Gu Huaian’s mind-reading ability

Gu Huaian’s mind-reading ability is not merely a supernatural convenience but the concealed mechanism governing his relationship with Shen Tang. Because he can hear thoughts that she does not deliberately express, he knows her private judgments, anticipates her reactions, and understands aspects of her identity that she has not yet chosen to disclose. The ability first creates an invisible intimacy between them, then becomes the source of a major rupture when Shen Tang realizes that the man closest to her has been receiving access to the self she believed was private.

Definition and Hidden Operation

The ability operates through Shen Tang’s inner voice rather than through surveillance or physical evidence. When Shen Tang searches the house from top to bottom, she finds no surveillance cameras, strange devices, or anything unusual on her body. Her investigation eliminates ordinary explanations for Gu Huaian’s accuracy, leaving the supernatural one increasingly difficult to deny. The contrast is important: the power is invisible in the material world, yet it produces visible effects in conversation and behavior.

Gu Huaian’s reaction confirms that the ability is active even when Shen Tang is not speaking. When she wonders whether he is too old for her and whether a generation gap might emerge between them in the future, his eyebrow twitches nearby. He thinks he has been exposed, but Shen Tang’s attention moves elsewhere before she can identify the reason for his reaction. The moment shows both the reach and the danger of the power. A passing thought can affect Gu Huaian’s body, while his involuntary response can in turn expose the fact that he is receiving thoughts he should not be able to hear.

Early Effects on Shen Tang’s Interpretation of Gu Huaian

Before the truth is spoken aloud, the ability explains a series of otherwise puzzling differences in Gu Huaian’s conduct. Shen Tang recognizes that he treats her differently from the man described in the book and that he repeatedly knows what she is thinking. The discovery reorganizes her understanding of the relationship: behaviors that had seemed unusually considerate, perceptive, or well timed now appear connected to his access to her inner voice.

That hidden access exists against the background of a relationship already structured by performance and contractual terms. Shen Tang initially encounters a marriage agreement promising five million per month, payment of living expenses through her husband’s card, and a two-hundred-million settlement after the two-year term and divorce. The arrangement requires her to appear at occasional family dinners and maintain the image of a loving couple while exempting her from ordinary wifely duties. In such a marriage, public behavior is already a managed surface. Gu Huaian’s ability penetrates the one realm Shen Tang assumes remains outside the agreement: the unperformed, unshared contents of her mind.

The same tension appears in her public life. Shen Tang is a Z-list celebrity burdened by relentless rumors and labels, while her company’s public-relations team pairs her with almost every male celebrity she has worked with in order to exploit attention. In livestreams she maintains a professional smile while black fans flood the comments, treating the abuse as financially useful because she will share the proceeds with the company. Her outward expression is therefore repeatedly separated from her private response. Gu Huaian’s ability collapses that separation for him alone, giving him privileged access to the difference between the persona Shen Tang performs and the judgments she keeps inward.

Revelation and Breach of Trust

The secret becomes explicit when Shen Tang directly tells Gu Huaian that she is not the original Shen Tang. His lack of shock immediately suggests that he already knows more than he should. She then asks whether there is anything he wants to tell her, and Gu Huaian pulls her into an embrace while saying that he is sorry and can explain. When Shen Tang identifies the specific cause—whether he can hear her thoughts—her question forces the concealed ability into the open.

Gu Huaian’s soft explanation does not deny the power; it effectively admits it. He insists that he did not trick her, but the distinction offers little relief because the central violation is not limited to deliberate deception. Shen Tang experiences the revelation physically: her body turns cold, her face becomes extremely pale, her heart feels violently squeezed, and breathing becomes difficult. These bodily reactions register the collapse of her previous understanding before she can fully organize the betrayal in words. The person who seemed to understand her has indeed understood her, but through an access she never knowingly granted.

The revelation also clarifies the earlier scenes of uncanny accuracy. Gu Huaian’s knowledge was not the result of ordinary observation, nor was it produced by a hidden device. He had been hearing Shen Tang’s thoughts all along. The power therefore functions retrospectively: once disclosed, it alters the meaning of earlier encounters and makes prior tenderness inseparable from surveillance. His intimacy with Shen Tang is genuine in its emotional consequences, but asymmetrical in its conditions.

Jealousy, Recurrence, and the Limits of Control

The ability remains active after the disclosure and continues to intrude into ordinary interaction. When Gu Huaian notices that Zhou Jin is the person who has messaged Shen Tang most frequently—moving from anger and complaints to expressions of concern—he cautiously asks who Zhou Jin is. Shen Tang immediately recognizes that he has eavesdropped on her thoughts again. Her accusation demonstrates that the problem has not been solved merely because the secret is known; knowledge of the ability gives her a vocabulary for identifying its intrusion, but not a reliable way to prevent it.

Gu Huaian apologizes and says that the ability is not something he can control. He also does not want it, describing it as something too extraordinary. This lack of control complicates responsibility without erasing harm. Gu Huaian may not have chosen the power, yet Shen Tang is still the person whose mental privacy is repeatedly breached. His inability to switch it off means that even a cautious question can be preceded by information she never voluntarily supplied, and even a moment of jealousy can reveal how much of her private life he has already accessed.

Shen Tang consequently regrets remaining in the situation. If the issue cannot be resolved, she concludes that she will be unable to live with Gu Huaian without reservations. The marriage agreement’s promised distance and limited obligations cannot contain a power that ignores physical distance, spoken boundaries, and the division between public performance and private thought. Mind reading transforms the contract marriage from a controlled arrangement into a relationship in which one party is continuously exposed beyond the written terms.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

As a narrative device, Gu Huaian’s mind-reading ability converts hidden thought into an active social force. Shen Tang’s inner voice is usually separated from her public conduct: she can smile for fans, endure hostile comments, attend formal banquets beside Gu Huaian, and participate in games while privately judging the people around her. The ability makes that concealed commentary consequential. A thought can trigger Gu Huaian’s physical reaction, shape his questions, produce jealousy, or alter the emotional temperature of a scene without Shen Tang intending any of it.

The power also exposes the instability of social roles. Shen Tang’s marriage depends on appearing affectionate, her entertainment career depends on surviving scandal and generating attention, and livestream work depends on maintaining a professional expression while viewers insult her. These settings reward controlled appearances. Gu Huaian’s ability operates behind those appearances, revealing that the most consequential layer of the relationship is the one no contract, camera, audience, or public-relations strategy can fully regulate.

Its deepest significance lies in the conflict between understanding and permission. Gu Huaian can know Shen Tang with extraordinary accuracy, but knowledge does not automatically constitute trust. The ability gives him access to truths that ordinary intimacy would require Shen Tang to offer gradually and voluntarily. Once she learns the source of his insight, the romance cannot proceed on the old terms: his attentiveness is shadowed by involuntary eavesdropping, while her inner voice becomes both a channel of closeness and a site of vulnerability. The resulting crisis makes mental privacy—not ignorance—the condition that Shen Tang needs before intimacy can become secure.