I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 81

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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 · Episode 81
“I’m not keen on this tournament becoming someone else’s spectacle, if I’m being honest.”
Having finished speaking, he quietly slipped his hand into the lottery drum.
Rattle-rattle.
The ball rolled through the chamber, producing that peculiar, tense sound.
It made no difference who his opponent would be.
Whoever he faced, victory was all that mattered.
‘I wish I’d drawn an earlier number.’
Cz Hao held a lower number, after all.
If possible, he wanted to face the man soon.
The disrespect Cz Hao had shown toward Korea weighed on his mind, but that wasn’t the main reason.
China’s prodigy among Go players.
A prodigy of unconventional brilliance, one who wielded audacious, unorthodox moves.
And most crucially.
‘The player whose style most resembles my own.’
That was the assessment of Park Ji-man, the Kisung Association’s analyst—and it would be accurate.
A harmony of fluidity and irregularity.
Intuitive Move Reading and instinctive judgment.
That final surge of focus in the closing phase.
Precisely because they were similar, he was more curious.
Whether his moves could surpass his opponent’s moves.
Whether his opponent could fathom his strategy.
But.
The ball in his palm bore a number he never anticipated.
“Number eleven! In the Main Tournament Round of 16, 9-dan Kim In-ha will face 9-dan Kim Eun-woo!”
The audience stirred.
A matchup no one had predicted.
Even he couldn’t help but be taken aback.
‘I didn’t see that coming.’
Typically, seeded players are distributed across different brackets to ensure balance.
But the National Champion Tournament draws from a complete random pool to avoid fairness disputes.
Anyone could face anyone from the very first round.
Yet he hadn’t expected to meet South Korea’s second-ranked 9-dan, Kim Eun-woo, in that first match.
‘Well, it’s an opponent I’ll have to meet eventually anyway.’
He stepped down from the platform and gave Kim Eun-woo a slight nod.
The other acknowledged him with a glance.
His expression was composed, yet a hidden tension was evident.
The revived National Champion Tournament.
Given its symbolic weight, Kim Eun-woo’s resolve would be different from an ordinary match.
Meanwhile, Cz Hao, having heard the translation, was grinning as if he found it amusing.
There was no malice in it.
Yet his gaze was full of mischief.
‘Truly a prodigy without peer.’
Though only in his mid-twenties, his manner of speech and the light in his eyes carried an unpredictable quality—impossible to pin down.
The drawing continued swiftly thereafter.
Japan’s specially invited player, 9-dan Noramoto.
9-dan Tak Hyeon-min, who had reached the final National Champion Tournament before it was discontinued.
Interview after interview traced the grand history of the National Champion Tournament—a lineage of tradition and legend.
And finally.
“Special invitation to the National Champion Tournament, Female Professional Player Cai Ran, 8-dan, from China. Please come forward.”
At the announcer’s call, a woman rose from her seat.
Her footsteps were silent.
Straight black hair and sharp jawline.
Pale skin and dark-framed glasses.
The glasses obscured half her face, making her expression difficult to read.
“8-dan Cai Ran is the daughter of 9-dan Guiling, a Female Professional Player from China who was invited to the 32nd National Champion Tournament and ascended to National Champion.”
Roughly thirty years ago.
A Female Professional Player from China, invited to the National Champion Tournament, defeated the nation’s strongest male professionals in succession and became National Champion.
In Korean Go history, the first and only woman to win a major integrated championship among male and female players.
An event that shattered the prejudice that men always defeat women in professional Go, creating waves of shock and sensation.
Cai Ran, an 8-dan Female Professional Player, stood on the podium and cupped the microphone in both hands before speaking quietly.
“……It is an honor to participate in the same National Champion Tournament, following in my mother’s footsteps.”
A Female Professional Player competing in the National Champion Tournament across generations.
For her, this resurrected tournament would mean far more than a simple entry.
The moderator posed a question.
