Chapter 114: Touched by the Goddess of Luck (Please Vote)

After teasing his netizens, Zhang Chu accessed his system. In the mere hour it took to travel from the exhibition center to the Nanhai Publishing Company, his popularity points had surged from over 19 million to 20.5 million.

The joy of such a bountiful harvest was impossible to conceal. Recalling the days when he had to struggle and act pretentious during the college entrance exams just to scrape together a few points, Zhang Chu couldn't help but feel a twinge of sentimentality for those bygone days.

"There are six billion people on this planet, and I've only reached twenty million points. I still have a long way to go," Zhang Chu muttered to himself. He knew he was being overly ambitious; in many parts of the world, mere survival was a struggle, so it was unlikely those people would care about news like his.

However, having crossed the ten-million-point threshold, he had earned three chances at the lucky draw. The next milestone would be at one hundred million, which still felt quite distant for now.

The items he had pulled in previous draws had been decent. Zhang Chu whispered to himself, praying for good luck today. Perhaps he should have burned incense and bathed before starting?

"System, start the draw."

The Savior System in his mind immediately manifested a large prize wheel. He was no stranger to this contraption; his luck in previous draws had been mediocre—some items were useful, others were not.

The wheel was filled with an array of skills Zhang Chu had yet to master, which filled him with anticipation. There were life skills like "Master Chef," intriguing abilities like "Hypnosis," as well as "Piano Virtuoso," "Elementary Xingyi Quan," and even three charges of "X-Ray Vision."

Zhang Chu stroked his chin. If he actually pulled X-Ray Vision, should he go play at the jade gambling dens or go peek at a goddess? This was truly a difficult choice!

The vast variety of options made him exceptionally greedy; he wanted everything, but unfortunately, he could only pull three prizes. These days, what protagonist didn't have X-Ray Vision? And among those who did, who wasn't making millions or tens of millions with a single glance? X-Ray Vision was not only a tool for cheating on exams but also an essential asset for getting rich and a necessary piece of equipment for winning over a goddess.

However, the system seemed to be playing a joke on him. While every item and skill on the wheel was roughly the same size, the "Temporary X-Ray Vision" segment suddenly shrank until it was nothing more than a thin line.

"You can't be serious?" Zhang Chu complained. This was clearly the system rigging the game—it couldn't even be bothered to keep up appearances and simply didn't want him to win that specific prize.

Faced with Zhang Chu's grievances, the system chose to remain silent, playing dead. It had no intention of getting involved in any ethical disputes.

"Fine, fine, let's just draw!" Zhang Chu muttered, letting the wheel spin.

The pointer flickered rapidly past one prize after another before finally slowing down. Zhang Chu’s heart leaped into his throat. He watched as the pointer came to a halt, landing on "Elementary English Proficiency."

Counting the "Elementary Japanese Proficiency" he had pulled earlier, Zhang Chu felt that if he transferred to the foreign languages department at Yan University, he might be able to apply for graduation immediately. Still, English was at least more useful than Japanese; after all, Zhang Chu intended to go global in the future, and he would certainly need English then.

"Luck's not bad, not too bad. Let's draw again!" He accepted the result readily. Now, if he wanted to watch American dramas, he wouldn't have to hunt for fan-made subtitles if only the raw versions were available.

The wheel, which had just stopped, began to spin again. This time, the prize was quite interesting: a "Restoration Flashlight."

This item could restore any broken object to its original state, but one had to be careful not to shine it indiscriminately, or it would revert finished products back into raw materials. Furthermore, it could not be used to bring the dead back to life. It had three charges.

In an ordinary household, this would be a must-have for families with mischievous kids—no matter what the kids broke, it could be restored. However, applying it to other things would likely maximize its value.

"If one day someone accidentally formats my hard drive, could I use this to recover those precious resources?" Zhang Chu mused to himself as he initiated the third draw.

Having the first two results as a buffer, he could accept whatever the third draw yielded. Perhaps because he was more relaxed, he pulled something unexpected: a "Nightmare Generator!"

This device could create nightmares for a specified target. Floods, infernos, chasing giant pythons, zombie apocalypses—it was quite fun, essentially like creating a world within a dream. Surprisingly, this machine had no limit on the number of uses, though it required a month of recharging after each use.

"A Nightmare Generator... heh, this is interesting. Whoever ticks me off, I'll let them have a month of nightmares and see if they dare to sleep again."

Zhang Chu’s luck today was definitely not bad; he could even be called a child of fortune! Although his luck hadn't been particularly great in the past, he had pulled several useful items this time. Since his "Bad Luck Notebook" only had one spot left, he wondered who would become the next victim.

...

Compared to the triumphant Zhang Chu, someone on the other side of the globe was pacing in agitation.

Charles Doyle, the current administrator of the Conan Doyle Estate, was throwing a tantrum in his office. Being hit with a joint lawsuit from three of the most tenacious lawyers in the United States—such a major matter, and as the defendant, he was only finding out now. Just hearing the names of those attorneys told him this was going to be trouble.

"Are you all idiots? Why didn't anyone discover this sooner? After seeing the news last night, why didn't anyone notify me? Let me tell you, we are finished!"

Charles Doyle had spent his life doing nothing, yet he lived very well because his grandfather's brother was Conan Doyle. Every year, the royalties from the publication, film adaptations, games, and other related licensing fees for *The Complete Sherlock Holmes* were enough for him to live lavishly.

Now, the cash cow he relied on was about to be chopped down by a Chinese person he had never heard of, and that person was wielding the sharpest axe imaginable.

The employees standing nearby kept their heads bowed, enduring his spray of saliva.

Charles Doyle was filled with both regret and fear. The copyright for Sherlock Holmes was already in the public domain in most countries, but among the major nations, the United States still held a few years of copyright protection. He knew full well that this "copyright" only applied to a small number of works published after 1925; the earlier works had long since passed their legal protection period. Many publishers and film companies were willing to pay simply to avoid unnecessary trouble, as they weren't entirely clear on the expiration dates for each individual work.

The Estate had kept plenty of lawyers on the payroll, and Charles Doyle was always ready to send a lawyer's letter or threaten a court appearance. But this time, he had encountered the unreasonable Zhang Chu. Zhang Chu stood on the side of the law and had top-tier lawyers by his side; there was no comparison to the average attorneys he usually dealt with.

"It’s all that wretched madman's fault!" Charles Doyle couldn't help but curse. These past three days had been like waiting for his execution. Was there anything more cruel than this?