An hour later.
Xu Wanyue’s face was now even paler than the girl sitting across from her. She slumped in her chair, staring fixedly at the dice on the table before her. She couldn’t tell anymore whether the other girl was cheating or if her own misfortune had turned against her. In these ten rounds, she hadn’t won a single game—all utter failures. She’d done everything possible to stall for time, desperately calling on her luck, but it felt as though luck had vanished entirely. She was certain she hadn’t fallen victim to psychological suggestion, and that realization only made her more frantic.
She now owed seventy million in gambling debt.
“Game over. Please select your method of payment.” The girl across from her stared straight into Xu Wanyue’s eyes, her pink tongue flicking across her lips. The gesture made Xu Wanyue’s heart clench for an instant, a vivid image of her own eyes being gouged out flashing through her mind. Her body shuddered again. “I… I’ll make a phone call…”
“Please do.”
Xu Wanyue pulled out her phone and dialed Litchi’s number. The call rang on without answer, her heart pounding in time with the tone. The entire room was deathly quiet, filled only with the relentless ringing.
Fortunately, at the thirty-fifth second, Litchi’s voice finally came through from the other end.
“What’s wrong?”
“I… I lost…”
“Lost? How?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know how she kept winning… But I didn’t win a single time. I lost… seventy million. If… if I can’t pay it back, she wants my eyes…”
There was a moment of silence on Litchi’s end. “But our organization doesn’t have seventy million right now.”
For some reason, Xu Wanyue sensed a hint of amusement in Litchi’s voice. She stared blankly out the window at the pouring rain, a sudden spark of realization igniting in her mind.
If Litchi had long suspected her of being a Fruit Shop mole, then… sending her into North City meant that if she slipped up, there would be no reason to rescue her.
“I don’t have seventy million either. I… I’m part of the organization too, Litchi. You can’t just abandon me like this…”
Litchi’s voice remained gentle. “But all our liquid funds went into that movie investment recently. Right now, we have less than twenty million total… How about you gouge out your eyes and hand them over first? Once the movie turns a profit, we’ll buy them back. I’ll find a healing ability user to reattach them for you?”
Xu Wanyue’s heart shattered like glass underfoot.
She held her breath, her throat constricting. “You… you can’t do this…”
Litchi sounded utterly helpless. “But I never imagined you’d lose. This is your mission gone wrong. It’s not that we don’t want to help with the money—we just can’t. Why don’t you think about the idea I suggested?”
Even across the phone line, Xu Wanyue could picture Litchi’s mocking smile.
Xu Wanyue looked up at the girl across from her and said slowly, “Could you… give me a little more time? Within a week, I’ll definitely scrape together the seventy million for you.”
The girl shook her head. “One hour, maximum.”
Xu Wanyue pulled out her phone, ended the call with Litchi, and tried dialing her Alliance contact. But the line was dead—an empty number, as expected. She never initiated reports; they always reached out to her first. What right did she have to check in?
In her desperation, Xu Wanyue was clutching at straws. She dialed another number and held the phone to her ear. “Xiaoxiao… you haven’t gone to bed yet…?”
“Nope. Watching a show. Kamen Rider is so cool.”
“Um, I wanted to ask you something…”
“What?”
“Could you… lend me seventy million?”
“Is this some new prank?” The girl’s voice on the other end brimmed with surprise. “I only have seventy thousand on me right now… Do you want it?”
Xu Wanyue’s phone slipped from her grasp and clattered onto the table. She bit her lip, bowed her head, and racked her brain for a way out. But her thoughts were a tangled mess, yielding no viable plan.
She had never been good at these intricate gambits. Even her gambling techniques had been picked up on the fly. Her string of easy victories earlier had blinded her to gambling’s true essence.
The thrill of winning it all in an instant, the terror of losing everything just as quickly—that was what kept gamblers coming back, hopelessly addicted.
The girl she called Xiaoxiao was still chattering away, but Xu Wanyue had no time for explanations or small talk. The Alliance’s position was clear: as a mole, she couldn’t expect their aid for this mess. And none of her friends or family could bail her out now.
Xu Wanyue’s life had always been fractured. She’d only joined the Alliance at eighteen. Before that, she’d been an ordinary college student. Her parents had died young; she’d grown up depending on her younger sister, raised in their uncle’s home. He was an older man who ran a restaurant and treated them well, but it barely brought in a hundred thousand a year.
A figure suddenly materialized in her mind—a relaxed face with a slightly roguish smile.
“Your hands are lovely too,” the girl across from her said suddenly. “Each one’s worth five million. Both together… ten million. You’d only need to come up with fifty million more.”
Xu Wanyue’s desperate vulnerability must have been all too obvious, allowing the girl to sense her weakness and toy with her in that teasing tone. Xu Wanyue glanced at her own hands—slender bones, long fingers, and a fresh set of cute manicure from just days ago.