“Is there a player you’d like to face, or one you’d prefer to avoid?”
She lowered her head briefly, then lifted her gaze.
“Yes. There is a player I would like to face.”
“May I ask which player?”
Her eyes fixed directly on me.
“Kim In-ha, 9-dan.”
‘……Me?’
An unexpected nomination.
In that instant, every eye in the hall turned toward me.
Cai Ran did not lower her head or change her expression.
The moderator pressed further.
“May I ask why?”
She regarded me through her glasses.
Her gaze held neither fire nor emotion.
Yet it was strangely cold.
“……Because your Go resembles my mother’s. That’s why I want to surpass you.”
A silence fell at her words.
On the surface, a calm statement.
But beneath it lay something suppressed.
“Cai Ran is seeded ninth.”
Having completed the final draw, she descended quietly from the podium.
Measured tone, expressionless face.
Yet I could feel something buried deep within—a quiet intensity.
A determination to overcome her mother’s shadow through me.
I hadn’t been insulted, yet somehow I felt as though a gauntlet had been thrown.
‘This is interesting.’
I let my lips curve upward slowly.
It didn’t matter.
Whatever resolve brought her here, I’m not the type to go easy on an opponent.
This National Champion Tournament.
It was stirring something in me even more than the Ciel Bank Cup had.

* * *
As the draw ceremony ended, Professional Players began rising from their seats one by one.
Outside the studio, chaos was already brewing.
Reporters prowled openly, hunting for interview angles.
‘Here we go again.’
Their eyes naturally fixed on me.
I was always good for a story—an irresistible meal ticket for them.
Moreover, I’d recently gained media attention by passing the first selection round for the Polymath national team.
At my first official public appearance in a long while, there would surely be no shortage of questions beyond Go itself.
‘Maybe I’ll just slip out today.’
Normally I’d have granted interviews, but with tomorrow’s match looming, I had no desire to waste my mental energy.
My opponent was none other than Kim Eun-woo, 9-dan.
I was gauging the situation and about to slip out through the back when it happened.
“Excuse me. Might you have a moment?”
An unfamiliar accent reached my ear.
I turned, and there stood a man in neat formal dress, composed and still.
‘……Noramoto, 9-dan?’
A guest player from Japan.
Though some said his peak had passed, he remained among the elite of Japan’s Go world.
He, with whom I had little prior connection, approached cautiously.
I paused.
I didn’t know Japanese well, but the atmosphere made clear he had business with me.
Noramoto reached carefully into the inside pocket of his jacket.
And what he pulled out was a single letter.
He spoke in halting Korean.
“Yu Jeuh-ha. Please tell her.”
“……!”
For a moment, my mind went blank.
Yu Jeuh-ha.
A name I’d never expected suddenly emerged.
“She…… speaks of Kim In-ha 9-dan very often.”
I stood there without a word.
Noramoto 9-dan looked at me for a moment, then quietly lowered his head and withdrew.
I watched his receding figure for a long time as he pushed through the throng of reporters.
A thin, white envelope.
A handwritten letter.
Precisely the sort of neat elegance that was so like her.
“…….”
I slipped the envelope inside my jacket.
The things she couldn’t say.
And her apology.
The sincere heart she’d wanted to express but couldn’t—it would all be in there.
The time to open her heart…… didn’t feel like it was now, at least.
Somewhere quiet, with a quiet mind.
I quickened my pace toward the back exit, dodging the reporters’ gazes.
A thin letter in my chest.
I hadn’t opened it yet, but warmth bloomed in a corner of my heart.

* * *
Park Ji-man’s Go In channel.
On the studio screen, Kim In-ha 9-dan and Kim Eun-woo 9-dan sat facing each other, with the National Champion Tournament Round of 16 ahead of them.
Despite the match not yet having begun, the studio crackled with tension.
Riding that atmosphere, the live viewership had already surpassed twenty thousand.
This was only a domestic tournament Round of 16, not a world championship.
