With the help of Mental Radiations, Jin Huang also realized the existence of Immortals at the age of 9 months. She read her father's mind many times and, on one occasion, realized this world was far more complex.
Not just that, she realized those Immortals were capable of reading minds and manipulating the entire world by controlling highly influential Warriors!
Even though the Golden Crow is the largest Kingdom of the Northern Continent, it only reached this state because it was controlled by Immortals behind the scenes.
Otherwise, how could a small province rise so high out of nowhere and reach the pinnacle?
That day, Jin Huang felt a strange emotion. Normally, anyone would feel despair, fear, and insecurity.
But Jin Huang?
She felt differently. She thought inwardly, 'Reading others' minds? Isn't that a weakness?'
Yes!
Her first impression was — Immortals were foolish!
Why would they read others' memories?
According to her, reading others' memories isn't foolish in itself. But letting them realize that they were capable of reading minds — that was foolish! It was like showing your whole hand of cards and saying, I will still win. Now that the world knew they could read minds, it could be used as an advantage against the Immortals.
However, at this point, Jin Huang had yet to interact with high-ranking Warriors. She didn't know the essence of Soul Cultivation yet. It's not that the Immortals hadn't tried to conceal this fact — but all high-ranking Warriors were smart enough to figure it out. Over millions and billions of years, it becomes impossible to hide clues, especially when one must interact with others regularly.
There was one thing Jin Huang didn't know at this point in time. She didn't know that she was one of a kind — and not just anyone could exploit that weakness.
From the moment she was born, she possessed Perfect Talent. Her soul and body were perfectly synchronized, and thus, she could learn and perform any action without difficulty.
She instantly came up with a counter to this Mind Reading ability: the use of Intuition and Reflexes!
Intuition comes suddenly and doesn't exist in your conscious and subconscious thoughts. Reflexes are actions that don't require you to think.
So, what if you don't think? Or what if you think one thing, but do something else? What if you make decisions based on intuition and act through reflexes?
Our brain normally has two states:
Active State and Passive State.
In the active state, we actively think about situations.
Let's take a chess game as an example. When you calculate future lines of play, that is the active state. But most of the time, we don't calculate all possible lines. Instead, we focus only on a few key ones. How do we come up with those specific moves? Through the passive state. Passively, we select the most obvious choices — a kind of 'common sense.' The passive state is closer to intuition and is based on experience — the subconscious mind trained throughout our lives.
And, as we can see, since the active state is based on actual calculation, it is more reliable than the passive state. Meanwhile, the passive state is much more efficient and faster than the active state. The combination of these two states keeps our brain cool and functioning well.
Jin Huang came up with a third State of Mind in order to counter someone reading her thoughts: the Abstract State.
What is intuition?
Intuition is nothing but pattern recognition at its peak. It's a form of unrealistic pattern recognition — as it finds patterns in noisy data and predicts coincidences or any situation! Noisy data here refers to the irrelevant events we face day to day, not even worth remembering. Let's take an example:
You're just sitting around — maybe folding laundry or scrolling your phone — and suddenly someone pops into your head, say an old friend or cousin you haven't talked to in weeks.
You think: "Huh, wonder how they're doing…"
Then, minutes later, your phone buzzes — it's them, calling or texting you.
And you're like: "Whoa. I just thought of you!"
However, is this kind of intuition accurate? Ask yourself!
It's not — because it is uncontrolled!
Controlling intuition improves its accuracy, but it's still nowhere near as reliable as a gut feeling or conscious analysis.
When intuition is uncontrolled, it's just an unreliable, momentary feeling.
But when this intuition can be controlled, it becomes the third state of mind — the Abstract State. In this state, you think with intuition and act with reflexes.
It's like forgetting what you have to do, yet still having a vague feeling that you just must do it. You're not consciously thinking about it — but you still do it. That is the Abstract State.
However, the difference is: the Abstract State consumes much more brain power than the Active State, while being much more inefficient than the Passive State — making it nearly useless.
Even in the Passive State, sometimes we don't consciously think about our actions — but we still do them. However, even if we're not conscious of it, the subconscious thought still exists. In the case of the Abstract State, even subconscious thoughts do not exist.
Jin Huang instantly switched to the Abstract State the moment she realized Immortals could read minds.
The Abstract State is something only Immortals and Emperors can utilize. However, Jin Huang is different. Her talent is Overlap, which allows perfect synchronization between body and soul — a state that usually exists only after reaching the Emperor Realm.
Northern Continent, Jinyang
Both Jin Long and Jin Huang showed immense talent, reaching as high as B-grade low level.
Everyone rejoiced at the young prodigy — except a few.
