Dark Star Field [Interstellar]

It was late at night, but there was still a room with a light on in the Cao's mansion.

Cao Ge sat in the study, facing the chess game in front of him anxiously, holding the black grid bishop and hesitating.Across the table is his father Cao Fu.

"Have you figured it out yet? How is your elephant going?" Cao Fu asked his son slowly, "I can give you a hint. According to the current situation, the outcome will be decided within five steps. As for you Whether you win or lose, it all depends on how you choose this step."

Cao Ge bit his lip and thought for a long time before slowly putting the "elephant" in a grid.

Cao Fu glanced at it and smiled lightly. "You, you always just stare at a small area where the battle is fiercest in front of you, and you can't see the whole situation. Especially after being influenced by others, your judgment is even worse. When your elephant comes here, I guess you The next step is to transfer the 'car' to cooperate with the attack. This can indeed eat my queen within three steps. But you didn't notice that all the retreats of your king are about to be blocked by me, just wait Let you transfer Wang Yi's 'car' away, and I can kill you in one step."

After saying these words, Cao Fu jumped a step on his horse, "General——Look, where else can your king escape?"

Cao Ge's face turned pale, and he bowed his head to admit defeat.

"You know how to strategize, but you can't keep yourself in a stable state. You can make very clever tricks, but you can also make the lowest mistakes, and you can easily lose your composure and fail to judge the priorities of things." Cao Fu has a profound meaning Looking at his son, "Do you know what this is called? It's called talent but incompetence."

"..." Cao Ge didn't say a word.

"At your age, it's normal to have these shortcomings." Cao Fu sighed, "But if you want to do great things, you have to learn to make yourself unusual. I think Xue Yelai is better than you."

"He's like a lost dog now, what's better than me?" Cao Ge stiffened his neck, and didn't dare to argue with his father loudly, so he could only mutter angrily.

"I've seen the video of you taking part in the sage exam." Cao Fu leaned back on the chair, clasped his hands, and touched his fingertips lightly, "Only in theory, his tactics are not complicated, nor are they superb. But it completely targets your psychological weakness and your tactical loopholes. If you stay calm and realize his real purpose before the end of the first round, then the situation will not evolve into that after that. Unfortunately, just like you I didn't notice that I was quietly blocking your king just now, and you didn't realize his intentions in time. I think Xue Yelai must understand a truth: the simpler and more targeted the tactic, the more operable it is. The better the effect."

"I was too impetuous back then, and he took advantage of me." Cao Ge gritted his teeth fiercely, "But what he played was just clever tricks, and I can do it too."

Cao Fu nodded slightly, "I believe it. The real gap between you and him is not here. You can also imagine his tactics, but there is another thing he did at that time that you can't do now. "

"What?" Cao Ge raised his head in astonishment when he heard the words, "What is it?"

"Before the last round of the exam, in order to let others assist him, he said something in front of everyone. Do you remember what he said at the end?"

"It seems to be saying..." Cao Ge searched painfully for that humiliating memory. "We may become colleagues in the future. There is no need to make enemies for yourself because of an exam. We all win, and we will still be friends in the future."

"That's right, it's this passage. Don't underestimate its effect. He used this method to draw others into his camp, and at the same time left room for himself to change. Think about it, If Xue Yelai had done too much at that time, and had made grievances with those people in order to show off for a moment, how would those people retaliate against him now that he is in such a situation? ——If you were in his position at that time , would you say such a passage?"

Cao Ge was speechless.If it is normal, he will certainly say a lot of occasional words.But at the time when he had such an advantage and was almost sure of winning, if it were him, he would definitely be complacent and forget himself.

Cao Fu stood up and paced back and forth in the room with his hands behind his back, "You have to remember that a person will always, always leave a way out for himself. This is what worries me the most about you. Once you gain power, Just want to kill your opponents, it will hurt you. As the saying goes, you have to forgive others and forgive others. It is convenient for others, it is convenient for yourself."

"But..." Cao Ge muttered to defend himself, "But as the saying goes, if you don't stop, you will leave future troubles. To be kind to the enemy is to be cruel to yourself."

"That's right. There are no absolutes in everything, and you have to follow the trend." Cao Fu's slender eyes flashed like a falcon, looking at the hotel where Xue Yelai once lived in the distance, "When should we cut the grass and roots, and when should we keep it?" Room, this is the wisdom that you have to spend your whole life learning. For example, have you ever thought about why we knew that His Majesty was going to attack the Xue family, but we took Xue Yelai to our territory and protected him from Xue in a disguised form? Is the family difficult?"

