Mind-Reading State

Mind-Reading State is the narrative condition through which Gu Huaian gains direct access to Shen Tang’s inner voice. Its decisive effect is not merely supernatural convenience: it breaks the separation between outward performance and private thought, allowing Gu Huaian to discover that the woman he believed he understood is fundamentally different from the person he expected her to be.

Discovery and Initial Disruption

The ability appears by chance, when Gu Huaian discovers that he can hear Shen Tang’s thoughts. At first, the phenomenon is so unexpected that he suspects he may be hallucinating. The possibility becomes undeniable when Shen Tang’s mouth remains completely still while he distinctly hears her speaking. Her own internal reaction to his stare—wondering why he is looking at her and whether overwork has driven him mad—confirms the gap between what she says aloud and what reaches him privately.

The first discovery immediately destabilizes Gu Huaian’s understanding of his wife. He had expected Shen Tang to be deeply in love with him, yet her thoughts reveal an attitude that does not fit that assumption. The mind-reading ability therefore functions as a revelation of character before it becomes a practical tool. It exposes the distance between the role assigned to Shen Tang and the person now occupying it, making the apparent continuity of her identity increasingly difficult for Gu Huaian to accept.

Operation Within the Marriage

Gu Huaian initially responds pragmatically. His plan had been to endure the two-year contract period and then divorce Shen Tang, so the ability seems useful: if she deliberately causes trouble, he can remain alert. He accepts the condition as a form of protection against surprise, even while recognizing that Shen Tang’s inner voice is so constant and noisy that it interferes with his work. The power thus provides information but removes privacy and concentration at the same time.

The contrast between spoken behavior and internal thought repeatedly turns ordinary interactions into scenes of uncertainty. When Gu Huaian asks whether Shen Tang remembers the terms of their agreement, she answers aloud that she does and promises to behave properly, while inwardly reviewing romance novels and imagining the situation as that of a loving married couple. Gu Huaian can hear the private process behind the compliant reply, making the marriage agreement operate on two simultaneous levels: public performance and involuntary disclosure.

The ability also alters physical gestures. After getting out of the car, Gu Huaian stretches out an arm. Shen Tang’s thoughts race before she takes the arm with both hands and asks whether she should support him. Her behavior can therefore no longer be read solely as spontaneous affection, calculated acting, or formal obedience. Gu Huaian hears the thoughts that precede the gesture, while Shen Tang remains unaware that the gesture has been observed at its most private stage.

Reassessment of Shen Tang

As the state continues, Gu Huaian becomes nearly certain that the Shen Tang before him is not the same person as the Shen Tang from his previous life. The mind-reading ability gives him access not to a complete explanation but to a contradiction: familiar identity on the surface, unfamiliar consciousness underneath. He can identify the difference without knowing where this version of Shen Tang came from, leaving the central mystery unresolved while making his original assumptions untenable.

That uncertainty is intensified by Shen Tang’s public circumstances. In this life she is still a Z-list celebrity, but she has become an endlessly trending scandal figure, burdened by accusations and derogatory labels. Her company’s public-relations team pairs her indiscriminately with male celebrities from her past work in order to exploit attention, turning her into someone widely avoided within the entertainment industry. Shen Tang is prepared to quit, regarding success as something for which she was never destined. Gu Huaian’s access to her thoughts allows him to perceive the private resignation behind the public scandal image, while the surrounding industry continues to treat visibility itself as an asset.

The tension between inner motive and external reputation is also visible in Shen Tang’s livestream work. During a broadcast intended to help farmers sell agricultural products and reduce fruit surpluses in remote mountain regions, black fans flood the streaming room and sharply increase its popularity. Shen Tang maintains a constant professional smile as if the abuse in the comments is directed at someone else, while privately calculating that the broadcast will still bring her money through the company’s revenue split. The state makes this emotional labor legible: the smile is a professional surface, the inner calculation is an economic survival strategy, and public hostility becomes measurable attention.

Effects on Trust and Narrative Perspective

Mind-Reading State changes the balance of knowledge between the couple. Gu Huaian knows more about Shen Tang than she realizes, but what he hears does not automatically produce trust. Instead, it forces him to interpret fragments, contradictions, jokes, practical calculations, and unguarded reactions without being able to ask openly how he obtained them. Shen Tang continues to act within ordinary social assumptions, whereas Gu Huaian must navigate a private stream of information that she has never consented to provide.

This asymmetry creates a distinctive form of dramatic irony. Shen Tang believes she is concealing or merely thinking through her responses, while Gu Huaian receives those thoughts as audible evidence. He can consequently anticipate possible trouble, reinterpret her gestures, and compare her current consciousness with the person he remembers from his previous life. Yet the same access leaves him uncertain about the source of her transformation. The power reveals the falseness of his first reading while withholding the complete truth that would replace it.

The condition also reframes Shen Tang’s relationships and choices as more complicated than her public image suggests. Her decision about whether to remain in entertainment is connected to money, family responsibility, and the desire to improve her siblings’ living conditions, while the industry presents continued controversy as an opportunity because bad publicity still counts as publicity. Her private voice exposes the practical pressures beneath both withdrawal and performance, preventing the narrative from reducing her to either a scandalous celebrity or a passive contractual wife.

Narrative Significance and Continuing Consequences

Mind-Reading State is the mechanism that drives the book’s early divergence from expected romantic and social roles. It begins as an inexplicable intrusion into Gu Huaian’s perception, becomes a means of monitoring potential conflict, and then develops into the basis for a deeper recognition that Shen Tang’s identity has changed. The ability repeatedly converts seemingly simple scenes into double scenes, in which spoken dialogue supplies one meaning and inner voice supplies another.

Its greatest consequence is the collapse of the boundary on which Gu Huaian’s original plan depended. He intended to survive the two-year marriage by relying on visible rules and eventual divorce, but hearing Shen Tang’s thoughts makes the relationship impossible to keep at the level of a formal agreement. Every casual look, supportive gesture, professional smile, or promise to behave may carry a second significance that only he can hear. The mind-reading condition therefore does not simply give Gu Huaian power over information; it compels him to reconsider who Shen Tang is, why she no longer matches his memory, and what kind of relationship can exist when one partner’s unspoken self is continuously exposed.