I don't know Zhang Hong well, and I won't remember his name because he is Yan Jinfeng's tablemate.

That day, full of excitement, I stepped into a quaint house.

It is a small courtyard house located in an old neighborhood in the middle of the town. Pushing open the antique wooden gate and stepping over a high threshold, you will be greeted by a flower stand in the courtyard, and in the center of the flower stand is a plum tree. In winter, the plum blossom tree is smiling and greeting every visitor, and its ruddy complexion looks like an ink painting by a famous artist against the white wall.

After entering the courtyard, turn right to the main hall, and cross the high threshold, where an old man has been waiting for a long time.

He is an interest class teacher invited by the school, he is over the age of six, tall and thin, and when he is in class, the wrinkled face of the horse is full of the word "serious", his voice is slow and low, but the words are clear and powerful. What does he teach? Listen to me slowly.

Since the third grade, the school has set up interest classes, including erhu, guzheng, chess, go, calligraphy, art, basketball, football, badminton, table tennis, ...... Interest classes are held on weekends.

Most of the students wanted to have fun on the weekends and didn't want to participate in any classes at all, but the school required every student to participate in at least one program, so they had to choose it casually. I was different, I was curious about each project, but I had limited energy, and I finally settled on a project called "chess".

The reason why I chose chess is mainly because I think that everyone is familiar with things like art, calligraphy, erhu, guzheng, Chinese chess, and Go, and it will not be incredible if you learn it; Instead, something called "chess" sounds lofty, trendy and international, and if you learn it, you will definitely be able to become the focus of your classmates, and you will definitely be more prominent in Yan Jinfeng's eyes.

When I thought about it, I decided it was it!

The old man was the teacher in the "chess" class.

He was very serious, but it was a pity that few of the students below listened carefully, and the sound of the ear-to-ear exchange could basically cover him.

At first, when the old man felt that the classroom was noisy, he would pick up his ring ruler and knock on the podium, and at the same time face the students with a straight face, slowly scanning from the far left to the far right, and then sweeping back to the far left from the far right, like a machine gun erected on a hill, the sound of the ring ruler is a signal flare, and his torch-like gaze is the bullet fired from the machine gun.

I could feel the tremendous energy of the bullet, an unbearable feeling of oppression, and my body would easily be pierced in front of it.

However, most of the students were completely immune to this kind of gaze and still went their own way, perhaps they understood that this old man was from outside the school and could not threaten them at all.

It is true that this is not a private school in the old days after all, and you can neither scold loudly nor hit your palms with a ring ruler, and the old man really has no way to look at this group of children who have no intention of studying at all.

So fortunately, he adopted the Taoist idea of "ruling by doing nothing", and he lectured at his own pace step by step, and the students below listened to what they wanted to listen to, and pulled down those who didn't want to listen.

Sometimes he left homework after the lecture, which was all about solving some endgames. The so-called endgame is to put the pieces in a specific layout, which is in accordance with the rules of the game and given that White or Black will move first, and then it depends on how to move to win, which is the solution.

In the same way, the old man doesn't care whether the students do it or not, the students do what they want to do, and pull it down if they don't want to do it.

Fortunately, there are still some students in the class who love to learn, and the old man can still receive about ten homework at a time, although he has no expression on his face, but I think he should still be very happy in his heart.

With the idea of getting ahead, or in layman's terms, the idea of being in the limelight, I still want to learn chess well, which is why I took the initiative to choose chess. However, I was not among the students who often turned in their homework, and I found the questions to be quite difficult, and if I didn't solve them for an hour after returning home, I would have to wait for the answers to be released next week. A good weekend should be used to play more to be comfortable.

Just by chance, I solved an endgame problem and excitedly handed over the solution steps to the old man. The old man's eyes suddenly lit up after seeing it, and he looked at me very strangely, as if he had discovered a treasure in the depths of the sea, and red flowers bloomed on his rotten wood-like face for the first time in a long time. After class, he called me to his side and invited me to his home for lessons. I can't believe that there is such a good thing in this world, it is like winning the lottery, and even more exciting than winning the lottery.

So on the appointed day, full of excitement, I stepped into the old man's house.

I saw that there were already a few students in the main hall listening to the class, and they were sitting on the sofa on the left, facing the magnetic chessboard display board on the right. There are round cake-shaped chess pieces on the chessboard, which are written with "cannon", "general", "soldier", "pawn" or something, and the chessboard also draws the Chu River and Han boundary. I was shocked, thinking that I had gone to the wrong place, but fortunately I was relieved to see that the old man was still like that. It turned out that the old man also taught Chinese chess, and before I came, he first taught Chinese chess to a group of students, and then taught chess to another group of students, including me.

