Chapter 3: First Trial of Power
The lottery shop.
Lin Tian had just walked in when he was choked by the smoke and coughed repeatedly.
He saw five middle-aged men sitting inside the not-so-spacious room, studying the past draw results on the wall with pens in hand.
"Let’s see if my X-ray vision can see through scratch cards!" Lin Tian didn’t rush to buy a ticket, but decided to test his abilities first.
After all, he had only seen through clothes before and hadn’t tried to see through other things.
As a result, the coating on the scratch card completely disappeared, and the numbers appeared in front of Lin Tian.
"Boss, I’m buying a lottery ticket!" Lin Tian spoke with excitement.
"Two, five, ten, twenty yuan denominations, which one do you want?" The shop owner glanced at Lin Tian and was a bit surprised to see him still in a school uniform.
"A high school student not studying in school, buying a lottery ticket!" A middle-aged man who was buying scratch tickets sneered.
This middle-aged man had a shaved head and a small bag under his right arm. Whether he was really rich or not was unknown, but he looked the part.
Lin Tian was unhappy when he heard this: "What’s wrong with high school students? Who says they can’t buy lottery tickets?"
"Are you discriminating against students?"
"No problem, go ahead and buy, who am I to stop you from giving away your money?" The middle-aged man let out a cold laugh, taking out a hundred-yuan bill from his bag and handing it to the lottery shop owner.
"Give me another ten ten-yuan scratch cards!"
"Alrighty!"
Lin Tian watched the middle-aged man buy the scratch cards and patted his pocket, finding only ten yuan.
"Boss, I’ll also take one like that!" Lin Tian pointed at the scratch card in the middle-aged man’s hand.
The middle-aged man glanced up at Lin Tian and snorted: "Buying one ticket and hoping to hit the jackpot? You are a student after all, haven’t you learned about probability?"
Lin Tian ignored the middle-aged man and suddenly said to the shop owner: "Boss, I feel lucky today, can I pick one myself?"
"Of course you can!" The shop owner handed a stack of scratch cards to Lin Tian.
Lin Tian quickly glanced over them and picked one out, and it happened to be the one with the highest prize in that stack.
"Damn it, only won ten yuan!" While Lin Tian was selecting his card, the middle-aged man had already scratched open all ten of his cards.
"Why are you standing there? Scratch it quickly!" The middle-aged man shouted at Lin Tian, basically bullying him because he was a student.
"What’s the rush? I’ll scratch it whenever I want!" Lin Tian couldn’t care less about the other man.
"Hey~!" The middle-aged man was displeased at hearing this.
Especially since there were other people in the room and being spoken to like this by a young student made him a bit embarrassed, "You’re not going to win anyway, so why hold it like a treasure!"
"What if I do win?" Lin Tian replied.
"Win?" The middle-aged man sneered, "If you win, I... I’ll run around outside naked!"
"Alright~ you said it!" Lin Tian chuckled inwardly, thinking that some people just look for trouble willingly.
He brought it upon himself, so no one else was to blame.
"I said it!" The middle-aged man, too, was fired up.
"Everyone heard it. If I hit the jackpot, he’d better strip naked and run a lap outside, don’t later say you’re bullying a student!" Lin Tian wasn’t stupid, knowing that making a scene would force the middle-aged man to comply.
"I’m a man of my word!" The middle-aged man said, slapping the table.
"Good," Lin Tian picked up his scratch card and began scratching.
There were a total of ten chances to win, and Lin Tian’s winning number on this card was 20, with a prize of ten thousand yuan underneath. Nine chances were wasted without revealing a matching number.
"I told you there was no way you could win!" The middle-aged man couldn’t help but feel slightly proud.
"Don’t rush!" Lin Tian used his fingernail to scratch off the last coating, revealing the number 20.
"I won, ten thousand yuan!" Lin Tian was overjoyed.
Although he knew early on that this ticket would surely win ten thousand yuan, scratching it off and seeing it still brought excitement.
This might be the charm of lottery tickets!
"Damn!" The middle-aged man cursed, his face turning pale.
"My god, you really won!" The lottery shop owner took a look at the ticket in Lin Tian’s hand and also couldn’t quite believe it.
Even though ten thousand yuan wasn’t the grand prize, this kind of third prize was still hard to win.
"What did you just say?" Lin Tian turned to the middle-aged man: "Need a friendly reminder?"
"Kid, get lost, you just got lucky!" The middle-aged man indeed was trying to renege.
"A man of my word!" Lin Tian deliberately repeated the phrase.
"Get out of here!" The middle-aged man waved his hand impatiently, "If you don’t want to get hurt, beat it!"
"Hey~ you big man, don’t bully the kid!" The lottery shop owner couldn’t stand it anymore.
"That’s right, we all heard what you just said!"
"Strip and run a lap outside!"
"Hurry up!"
Other customers in the lottery shop joined in, all turning against the middle-aged man.
The middle-aged man burst into anger: "Damn, do you know who I am? I’m Bao, the top dog on Wener Street!"
"Who just heard what I said? Stand up!" Bao stood up and smashed his leather bag onto the table.
Suddenly, the lottery shop fell silent; no one dared to speak. After all, this self-proclaimed Bao with a shaved head didn’t look like a good person.
It was none of their business, so why get involved and make trouble?
"Let it go, let it go, let’s just move past this!" The lottery shop owner came out to ease the tension.
Just when things seemed over, Lin Tian unexpectedly said: "Causing trouble for no reason, breaking your word, I hate people like you the most!"
"Kid, you have the guts to say that again!" Bao pointed his finger at Lin Tian’s nose, ready to fight if there was any disagreement.
"I! Hate! People! Like! You! The! Most!" Lin Tian repeated word by word.
"Damn! Today I’ll teach you a lesson!" Bao rolled up his sleeves and was ready to hit Lin Tian.
But soon, Bao realized a fact: Lin Tian, though skinny, stood at 1.82 meters tall, towering over his 1.68-meter frame like a wall.
Despite being a student, he was not someone to underestimate in a fight.
"Just you wait!" Bao angrily left, throwing out a threat.
The lottery shop owner, seeing Bao leave, quickly took a stack of money from the drawer and handed it to Lin Tian: "Here’s ten thousand yuan, hurry up and leave before he calls for help; you won’t be able to go then!"
"Thanks!" Lin Tian stuffed the money into his pocket and leisurely walked out of the lottery shop.
Just as the lottery shop owner warned, Lin Tian barely stepped outside when he saw Bao standing at the entrance, smoking, as if waiting for him.
"Your pocket is bulging, did you cash out?" Bao’s eyes intentionally or unintentionally focused on Lin Tian’s pocket.
"Are you thinking of robbing my money?"