The Seven-Hundred-Million-Dollar Trick - Chapter 3
When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in the underworld.
I was standing on Ziqi Avenue, whole and unharmed, facing the billionaire again.
Had I… come back to life?
Shaken, I felt myself all over. The pain of the crash and the fall ebbed like a receding tide. My wounds were gone. Only a lingering weariness and weakness remained.
Still reeling, I looked at the coin.
Unless my memory was wrong, the strange deity carved into it had originally had seven open eyes.
Now one was closed.
Did each open eye stand for another life?
Confusion gave way to wild delight. That meant I had six chances left!
Remembering the agony and despair of falling off that cliff, I picked up my phone and called Zhao Cheng without hesitation.
“Hey. What’s up?”
From the sound of it, he was sprawled on the couch, watching pretty girls livestream on his other phone.
Hatred surged through me at the sound of his voice.
Was this what he’d been doing last time, while I was running for my life? Lying there in comfort, moving a finger, destroying my last chance to live?
I clenched my teeth so hard they nearly cracked before I could steady my voice.
“Cheng, get over here. Big client. He’s asking for A13!”
“Big client? How big?”
He sounded indifferent. The livestream kept playing in the background.
I transferred twenty thousand yuan straight from my own account.
“That’s the deposit. Another thirty thousand after the show. Extra if we do it well.”
At the payment notification, Zhao Cheng’s eyes must have lit up. I heard him bolt upright.
Few people cared about magic these days. We could barely make five or six thousand a month. Even with help from his family, we were both hard up.
“He wants us performing within ten minutes,” I pressed. “If you can’t make it, I’ll ask someone else.”
“I’m coming! Of course I’m coming! Chen, you’re my brother, you know that? Always thinking of me when something good comes along. On my way!”
Grinning and joking, Zhao Cheng hurried downstairs to get the van.
People were converging on Ziqi Avenue.
Nearby, the shopkeeper kept peering out. When he heard the billionaire announce on the stream that I would inherit his estate, that honest, kindly face twisted. His eyes raked over me with venom.
I pretended not to see and waited for Zhao Cheng.
Three minutes later, with more than a dozen people gathered around, I suddenly sprinted through the crowd.
In full view of everyone, I jumped into the cargo compartment of the van parked on the corner.
It was a battered little produce van, brightly painted and emblazoned with a chain store’s logo.
The rear door slammed.
Zhao Cheng hit the accelerator and sped away from Ziqi Avenue.
Everything that followed went as I expected.
Witnesses photographed the van and posted the pictures. Hunters moved in like hyenas, helped along by tips from people lining the route.
They caught Zhao Cheng before he even left the city.
This time, he was too busy driving to watch the stream. All he knew was that a luxury car ahead kept cutting him off and trying to force him to stop.
I guessed its owner wanted to negotiate—to get the coin by gentler means before things escalated.
But Zhao Cheng had no idea what was happening. His temper flared. He gripped the wheel, gritted his teeth, and rammed it.
The luxury car swerved several meters out of line.
He’d always prided himself on being an experienced driver. The little van carried enough weight to force the other car aside.
He rolled down his window, triumphant, and gave the driver the finger.
“Think you’re special because you’re rich? Not with me, you’re not!”
A moment later, the van shuddered.
A heavy SUV had pulled up on his other side. Its driver’s face was blank as he repeatedly scraped against the van, squeezing it inward from the outside lane.
“Oh, so you’re together!”
Zhao Cheng slammed a hand against the wheel.
“You’ve got money, so what? Think a better car gives you the right to push people around? Come on, then! Let’s see who can actually drive!”
The engine roared as he accelerated and pulled clear of the SUV.
He spat viciously out the window behind him.
When he looked forward again, four or five nearby cars were closing in together. All of them were boxing him in.
“Shit. How many of you are there…?”
For a moment he sounded uncertain. Then he relaxed.
The cars were only following him now. No scraping. No swerving in front of him. Nothing else.
He lit a cigarette one-handed and sneered. “All this fuss. Thought you were somebody serious. Just a bunch of posers. You don’t dare do a damn thing.”
I said nothing. I was counting the minutes.
They weren’t acting because there were still cameras along the road. Soon he would reach the mountain stretch where I had died.
More importantly, they were rivals. Several leopards stalking the same fat sheep would naturally be cautious.
Even now, I thought, if Zhao Cheng stopped and calmly asked what was going on—explained that he was only the driver, that he knew nothing about the coin—he might still get out unharmed.
He didn’t stop.
I sighed. I knew him. In this respect, at least.
We’d attended the same vocational college, then trained under the same magician. I finished my apprenticeship six months earlier, making me something like his senior.
When I first started performing on my own, he often came to support me.
Mobile payments weren’t common then. Once, a rich kid watched my show, tossed several large bills into a puddle, and told me to pick them up from beside his shoes.
I picked them up.
Zhao Cheng roared and charged him.
He punched the rich kid’s nose crooked and demanded that he apologize to me.
Of course, I never got an apology. I paid two thousand yuan in compensation instead.
But from that day on, I considered Zhao Cheng my closest friend.
On the dangerous mountain road, the cars began closing in again, well inside a safe following distance. He finally sensed something was wrong and rolled down his window.
“Get out of the way, you fucking idiots!”
No one moved.
I closed my eyes. An ache rose in me that I couldn’t suppress.
He was roaring just as he had when he stood up for me, a brave knight charging into battle.
The old engine trembled and whined like a warhorse refusing to yield, urging him to break through the world’s encirclement and teach those powerful bullies a lesson.
Bang.
One enormous crash, and everything went quiet.
He was trapped in the driver’s seat, hanging upside down, his face a mask of blood.
I couldn’t tell if he was alive.
