Zu An blinked. “Perhaps it was my good luck?”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. He had won the bets due to his good luck, he just didn’t disclose the reason behind his good luck.

“Good luck?” Old Mi frowned, clearly dissatisfied by his answer.

“What else could it possibly have been? I couldn’t possibly cheat under the noses of those veteran dealers at the Silverhook Casino, right?” replied Zu An.

Old Mi saw some sense in those words. He was well aware of the limits of Zu An’s capability, so he decided to let the matter go. As he walked out the door, he said, “For the next few days, don’t head out if you don’t need to. You have a note for seven-and-a-half-million silver taels from the Plum Blossom Sect. They won’t let you off that easily.”

Zu An felt a surge of warmth suffuse his heart, and he wondered if he had misunderstood this old man. It looks like he still cares for me. He isn’t coveting my wealth despite knowing that I’ve struck it rich.

Little did Zu An know that there was no need for Old Mi to covet his wealth. After all, the money would all be his once he possessed Zu An’s body in the future.

Once Old Mi left the room, Zu An quickly shut the door. He double-checked that there was no one else in the room, then proceeded with his washing ritual. With that, he was ready to start drawing the lottery.

He summoned the Keyboard and loaded up the lottery function. As he prepared to hit the ‘Enter’ key, he suddenly noticed some slight changes. Taking a closer look, his eyes were drawn to a notification.

You have successfully accumulated a total of 100,000 Rage points. The letter keys are now unlocked for the lottery drawing.

Zu An was stunned for a moment, then his heart erupted in frenzied joy. Did this mean that he could draw prizes from the letter keys now? The Heiress’ Ball of Delights and the Poisonous Prick might have looked like troll items at first glance, but they had proven to be incredibly useful. It was likely that any other he obtained from the Keyboard would be pretty decent.

His heart full to the brim with anticipation, he hit the ‘Enter’ key.

Unsurprisingly, he was greeted with a curt ‘Thanks for playing!’, but that did little to dampen his excitement. He had seen with his own eyes the light marker moving across the letter keys on the Keyboard, which proved that it was possible for him to obtain a different reward if the marker halted on one of them.

He launched into another round without hesitation.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing!

…

Congratulations, you have won a ‘Ki Fruit’!

…

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing!

…

After a while, Zu An was able to confirm his earlier conclusion that the chances of drawing a Ki Fruit were around one in ten. Unfortunately, the probabilities of drawing a Poison Bottle, Fortune Pill, and Faith in Brother Spring were still uncertain.

As he continued drawing, Zu An’s excitement started to fade. All his successes thus far had only been Ki Fruits.

I have enough Rage points to draw the lottery 602 times. I can’t be so unlucky as to be unable to draw anything new at all, right?

As soon as this thought arose, he slammed his palm on a nearby wooden table and threw it out of his mind. What in the world am I doing here? Knock on wood! I can’t be raising flags and jinxing myself like that!

Fortunately, on something like his five-hundredth draw, the light marker finally stopped on the ‘D’ key.

What could it be?

His heart pounding, Zu An quickly looked at the item he had received, only to see a pair of thin, transparent lenses that looked oddly like contact lenses.

Congratulations, you have won a ‘Knock-You-Up Eyes’!

Zu An’s face scrunched up.

His last few experiences with the Keyboard had given Zu An a glimpse into its ridiculous naming sensibilities, so this notification wasn’t too surprising. He brushed past it and moved on to the item description.

Knock-You-Up Eyes: This item is renowned as one-half of the ‘Ultimate Insemination Duo’, the other half being the ‘Thousand-Li Chastity Robbing’ skill wielded by an expert only known by his surname Song.[1]

Artifact Effect: When wearing this item, you may select whether to activate the item’s effect when you look at a target. As long as the target makes eye contact with you, they will immediately experience pain equal to that of delivering a 10-month-old child. This effect doesn’t discriminate against gender or race. The pain inflicted by this item will last for an hour. Uses: 3

Angry black streaks flashed across Zu An’s eyes. He would have much preferred to obtain the ‘Thousand-Li Chastity Robbing’ skill instead. He had no idea who that expert was, but he was definitely worthy of respect.

Still, this ‘Knock-You-Up Eyes’ looks pretty useless. It only makes the target feel pain, without dealing any actual damage. What’s the use if the individual were to recover once the duration is over?

It honestly feels more like voodoo magic to prank a friend…

As he pondered further, though, he realized that this skill could work wonders at critical moments. He remembered reading a scientific study in his previous world that stated the pain experienced during childbirth as the highest possible level of pain a person could experience. The scientists then developed a machine that simulated the pain of childbirth, and many of the men who had been subjected to it—whether voluntarily, out of love for their wives, or involuntarily as some form of revenge—ended up crumbling to the floor wailing.

He could definitely use this item to incapacitate an adversary during a critical moment in a battle to turn the tide.

It was a pity then that this item had a limit of three uses, which meant that he couldn’t abuse it.

He wondered as well if this item could work on multiple people at once. If he activated this item in a situation where he was glaring at multiple people, would he be able to incapacitate them all at once?

All sorts of possible scenarios surfaced in his mind, and he broke out into deranged laughter.

Zu An turned his attention back to drawing the lottery, but the light marker never fell on the letter keys again. All in all, he managed to draw fifty-eight Ki Fruits.

He swallowed them one after another and relished the soothing feeling of ki gushing through his body. The second formation in his muscles swiftly began filling up with golden matter, but there wasn’t enough ki to fill it completely. It eventually made it to two-thirds full.