Whether it was Crown Prince Jin Wei, Third Prince Jin Han, or most of the other princes and princesses, they all hid their inner hostility and wore smiles like roses in bloom — with thorns hidden beneath velvet petals.
Jin Huang couldn't read their memories, but she could distinguish between friendly and hostile mental radiations. She instantly saw through their hidden intent.
Soon, the ceremony ended.
At this moment, Jin Haoran introduced Jin Huang to Shi Tian. He smiled at her and said lightly, "I want you to learn from him."
Shi Tian was still young, only in his 70s. A Rank 5 Warrior can live up to 400 years!
Jin Huang nodded. "Yes, Father!"
Shi Tian was surprised. He had heard rumors of her talent, but still believed she was too young to learn anything from him.
Jin Haoran glanced at Shi Tian and smiled faintly. "You don't have to worry about her not learning. Just teach her what you can. If she can't learn, then you don't have to teach anything."
Shi Tian nodded and bowed, intending to leave. "I will meet with the princess tomorrow and begin her training accordingly."
Jin Haoran smiled. "Where are you going? How about we play a game of chess first?"
Shi Tian nodded thoughtfully.
Jin Huang, on the side, asked with an excited face, "What game are you playing?"
Jin Haoran smiled and replied lightly, "It's called Go. Do you want to play?"
Jin Huang nodded immediately. "I want to."
Jin Haoran smiled faintly and said to Shi Tian, "It's a good chance to test her."
Shi Tian was puzzled. "Does she even understand the rules?"
Jin Haoran didn't speak, completely confident in his daughter.
Both sat opposite each other at the table and began the game.
It must be noted that Shi Tian was already a Rank 5 Warrior, and any ordinary Rank 5 Warrior could perform trillions or even quadrillions of calculations with ease.
With a human-like approach and machine-like calculations, he could analyze 40–50 moves ahead across the whole board, and around 100 moves ahead when considering localized positions!
Shi Tian glanced at Jin Huang and said, "You play with black. Make your move."
Jin Huang glanced at Shi Tian and sat across from him. She looked at the box of black pieces beside her.
She murmured inwardly, 'So black plays first in this game.'
She took a piece and placed it directly at the center of the board, shocking both Shi Tian and Jin Haoran.
Jin Haoran murmured inwardly, 'Hasn't she played this game before?'
Jin Huang's learning speed shocked Jin Haoran so much that he automatically assumed she had played this game before. But unbeknownst to him, she didn't even know the rules of the game.
Shi Tian didn't mind. He glanced at Jin Huang deeply and placed his stone at the top right corner, (4, 4).
Jin Huang looked at the move thoughtfully and didn't understand why it was placed there. She probed further by copying the same move and placing her piece at (4, 4).
The game continued for ten moves as Jin Huang kept copying — and then, suddenly, she realized something.
What White (Shi Tian) was trying to do was surround her pieces from all sides. Within ten moves, she had entered a losing position.
She immediately activated her brain, calculating every possible line of every move. She realized that, with perfect play, the game was already lost!
In fact, she had already figured out what Shi Tian was trying to do within 3–4 moves — but wanted more confirmation. She was still young and lacked experience. She shouldn't have let her opponent gain so much advantage.
Shi Tian, as a Rank 5 Warrior, was incapable of calculating every possibility and playing a perfect game.
The game continued.
Shi Tian's initial disappointment faded slowly. As the game progressed, the advantage he had gained was slipping away.
He realized he couldn't let his guard down and instantly began calculating the best possible moves.
Both played an intense game, and the result?
Black's territory totaled 184 points — made up of 180 stones and 4 empty spaces.
Meanwhile, White's score was 176 — made up of 173 stones and 3 empty spaces.
Jin Huang didn't understand how the score was calculated, but she more or less guessed. She said, "I occupy more space."
Jin Haoran laughed. "Who would have thought the great Shi Tian would be trolled by a 1-year-old!"
Shi Tian felt ashamed. He had assumed she trolled him with her newbie-like opening.
He asked, "How is this possible?"
Jin Haoran smiled and said slowly, "Nothing is impossible. She's just that talented."
At this time, Jin Haoran didn't even know that Jin Huang had played the game without knowing the rules.
He smiled at his daughter and said lightly, "Yes, you won. Though it was a close battle — you won by only 0.5 points."
Jin Huang was puzzled at first. She clearly had an 8-point advantage — so why was the victory only by 0.5 points?
However, she instantly figured it out. It must be some sort of weightage given to White, since playing second is a disadvantage! As someone who had calculated all possibilities of the game, no one understood better than her how disadvantageous White's position was without that compensation!
She murmured inwardly. "There are moments when even the wisest move leads to ruin—simply because it began at the wrong time."