Astonishment!

Disbelief!

Chen Qiqi was scared silly. “What exactly has happened?”

Chen Niannian said, “Who the hell is this guy?”

A teenager said anxiously, “Hurry, tell the teachers!”

A teenage girl shouted, “Right, go and tell everyone!”

“The Go world will be shaken by this!” Everyone stopped caring about the training regimen and rushed out of the room to go look for Tian Weiwei.

..

In a room.

Tian Weiwei and several 8 and 9-dan professional Go players were watching 9-dan Chen Ying’s match. Her opponent was a professional Korean 8-dan Go player who was also their rival in recent years.

8-dan Li Fang smiled and said, “This push through that Sister Chen made is such an interesting move.”

Tian Weiwei said, “This is a 2-5 approach ¹ that Sister Chen has mastered superbly.”

But Chen Ying said, “What’s so superb about this move of mine? The best 2-5 approach that I’ve ever seen played was made by PeterGo. It can only be described as impeccable.”historical

“But it’s not human,” 8-dan Zhou Zhen said.

Li Fang said, “Yes, PeterGo has a large computing platform to support its decision making. Strictly speaking, that’s considered cheating. It’s the same if this were a math competition with everyone doing their calculations using pen and paper while someone else makes use of a calculator or computer. It would be a wonder if we could win against it. What is it if that’s not cheating? Technology these days has become too advanced. The computing efficiency and processing power have gotten much more powerful than before. There isn’t anyone who can beat Peter anymore.”

At this moment, there was a flurry of knocking on the door!

Knock knock knock!

Knock knock knock!

Li Fang said to the outside, “Who is it?”

He went over, opened the door, and saw Little Chen and the others.

Tian Weiwei said, “What’s the matter? Didn’t I arrange for you all to practice?”

Chen Qiqi was panting from running over here. “Master Tian! Something big has happened!”

Tian Weiwei was startled. “What happened?”

Chen Ying’s game was more or less already won. She couldn’t help but turn her head. “What’s all the fuss about?”

Chen Niannian took a deep breath and said, “You’d never believe what happened if we told you!”

Zhou Zhen laughed. “Is there anything that we wouldn’t believe?”

A teenage newcomer said loudly, “PeterGo has lost!”

Chen Ying was stunned. “What?”

Tian Weiwei’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

Li Fang said dumbfoundedly, “It lost?”

Zhou Zhen straight-up said, “That’s impossible!”

Chen Qiqi pointed at the computer and said, “Have a look for yourselves! It’s true!”

Chen Ying no longer cared about the ongoing game at this moment. She clicked on the mouse and exited the match, then went into PeterGo’s dedicated match zone and got dumbfounded by what she saw! The top Go masters in China—Tian Weiwei, Li Fang, and Zhou Zhen—were all dumbfounded too!

Tian Weiwei gasped. “Who was it?”

Chen Qiqi quickly said, “We don’t know. It’s an unknown account!”

Chen Ying shouted, “Show me the game record!”

Chen Niannian said, “There’s no record of it. We didn’t watch the game!”

A newcomer said excitedly, “Awesome! This is so awesome!”

Zhou Zhen said horrified, “Is there really someone in the world who can beat PeterGo?”

Chen Ying clicked the mouse several times before saying, “It’s still too early to say. I tried accessing the match room, but PeterGo is currently not available to play against. I believe that the Americans set it as a best-of-three format, so that person still has to play another game against PeterGo!”

Tian Weiwei said, “It’s gonna get crazy in the Go world!”

..

Beijing.

At Old Wu’s parents’ courtyard house.

Li Qinqin was washing vegetables while Wu Changhe sat outside in the courtyard, looking at the sky.

Li Qinqin smiled and said, “Why aren’t you studying that new style of play you just created?”

Wu Changhe said uninterestedly, “What’s the point of that? We still can’t win.”

“It’s the New Year, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself.” Li Qinqin said, “It’s been two years, but still no one can win against it. I suppose we should just forget about it.”

At this moment, a cell phone rang.

After Wu Changhe got off the phone, he looked stupefied. He put down his cell phone and suddenly felt a decade younger. He was so excited that he couldn’t get a hold of himself!

