Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Wang Ling suddenly discovered that there was a rich spread of dishes for tonight, many of which he had never seen before. There were already more than eight dishes on the dining table, but the old man and Mother Wang were still busy in the kitchen, presumably to round the number up; for example, ten perfect and beautiful [1 beautiful This is a literal translation of 十全十美, which means ‘to be perfect.’] dishes… Wang Ling wasn’t interested in this sort of thing, but people at the old man’s age were zealous in chasing luck.
Father Wang was reading the newspaper; when he saw that Wang Ling had returned, he hurriedly put the evening paper down and pushed up his black glasses in a familiar gesture. “From today onward, your grandfather will be preparing to battle the head of Kitchen Knife Sect, Jiang Haifu, in a cooking contest, so we’ll have a lot of dishes these two days. Today, your mom and grandfather bought a lot of things from the market, to the point that Sheep almost wasn’t able to take everything.”
Were they really going to compete against each other?
Wang Ling was startled.
“Your grandfather’s been very bored after retirement, so just treat this as something he can amuse himself with in his old age.” Father Wang couldn’t help smiling.
Wang Ling was speechless; he opened the fridge in the living room and was immediately shocked by the stock inside. He had never thought that they would actually buy so much; no wonder Sheep had been unable to carry it all. If Wang Ling hadn’t specially transformed this fridge, there was no way all the ingredients could have been stuffed inside.
Wang Ling felt that the food in the fridge could sustain them for a whole month…
Just then, Father Wang suddenly put his newspaper down. “Oh, Ling Ling, I need your help with something.”
Wang Ling: “???”
“It’s like this: the supermarket that your mom and grandfather went to are starting a new system; from now on, you get points with every purchase you make, and then you can use the points to draw a lottery. You know…” Father Wang adjusted the frame of his glasses, and the lens flashed with reflected light.
“…”
Hearing this, Wang Ling understood; it turned out he was being asked to draw a lottery.
Father Wang handed his cellphone to Wang Ling. “Look, this is how much your mom and grandfather spent… They now have thirty thousand points. The normal lottery costs one hundred points, the mid-tier lottery one thousand points, and the top lottery costs ten thousand points.”
Wang Ling’s lips twitched as he gazed at the screen. He would break his hand trying to use up all the points for the one hundred points normal lottery. Furthermore, the prizes were a sham. The software system used a lottery wheel, and the prize depended on where the pointer stopped. The better a prize was, the less space it took up on the wheel, and on the normal lottery wheel, half the surface was “Thanks for your participation,” while the best prize was just an electronic reader.
And there was even less to be said for the mid-tier lottery draw, where most of the prizes were just coupons and discount vouchers for various stalls in the market.
It was why Father Wang had aimed for the top lottery draw since the beginning. There weren’t any sham options like “Thanks for your participation”; there were five options on the wheel, three of which didn’t state what the prize was but were represented with a question mark instead. Most importantly, these question marks took up small amounts of space on the wheel.
Father Wang felt there was an eighty percent chance that these were valuable prizes!
Grocery shopping this time had cost him a full three days’ worth of his writing fees… Now, his priority was to reduce his losses.
Although even Father Wang himself didn’t know what he would get, humans were by nature very curious creatures.
Ordinarily speaking, Wang Ling wouldn’t play trading card games.
Because he would hit the legendary jackpot every time, which was boring…
Characters in a trading card game could number as few as a hundred to as many as a thousand, five to ten percent of which would be made up of the “gold cards.” These were the rarest cards, but every time Wang Ling played this type of game and as long as he mastered it, he could collect all the available gold cards in the shortest amount of time.
Wang Ling hence felt that this type of card game wasn’t as challenging as trying to obtain the Water Margin [2 Margin One of the Four Classical Novels of Chinese literature.] cards in crispy noodle snack packets.
Whether it was drawing a card or drawing a lottery, it was all the same to Wang Ling. But it wasn’t as if he had been born with good luck; instead, he relied on one of the Three Thousand Great Spells, the “Great Fortune Spell.”
This spell was an active and potent skill; once it was activated, there was no way to undo it except to wait until its “buff” effect was over, and it could only be reactivated after a cooldown period. The most miraculous thing about this spell was that its cooldown period was pretty short; it only took two days before it could be discharged again.
The most important thing was that once its effect started to take hold, the luck generated by the spell and its support ability would last ten whole days.
In some sense, Wang Ling could use it continuously for as long as he wanted to.
But he recalled that it had already been at least seven to eight years since he had first used this spell.
He felt that using this spell was too much like showing off. Luck was something that had two sides to it: if your luck was good, there would naturally be someone on the flip side whose luck was bad… furthermore, if your luck was too good, it was easy for people to become jealous of you.
It didn’t matter what era you lived in; there would always be two-faced people. Jealousy was a very curious thing: people might call you ‘brother’ to your face, but then stab you in the back.
Drawing a deep breath, Wang Ling opened his palm, and gold spirit light emanated from the center. It was as if Father Wang could see currents of energy gather in Wang Ling’s palm before it gradually covered his entire body.
This was how the Great Fortune Spell was activated, commonly referred to as: gathering the spirit of heaven and earth, collecting the brilliance of the sun and moon.
After that, Wang Ling sighed lightly. He tapped the “Begin Draw” button, and the wheel started to spin quickly.
There was a flash of golden light on the screen, and he actually drew the mysterious question mark.
A crisp electronic voice sounded: Con Con Con Con Congratulations, you’ve drawn a grand prize!
After Wang Ling swiftly tapped the screen two more times, the electronic voice stuttered and repeated itself: Con Con Con Con Congratulations, you’ve drawn a grand prize!
“So amazing?” Father Wang was also awestruck.
Wang Ling had already foreseen this outcome earlier, so there wasn’t the slightest ripple in his expression.
Whatever Father Wang had won would be displayed in the virtual gift bank; after he submitted his address, they would be delivered within three working days.
Wang Ling didn’t know what he had drawn; it seemed he had gotten the mysterious question marks for all the three times that he had tapped the button just now.
“They should be pretty good prizes, right?” Father Wang opened the gift bank expectantly, and then opened the three mysterious question marks which Wang Ling had drawn.
Father Wang then saw that three things had been added to his gift bank.
A one-year membership for the Purple Light Pavilion Restaurant [3 This is a reference to how fans of rapper PG One took umbrage at criticism which the magazine ‘Purple Light Pavilion’ leveled at him, and mocked that the magazine’s title sounded like the name of a food stall or restaurant] .
One gold card for Red Flower Society Hair Salon [4 PG One is part of the rap crew ‘Red Flower Society.’ He was outed by tabloids for hooking up with married actress Li Xiaolu on New Year’s Eve 2017, while her actor husband in a live broadcast on that day said that she was getting her hair done.] .
And half a year’s worth of gongqing dumplings [5 dumplings 团子 means ‘dumplings,’ but ‘gongqing tuan’ or 共青团 refers to the Communist Youth League of China.] …