novelraw Chapter 16 Making Money
Chapter 16 Making Money
It was obvious all three of them had little schemes going on in their heads.
Their expressions had already sold them out—especially starting from the moment Jiang Ran smiled just now.
The three of them narrowed their eyes, looking at you, looking at me, and in the end, without saying it aloud yet somehow saying it together—
“Lottery!” “Lottery!” “Lottery!”
A burst of laughter.
“Sure enough, heroes think alike.”
Qin Feng laughed.
“Just based on what I know about you two, I knew you’d both been thinking about doing this for ages.”
“And you haven’t?”
“Of course I have. I wanted to do it the first time we tested.”Jiang Ran spread his hands.
“Having that thought is normal. Before you stare up at the stars, you’ve still got to keep your feet on the ground. Let me see… perfect—today happens to be Double Color Ball draw day.”
Double Color Ball was one of the most common lottery games.
It was six plus one numbers in total. If you matched everything, that was the first prize: five million. If you matched the first six numbers, that was the second prize;
the payout fluctuated, but it was usually around two hundred thousand.
The lottery drew once every two days. On draw days, at 9:15 p.m., the winning numbers were broadcast live on a TV channel.
“Pretty lucky.”
Jiang Ran opened his laptop and pulled up the live draw.
“We’ll wait ten-some minutes. Once the numbers are announced, we’ll send a time-traveling text message to our past selves.”
“Whether that message lands three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, or even just a few hours ago—we’ll still have time to buy tickets.”
…
You had to admit, plotting lottery numbers really did get the blood pumping.
The atmosphere in the club room was ridiculously cheerful.
Ten-some minutes later, the winning numbers were announced. Jiang Ran wrote them down on white paper and handed it to Qin Feng.
“What’s this for?” Qin Feng didn’t understand.
“This time you’re the one sending the text.”
Jiang Ran said, “Let’s switch it up. See if you’ll keep [All-Spacetime Memory] this time.”
“That won’t work… I have to operate this.”
Qin Feng pointed at the Positron Cannon.
“I just adjusted the focusing unit’s intensity to one-fifth of what it was before. I want to see if we can send the text to yesterday.”
“And there are some detailed operations. You two can’t handle them, and I don’t feel good about letting you touch it.”
“Fair.”
Jiang Ran turned around, handed the paper to Cheng Mengxue.
“Then you send it. Use your own phone. Send the lottery numbers to my phone.”
Cheng Mengxue nodded.
“Do we need to tell our past selves not to buy first prize? That would be way too conspicuous.”
“Heh. Our past selves aren’t idiots.”
Jiang Ran was very confident.
“Our past selves are us. The brainpower’s still online.”
“Second prize is obviously better anyway. I just checked—every Double Color Ball draw, across the whole country, there are hundreds of second-prize winners. Hiding in plain sight.”
With the plan set, the three of them took their positions.
Cheng Mengxue held her phone and stood right up against the transformer distribution box.
“You don’t have to press yourself that close…”
Jiang Ran warned her.
“If there’s leakage current, it stops being fun.”
Qin Feng stayed responsible for the Positron Cannon. Jiang Ran climbed onto the windowsill to count down.
“5! 4! 3! 2! 1!”
His gaze locked onto Cheng Mengxue’s finger…
“0!”
The Positron Cannon roared! Cheng Mengxue hit send—
Wumm!
Wumm!
Wumm!
That familiar dizziness, the world flipping upside down.
Jiang Ran felt like he’d fallen off the windowsill—like he’d been stuffed into a front-loading washing machine, the entire world spinning.
[The worldline has shifted!]
It seemed that no matter who sent the message, and no matter whose phone was used, as long as those prerequisite conditions were met, the time-traveling text message could be sent successfully.
Sender, recipient, phone, message content… none of that mattered.
Only the Positron Cannon and the transformer distribution box were mandatory.
Roughly speaking, there were plenty of transformer distribution boxes of the same spec around campus—maybe you could substitute one in the same position.
But only the Positron Cannon was [unique].
It was an accidental product, cobbled together from who-knew-what principles. Nobody could replicate a second one.
Two seconds later.
The vertigo vanished.
Gravity and the sense of the floor returned.
He opened his eyes.
And realized…
He wasn’t perched on the windowsill at all. The window wasn’t even open. He hadn’t fallen from anywhere—he was standing in the middle of the club room.
