"Boss, give me a book of scratch cards!"
"Another book!"
"Bring me all the scratch cards in your shop!"
[Blazing Summer Heat]
[Ning'an City, Jiang Province, Tianyi Plaza, Inside a Welfare Lottery Shop]
A young man, ignoring the sweat covering his head, was like he was possessed, throwing himself over the table and crazily scratching one scratch card after another, each worth 20, 30, or 50 yuan.
At this moment, the scratched tickets were piled up like the textbooks on the desk of a senior high school student about to face the college entrance exam.
Onlookers gathered endlessly around him, pointing and whispering at the young man.
"Is this guy crazy? Buying this many lottery tickets like he's eating food?"
"This is cracking me up! These days, there are actually people who still believe they can get rich overnight through the lottery?"
"Get rich? I've been watching this guy since his first book. He's scratched dozens of books, and the biggest prize he's hit so far is only two hundred yuan. Where's the getting rich part?"
"So young, with arms and legs, why not work honestly and earn money? Always thinking about shortcuts, thinking you're smart, but actually you're just missing a screw."
"If this were my son spending this much money on this crap, I'd definitely break his hands."
The idle chatter of the crowd did not affect Lin Mo's hand speed.
He scratched faster and faster, scratching more and more.
A full dozens of minutes passed.
Until dozens of books of tickets were scratched down to the final three.
When he opened one of the 30 yuan "Happy Reunion" books and scratched the fifth ticket. [T/N: Happy Reunion is a scratch card book.]
His entire body suddenly froze in place, eyes wide as he stared at the scratched ticket for a full three seconds.
Buzz!
Lin Mo clenched the ticket and sprang to his feet.
"Hahahaha!"
"Hahahahaha!"
Amid uncontrollable laughter, Lin Mo rushed out of the lottery shop like he was possessed by a demon.
The baffled onlookers around him were all startled.
"What's wrong with him?"
"What did I say just now? If he keeps scratching like this and doesn't hit a big prize, he's definitely going to go crazy."
"No money and still trying to act rich? If you can't afford to play, then don't play, you poor bastard!"
"But judging by how he looks, could it be that he actually won something big?"
"Big my ass! If he won, wouldn't he go redeem it? Why would he run off?"
"I'm dying of laughter, what a complete idiot!"
———
Meanwhile—
Lin Mo got into a taxi.
After riding for over forty minutes, he finally returned to his rental room in an urban village on the outskirts of Ning'an City.
The first thing he did after getting home was impatiently turn on the computer and put on a pitch-black helmet that looked like a motorcycle helmet.
He clicked a game on the desktop called [Divine Oracle].
[Ding~ Dear player, the game server opening countdown is 32 minutes and 18 seconds. You cannot enter the game before the server opens. However, you can carry out the following actions in advance—]
[1: Watch CG]
[2: Create Character]
[3: Enter Talent Code]
Lin Mo quickly clicked 3.
Then he took out the "Happy Reunion" lottery ticket he had scratched earlier at Tianyi Plaza.
The prize area on the ticket did not show "Joy," nor "Double Joy," but instead a string of code: LZXYBBKWY
Lin Mo entered this string of code and then entered the verification code.
[Ding~ Congratulations on obtaining the unique SSS-tier talent · Soul Flame. Please log into the game after the server opens and claim the talent via in-game mail.]
At this moment, Lin Mo felt a huge weight lift off his shoulders.
The tightly wound tension finally relaxed completely.
He took off the helmet, his whole body feeling drained, and collapsed onto the bed.
"Finally got it…"
"So damn good!!!"
At the same time, a surge of memories flooded into his mind like a tide.
July 1, 2028. A cross-century online game [Divine Oracle], jointly created over three years by tens of thousands of top game designers from over a hundred countries worldwide with an investment of three trillion, burst onto the scene.
Relying on two major features, players being able to mentally enter the game world through dedicated equipment, and the permanent opening of game currency to RMB(Renminbi) exchange.
The moment it launched, it crushed over 99 percent of games on the market and quickly exploded worldwide. A gaming device originally priced at three thousand yuan was scalped up to thirty thousand, yet still impossible to get.
