8: A moment to test your acting skills

After having a quick breakfast of soy milk and steamed buns at the cafeteria, Ye Su rode a shared bicycle and followed the navigation to find the lottery station mentioned in the intel.

It was only 8:30, and the lottery station hadn't opened early, so Ye Su had no choice but to find a stone bench by the roadside and wait.

It wasn't until nearly nine o'clock that the lottery station finally opened, but Ye Su didn't go in immediately to buy that scratch-off lottery ticket.

If a stranger like you rushed in to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket the moment they opened, and you just happened to buy a winning one, it would look too suspicious.

No matter how you looked at it, it would seem too deliberate, as if you clearly knew you would win. Ye Su didn't want the owner to suspect anything.

In any case, no one had entered the lottery station yet, so that scratch-off lottery ticket wouldn't be bought by anyone else. After reading his novel on the stone bench for another twenty minutes or so, Ye Su finally strolled into the lottery station.

Seeing a new face not long after opening, the owner immediately stood up to greet him: "Hello, are you here to buy lottery tickets?"

"I want to buy a few scratch-off lottery tickets."

"The scratch-off lottery tickets are all here. Would you like to pick them yourself, or should I recommend some for you?"

"I'll take a look myself."

While speaking, Ye Su scanned the counter and quickly locked onto a stack emitting a faint glow. On top, it had the words "All the Way to Prosperity" printed in crooked artistic font, with "Face Value 20 Yuan" printed in the top right corner.

A standard stack of 20-yuan face value scratch-off lottery tickets contains thirty tickets.

Seeing that this "All the Way to Prosperity" stack still had at least twenty-some tickets left, Ye Su realized why this 8000-yuan scratch-off lottery ticket had fallen to him.

After all, everyone knows the tricks lottery station owners play with scratch-off lottery tickets.

If this "All the Way to Prosperity" stack didn't have many left, the owner would likely have scratched them himself, unless a big prize had already been won.

"Hmm—"

At this moment, other people began to enter the lottery station. Judging by the fact that the owner only nodded at them, they were likely regular customers of the lottery station.

Seeing someone enter, Ye Su feigned hesitation for a moment before picking up the "All the Way to Prosperity" stack.

"These are 20 each." Seeing Ye Su dawdling, the owner began to lose interest.

In his eyes, Ye Su was definitely the type who wouldn't buy a scratch-off lottery ticket once in a few years, and once he walked out of the store today, he probably wouldn't come back in his entire life.

"Okay."

Ye Su, however, didn't care about the owner's attitude.

I'll show you what a "surprise" is in a moment.

The hint of light provided by the system was somewhat faint because the scratch-off lottery tickets were stacked together, covering the entire stack.

To precisely find that 8000-yuan scratch-off lottery ticket, one would have to spread out the entire "All the Way to Prosperity" stack.

Ye Su certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to use such a suspicious method to find that scratch-off lottery ticket.

If you're going to act, you have to do it right.

Relying on his feel, he divided the scratch-off lottery tickets in his hand into two roughly equal portions, then held one in each hand, hesitantly separating them to the left and right.

It's the right side!

As he separated the two portions of scratch-off lottery tickets to the left and right, Ye Su clearly saw the system's hint of light shift to the right.

"Boss, I want to buy this half."

"Alright."

Ye Su buying half at once made the owner realize he had misjudged him, and his attitude clearly became more enthusiastic.

As for Ye Su's move of buying half at once, the lottery station owner was unfazed.

In a stack of scratch-off lottery tickets, only a portion contains prizes. To increase their winning odds or take a shot at the big prize, many people would buy half a stack or just buy an entire stack. These kinds of gamblers were the big customers in the shop.

"There are 14 here, totaling 280 yuan."

"Then I'll take one more, making it exactly 300 yuan. I've scanned the payment to you."

"Alright, good luck."

After watching Ye Su walk away with the scraper and the scratch-off lottery tickets, the owner also put away the remaining "All the Way to Prosperity" stack.

Having run the lottery station for so long, the owner was naturally very experienced and would keep track of how much money had already been scratched from each stack of scratch-off lottery tickets.

Now that this "All the Way to Prosperity" stack only had 11 tickets left, if that Handsome guy didn't win anything with his 15 tickets, he could consider playing a few himself.

On this side, there was only one customer who had come in after Ye Su. After entering, he sat down at a table to the side. Ye Su didn't know what he was doing, so he chose to sit at a table on the other side.

After rubbing his hands together with a sense of ceremony, Ye Su picked up the first scratch-off lottery ticket and neatly scratched it open in one go.

The winning rules for this "All the Way to Prosperity" that Ye Su was playing were very simple.

Once scratched, there would be two "Lucky Numbers" at the top, and twenty-five "Winning Numbers" below.

As long as a "Winning Number" matched a "Lucky Number", you would win the amount marked under the "Lucky Number".

"19... 21..."

After looking carefully twice and confirming that the first ticket wasn't a winner, Ye Su tossed it aside and picked up the second one to start scratching.

"Didn't win..."

"Won 20 yuan..."

"Didn't win..."

"Didn't win again..."

He scratched five tickets in a row, but only won on one 20-yuan ticket.

If he didn't know that there was an 8000-yuan big prize waiting for him, Ye Su would have started cursing internally.

After scratching nine tickets in a row, he had only won one 20-yuan and one 50-yuan ticket. Ye Su started to feign impatience and slapped the losing tickets aside with a "snap".

The owner had seen this situation too many times to count, so he naturally didn't take it to heart.

The customer sitting on the other side, seeing the commotion on Ye Su's side, also started to get up and wander over, ready to snap up the remaining "All the Way to Prosperity" at any moment.

The owner naturally knew this regular customer's plan, but it wouldn't be right for him to stop him and put away the scratch-off lottery tickets in advance.

Everyone knows the tricks of a lottery station, but you can't be that blatant and pull underhanded moves right in front of customers, otherwise who would dare to come and play here?

Anyway, scratching out those 11 "All the Way to Prosperity" tickets would probably only net one or two hundred at most; there was no need to ruin his reputation for such a small amount of money.

The owner simply left the "All the Way to Prosperity" out generously, letting the regular customer make a little money.

But just as the two of them were harboring their own thoughts, a cry of surprise instantly drew their attention.

"Holy crap, I won!"

This cry of surprise from Ye Su was genuine and heartfelt, without a shred of acting.

"How much did you win?" The owner and the other man hurriedly walked over.

"Eight thousand!"

Ye Su lightly flicked the scratch-off lottery ticket, brushing away the coating debris on top.

"Really?" The owner and the other man both leaned in at the same time.

They saw that on the scratch-off lottery ticket in Ye Su's hand, the "Lucky Numbers" were 7 and 22, and among the "Winning Numbers" below, five matched the "Lucky Numbers", with the total amount adding up to exactly eight thousand yuan!

"He really won!"

Confirming that Ye Su had really won, the regular customer looked envious.

He had been playing for so long and had summarized so much experience, but the most he had ever scratched out was two thousand yuan.

Yet this Handsome guy came over early in the morning, randomly picked a dozen, and scratched out an eight-thousand-yuan prize. Where is the justice in that!

"Handsome guy, your luck is pretty good. Do you play this often?"

"No, I was just passing by today and suddenly felt like playing, so I bought some."

Hearing the conversation between Ye Su and the owner, the regular customer felt even more devastated: Where is the justice in this world!