Park Ji-man couldn’t hide his excitement.
Viewers meant sponsors, after all.
“Wow. This is a smash hit from day one. Eun-woo and In-ha are already matched up? Shouldn’t we save this for the finals?”
He adjusted the microphone slightly and spoke in a light, joking tone.
On one side of the monitor, live chat scrolled relentlessly.
-I would have liked to delay this match a bit.
-Isn’t Kim Eun-woo still stronger at this point?
-Kim Eun-woo’s recent results have been so poor lately…….
-Right, it was in the news that Kim In-ha does archery too.
-Yes. He was selected for the first round of national team trials, and since he’s juggling both, I’m wondering if it might affect his games.
A flood of opinions poured in.
Park Ji-man let out a soft chuckle as he read the chat.
“No, no, everyone. Our ancestors—they studied literature and shot bows and played Go too. Both Go and archery are mental sports. They come from the same root.”
He searched YouTube and pulled up footage of Kim In-ha competing in the first round of the national compound archery team trials.
Calmly drawing the bowstring and releasing.
Even to someone unfamiliar with archery, there was nothing clumsy or amateurish about it.
“When we were young, adults used to say this—just be good at one thing. Master, expert, that sort of talk?”
The screen switched back to the studio.
Kim In-ha sat with eyes closed, as if in meditation.
His opponent was the unshakeable domestic ranking number two, Kim Eun-woo 9-dan.
And yet there was no trace of tension or stiffness in his face.
“But nowadays it’s different, right? What’s that word…… a Polymath? Someone accomplished in many fields. Like Jung Yak-yong or da Vinci. So that’s what makes In-ha even more remarkable.”
As Park Ji-man continued his explanation, he felt a complex emotion stirring within.
‘It’s not easy, though.’
He too had devoted his life to Go.
He’d won a domestic tournament once, but that was all there was.
He’d never placed in a world championship quarterfinal, not even the round of eight.
That was why In-ha seemed so extraordinary.
Twenty-nine years old.
The twilight years of a professional Go player’s career.
Yet he had emerged suddenly, dominated world championships,
and now he was even targeting a position on the national archery team in the compound division.
‘That attitude, that gaze…….’
Kim In-ha on the screen was utterly still.
Like someone submerged in the depths of water.
He sat without a word, without a single change of expression, yet the concentration that drew in the very air around him was palpable.
‘……Treating winning as inevitable. That’s what’s truly terrifying.’
Professional Go players understand this.
A world where you must win to survive.
Without the skill and conviction to back it, you couldn’t sit in that seat like In-ha does, couldn’t draw the bowstring toward the target.
Which is why the anticipation only deepens.
“Ah, the match has begun. Now, shall we focus?”
The screen switched to the Go board.
Click.
Black’s first move, played by Kim In-ha, 9-dan.
The 3-3 point.
Kim Eun-woo, 9-dan, met it with the small-point opening on the opposite side.
The kakari that followed.
Black’s hand withdrawal.
Then the 3-3 Invasion.
A subtly altered variation of the AI’s opening strategy.
The board unfolded in complexity yet nuance, flowing with delicate precision.
Neither side had seized the advantage; the board state remained precariously balanced.
“Nothing too striking yet. No Joseki variations either…… Huh? Huh?”
Park Ji-man fell silent mid-sentence.
In that instant, the board on the screen.
Kim Eun-woo’s stone had shifted in a direction entirely unexpected—a bizarre, defiant jump.
“W-what is this? Is this right, Eun-woo? Did you really play that?”
Park Ji-man’s hand flew to his head in shock.
The Ripping Attack.
A variation so complex that most professionals avoided it.
In the second game of the Ciel Bank Cup finals against Lu Queran, 9-dan—the very Joseki that Kim In-ha had unleashed.
His breath caught, and his voice rose.
“……Eun-woo has brought out the Daisenbaku against In-ha. He’s picked a fight right from the start!”

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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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