A wave of utter exhaustion washed over her.
Two hands and a pair of eyes for twenty million—anyone might weigh that bargain carefully. Xu Wanyue gave a wry, self-mocking smile. At eighteen, some old creep had offered twenty thousand a month to keep her. She’d thrown her drink in his face. Her choice back then had been right; now just look at the price of her hands and eyes.
Her smile turned bitter. She picked up her phone once more and dialed Litchi again, clinging to it like a lifeline. After an eternity, Litchi answered. “What’s up? I’m already scraping together money for you, but we’ve only got twenty million so far…”
“I want Lin Cheng’s number,” Xu Wanyue said abruptly.
“He’s a busy man. Probably sprawled over some woman right now.”
Litchi’s barbed sarcasm wasn’t reserved just for face-to-face encounters with Lin Cheng. Xu Wanyue clamped down on her lip, her voice trembling. “I want his number…”
“Fine, fine. Sending it now.”
Xu Wanyue soon received the number from Litchi. She dialed Lin Cheng, but there was no answer.
She tried again. Still nothing.
The girl across from her spoke up slowly. “The Fruit Shop sent you here, didn’t they?”
Xu Wanyue looked up. The girl’s expression was icy. “The Fruit Shop didn’t spare our people either. Our casino has been running in A City for years. You stole our business without so much as a hello. So… we’re not inclined to show you mercy.”
“You can leave here alive tonight, of course. But you’ll have to leave something behind. Don’t be too frightened—I only want your eyes and hands. I’ll keep them safe and preserved. If you scrape together the money someday, you can buy them back.”
Xu Wanyue stared at her arms and eyes as boundless terror closed in around her. Without her eyes and hands, would the Fruit Shop even keep her on? Would they truly stand up for her? How could she possibly earn seventy million then?
Only now did the truth hit her: she’d been abandoned. Perhaps the Alliance didn’t value her safety that much, and the Fruit Shop had never truly cared either. It was all her own foolishness that had led to this. A smarter woman might never have ended up in such a bind.
But she couldn’t just become dead weight. Her sister was still lying in that hospital bed, waiting for her. She’d sworn to wake her sister—to let her live!
What now? Xu Wanyue, think. There has to be a way out. The Alliance had rated this infiltration mission SS-rank for a reason; they wouldn’t abandon their only inside line. Why couldn’t she reach them…? Was it the misfortune? No… there had to be something. Don’t give up, Xu Wanyue. Don’t… give up.
The phone on the table rang suddenly.
Xu Wanyue froze, then numbly picked it up, answered, and pressed it to her ear, terrified of missing a single word. Lin Cheng’s voice came through, laced with irritation. “Who calls this late at night? No manners.”
“I… it’s Xu Wanyue.”
“Oh… Up late and can’t sleep? How’d you know I’m such a responsible person?” Her voice—cool and aloof—melted away his grumpiness in an instant, replaced by a warmer tone laced with teasing.
“I’m… on a mission. In a casino in East City. I lost seventy million. No money to pay. Litchi says the organization doesn’t have any either, so…”
“How much?” Lin Cheng sucked in a sharp breath.
“Seventy million.”
“My accounts total less than seven thousand. What did Litchi say?”
“She said all the organization’s funds went into a movie investment… Told me to figure something out… But I can’t. They want my eyes and hands… Lin Cheng… save me…”
Xu Wanyue’s voice cracked with sobs, blending with the roar of rain outside the window.
“Lin Cheng… please… I have no way out… no way…”
Lin Cheng let out a helpless sigh. “Seventy million? Sis, how the hell did you lose that much?”
“I don’t know. My luck just… stopped working. All that’s left is misfortune. I didn’t want to keep playing, but they wouldn’t let me leave… I don’t know what to do… Lin Cheng…”
“Finally managed to fall asleep too. Been dealing with insomnia lately.” Lin Cheng sounded mildly exasperated.
The silence in the darkness lasted only a second, yet it stretched on like a century.
“Stop crying for now. The rain’s coming down hard; it might take me an hour to get there. Keep playing with her—doesn’t matter how much more you lose. Just stall until I arrive. I’ll make sure you get out safe.”
Xu Wanyue’s expression went slack. She’d only been teary-eyed before, red-rimmed, but now the tears spilled freely, her voice rising. “You’re… coming to save me?”
“We’re partners now—that makes us family. Litchi wasn’t trying to screw you over; the organization really is tapped out right now. She called me too, but I was asleep and missed it. Good thing the thunder woke me up. Don’t worry; I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
Xu Wanyue had never heard a man’s voice sound so reassuring, so gentle. It was as if she’d been drowning in a lake, thrashing and sinking deeper with every struggle—until a strong hand hauled her to the surface. She barely registered that it was the same hands that had pushed her under in the first place.
“Okay. I… I’ll wait for you.”
Light returned to Xu Wanyue’s eyes.
