I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 120

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Too Many Profitable Talents — Chapter 120
‘……He’s a different person.’
Today, Fujisaki Yuya’s 9-dan baduk was nothing like yesterday’s.
His level?
No—it’s more like his very caliber has shifted.
The texture of his moves themselves is altogether different, to the point where I wonder if this is even the same player.
The depth of his reading. The precision of his responses.
But most of all.
Every Destabilization I attempted.
Every move I tried as a destabilizing play.
Perception within chaos.
A web of uncertainty.
Speed transcending orthodox forms.
Today, he meets all of those weapons head-on.
And those very moves have become overreaches, one after another ensnared in his counterplay.
Inspired, almost divine responses.
Because of that, my baduk itself has begun to waver.
‘……I’ve never faced baduk like this before.’
I’ve played through countless professional tournaments, weathered innumerable crises.
But today is different.
Deeper and darker than any previous turning point.
A day when my baduk feels utterly powerless.
Tap.
The sound of a stone landing spread quietly across the board.
But the ripple that single move sent through the Go Board was anything but quiet.
The Correct Move.
Theoretically the most optimal play in this position.
I don’t need to check an AI to know it.
From the very influence that move exerts, I could sense it was a Bluespot.
And that’s not all.
Tap.
The moves that keep coming in response to my destabilization attempts.
Bluespot.
Another Bluespot.
Yet another Bluespot.
Optimal plays so difficult to find through human intuition alone.
It almost feels like they’re visible to his eyes right now, as if he can simply see them.
At this point, I have to admit it.
Today, Fujisaki Yuya’s 9-dan perception, focus, and immersion have reached their absolute peak.
‘It keeps spreading.’
The board state.
The difference in territory.
The very atmosphere of the position.
All widening further, the balance of victory tilting toward black.
He knows this too, and responds with stable, solid plays.
Moves that hold his lead without leaving further weaknesses.
‘If this continues……I lose.’
Baduk that draws admiration.
But at the same time, for me as his opponent, it’s a terrible crisis.
A design built on the premise of chaos, breaking orthodoxy to seize the flow.
That design is collapsing.
Upon the world I constructed, his baduk has climbed.
No—I’m being dominated by it.
‘Breathe……stay calm.’
I took a moment to steady my breathing.
I set aside the baduk I’d been playing until now.
A moment to extract trapped thinking outside the box.
Stepping back, I turn my mind to my baduk, my Baduk Style, and my foundation.
Then, suddenly, I grasped something.
The only trick that could engineer a reversal.
My opponent was organizing a winning game, while I was finding a way to collapse a losing one.
‘I have to overturn it.’
Not just Destabilization.
I have to shatter the framework itself.
I have to destroy the structure.
I have to change the entire picture of the game from the ground up.
Click.
I gripped a stone.
The start was…… a dead stone.
A stone that had collapsed under Destabilization, now bordering on being truly lost.
A position everyone deemed beyond salvation.
From the most disadvantageous place.
On the most nonsensical stone, I reached again.
Tap.
I placed the stone quietly.
I no longer hid myself within an unpredictable flow.
Starting from a stone no one could save, breaking the current.
Twisting the framework.
A move that altered the very grain of the game itself.
And from that moment on.
The dead stone began to breathe.
‘This game starts now.’
My Baduk, which I thought had collapsed…… began to live and move again.

* * *
The Baduk world described Fujisaki Yuya’s 9-dan style thus.
Composed.
Beautiful.
Restrained, with an emphasis on shape.
A line of Baduk that carries forward the traditional aesthetic Japan had pursued since antiquity, even in the age of AI.
For that reason, there was one assessment that always attached itself to him.
‘Weak in decisive moments.’
On the domestic Japanese circuit, he showed overwhelming performance and claimed championships.
But on the international stage, he crumbled repeatedly.
Before the formidable walls of Korea and China.
Yet today was different.
‘……I see it all.’
