Fatebound Dice

Chapter 5 – A Tycoon’s Life

“Erand Zov?”

Chen Qi’s spirits lifted—this should be the very man who had died before his eyes tonight.

He eagerly turned the next page, only to find it completely blank.

Unwilling to give up, Chen Qi flipped through the entire notebook, but there was nothing written at all.

“Could it be that Erand never kept a diary?”

“Or perhaps… his diary isn’t in this villa at all.”

Chen Qi’s instincts told him the second guess was the right one.

In fact, he even faintly suspected where the diary might be hidden.

The game role he had inherited—Jomoya Chris—while giving him no concrete memories, always seemed to offer him some sort of guidance.

“This world really is becoming stranger and stranger!”

“But I definitely don’t regret rolling that die.”

Once again, the bronze die appeared in Chen Qi’s hand. Perhaps because one wish had already been fulfilled, his connection to it felt deeper.

After that peculiar wish-making experience, Chen Qi had formed a theory about the die’s wishing mechanism:

[The number of pips] determines the scale of power the bronze die can project into reality.

In the die’s judgment, predicting a lottery’s winning number and giving someone’s date of death were essentially no different.

The power it could bring into reality was fixed—it was up to the wisher how to use it to interfere with the real world.

Of course, this was just Chen Qi’s speculation; perhaps on his next wish, he would discover something entirely new.

What’s life like for the rich?

As a former wage-earner, Chen Qi could only imagine it. Now, he could experience it firsthand at his leisure.

After a single night, his greatest revelation was this—beds could be that comfortable, homes could be that warm, and food could be that delicious.

After enjoying a sumptuous breakfast, Chen Qi dressed in the kind of high-end clothes he had once only been able to admire from afar, ready to face the day’s challenges.

The new Jomoya Chris had officially come online.

“Good morning, Chairman!”

“You’re here so early today—it’s truly hard work for you.”

At the headquarters of the Chris Group, Chen Qi’s car had barely stopped before he was treated to a high-level welcome.

In the past, he had only been the one hiding in the back row, serving as part of the background.

“Heh, so it’s not that standing tall puts you in the center of the crowd… it’s that when you’re in the center, everyone else is bowing to you.”

Chen Qi calmly enjoyed the crowd’s deference, feeling no discomfort or unease.

Everything went smoothly; he played the role of Jomoya Chris flawlessly.

At first, he had worried others might see through him as an impostor—but soon he discovered the uncanny nature of the King’s Game.

No one around him harbored the slightest doubt about the identity of Jomoya Chris.

Even when he deliberately acted in ways that didn’t match the Chairman’s usual image, everyone simply assumed he had some deeper purpose, never once suspecting he was a fake.

“No wonder Erand Zov—a homeless man—could inherit the Chris Group without issue!”

“I had planned to keep a low profile to avoid suspicion, but now… I can change the plan.”

Once certain that his identity as Jomoya was secure, Chen Qi decided to loosen up a bit.

If his new life was still going to be as timid and restrained as before, he might as well go back to his rented room.

“Notify Manager Greete from the group’s subsidiary companies!”

“I want to see him in my office within twenty minutes.”

Chen Qi issued his first order of the day to the secretary beside him—and Greete just happened to be his former boss.

“Yes, sir. You’ll see him shortly.”

The secretary hurried away, and Chen Qi noted with mild surprise that Erand had actually employed a male secretary.

It was unexpected—Chen Qi would have thought a homeless man suddenly turned tycoon would indulge himself more.

But soon he realized he had underestimated Erand.

From the office safe, he found Erand’s Diary—and finally understood what it meant to live a life of pure indulgence.

“Hahaha, everything’s so easy—no one will ever doubt my identity.”

“This company is mine now!”

This was Erand’s first diary entry, clearly describing the same experience Chen Qi had just gone through.

“Luxury cars, nightclubs, beauties, throwing money around…”

The next month’s worth of entries was a tour of endless debauchery and lavish excess.

Chen Qi figured the man kept the diary just to brag to himself.

But human desire is a bottomless pit—especially when coupled with superpowers.

Flesh Manipulation: the ability to form ten invisible puppet strings to control living beings.

One could easily imagine the depraved things Erand had done with such a power.

What left Chen Qi speechless was that Erand had even used it on himself—boasting in the diary that he had “fought on the bed for three days and nights.”

Still, Erand wasn’t entirely useless. Though he hated studying, he had a talent for learning magical knowledge.

In just two months, he had fully deciphered Jomoya Chris’s diary, mocking Jomoya as an i***t in the process.

By the third month, his reckless spending had driven the Chris Group’s cash flow to the brink of collapse, with bankruptcy looming.

Erand knew nothing about running a business—and couldn’t be bothered to try.

But becoming poor again was out of the question.

When it came to the company’s crisis, he had his own “solution.”

In the diary, he smugly wrote that with “cash power,” only a fool would work hard for money.

He used Flesh Manipulation to forcibly borrow money from banks and swallow up several competitors.

But then—something unexpected happened!

“Damn it, I ran into another player today.”

“How many enemies does that scumbag Jomoya have? Just how many people did he offend?”

“Luckily, I confessed everything and groveled to Mei-10, and managed to keep my life.”

“So the game actually has two factions—the Lawful and the Betrayers!”

“Looks like I can’t run wild anymore. Even if I blend into the Lawful side, I still won’t escape the final King’s Judgment.”

From then on, Erand drastically changed his behavior. Aside from his personal life, he no longer dared to a***e his powers.

Until three days ago—when he picked a fight with Hu Wanhai, the leader of the Fire Fox g**g, over a woman in a nightclub, and decided to “punish a mortal.”

The result? Total disaster.

At last, Chen Qi fully understood the origins of the game role he had inherited.

Though much remained unknown, this was more than enough as a beginner’s guide.