After waking up in the hospital last time, Jiang Ran was already used to this kind of positional change.
Under Worldline Theory, it was completely reasonable.
Since the temporal butterfly effect altered history, his life trajectory would naturally change along with it.
Unless it was an absurd coincidence, it was hard to still be standing in the exact same spot after a worldline shift.
“Tomorrow I’m buying an obscene amount of Rhine Cat merch!”
Cheng Mengxue sounded ecstatic, practically tossing confetti in the club room.
“I can’t spend it all—there’s no way I can spend it all!”
From the look of it…
“Did we win?”
Jiang Ran asked even though he already knew the answer.
“How much!”
That was what he actually cared about.
“A full 1.3 million!”
…
The three of them sat down first and helped Jiang Ran synchronize memories—that is, everything that had happened from yesterday to today after the worldline shift.
“The text came yesterday afternoon.”
Cheng Mengxue pointed at Jiang Ran’s phone.
“This time your phone received it. I was the sender.”
“Good.”
Jiang Ran nodded.
Qin Feng really was a genius—one shot, dead on—
[Adjusting the Positron Cannon focusing unit’s intensity really can control the time point the time-traveling text is delivered to!]
This time, dropping it to one-fifth of the initial value turned “three days ago” into “yesterday.”
Which meant, conversely…
As long as they increased the focusing unit’s intensity, they could send texts to a farther past—one month ago, one year ago, even ten years ago.
You could say, without exaggeration, that this was the biggest gain from the experiment.
As for the second gain, it was pretty much as expected:
[All-Spacetime Memory really is unique to me, and has nothing to do with who sends the text.]
This time, Cheng Mengxue had personally sent the text, yet Jiang Ran’s dizziness arrived right on schedule;
and Cheng Mengxue still didn’t have any memory from before the worldline shift, while Jiang Ran—as always—remembered everything clearly.
“Oh, right, right.”
Jiang Ran immediately pulled out his phone.
To confirm how many messages he’d received this time.
“Still just one.”
He smacked his lips.
He didn’t know how to feel.
He both hoped he’d receive another mysterious message… and feared he would.
It was contradictory.
But at least, judging from the situation so far… not receiving one again made him feel a little more at ease.
Cheng Mengxue told Jiang Ran how the lottery thing had gone.
After receiving the text yesterday afternoon, the three of them met up immediately and agreed: they couldn’t buy first prize. Too conspicuous, too flashy. Their target was second prize from the start.
They each went to different lottery shops and bought a lot of tickets. Most of the numbers were random, doing their best to create the illusion of an “accidental win.”
Just ten-some minutes ago, the winning numbers were announced, and sure enough, they matched the numbers in the time-traveling text down to the last digit.
So altogether, they’d won five second-prize tickets—total payout: 1.3 million.
“We’re rich…”
Qin Feng stared at the few lottery tickets in his hand.
“We’re millionaires.”
“Th-this is too easy…”
After the cheering, once she calmed down, Cheng Mengxue started to feel guilty.
“Really… nothing’s going to happen, right? We… uh, this counts as legal, doesn’t it?”
Jiang Ran smiled.
“If it exists, it’s reasonable. This is a gift from physics.”
“Shouldn’t it be a gift from the Film Camera Club seniors who cobbled together the Positron Cannon?” Cheng Mengxue corrected.
“That’s true too.”
Jiang Ran nodded.
“So, to repay them, we’ll keep the Film Camera Club going. Consider it letting their spirits in heaven see—”
“Hey, hey, hey, the seniors just graduated, they’re not dead!”
…
The next day.
Outside Donghai’s Welfare Lottery Center.
The three of them stood on the sidewalk, watching the busy stream of traffic in front of them…
Lost.
After cashing out, each of their bank cards had an extra several hundred thousand.
Oh my god.
How were they supposed to spend this?
Normally they lived on 2,000 a month, broke as hell. When had they ever seen this much money?
For a moment, they genuinely couldn’t even find a direction to waste it in.
“Uh…”
Jiang Ran scratched his head.
“How about… we go back to school for class first?”
“Mhm, mhm.”
The other two followed.
…
After walking two steps, Jiang Ran made another suggestion.
“After class, we use time-traveling texts to make a little more money?”
“Mhm, mhm!!”