Chapter Nineteen: Only Possible at Noon; Must Be Finished by Morning or Evening

"Four-Eyes, are you even our brother? Your brother is such a jerk. Charging two thousand for a single ID? Is he out of his mind, or does he think we're suckers? If he weren't your brother, I would’ve clobbered him right there!"

Inside a roadside mobile phone repair shop, Laizi was shouting and gesticulating at a curly-haired boy wearing thick glasses. The curly-haired boy felt his brother was indeed in the wrong, so he just kept his head down, puffing on a cigarette in silence.

"Alright, it’s not that big a deal. Four-Eyes didn't ask for that much from us, so what good does yelling at him do?" Hua Shi’er said, sitting behind the counter and tinkering with the shop's computer without looking up.

Da Kang, who was watching Hua Shi’er operate the computer, asked curiously, "Brother Xiaobei, what are you doing?"

At his question, Laizi and Four-Eyes gathered around to watch. Hua Shi’er glanced at Da Kang and said helplessly, "You spend all day online; is your brain filled with nothing but World of Warcraft and CrossFire? This is Photoshop, one of the four great arts of Asia. Since we don't have the money to buy a fake ID, we'll just edit one ourselves!"

With practiced ease, Hua Shi’er used Photoshop to change the birth date on the ID card, making himself one year older. Looking at the photo alone, he was now an adult over eighteen.

Four-Eyes understood what Photoshop was and asked, "Xiaobei, why are you doing this?"

"Nothing much. Just feel like I'm too young, so I'm bumping my age up by a year!" Hua Shi’er smiled, cut and pasted the edited photo to his phone via a data cable, then waved it at Four-Eyes. "I’ve got things to do. A friend’s phone is broken; I’ll come find you tonight!"

He stepped out from behind the counter and beckoned for Laizi and Da Kang to follow him.

After leaving the shop, Hua Shi’er told Da Kang and Laizi to be careful and stay low for a while, just in case Ma Qi couldn't get to him and decided to take his anger out on them instead. Both agreed and asked when they would be "getting to work."

"Getting to work" referred to their petty theft and debt collection. Having become Liu Beishan, Hua Shi’er was eager to go straight and leave that life behind, so he immediately told them he was done with all that.

He spoke to them earnestly, "The things we've been doing are all shady. You can only do this sort of thing for so long before something goes wrong. We’re still young—we can’t do this for the rest of our lives, right?"

"We’ve been hiding behind the protection of being minors, stealing and fighting. Even if we get caught, we just get a lecture and are released. But what about later? I turn eighteen in the second half of the year, and you two aren't far behind, are you?"

Stunned by his words, Da Kang and Laizi realized they had been living day-to-day, never considering such long-term issues. After a moment of silence, Da Kang asked, "Then what do you plan to do, Brother Xiaobei?"

Hua Shi’er patted their shoulders. "I have a plan for our future. Just wait patiently. And remember, don't go out and mess around these next few days!"

Seeing them nod, he said goodbye, told them to wait for his call, and hailed a taxi to return to Liu Beishan’s home.

Back home, Hua Shi’er downloaded a lottery app. Online lottery sales were once booming, and major internet companies offered the service. However, because of a lack of regulation, the practice would be shut down by the authorities in 2012—one year from now in this world. But for the moment, it was thriving.

Since he wasn't yet eighteen, Hua Shi’er couldn't collect major prizes in person, but online betting offered a way around that. He had thought of this while at Four-Eyes’ brother’s place. There were plenty of websites offering online lottery services, though their reliability varied. Hua Shi’er chose a well-known, established platform.

He installed the app and began registering. When asked to upload an ID photo, he used the edited one. Since the document itself was real, registration was a breeze. Of course, this was only possible because 2011 was before the age of big data; if it were his original world, the plan would have surely failed.

After registering and linking a bank card, he read the prize collection rules carefully. For single-ticket winnings under one million, the money would be credited directly to the user’s account. For prizes over one million, staff would contact the winner to assist with a secure collection process.

Since he couldn't show his face, Hua Shi’er aimed for the sub-one-million bracket. That didn't mean he was settling for just a million; he could simply place multiple bets. He chose the "Football Lottery" format, which capped single-bet prizes at 500,000. Anything more would be a waste.

He checked the date: April 9, 2011. He selected the matches from the "Big Five" leagues for the next two days. Based on the odds for the scores, he focused on the Bundesliga. He placed a "three-match parlay."

The first match: Freiburg to beat Hoffenheim 3-2 (25x odds).
The second match: Mönchengladbach to beat Cologne 5-1 (42x odds).
The final match, for April 10: Stuttgart to lose to Kaiserslautern 2-4 (100x odds).

With the three matches linked, the odds multiplied: 100 x 25 x 42, resulting in 105,000x odds. A two-yuan bet would yield a prize of 210,000. Hua Shi’er placed one hundred bets at two yuan each. If the scores matched reality, he would walk away with 42 million in pre-tax winnings.

Seeing the estimated total, his heart began to pound uncontrollably. He took a deep breath to steady himself. As a traveler with the gift of foresight, wasn't a "cheat-mode" life expected?

He smiled and checked the time. The stock market had closed. He searched for the code of the stock he had bought that morning. Just as he remembered, after dipping in the morning, it had turned red in the afternoon. With the swing, he had made a fifteen percent profit.

This gave him even more confidence in the Bundesliga matches that night. He put his phone away, went out, started Liu Beishan’s motorbike, and rode off. He had prepared for the future; now, it was time to go see Chen Nian.