The old man motioned for me to wait in the next room. So I walked to the next room. As soon as I entered the room, I found a familiar face and exclaimed in surprise: "Zhang Hong! Why are you here? ”

"Oh! Mao Xiaoer, you're here too! Zhang Hong smiled and squinted, the corners of his mouth curled high.

"You also took a chess interest class?"

"yes."

"How come I never noticed you?"

"I've noticed you a long time ago." Zhang Hong was still smiling, as if everything was under his control.

There were also two boys in the room, and there was no one else. In other words, the old man only accepted four apprentices in the chess project. Compared to the roomroom of people who are learning Chinese chess outside, our lineup is really miserable. The other two boys don't know what level it is, after all, I only know Zhang Hong, this guy with lower grades in the class can't be so smart, how did he get in? How could I end up with him?

According to the old man's instructions, we will kowtow to him and hand him tea. We didn't know why we did this, but we thought it was fun, so the four of us kowtowed and looked at each other with a smile. The old man didn't care about these details, and still sat firmly on the wicker chair with a blank face.

After the ceremony, the old man gave each of us a red envelope, and then told us that from now on, the four of us will be the old man's closed disciples in the chess project. Arrange the seats according to age, Zhang Hong is the eldest, so he became my senior brother. The senior brothers in the book are generally quite powerful, and those with such poor grades like Zhang Hong make me really not used to calling him senior brothers.

Classes are still held at the end of each week, and each class is divided into two periods, the first period is for the old man to teach, and the second period allows everyone to play freely. Four students take turns pairing up in pairs, and they play two tables at the same time. If someone asks for leave and doesn't come, the old man will go on top.

The old man still had a serious expression on his face when he played chess, but I thought it was relatively relaxed.

When I made a mistake, he didn't say a word, picked up his piece, moved it according to its path to the piece that was about to be captured because of the mistake, and then gently tapped it three times on the board, signaling that I was in danger here, and giving me a chance to withdraw and re-walk.

And when I was already doomed to defeat, Old Man Wang also lifted his chess piece without saying a word, moved to that sharp position, and kicked down the unlucky "king" with the bottom of the chess piece, like a ruthless killer, holding a steel knife and slowly cutting through the opponent's armor, making a piercing and long sound, and then accompanied by a short gunshot in the other hand, the bullet finally brought everything to peace.

Although the atmosphere was more relaxed when the students played chess, I felt quite stressed.

We must follow the rules of the game, have no regrets, and we must move which chess piece we touch. Next to the chessboard is a game-specific mechanical timer with two symmetrical clock dials, each with a button. When one player finishes a move, he presses the button on his side, and then the watch hand on his side stops moving, and the opponent's button pops up, and the watch hand moves again. If the time of a match is one hour, whoever passes the watch hand one hour first loses.

However, it is not common for students to decide the winner without an hour of delay.

The other two boys were no match for me at all, and I always got the easy way to win; The two boys and Zhang Hong were evenly matched, and Zhang Hong's chances of winning were smaller in the course of many confrontations. It stands to reason that my level should be above Zhang Hong, but in fact, I have not been able to defeat Zhang Hong once, so there is a round-robin situation between us, just like the famous Penrose Ladder, and it is not clear who is the best.

The strangest part of this is naturally that I can't always win against Zhang Hong, as if I am cursed. A closer look at it can roughly tell you what the problem is.

As a naughty ghost, Zhang Hong's main ability is not that he is muscular and has big fists, but that his mouth is particularly flexible. Words can also be a powerful weapon, and they have become a winning weapon for him to bully me. In the class, he used to make others embarrassed, and now here, only the two of us know each other best, and he is silent when he plays chess with the others, and talks endlessly in front of me like an open gate. At the end of the game, my thinking was completely distracted, and my momentum was completely compared to his trademark smile that fluttered as he chatted.

The more I lost to him, the more my whole mentality collapsed, I felt that I was submerged in a huge haze that could not be removed, and the whole chessboard was shrouded in chaos, I couldn't see anything clearly, I couldn't struggle, and finally I had to disarm and surrender.

I hate playing chess with Zhang Hong, and the more I look at him, the more unhappy I become. Besides, he was still at the same table with Yan Jinfeng, so he couldn't bear it.

What if Yan Jinfeng was snatched away by him! No way! I can't lose to Zhang Hong like this, I have to work hard to improve my level, and I will definitely be able to defeat Zhang Hong one day.