I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 160

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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 Much Money-Making Talent Episode 160
The Go board lay silent as if holding its breath.
Within that silence, a soundless cry seemed to vibrate through the air.
The only sound that reached my ears was the timing clock.
Without even that, I might have fallen into a hallucination where the harmonious black and white stones were strangling me.
‘……It’s suffocating.’
Since I began playing Baduk, I’ve faced no shortage of strong opponents.
Among them were matches against the world’s elite players.
Each time it was demanding, yet I ultimately defeated them all and claimed victory.
I couldn’t guarantee a win even if we played again, but my confidence remained unchanged.
Yet O Su was different.
With each stone placed, a suffocating pressure washed over me that froze even my breath.
‘Flawless Go.’
It wasn’t merely a nickname.
Having clashed with him on the precipice, those words struck deep in my bones.
To shake an opponent, you need cracks to exploit, weak points to probe…….
But O Su’s Baduk contained no such flaws whatsoever.
‘……The gap won’t narrow.’
We were passing through the middle game, approaching the endgame.
I attempted countless moves to destabilize him.
Yet O Su parried each one with precise responses, sealing every opening.
As the position deepened, the weight of a seven-and-a-half-point handicap pressed down on me ever more heavily.
The gap was merely half a point—at most a point and a half.
But that small margin loomed before my eyes like an immense wall.
Click.
In that moment, a white stone leaned against my stone on the lower edge.
‘If I retreat, there’s no answer.’
I unhesitatingly blocked on the second line with an extended jump.
It was an unavoidable choice.
I had to provoke a white response and seize a thread of reversal.
Yet.
Click.
O Su didn’t take the bait.
He exchanged one atari in the center, then simply extended from where I’d blocked.
A retreat.
A move that should be nearly impossible to play if momentum were the guide.
But he played it without a moment’s hesitation.
‘……It’s chilling.’
Divine Calculation.
Precise and intricate computations beyond human capacity.
A cold-blooded choice that preserves a lead of half a point to a point and a half without forcing matters.
A move that could never have emerged unless one’s board judgment reached the realm of the divine, approaching artificial intelligence itself.
My mouth had gone completely dry.
‘Can I win this match?’
A question that touched my mind for the first time.
A sign that I’d been driven into a corner.
But it lasted only an instant.
‘……No. I can win.’
I steadied myself.
It was too early to concede.
In moments like this, I have to trust my own Baduk.
Tick-tick.
I glanced at the timing clock.
Twenty-nine minutes remained.
Meanwhile, O Su had only seventeen minutes left.
The time advantage was clearly in my favor.
This would be an endgame battle, but there was still plenty of room.
Incomplete shapes and floating groups still occupied the board.
Click.
Five white stones that had infiltrated the right side and fled toward the center.
I stretched out a diagonal line extension to connect across the board.
It was a bold move to recoup the territory I’d fallen short on.
“…….”
O Su fell into deep deliberation.
How much time passed?
He leaned outward from the center. Another retreat, another sacrifice.
‘He’s abandoning that?’
White surrendered four points without hesitation.
It was territory he’d lose by the count, yet he didn’t blink.
The moment I captured those four points, the board state seemed to tilt toward me, however briefly.
But then.
Click.
White cut deep into the right side, second line.
Using the dead four stones as a springboard, he deployed a brilliant capturing sequence.
‘This is not good.’
I’d gained what appeared to be an advantage, yet the gap hadn’t narrowed.
If anything, White’s initiative outweighed the value of the four points I’d greedily secured.
And it didn’t end there.
A large black group that stretched from the upper edge across the center and down to the lower edge.
A sharp move to sever its incomplete connection and capture five black stones trapped in the middle with a net.
A meticulous calculation to gather more than what had been lost.
Instinct warned me.
‘……if I take the bait, I lose.’
If I retreated and surrendered here, this game would harden into fixed form.
Both sides’ territory would be locked in, and the position would enter a state where no further variables could exist.
In the end, my choice was singular.
Click.
I withdrew from the right side.
And instead launched into a Flying Horse Endgame down toward White’s territory on the lower edge.
An unavoidable choice.
Simply following the flow of White’s moves offered no chance for reversal.
I had to shake this game all the way to the end, searching for the faintest thread of possibility.
‘Even if I lose…….’
I inscribed in my heart that I would lose on my own terms, with my own baduk.
The final destabilization.
The last desperate move.
