Therefore, the news media in South Korea subtly praise them.

However, such praise must be compared with their own players and accompanied by self-praise in order to be fully published. For example, the Chosun Ilbo previously questioned Lin Ruo's speedrun of Go in two years and published an article:

[With 90 moves nearly slaying a dragon, does Lin Ruo truly have the potential to challenge Park Jung-hwan and Shin Jin-seo and win the world championship?]

While it may seem like they're praising Lin Ruo, they're actually also giving a shout-out to their two top national players.

Compared to the South Korean netizens in the comments section, they seemed much more normal, expressing only their gritting teeth at Lin Ruo, this pervert.

[Has he ruined League of Legends just two weeks ago and now he's going to ruin Go? Xibalinru is such a jerk. If he doesn't go back to playing League of Legends, he should just retire.]

[Please, Park Jung-hwan and Shin Jin-seo, you absolutely must defeat him! We can't let this kid get any more arrogant and push his luck.]

When Park Young-hoon 9-dan was defeated by him, I felt like the sky had fallen. We can't let it fall a second time. Ideally, tomorrow he should draw an all-Chinese match against Ke Jie to wear him down, then we'll have the championship in the bag.

[I have to say, this kid's luck in drawing the weakest lot twice in a row is absolutely incredible. But watching these two games, it seems like the lot he draws doesn't affect his advancement at all. He truly plays with strategic brilliance and wins decisively from afar.]

[I admit he has the ability, but he's definitely no match for Park Jung-hwan 9-dan and Shin Jin-seo 9-dan. We, the champions, will definitely face him head-on and crush him.]

...

On the Korean online forum, people are in a frenzy and eagerly anticipating the Round of 16 draw the next day. They want two things: to avoid an internal conflict and to see an internal conflict between the Chinese side, which has a numerical advantage.

On the second day of matches, Shin Jinseo, who was the focus of attention, once again easily defeated his opponent and advanced to the round of 16.

With this, the round of 32 in the Mengbaihe Cup has concluded. Of the 16 players who advanced, Chinese players still occupy half, securing ten spots.

In addition, South Korea occupies the other five spots, while Ichiriki Ryo, the current strongest player from Japan, has secured the last precious qualifying spot.

The draw ceremony began long after the competition ended, and the players didn't have to go up and draw lots one by one. Instead, the match-up list was automatically selected by the system and appeared on the big screen.

The first match is between Ke Jie and Park Jung-hwan, which has been selected as the first matchup by the system and is undoubtedly a highly anticipated game.

However, in the round of 16, the China-South Korea matches, which could involve large-scale clashes, are all potentially unmissable highlights.

In the subsequent draw, the human-machine system seemed to understand the audience's preferences, dramatically allowing South Korea to avoid a civil war and instead face Chinese players, thus forming five highly anticipated China-South Korea matches.

Among them, the 9th-dan battles between Mi Yuting and Byun Sang-il, and Xie Ke and Kim Ji-seok are all worth looking forward to.

However, what surprised the media and online viewers the most was undoubtedly the final match selected by the system.

Lin Ruo, 1st Dan, vs. Shin Jinseo, 9th Dan.

As soon as the results were announced, the atmosphere at the scene was already on the verge of exploding, especially the online uproar which reached its peak.

Among the 16 players comprised of veteran players, Lin Ruo and Shin Jinseo are the only players born in the 2000s, which undoubtedly represents a top-tier competition between the new generation of Go players from China and South Korea.

First there was Ke Jie's battle against Park Jung-hwan, and now Lin Ruo is going to face off against Shin Jin-seo. Everyone is going to be thrilled.

(End of this chapter)