A remarkable clarity.
Everything revealed itself to him, strange even to his own senses.
Even though his opponent was Kim In-ha, the 9-dan known as the “Championship Closer.”
He did not waver.
He was not swayed by Destabilization.
Rather, he saw through the illusion of Destabilization entirely.
That it was merely a succession of meaningless hollow moves.
‘I cannot accept losing to this kind of Baduk.’
Destabilization is momentum.
If it is not a Correct Move in itself, it becomes a liability at any moment.
Without precise Move Reading to support it, it amounts only to a reckless gambit.
Yesterday he had failed to distinguish this.
He had been caught in Ushio’s framework, outmatched in intuition.
But today is different.
The flaws in the Destabilizing moves.
And the method to crush them—he read it all.
A handful of moves.
Truly, just a handful of moves had created this Board State.
‘What can you do now?’
The advantage had shifted.
He had held the initiative throughout and maintained the lead.
It was more than a simple territorial gap.
On the Go Board, the placement of stones favored him across the board.
It was a situation that seemed unlikely to change even as they moved into the midgame.
And with the kind of peak sensitivity he was experiencing today, he felt confident he could win even from unexpected positions.
Then.
Click.
A White Stone was placed.
A move of such composure and quiet grace.
‘There? He’s playing there?’
His eyes, which had remained steady throughout the match, narrowed.
A dead stone.
Dead stones that had crumbled under Destabilization.
A position that looked meaningless to anyone watching.
He immediately entered Move Reading. And made his judgment.
‘……He’s going to enlarge it and abandon it?’
Dead Stone Tactics.
Deliberately expanding dead stones.
In the process, covering White’s weaknesses and drawing in outside forces to recoup losses.
From a disadvantageous position, an unexpected method.
Sacrificing what was already sacrificed.
It was an approach possible not for an AI, but rather because he was human.
‘There’s nothing to fear. No reason to waver at all.’
Fujisaki Yuya, 9-dan, did not waver.
Caught slightly off guard, but the Board State still favored Black.
Just a little more cautiously.
A little more conservatively.
He simply needed to preserve the current Board State.
He had the certainty that if he maintained this momentum, he would win.
Moreover, the Endgame was his strength.
At this point, moving into the midgame, there weren’t many openings for a reversal.
Then.
Click.
White’s move again.
Another dead stone.
‘……Again?’
Another position that looked meaningless.
But his instinct sent a small signal.
The shape, the position—there was something there.
As he entered deep calculation, White’s true aim revealed itself.
‘A ko?’
A Heavenly-Earth Grand Ko.
A bizarre sequence of cuts beginning from the dead stones.
A threat toward Black’s Large Group in the center.
From White’s perspective, a flower-viewing ko with nothing to lose.
‘……I almost missed it.’
His blood ran cold.
If he hadn’t noticed, he would have fallen for it.
Finding it now was a mercy.
He chose the best move and retreated.
Then.
Click.
White shifted his focus to the corner, as if waiting for this.
Two points already dead.
Beyond them, a soft attachment move burrowing in.
‘……He was aiming for this from the beginning?’
A Brilliant Move with the dead stones.
The corner his eyes had missed while managing the Large Group.
Using the dead White Stones, he forced two territories to live, creating a shape of survival.
With this transformation, the Board State that had been evenly balanced suddenly leveled out.
Before he knew it, impatience washed over him.
‘It’s still only down by two. If I respond carefully…… I can definitely take this game.’
The Endgame was Fujisaki Yuya’s exclusive domain.
An almost artistic finish.
Win with that, and it’s done.
She had the certainty that it was possible.
But then.
Click.
“……!”
Again, a White dead stone.
This time, an intrusion.
Feigning the draw toward endgame, White quietly pulls Black deeper in.
At the precise moment when Black seeks to consolidate territory, allowing a stone to be captured deliberately.
Seizing that gap, White lets a stone be captured on purpose.