Li Qinqin asked, “What’s the matter?”

Wu Changhe replied, “PeterGo has lost!”

Li Qinqin said in surprise, “What?”

..

In America.

At the company where PeterGo was created.

When the alert data was transmitted back, the entire team was dumbfounded!

“This—”

“This is impossible!”

“Peter has lost?”

“What’s going on? What in the world has happened?”

“Where’s the game record? Send it over quickly!”

“It’s a new account? There’s only one record of it signing in?”

“The IP address points to China?”

“Goddammit!”

It was a state of chaos at the company, and the higher management had to call an emergency meeting. In their opinion, PeterGo couldn’t have lost. There was absolutely no chance that it could have lost!

..

Korea.

At a Go circle party.

“Come, let’s drink.”

“Hai, let’s not talk about the AI anymore.”

“Right, let’s just enjoy the food and drink up.”

Then these people’s cell phones started ringing.

“What?”

“Are you serious?”

“It really lost?”

“Holy shit!”

..

Japan.

At a Go club.

Some amateur enthusiasts were playing Go when this piece of news hit them without warning.

“Oh my God!”

“Are you serious?”

“How is that possible!”

“Someone beat it?”

“W-Who could this godly person be?”

..

China was shocked!

Korea was shocked!

Japan was shocked!

This news had set off a raging torrent across the entire Asian Go community!

The Go server that served all international players was suddenly bustling with activity. In the global chat, the various zones’ chats, as well as PeterGo’s dedicated match zone, netizens and Go players from all over the world were filling chat up with messages. For over two years, the human players had been driven back in defeat one after another. Against the dominance of the artificial intelligence, the humans stood no chance of winning at all. This dominance even struck a devastating blow to the Xiangqi world along with the Go world, leading to more and more people leaving the game. The Go server’s daily activity and number of users started dropping year after year. But right now, there was a flurry of activity on the entire server. It felt like the entire world’s people had flooded into the server at this moment. It felt like the suppressed anger and gloom that had built up over the past two years had erupted at this moment!

—7451 wins!

—1 loss!

When many of the people saw this, they almost burst into tears!

“It’s lost!”

“It’s really lost!”

“Thank God!”

“Which godly player did that?”

“Yeah, could it be an alt account of Teacher Tian’s?”

“Impossible! If Teacher Tian and the others could win, they would have already won at some point during the past two years. Why would it take them until now to do so? And why would he use an alt account to do it?”

“I also do not think that it’s them!”

“Amazing!”

“There’s finally a master who did it!”

“Does anyone have the game record?”

“No, no one was watching the game when it was being played.”

“I saw that PeterGo was in a match with someone, but I didn’t watch it, just logged off. When I came back, PeterGo had lost! My God, I should chop off my hands. Just what did I miss? I totally missed out on watching a Go match that is worthy of going down in the annals of Go history! Heavens, please strike me down with lightning! W-Why did I have to log out at that time! I regret this so much!”

“What’s the username of the person who won?”

“HEOR!”

“This is a newly registered account. It has only 1 win and 0 losses? This was the only game played so far? In just one game, Peter was defeated? Damn, what kinda fucking person is that?”

“What does HEOR mean?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like a word?”

“Uh, do you guys think it should have been HERO instead? And that the person just misspelled it?”

“Ptui, how can that be? That person is such an amazing expert, so how could they have misspelled a word like ‘hero’? Can you stop cracking jokes!”

“You’re right!”

“HEOR must mean something much deeper than that!”

“Right, it must definitely mean something that we’re unaware of!”

“What could it represent?”

Craze!

Exhilaration!

Jubilation!

The global Go world felt like they were celebrating the New Year!

Although based on the festivities in China, they really were celebrating the Lunar New Year right now.

Everyone was talking about and guessing the identity of this HEOR person. In the end, they started going off on a tangent and instead guessed the meaning behind the name!

Someone said that it was the English acronym of “Health Economics and Outcomes Research.”

Someone said that it was the pinyin abbreviation of a Chinese phrase.

And others claimed that this name carried a hidden barb at PeterGo, or said that it was something that critiqued the hegemony of America, etc.

In reality, everyone had overthought things.

This name was simply a typo by that fellow Zhang Ye!