Could I speak of my baduk at all without this?
Until the moment I placed that final stone.
For me, this game was only just beginning.

* * *
“…….”
O Su’s gaze deepened, sinking further.
To him, who unraveled baduk through precise calculation and thorough board judgment, Kim In-ha’s destabilization was like a black hole he couldn’t have anticipated.
A single misplaced move risked losing his footing, becoming unmoored and dragged along.
Game Two had been exactly that.
So in Game Three, he allowed no margin at all.
He responded only with pure technique.
And holding White proved advantageous as well.
Seven and a half points of komi.
A substantially more favorable condition than the six and a half of Korea or Japan, with White holding a clear edge.
Professional tournaments in China had proven that White’s winning rate justified it.
Above all, the komi’s advantage aligned perfectly with O Su’s baduk—the Divine Calculator, the Flawless Player, the God of Endgames.
A style where once you seized the lead, you never relinquished it.
That had been the fundamental baduk of the absolute master who dominated the world’s highest ranks until his retirement.
‘……I must not grow complacent.’
An endgame battle.
This was the phase where he felt most confident among all possible positions in baduk.
But when the opponent was Kim In-ha, everything changed.
This very game proved it.
Even now, well into the endgame, Kim In-ha continued to unleash a fighting spirit beyond imagination, pressing move after move with relentless intent.
He showed such tenacity that he refused to surrender even in the face of repeated failures.
‘Just focus on time management.’
But O Su remained unmoved.
He had already recognized that he was consuming more time than expected responding precisely to Kim In-ha’s destabilization tactics.
Even in an endgame position, when rushed by the Sudden Death clock, a player makes Move Reading mistakes they wouldn’t normally make—that was the nature of Baduk.
Then it came.
Tap.
Black played another Destabilization move.
A position that should naturally be answered.
He withdrew from the incomplete connection extending from the upper Large Group and instead launched a Flying Horse Endgame formation along the lower edge with its eye-shaped pattern.
‘A vicious Destabilization.’
At this board state.
At this moment.
Even at this critical juncture, refusing to give up and still seeking to overturn the entire game with a single stone—such resolve.
That one move struck O Su’s heart with simultaneous trembling and a tightening sensation.
‘……Should I answer it.’
The upper black Large Group’s Life and Death hung in the balance.
Calculating the worst case, he could afford to lose the black Large Group and still maintain Actual Territory advantage by simply cutting off the incomplete tail.
In such circumstances, was it truly wise to surrender to the Flying Horse charge?
Even at the cost of disadvantage.
O Su’s eyes hardened.
He needed perfect Move Reading and board state assessment, but time remaining was critically scarce.
Tap.
He ultimately chose resistance.
He cut off the black Large Group decisively.
‘A stable response isn’t always the answer.’
Though he spoke of pursuing precise play, such concessions carried loss with them.
At a half-point margin, that loss represented a dangerous choice—one that could offer a path to reversal.
‘……Can’t pull back my hand.’
O Su persuaded himself this way.
But then.
Tap.
Kim In-ha’s next move.
It landed in a place he had never anticipated.
A Garlic Pattern on the third line, reinforcing the lower Flying Horse run against cutting while simultaneously destroying White’s Actual Territory.
He had withdrawn his hand from the point where the upper black Large Group’s Life and Death hung.
‘Surely…… he’s aiming for a Large Group exchange?’
O Su shook his head.
Impossible.
The white Large Group would not die so easily.
After all, black had backed off twice at the lower edge and withdrawn, leaving weaknesses exposed.
He responded with precise play.
After cutting and striking Atari to secure advantage, he countered with a Tiger Mouth Pattern against the Garlic Pattern, reconnecting the white stones in danger of disconnection.
The sequence that followed.
The configuration between black and white reversed.
White’s territory was trampled by black stones advancing like a tank.
Conversely, black’s Actual Territory crumbled from the double backing off, and even the central thickness vanished.
At first glance, the shape seemed unbalanced.
Yet O Su did not see it that way.
‘……Still ahead by half a point.’
The endgame flow careening from confusion into chaos.
Even amid this turmoil, O Su refused to yield even that half-point advantage.
Just then, black’s next move landed in an unexpected place.
Tap.
“……!”
O Su’s gaze wavered for the first time since the game began.
At the point connecting the Tiger Mouth Pattern.
It was an exceptional move that had no place in his Move Reading.