Yet that single move destroyed Black’s position.
A dead stone tactic for the endgame. A calculated sacrifice. A hidden blade.
A hidden blade.
That instant.
For the first time since the match began, Fujisaki Yuya’s 9-dan eyes wavered.
‘This, this can’t be…… what kind of Baduk is this…….’
Defeat?
He had never imagined it for a single moment.
His Baduk today had been flawless.
Each move a correct move,
both momentum and board state tilted entirely in his favor.
The best Baduk of his life.
He had believed it without question.
And yet.
‘……dead White stones killing living Black stones?’
Dead stones.
That word, that concept, shook the very foundation of Baduk that had sustained him.

* * *
“Everyone, In-ha has lost his mind, lost it! Black is completely ruined!”
Park Ji-man nearly shouted.
The real-time viewer count before the monitor broke past forty thousand.
No, and that wasn’t all.
Every viewer shared the same emotion.
His attempt at destabilization had failed.
Catastrophically so.
To anyone watching, Kim In-ha’s 9-dan position looked dark with defeat.
Black had the material advantage, and White seemed overwhelmed just trying to catch up.
That had certainly been true before.
But then.
As the midgame deepened, the board began to turn.
More precisely, it wavered.
Like an earthquake.
The stone they thought was White’s dead stone.
Where they believed only lifeless pieces lay, cracks began to form.
-Wow. He’s always played well, but…… this feels like a whole different level of skill.
-When you watch the Kuksoo’s Baduk, his framework itself is distinctive.
-Even if he’d pursued study, I think he’d have excelled.
-It’s true what they say — champions really do play better.
-They say three Brilliant Moves and you lose…… but that rule doesn’t seem to apply to the Kuksoo.
Admiration and cheers overlapped and rose.
It was impossible not to be moved by such Baduk.
Park Ji-man thought the same.
If someone watched Baduk like this and didn’t feel exhilaration, they could no longer call themselves a Baduk player.
“That’s right. There’s a saying in Baduk wisdom: play three Brilliant Moves and you’ll lose.”
He continued in a earnest tone.
“A Brilliant Move is ultimately a flash tactic meant to overturn an unfavorable position in a single stroke. Having to play three of them means…… the situation is that desperate.”
As Park Ji-man spoke, he pointed to several moves that had reversed the board state.
“But, everyone. These moves that In-ha has played so far—they are not Brilliant Moves.”
He paused, then spoke with conviction.
“This is just… utilization.”
A stone sacrificed without hesitation.
Yet through that stone, shattering the opponent’s territory.
In theory, it sounds simple.
Any Professional could play such a move.
But the real challenge lies in conception.
To take a move everyone knows.
And deploy it in a way no one could foresee.
That was Kim In-ha.
Park Ji-man spoke softly, almost to himself.
“Sometimes, watching In-ha, he’s like a painter. One moment his moves are masterpieces, the next they’re like scrawls… and yet on the Go Board—his canvas—each stroke reveals an entirely different picture. Every game, a different palette.”
Not the Bluespot arrangement of artificial intelligence, but the creative intuition only a human could imagine.
From that chaos, a sensibility that carved the contours of victory with precision beyond mere order.
“If—and this is a big if—Baduk could ever be recognized as art again…”
Park Ji-man fell silent for a moment.
There had been an age when Baduk was embraced as art.
For more than a thousand years.
An era when each stone carried emotion and life itself, transcending mere victory and defeat.
But since the age of AI, Baduk had transformed.
Optimization without soul.
Profit over form.
Calculation rather than art.
It had become nothing but a pursuit of the correct answer.
Yet now. Kim In-ha’s Baduk made one forget all that entirely.
Park Ji-man’s voice grew fervent.
“That will be In-ha’s Baduk.”
A resonance that transcends competition.
The lingering impression and the emotion it leaves behind.
And the memory of when Baduk was art.
That… was Kim In-ha’s Baduk.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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