As long as it makes money, who cares what it is? He only cared about the results and didn't have the energy to inquire about the process.
Money came too slowly to keep up with his ability exchanges, let alone upgrading them.
It was almost noon, and the sales manager hadn't arrived. He wasn't going to wait. Maybe something really came up. He'd check again in the afternoon.
As he walked, lost in thought about how to make money faster, someone bumped into him, nearly knocking him over.
"I'm so sorry, sir. Truly sorry," a pleasant voice called out.
He looked up to see a fair-featured girl, around twenty years old, looking a bit flustered and apologizing profusely.
"It's alright, just be a bit slower when you walk. Goodbye, goodbye," he said, turning to leave.
Make money fast? Earn quick cash? He had abilities but wasn't using them, instead dwelling on troublesome matters. Wasn't that asking for trouble? He smacked his own bald head hard. Fortunately, he was wearing a hat, or it would have made a loud crack.
Why say that? He recalled a great way to make quick money – the lottery.
With the cheat of x-ray vision, not buying lottery tickets would be a disservice to his ability.
He decided to act immediately.
He drove to the parking lot and headed straight for the city.
Lottery stores were usually on less bustling streets.
Why? Prime locations were expensive, with rents that were sky-high. The lottery sales from a day wouldn't even cover the rent, let alone living expenses.
So, he drove along smaller roads, navigating through alleys, searching for shops near residential areas.
His thinking was sound, so the outcome wouldn't deviate.
He found two lottery shops on opposite sides of a small street, one for sports lottery and one for welfare lottery, both small in size.
He decided to check the welfare lottery first. He walked in and found only the owner. Perhaps it was lunchtime, or perhaps business was just slow.
"Boss, give me a few boards of scratch-offs," he said.
"How much per ticket?" the owner asked.
"Just give me some of each."
The owner brought him a board of 50-yuan, 20-yuan, 10-yuan, and 5-yuan tickets.
He concentrated and looked. Only the 10-yuan tickets had a few small prizes; the others were losing tickets. He asked the owner to bring out all the 50-yuan tickets, and the owner brought out a whole box.
To avoid arousing suspicion, he took them out of the box one by one, concentrating as he did. Only one ticket had a 300,000 prize; the others were small wins. He took three tickets and returned the rest to the owner.
"Just these three. How much?"
"2,500 yuan per ticket, so 7,500 yuan total."
"Pay now or after scratching?" he asked.
"Pay now. If you scratch them here, we can settle later."
Since it was his first time, he decided to pay first.
He transferred 7,500 yuan to the owner. Then, he picked up a coin and started scratching.
"No, no, twenty, no..." he muttered incessantly. "Here's two hundred, nice, good luck. Another one, good. Fifty, that's fine too. Another one, another one, no, no, this one's okay, three thousand. Still haven't broken even."
He shook his arm, his arm sore from scratching the tickets.
"Two more big ones, aim to break even. No, no, hmm? Good," he exclaimed, slapping the table. The owner was startled.
"Won something?" the owner asked, confused as to why the young man was so excited.
"Won, thirty thousand. Beautiful," he said, clapping his hands.
"The biggest prize here is 500,000, and there are still so many unscratched. Keep going," the owner said, getting excited too, urging Guo Xuyang to continue scratching.
"Alright, boss, your words are golden. Let's see if I can catch a big fish?" He knew the 300,000 prize was among the remaining dozen or so tickets. "Seriously, scratching these scratch-offs is also physical labor. It's tiring, my hands are almost getting calluses."
"It's painful yet pleasurable," the owner quipped with a classic saying. "If everyone was like you, I wouldn't get tired of scratching all day."
"Hahaha, the boss is really humorous," he said, his hands not stopping. "Hmm, boss, is this one thirty thousand? Wahaha, boss, your mouth is blessed. Thank you, boss, for your good words. It really won. My luck has exploded, I need to buy more lottery tickets later."
The owner was stunned. If he had known there was 300,000 inside, he would have preferred to scratch it himself! What a wasted opportunity.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty.
Out of 150 scratch-off tickets, he redeemed a total of 368,000 yuan. He used the remaining money to buy machine-selected welfare lottery tickets.
The owner watched as the lucky young man went to the sports lottery shop across the street. He couldn't help but marvel at how different people's fates could be; why was this person's luck so good?
Guo Xuyang went into the sports lottery shop. Without the owner handing him tickets, he concentrated and scanned. He saw only small prizes, not worth pursuing, so he turned and left the shop.
This was too inefficient. He could only buy a few tickets a day. Besides, if he bought them all, in less than three days, he'd be taken away by special departments to be dissected as a test subject.
He was unwilling to take such a risk.
Forget it, this path was too difficult. He should lay low.
He drove around aimlessly, and coincidentally found a roadside snack shop to fill his stomach.
Damn it, where could he find money?
Ring, ring... the phone rang, waking him up.
"Bro, where are you?" Wu Youzhi's voice came through the phone.
"Cruising. What's up, President Wu?"
"Cruising with some beautiful lady? What a leisurely pursuit."
"By myself, driving around."
"Hahaha, what's the point of cruising by yourself? Are you free tonight? Someone's delivered a batch of good stuff, want to go take a look?"
"What stuff? Raw stones?"
"No. Something left by our ancestors. Cultural relics."
"I'm not interested in that, won't go."
"They say there's Tang Sancai, no worse than jade?"
"Forget it. If you want to go, you go alone. I'm really not interested in this. I have a team-building event tonight, I promised to attend. Also, I'm planning to visit Myanmar next week, are you coming?"
"Going to Myanmar? It's not time for the public bidding now. You might not get good material even if you go. Why not go to Jieyang instead?"
"Jieyang? How are the materials there?"
"It's known as the Jade Capital of Asia. What do you think? Shall we go take a look?"
"Okay, leave tomorrow. How's that?" Guo Xuyang was impatient, wishing he could go right now.
"No problem, I'll book the tickets now. Let's aim to depart tomorrow morning."
"Alright, see you tomorrow." Guo Xuyang hung up the phone, extremely excited. He couldn't wait any longer. This was still a fast way to make money.
He was now completely focused on making money and upgrading, always feeling that his earning speed was too slow.
He was poor. At this rate, how long would it take to reach level nine?