Martial King's Retired Life

Volume 9 Chapter 06 A Man Who Sucks at Checkers (Part 1)

People don’t know this because I’ve never formally announced it: I am an elite checkers player. They call me King of Mount Daluo’s Checker Kings. Some people like to shorten my title, but I get it. They’re jealous. If you think I’m good at fighting, know that my checkers skills are the cream of the crop of the best of the elite of the greatest of the masters of the experts… You get the gist. I’m godly at checkers. My checkers skills are in another league compared to my combat prowess. If I was to focus on checkers, I’d already be the grandmaster of grandmasters of history, a legend to be remembered for eternity. When we played cloud-churning, Earth-shaking, star-dropping, thunder-clapping matches back on Mount Daluo, be it man, woman, human or not, I never lost once.

One winter, my shifu told me, “I am going to bequeath to you the way of checkers.” Since I didn’t have the faintest idea about my dormant prodigious checkers gift then, I snapped, “Stop distracting me from my martial arts distracting, fool. Keep distracting me and thee will regret it.” That earned me five raging slaps. So, I set down my porn book and followed him.

I soon regretted not learning checkers from my shifu sooner and wasting thirteen years on porn-, training, instead. Training is lame! I was so regretful that I wanted to be rebirthed.

After watching one game of checkers, I was so enraptured that I was addicted. I remember my shifu also appearing to regret not teaching me the art of checkers sooner. That’s how I knew I was born to be a god at checkers. For the first time, I felt my shifu appreciated me.

Thanks to my gift for checkers, I was soon playing against my shifu. From what I know, he was good enough to demolish twenty-one national champions at once on Mount Wuyi, even having the luxury of time to play with a chick’s hand on his left side and give the maiden on his right a peck while waiting for them to make a move. He’d be the undisputed checkers world champion right now if my shiniang didn’t show up to catch him for cheating on her, vandalising the place and terrifying those present in the process.

My shifu gave my uncles and brothers twenty free moves each time they played. Only Second Brother did somewhat decent, so he sometimes won when Shifu gave him four free moves. As for me, I drew with Shifu in my first game. He said he could praise my talent for checkers until the sun came up if Second Brother didn’t stop him.

To sum up, my shifu praised, “Your checkers’ skills are terrible. I mean, so shocking that gods would cry, and hell would fear you.” I pointed at my shifu and derided him for being jealous of my performance, so he added, “The situation has changed, though.”

“What and what?”

“You used to suck, but you were fair. Ever since the mid games, you’ve changed. You can be bad, but you can’t be shameless! Why’d you switch my pieces?!”

I’ll have you know I improved by leaps and bounds ever since then. I built up a wealth of experience through my countless games against my shifu.

One day, I decimated my shifu from dawn until midnight, when Shifu exclaimed, “Well played. I can see your strong desire to win. However, I must remind you: regardless of how much you want to win… you don’t win if you switch people’s pieces right when they’re about to win! If you understand, put my pieces back… Hey, stop! Stop! Give it back! Your hands are too quick for me… That’s it. Put it down. We’re throwing hands!”

The only time you should look back is to see how far you’ve come. Look forwards, people. By the way, I’m the only person to ever beat my shifu at checkers.

“I get your point. You suck. Move on. Can we just get to the conclusion of your story?” grumbled Mountain Monster, speaking weakly because of her injuries that left her bed ridden after she disguised herself as Abels and Luo Ming tried to kill her.

To be candid, I couldn’t be certain that I could resuscitate Mountain Monster if we weren’t lucky that Luo Ming didn’t know about Blood Fiend Silkworm Transformation Art‘s functions. Otherwise, he would’ve realised he only dismembered fake limbs. She would’ve bled out before I could save her if he actually severed her limbs.

In exchange for saving River Monster and Mountain Monster, they provided me with intelligence, and then we made our way to Luo Sword Manor. I didn’t know my way to Luo Sword Manor, so we caught a ferry. Playing checkers was just our means of killing time.

Since we were on the topic of Luo Sword Manor’s Lotus Root Ground being comparably bewildering as a checkers game, Mountain Monster bragged she was a decent player, igniting my motivation to compete.

“You’re terrible. Can anybody provide me with a decent challenge?”

“Tch, y-you’re the one who is terrible.” Mountain Monster panted every time she spoke due to her injuries, yet she always argued with me. “All that smoke blown up your rear, yet you can’t even beat me. King of ch-, wait, I didn’t place my piece here… You switched my pieces, you cornhole!”

It’s so lonely being by myself at the pinnacle.

Mountain Monster flipped the board over; probably would’ve jumped to her feet if she wasn’t barely awake.

“Quiet! You two think this is an outing?!” A-Lan snapped.

“Yeah, naughty kid,” I added.

“Wh-who’d you call naughty? Listen, pin dick, come… come here!”

“Your face is as white as a sheet, yet you still insist on finishing your pointless threat.”

“I said, be quiet! I feel like I’ve aged several years around you two…”