"This..." Cao Ge was dumbfounded.

"The Xue family is too powerful, and it will be a matter of time before they commit a big taboo of making great achievements. So His Majesty planned the Hundred Flowers Temple incident in order to weaken the strength of the Xue family. ——Do you think the Xue family Did the Great Elder not know anything about it beforehand? That old man deliberately didn’t say anything because he knew that His Majesty would not destroy the Xue family, but only wanted to weaken it. After the attack, the Xue family will be safe, and so will he.”

Cao Ge was terrified, and it took him a long time to murmur: "Your Majesty...Your Majesty doesn't want to destroy the Xue family? But the Xue family lost seventeen elders in the Hundred Flowers Temple. This is a devastating blow!"

Before he finished speaking, he fell silent, because he suddenly remembered that the three great elders who were really in power in the Xue family were safe and sound, and had recently re-emerged to preside over the situation.

"You are really slow to notice such an important matter now." Cao Fu showed a look of resentment, "There are seven elders in the Xue family who often reject His Majesty's will, but if only these seven people die , it is too suspicious. So His Majesty plans to kill fifteen - the two more killed are accidental, but anyway, they are useless people, and they are dead."

Cao Ge was dumbfounded, and opened his mouth soundlessly.He always thought that the Hundred Flowers Temple incident was a plot set up by the Cao family to bring down the Xue family, but he only got the emperor's tacit approval.Unexpectedly, it turned out that everything was planned by the emperor himself.

"Then...then how can it be seen that His Majesty does not want to destroy the Xue family?"

"Use your eyes and brain." The smile lines on the corners of Cao Fu's mouth deepened, but his eyes grew colder, "If His Majesty really wanted to destroy the entire Xue family, the Xue family would have been uprooted as early as the Hundred Flowers Temple incident. Yes. Even now, only the Xue family mansion has been searched by the Royal Gendarmerie. Thinking about how His Majesty treated the Su family back then, isn’t the comparison obvious enough?”

Cao Fu paused, looking at his son's expression, "Do you want to ask, why does His Majesty attack the Xue family and protect the Xue family at the same time?

"..." Cao Gewei nodded silently.He really couldn't figure it out.

"Let me tell you a story. In ancient times, there was an emperor who heard that the prince rebelled and was furious. He sent someone to destroy the prince. In the end, the prince was defeated and committed suicide. people.

"But this is not the end of the matter. After a few years, the emperor realized that the prince was framed by traitors back then. He regretted it and was in great pain. All the people who were promoted to rank because of the extermination of the prince were all executed. Those who helped the prince were rewarded."*

Cao Fu stopped, picked up two pieces of snacks and threw them into the teacup, and stirred them with a spoon.The two pieces of dim sum were sinking and floating around the spoon, and the collision was choppy.

"The complexity of the human heart has always been the same from ancient times to the present. Your Majesty's feelings for the Xue family are not a single love or hatred, dependence or guarding, but coexistence, ups and downs. Since the ancestors of the Xue family rescued the Xue family 100 years ago, The late emperor, the relationship between the Xue family and the royal family is getting closer. What's more, now that war with the Interstellar Federation is possible at any time, His Majesty's attitude towards the Xue family is even more contradictory. On the one hand, he is afraid that the Xue family will really defect, and on the other hand, he is also afraid of losing the Xue family. Therefore We should try our best to avoid participating in the action of attacking the Xue family head-on, even if His Majesty regrets it in the future, we can get away, at least we won't be involved too much."

After listening to his father's long speech, Cao Ge was stunned for a while. "That is to say, the Xue family may not be over like this, and it may turn around again in the future? Could it be that we just do nothing—"

"Cough." Cao Fu interrupted his son with a light cough, "If the power struggle of the empire is compared to a balance, we and the Xue family are like the two ends of the balance. If the Xue family is stepped down, we can certainly rise up. But What if the whole scale ceased to exist?"

He tapped the chessboard hard with his fingers, shaking all the pieces. "As I said just now, you always only focus on a small area where the battle is fiercest in front of you, and you can't see the greatest danger in the overall situation. In this regard, Xue Yelai is much better than you."