The new card room was two blocks south of the west end of Binjiang Road, a place called Yuelai Teahouse.
Zhang Lei found it on his phone. The review app said "average environment, affordable prices," and someone in the comments mentioned "plenty of Zha Jinhua tables." Good enough.
Wednesday night at seven, he rode his electric scooter to the door. Ground-floor shop in an old residential building. Small storefront. Inside, it was a step up from the urban village spot—at least there were no peanut shells on the floor. Three mahjong tables, two Zha Jinhua tables, and a pool table against the wall with felt so worn it was fuzzy.
Zhang Lei stood at the counter for two seconds.
"Cards. Zha Jinhua."
The owner was a heavyset woman in her fifties. She glanced at him and pointed toward the back. "That table needs two more. Sit and wait."
Ten minutes later the table filled. Six players, fifty-yuan minimum. Zhang Lei looked around—all strangers. Good.
First hand, he didn't activate the vision. Played it straight to feel the table's rhythm—betting habits, who was bold, who was cautious. His cards were garbage. He folded.
Second hand, he switched it on. Three seconds. One sweep around the table and off.
Six hands of cards laid bare in his mind.
He held a pair of queens. Third-best at the table—the man in the checkered shirt diagonally across had three fives. The shaved-head kid to his right had a straight.
Pair of queens couldn't win. Fold.
Third hand. Zhang Lei drew a flush—ace of spades, nine of spades, six of spades. Best hand at the table.
He called the first round at fifty. Two players folded in the second round, leaving four. Checkered Shirt raised to a hundred. Zhang Lei called. The other two followed.
Third round, Checkered Shirt pushed to two hundred. The guy in the cap on the left agonized for half a minute, then folded. Down to three—Zhang Lei, Checkered Shirt, and the shaved-head kid.
Zhang Lei checked Checkered Shirt's cards—pair of tens. The kid—junk. He was just along for the ride. Find the original chapter at g.com.
"Call." Zhang Lei laid down two hundred.
The kid called too.
Cards revealed. Zhang Lei's flush. Checkered Shirt's pair of tens. The kid flipped his over with a wry grin. "Just wanted to see."
Zhang Lei raked in the pot. A little over six hundred.
Simple as that.
From there he followed his usual pattern—win one, fold one, occasionally lose a small hand. Kept his win rate below sixty percent. Vision usage strictly rationed: three seconds per activation, no more than twenty times the whole evening.
Two hours later, he was up twenty-four hundred net.
Nobody at this table was cheating. They were all regular people—killing time after work, not caring much about a hundred here or there. Zhang Lei among them was like a fish in a wading pool. No predators. No undercurrents.
At nine-thirty he cashed out. Made an excuse—"early shift tomorrow"—nodded goodbye to the table, and pocketed his winnings.
"Dude, your luck is insane." The shaved-head kid called after him. "Coming back tomorrow?"
"We'll see." Zhang Lei waved without turning.
Outside, the cool air hit him and he drew a deep breath. His temples carried only a faint pressure—much lighter than at Zhao Si's table. The three-second on-off technique was fully dialed in now, energy expenditure well within the safe zone.
Twenty-four hundred.
He did the math on the ride home. Cash in the dictionary: three thousand nine hundred, minus five hundred repaid to Lao Zhou (transferred that morning), minus about five hundred for medicine and daily expenses. Plus tonight's twenty-four hundred.
Total assets: roughly fifty-three hundred.
Not enough. Still not enough. The source of this chapter is g.com.
At this pace—winning around two thousand per night at Yuelai Teahouse—four sessions a week meant eight thousand. Two weeks would put him past twenty thousand. But there was a problem: play the same table too often, win too consistently, and sooner or later people noticed.
He needed to rotate. Yuelai tonight, somewhere else tomorrow, another spot the day after. Cycle between card rooms—hit each place two or three times then let it cool. Never give anyone at any table the impression that "this kid wins every single time."
Zhang Lei searched on his phone. Binjiang City had at least forty or fifty card rooms scattered around. Plenty to rotate through.
The next phase of the plan was taking shape:
Two to three weeks. Build his cash past twenty thousand through card games. Control the frequency. Control the win rate at each table. Stay invisible.
Then buy his first car at the used market.
He already knew where to find cheap inventory—three years at the dealership weren't wasted. Every Wednesday and Saturday, the Binjiang Used Car Exchange held open trading days for individual sellers. Cars of every kind showed up there—ones the dealers had passed on, ones people needed to dump fast, ones with the price tag set wrong.
Other buyers had to spend time inspecting, spend money hiring someone to check. He just needed to stand next to a car for three seconds.
The thought made the corner of Zhang Lei's mouth twitch upward. He rode through a traffic light, the night wind filling the back of his T-shirt like a sail.
Twenty thousand.
Give him two weeks.
Back home, his mother was already asleep. A light still glowed in his father's room—probably listening to that old radio. Zhang Lei crept into his own room, pulled tonight's winnings from his pocket, smoothed each bill flat, and tucked them into the dictionary.
Twenty-four hundred.
He slid the dictionary back under his pillow. Kicked off his shoes, got into bed, and stared at the ceiling.
Two weeks. Twenty thousand. Then the first car.
Zhang Lei closed his eyes.
His temples didn't hurt at all.