After graduating from university, unwilling to earn a little over three thousand yuan a month and work like a beast of burden for others for his entire life, Lin Mo resolutely quit his job and used a month's salary to buy this set of equipment.
In his past life, he planned to become a professional gold-farming player.
That's right, Lin Mo was a transmigrator.
But no one expected, just three months after Divine Oracle went online, an unknown malfunction occurred, devouring the real world and trapping all seven billion people inside.
And if a player died in the Divine Oracle world, it was real death, with no revival.
In his past life, Lin Mo started with the most garbage E-tier talent [Defense] (+1 percent defense). Combined with the fact that he was a broke nobody in the real world, after entering Divine Oracle, he had always been mediocre.
Before Divine Oracle devoured reality, he was bullied by whale players and players with high-tier talents.
Precious equipment he had finally crafted after collecting materials for days was blown up.
A rare boss he had fought through an all-nighter was stolen.
A hidden quest he had waited at locations for over half a month and painstakingly obtained was hijacked.
And after Divine Oracle merged with the real world, order collapsed. The law of survival, the strong preying on the weak, made people like Lin Mo fit only to be trampled under the feet of the strong.
To stay alive, he abandoned his dignity and lowered his pride.
Barely surviving in the lowest, darkest corners of Divine Oracle.
But as the game's difficulty rose higher and higher, Lin Mo eventually died at the hands of a level 17 super boss [Vampire Emperor · Ainogea], his journey ending in the second year after Divine Oracle descended.
Luckily, fate did not abandon Lin Mo.
He unexpectedly reincarnated back to the very day Divine Oracle's servers opened.
Every player, upon first entering the game, would randomly obtain a talent from E-tier to SSS-tier.
According to official big data statistics from his past life: 99.99 percent of players worldwide obtained talents between E and B tier.
A-tier talents were one in ten thousand.
S-tier talents were as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.
SS-tier talents, even in a single country, did not exceed double digits.
As for SSS-tier talents. Among over seven billion players worldwide, there were only nine.
After Divine Oracle devoured the real world, these nine SSS-tier talent holders all became top-tier powerhouses dominating their regions.
Before the server opening, the official team, for promotional purposes, randomly distributed one SSS-tier talent code to each country around the world.
The talent codes could appear in any form, hidden in any location or any product, waiting for players to discover them.
And the SSS-tier talent code for Dragon Nation was hidden precisely in Jiang Province, Ning'an City, inside the lottery shop at Tianyi Plaza.
Unfortunately, in his past life, no one discovered it. It wasn't until after Divine Oracle opened, when official staff came to the lottery shop to retrieve the ticket, that countless players in Ning'an City were filled with regret.
Among them was Lin Mo.
So in this life, the very first thing Lin Mo did after being reborn was go to the lottery shop and secure this lottery ticket containing the top-tier SSS talent code.
The official valuation of one billion RMB for an SSS-tier talent was not important.
What mattered most to Lin Mo was that he knew clearly, "Once Divine Oracle devours reality three months from now, no matter how much money you have, it's all worthless paper. Only strength matters."
"In this life, I refuse to be an ant trampled underfoot by others!"
"I will become an unmatched powerhouse!"
"I will make everyone who ever bullied and humiliated me repay it a hundredfold!"
"Strength! Money! Status! Power! I want all of it!!!"
———
At the same time.
[Tianyi Plaza, the Lottery Shop]
Just as the onlookers who had mocked and laughed at Lin Mo earlier were eagerly dividing up the lottery tickets that Lin Mo had won but not redeemed.
The wall-mounted TV suddenly broadcast a piece of news.
["Next is an announcement released by the official Dragon Nation team of the game [Divine Oracle]: Just moments ago, the only SSS-tier talent code of Dragon Nation has been activated. And the revealed location of this code is Jiang Province, Ning'an City, Tianyi Plaza Welfare Lottery Shop."]
Seeing this news, everyone in the lottery shop widened their eyes, jaws dropping to the floor.
"Jiang Province… Ning'an… Tianyi Plaza... Welfare Lottery... isn't that right here?"
"That Divine Oracle SSS-tier talent code worth one billion."
"Fuck! The grand prize was right next to me! And it slipped past me!!"
"That kid! He scratched away a ten-billion-level grand prize!"