Based on the Fibonacci Sequence, 89 Ki Fruits were needed to fill this second formation. He had already filled it up a little previously, and adding in the fifty-eight Ki Fruits he had just eaten, he would need about twenty more in order to make a breakthrough.

Zu An couldn’t help his frustration. It hadn’t been easy for him to earn 60,000 Rage points, and yet it couldn’t even fill up a single formation. Not only that, gaining strength would only get harder as he progressed further. It would take an astronomical sum of Rage points to fill up every single formation. He couldn’t imagine just how long it would take for him to reach the higher cultivation ranks.

Seeking to distract himself, he stretched his body to test out his newfound strength. Currently, he wielded the strength equal to two hundred grown men combined. He felt that he was becoming superhuman, but then recalled how the cars in his previous world boasted hundreds of horsepower. With this bit of strength he had, he wouldn’t even match up to the force of a car accelerating at its maximum.

Of course, now that he had started comparing his physical ability with that of a car, there was no way he could be considered an ordinary mortal anymore. Once again, he found himself wondering just how terrifying the power of high-rank cultivators in this world was.

Little did he know that that was the wrong way of looking at the situation. Higher rank cultivators gained the power to tap into the raw ki around them, so it was no longer accurate to gauge their strength using ‘human-power’ as the unit of measurement.

With nothing else to do after drawing the lottery, Zu An decided to drop by the Reflection Room to see how Cheng Shouping was faring. He was curious to see how many others he had hired.

When he finally arrived at the entrance of the Reflection Room, he saw Cheng Shouping gritting his teeth, the brush in his hand flying swiftly across a sheet of paper. He was all alone inside the room.

Zu An stared at him for a moment.

This fellow is really nut over money! He can’t even bear to use some of it to hire someone else to help him out. But since that’s what he wants, so be it.

Zu An left his study companion to his task and returned to his residence. He headed straight for his room, and was just about to enter it when he noticed a broken strand of hair on the wooden door latch. He froze.

Ever since he found out that someone in the Chu Estate was out to kill him, he had been keeping his guard up. Every time he left his room, he would set up a small mechanism to let him know if an intruder were to sneak in—and the mechanism had clearly been triggered.

Right now, the question was whether the person who had snuck into his room was still inside.

Zu An slipped the Poisonous Prick into his sleeves, then carefully nudged the door open and headed in. This would be a good opportunity to test out his newfound strength.

As soon as he stepped inside, a strong gust of wind assaulted him from behind, carrying with it a black figure that charged straight for him. Zu An had been well prepared, and quickly rolled away before stabbing with the Poisonous Prick toward the black silhouette.

The black-robed assassin was surprised that her attempt had failed, and her target was far faster than she’d anticipated. Her own attempt to evade him was just too slow, and the dagger made a solid contact.

Despite this, Zu An was less than pleased. He sensed that, while it had connected, the tip of the dagger had failed to pierce flesh.

“Hm?”

The black-clad figure had retreated several meters and was crouched on top of a table. Her exclamation revealed her astonishment. Zu An’s swift reflexes did not fit with his image as a wastrel, and the dagger he’d brandished had been sharp enough to pierce through her Ki Armor and slice right through the fabric of her clothes. Had she been just a hair slower, she would have been wounded by his unexpected riposte.

Zu An was himself assessing his would-be assassin. She was dressed in black cloth, and her hair had been carefully wrapped up to avoid giving away any hints of her identity. Nevertheless, from her crisp and pleasing voice, he could tell that the figure was a woman, and likely a beautiful one at that.

Her eyes were well hidden beneath a veil, but they seemed very familiar to him. A spark flashed across his mind, and he remarked instinctively, “Snow!”

The black-clad assassin gave a start. She slowly took off her veil. Her face was cold. “You’re actually a cultivator?”

Zu An’s earlier reaction had been faster than any ordinary mortal’s.

In response, Zu An chuckled softly and replied, “Aren’t you one too?”

“I always thought that you were a wastrel, but it turns out that you’ve been putting on an act all along. What are you scheming?” Snow growled.

Zu An sighed deeply and replied, “A powerful cultivator like you, serving as a mere maid in the Chu clan. I should be the one asking you what you’re scheming.”

“Forget it, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to die tonight anyway!” Snow fired back hotly.

Zu An retorted indignantly, “Aren’t you a vicious one? We might have our differences, but it doesn’t change the fact that we had once shared a night in bed with one another. As the saying goes, a day as a couple, a hundred days of gratitude—”

“Shut up!” Snow shrieked.

You have successfully trolled Qiao Xueying for 444 Rage points!

That matter was a constant thorn in her side. Every night, she would dream about how her pure body had been defiled by his vile hands, and she would jolt awake in revulsion.

Conditioned by all the verbal sparring that she’d exchanged with him over the past few days, she reflexively responded to Zu An’s provocation. “You aren’t even a man at all. Where do you find the courage to say such words?”

As she insulted him, she shot a disdainful glance between his legs, making sure to express her full scorn for him.

She had expected Zu An to fly into a state of fury or to wither in embarrassment, but he was somehow completely unfazed. “Even though we didn’t manage it in the end, I reckon that what we shared counts as half a day of couplehood, at least. That would equate to fifty days of gratitude. How can you be so heartless as to assassinate someone whom you owe fifty days of gratitude to?”

What the hell! Is that saying even supposed to work that way?!

1. One ‘li’ (厘) is five hundred meters, or just under a third of a mile.