At first glance it resembled a Brilliant Move, yet simultaneously it seemed like an overreaching desperation move.
The shape alone told him nothing, and his instincts couldn’t settle on the next move with any confidence.
But what truly strangled him was something else entirely.
Sudden Death.
One minute remained.
Kim In-ha’s relentless Destabilization had worn away his time like sand, and Sudden Death—the match’s greatest variable—loomed at his doorstep.
O Su’s palms and the backs of his hands glistened with cold sweat.
‘This game… could be lost in its entirety.’
An artistic Destabilization that squeezed both the opponent’s heart and his clock at once.
Kim In-ha’s decisive play was shaking the very outcome of this board.

* * *
Park Ji-man’s Go-in Channel.
The broadcast of Game Three of the Geumran Cup final, where the championship hung in the balance, had the atmosphere on the verge of explosion.
And the most electrified person of all was the channel’s proprietor himself—Park Ji-man.
“Wow, what is this? Are you watching, everyone? This is exactly why our In-ha is the world’s finest player! Can you feel it? The tension of this match is electric!”
Unable to contain his excitement, he raised his voice another octave.
Goosebumps crawled up his forearms, and even what little hair remained on his head stood on end.
As someone who was a baduk fan first and a professional second, he couldn’t help but shudder.
“White can’t defend the lower edge. The instant it plays there, Black gains a half-point reversal!”
Park Ji-man pulled up a reference board for added commentary, his own admiration still pouring through.
“Just moments ago, In-ha’s win rate was only thirty-one percent. At that level of play, the game was essentially over—but now it’s being overturned?”
Click.
The moment White’s next stone landed, Black answered in less than three seconds.
A maneuver designed to create a variable in a desperate position, baiting the opponent into a mistake.
A blatant time attack.
“O Su is in Sudden Death crisis! When it comes to this, nobody knows what’ll happen. Even the world’s best slip up in rapid reading—that’s baduk!”
Park Ji-man jumped to conclusions.
But then—
O Su didn’t falter. Not for a moment.
And the sequence that followed.
Click. Click. Click.
Park Ji-man glanced quickly at the reference board on his monitor and his mouth fell open.
“Every single move is a Blue Spot. How is this even possible? Not even a human AI—O Su is in rapid reading crisis and there’s not a single mistake in his play.”
The variable Kim In-ha had barely created was crushed beneath O Su’s weight.
As the fierce exchange continued, the viewer chat erupted into flames.
-The AI still says White is better.
-This is why O is truly exceptional. There’s a reason he’s called the finest baduk since AI.
-Kim Kuksoo’s baduk isn’t over until it’s over.
-My eyes are delighted but my head is spinning. I can’t follow half of this anyway.
But Park Ji-man had no time for the chat.
Click.
A Black stone landed in a place beyond all logic.
A connecting move, quietly placed.
The key point, striking at the gap in thought—the very shape of subtlety.
In that instant, the pro instinct from Park Ji-man’s playing days flooded through his entire body.
“Wait—wait? What is—this? Just looking at it, this is a Subtle Sequence? This is insane. How—how does he connect here at this moment? Is this really the match sense a human can produce?”
Park Ji-man turned his gaze frantically to the reference board.
The Deepstone AI blazed through the analysis, and the results flooded the screen.
He wanted nothing more than to immediately explain this thrilling move to his viewers—
“…”
In that instant, his expression froze solid.
His face half-slack, mind reeling.
-Explain something, please!
-I’m dying of suspense.
-Is In-ha at it again? Another Brilliant Move?
-Why does the master’s face look like that? What move is it?
The viewers’ demands poured in, but Park Ji-man could scarcely open his mouth.
“Well, you see…”
He finally fell silent, unable to tear his eyes from the reference board.
He ran the AI analysis again and again, but the result never changed.
Technically speaking, this was the worst possible position.
If White responded with a normal move, Black would fall behind by four and a half points—a reckless overreach.
‘……That’s, that’s a sacrifice move, isn’t it?’
Park Ji-man’s fingertips trembled slightly, caught off guard.
Then it happened.
Tap.
O Su’s white stone, trapped in rapid reading mode, tumbled onto the board as if forced.
A response that failed to see through Black’s unexpected connection.
One move, a single tremor outside the calculation—the butterfly effect it spawned.
The moment Park Ji-man saw that move, he bolted upright from his chair in excitement.
“He—he got him! In-ha has turned it around!”

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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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