Chapter Seventeen: I Won!

"Are all these winning tickets, Zhao Gu?"

"Yes, they are."

Chen Fan carefully sifted through the pile of scratch-off lottery tickets. After double-checking, he confidently bought five of them at once.

The shop owner glanced at his phone to confirm the payment and chuckled to himself: If winning were this easy, everyone would be rich.

Chen Fan scratched the first ticket with extreme caution. These scratch cards displayed two winning numbers on the left and nine numbers on the right—if any of the right-side numbers matched the winning numbers, the corresponding prize would be awarded.

After revealing eight numbers without a match, Chen Fan couldn't help but feel discouraged. "Zhao Gu, are you absolutely sure about these? Are you positive they're winners?"

The shop owner grinned and chimed in, "Kid, whether you win or not isn't your girlfriend's fault. But hey, if you want to keep playing, I've got plenty more tickets. Luck is unpredictable—maybe the next one will be a big prize!"

"Just scratch the last one already! I said it's a winner, so it's a winner!" Zhao Gu urged impatiently.

Taking a deep breath, Chen Fan scratched the final number—08.

"I won!" he gasped in excitement. The shop owner immediately leaned in for a closer look. Without hesitation, Chen Fan revealed the prize amount: five yuan.

"Haha! Not bad, kid!" The shop owner laughed, casually pulling a five-yuan bill from the register and tossing it onto the counter.

Chen Fan continued scratching the rest of his tickets—winning 100 yuan, 10 yuan, and another 5 yuan. By this point, he had nearly broken even.

Even though Zhao Gu had an uncanny ability to predict the winning tickets, these five-yuan scratch-offs didn't offer massive prizes. He wasn't expecting anything life-changing.

Now that he had almost recovered his initial spending, he scratched the final ticket without much anticipation. To his surprise, he revealed yet another winning number. Curious, he slowly uncovered the prize amount—9.

Lottery prizes never came in increments of 9 yuan. It had to be either 90 yuan or 900 yuan.

His heart pounded with excitement as he continued scratching.

A zero appeared.

Then another.

Then another.

"9,000 yuan!?" Chen Fan's eyes widened in disbelief. That was nearly a year's worth of living expenses for him!

"Zhao Gu, you're amazing! Boss, time to cash out!"

The shop owner hesitated for a moment before reluctantly pulling 9,000 yuan from the cash register. Though he wasn't losing any personal money—since he could redeem the ticket later—watching such a large sum leave his hands still stung.

"Wow, we won 9,000 yuan! That's even more than what I made working construction and waiting tables combined. Making money is so easy!" Zhao Gu beamed.

Chen Fan was equally thrilled. He was in desperate need of money, and this windfall couldn't have come at a better time.

"But it's a shame," Zhao Gu suddenly muttered. "I just took another look, and there aren't any more matching numbers left in that pile. But the guy next to you was playing a different kind of scratch-off, right? The one with animals?"

Chen Fan recalled that the bald man beside him had been playing a ten-yuan zodiac-themed scratch-off. The dragon symbol had the highest prize—200,000 yuan—while the other zodiac animals had smaller rewards.

Zhao Gu giggled. "He had terrible luck. He kept trying to get three matching symbols but never succeeded. But the funny thing is, he missed one! The ticket right next to his hand actually had three matching symbols. I didn't tell him though, hehe."

Chen Fan's heart pounded. The bald man had been playing ten-yuan scratch-offs, which meant the prizes were much larger than the ones he had just won from the five-yuan tickets.

And if the matching symbols were dragons…

"Zhao Gu, which ticket is it?!" His voice trembled with excitement.

"It's the one at the bottom of the pile. Honestly, making money in the human world is ridiculously easy. How many bags of French fries can we buy with this win?" Zhao Gu still had no real concept of money—she was only interested in how many snacks it could get her.

Chen Fan grinned. "Let me put it this way—if I win this time, I can open an entire French fry restaurant just for you."

"Wow! Really?! Then hurry up and buy it!"

"Boss, I'll take a ten-yuan scratch-off," Chen Fan said, trying to keep his voice steady.

The shop owner chuckled. "Oh ho, kid, winning that 9,000 yuan sure made you bold. How many do you want?"

"Just one," Chen Fan said, pointing directly at the specific pile.

The shop owner raised an eyebrow but didn't object. After all, he had seen enough gamblers to know they all had their own superstitions.

"Alright, pick one."

As soon as the tickets were laid out, Chen Fan immediately grabbed the bottom one.

If Zhao Gu is right… this is the jackpot!

The shop owner watched him closely, his skepticism growing. "What's with this kid? He looks so confident… Could he really win?"

Chen Fan's hands trembled slightly as he scratched the first symbol.

A dragon.

His pulse quickened.

The second symbol—another dragon.

The shop owner's eyes widened.

Could this really be happening?

Just then, a loud voice interrupted—

"I WON! I FINALLY WON!"

The bald man, who had been scratching furiously, leapt up in excitement.

He had finally revealed three monkeys—a prize worth 50,000 yuan.

However, before he could celebrate further, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed on the spot.