Shen Tang and Gu Huaian Remove the Mind-Reading Restriction

Shen Tang and Gu Huaian Remove the Mind-Reading Restriction is the turning point at which the supernatural mechanism governing Shen Tang and Gu Huaian’s relationship is finally loosened. Gu Huaian has been able to hear Shen Tang’s inner thoughts, leaving her feeling exposed and deprived of any private interior space. After Master Zang indicates that the restriction can be removed, the couple eventually tests the result directly, and Gu Huaian confirms that her thoughts have become inaccessible to him. The event therefore changes more than a magical condition: it restores a boundary between two people who have had to negotiate intimacy under extraordinary surveillance.

The Question Put to Master Zang

Shen Tang does not passively accept the explanation she has been given. While discussing the mind-reading ability, she begins to ask Master Zang about his reference to yin-yang harmony. The question is cut short when the master’s disciple spits out the water he is drinking, an involuntary reaction that makes the subject appear embarrassing before it is even explained. Master Zang claims to be fine, but his avoidance is unmistakable: instead of answering, he throws Shen Tang a small booklet and tells her to read it at home, then urges her to leave because she is already awake. When she continues to have questions, he hastily moves toward the inner chamber. His evasiveness leaves the method technically available but socially and emotionally uncomfortable, forcing Shen Tang to infer more than she is told.

The booklet becomes the narrative substitute for a direct explanation. It gives Shen Tang a possible way forward without making the circumstances feel ordinary or fully transparent. The master’s abrupt dismissal, the disciple’s startled reaction, and the missing verbal explanation all make the restriction’s removal feel like knowledge that the adults around her would rather not articulate. The event consequently preserves a small zone of comic embarrassment around an otherwise consequential supernatural development.

A Solution Shen Tang Does Not Want to Name

The prospect of ending the mind-reading initially reassures Shen Tang because she has never been able to accept the loss of privacy it creates. She has felt, in effect, as though she were naked whenever Gu Huaian could hear what she was thinking. Once she learns that there is a solution, the fear of permanent exposure eases. Yet the solution carries its own resistance. Shen Tang cannot accept having to do “that” in order to unlock the ability, because the first time between them had been beautiful and she does not want intimacy to occur merely as the result of a strange supernatural requirement.

This hesitation gives the event its central contradiction. Shen Tang wants the boundary restored, but she does not want the restoration to reduce physical intimacy to a procedure. She and Gu Huaian therefore tacitly ignore the matter rather than discuss it openly. Their silence is not the disappearance of the problem; it is a way of postponing the collision between emotional meaning and magical necessity. The narrative’s comedy depends on that avoidance, while the relationship’s seriousness appears in Shen Tang’s insistence that the first time must retain its own meaning.

The Restriction Is Tested

The decisive confirmation comes after the couple has been intimate. Outside, it begins to drizzle without either of them noticing exactly when the rain starts. The pitter-patter and the cold air contrast with the heat inside the room, creating a physical aftermath that is both mundane and charged. The seasonal chill intensifies the sense that the scene has crossed from anticipation into consequence: the supernatural question is now being tested in the ordinary space after the event.

Shen Tang pushes Gu Huaian and asks whether he can still hear her inner thoughts. Gu Huaian listens carefully, then shakes his head and says that he cannot hear them anymore. Shen Tang is immediately excited because Master Zang’s claim has proved true. The excitement is so sudden that she almost leaps up, pulls at something, and has to lie back down. Her movement turns the abstract success of the ritual into a bodily, slightly painful reality.

The consequence is not entirely comfortable. It was the first time without much preparation, and Shen Tang is injured as a result. Gu Huaian feels deeply guilty and offers to go out to buy medicine, while Shen Tang insists that she is fine. Even after the mind-reading has ended, the scene remains bound to practical vulnerability: the restored privacy arrives together with discomfort, embarrassment, and Gu Huaian’s immediate attempt to care for her.

Privacy, Trust, and the Relationship’s New Boundary

The removal of the ability changes the terms on which Shen Tang and Gu Huaian understand one another. Before this point, Gu Huaian’s access to Shen Tang’s thoughts could make closeness seem effortless, but it also made genuine trust difficult because Shen Tang could never choose what to reveal. Afterward, he must once again rely on her spoken words and voluntary openness. The loss of supernatural access is therefore also a test of the relationship: intimacy can no longer be guaranteed by magical knowledge.

The event does not erase the awkwardness surrounding how the restriction was removed. Shen Tang still blames Gu Huaian for her injury, and he readily accepts responsibility, telling her to lie down while he goes to obtain medicine. Their exchange combines complaint, guilt, and care rather than presenting the solution as a clean triumph. The mind-reading restriction ends, but the couple must live with the ordinary consequences of the decision that ended it.

Narrative Significance

The event resolves one of the story’s most intrusive mechanisms while preserving the tension between extraordinary plot devices and ordinary romantic boundaries. Mind reading had made Shen Tang’s internal life permanently available to Gu Huaian; its removal restores the distinction between thought and speech, knowledge and confession, involuntary exposure and chosen intimacy. The transition is especially significant because Shen Tang’s earlier gaming interactions are built on communication, rank, and hostile judgments expressed through messages, whereas her relationship with Gu Huaian has been complicated by communication that bypasses consent altogether. Against that contrast, the restriction’s removal returns their relationship to a more conventional but more demanding form of mutual understanding.

The surrounding scenes also show how the book repeatedly turns social interaction into a test of boundaries. Shen Tang plays King of Glory with Miao Miao, waits for Miao Miao to finish a match, and encounters another player using the ID “Cool Tyrannosaurus Rex.” In a later game, she is harassed after asking the jungler for help while playing under tower, and a teammate responds with a sexually degrading insult about how she achieved her rank. Elsewhere, she discovers that Gu Huaian is online and already at King rank before being pulled directly into his room, while another team consists of two girls who main mage and support and a boy who begins scolding as soon as he joins. These gaming episodes repeatedly expose the politics of access, judgment, and gendered speech; the mind-reading plot gives those same concerns an intimate supernatural form.

By ending Gu Huaian’s involuntary access to Shen Tang’s thoughts, the event converts privacy from an impossible condition into a shared responsibility. Shen Tang is relieved that a solution exists, but the narrative refuses to make the solution emotionally uncomplicated. Its lasting significance lies in that double movement: a magical restriction disappears, and the couple must begin learning how to know one another without it.