Era: Rise from the Wilderness

"I...I'll give you an IOU!"

Gao Fu cried out urgently, as if grasping at a straw, "Put your fingerprints on it! I, Gao Fu, keep my word! If you win, I'll give it back to you!"

"Oh?"

Li Yunjing seemed intrigued and squatted down again, his gaze sweeping over Gao Fu's distorted face. "Words are meaningless. If you really want to borrow, you have to follow the rules."

He turned to Lü Ruoxi, who had been standing there blankly with a complicated expression: "Ruoxi, could you please go to the convenience store outside the school and buy a notebook and a pen, and preferably some ink pads?"

Lu Ruoxi opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end she just nodded, turned around and ran away.

Her mind was in turmoil, and she vaguely felt that things were sliding in a direction that she could not predict or control at all.

Twenty minutes later, Lü Ruoxi returned, carrying a brand-new hardcover lesson preparation notebook, a ballpoint pen, and a small box of cheap red inkpad.

Li Yunjing took the items, tore off a few blank pages, and laid them on a corner of the relatively clean newspaper.

He picked up the pen, his wrist steady, and with a few quick strokes, he wrote a standard IOU template: I hereby borrow RMB XXX from Li Yunjing, to be repaid before X year X month X day, interest will be calculated daily for overdue payments... Borrower: XXX, Date, Fingerprint.

Write it down.

"How much do you want to borrow?"

He pushed the paper and pen in front of Gao Fu.

Gao Fu stared at the black and white words on the paper, his fingers trembling slightly.

He gritted his teeth: "Lend me... lend me fifty first!"

Li Yunjing didn't say anything, but simply tapped the amount on the IOU with his pen.

Gao Fu took a deep breath, picked up his pen, and wrote "Fifty Yuan" in a crooked hand, then signed his name and wrote the date as the day.

Then, he dipped his finger in the inkpad box that Li Yunjing handed him and pressed it firmly onto his name, leaving a bright red, somewhat blurry fingerprint.

It was blindingly red.

Li Yunjing picked up the IOU, blew on the still-wet ink and seal, examined it carefully, folded it neatly, and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Then, he counted out five ten-yuan bills from the wad of cash in his pocket and threw them in front of Gao Fu.

"continue."

The following games seemed to enter a bizarre cycle.

Gao Fu borrowed money, wrote an IOU, pressed his fingerprint, received the money, sat down at the table, and lost it all.

Borrow again, write another IOU, and lose again.

The cash in front of Li Yunjing didn't increase much, but the IOUs in his inner jacket pocket grew thicker at a visible speed.

Fifty, one hundred, two hundred... The amount on the IOU got bigger and bigger, and Gao Fu's actions of signing and pressing his fingerprint became more and more numb. His eyes gradually changed from the initial humiliation and anxiety to emptiness and despair.

The sun had unknowingly begun to set in the west, and a hint of coolness began to creep into the sweltering wind.

The students on the playground had long since dispersed, leaving only this silent and strange patch of land under the old locust tree.

From initial shock and confusion to numbness, and now, only a heavy chill remains in Lu Ruoxi's heart.

She watched as Li Yunjing calmly accepted one IOU after another, each bearing a red fingerprint; she watched as Gao Fu, like a soulless shell, repeatedly signed and sealed the papers; she watched as the other three thugs went from initial schadenfreude to trembling with fear and shifty eyes…

This is no longer just playful banter between classmates, or even a simple matter of winning or losing.

It was like a cold, one-sided harvest.

She was the sole, bewildered witness to this harvest.

As the last rays of the setting sun were about to be swallowed by the distant buildings, Gao Fu found himself once again surrounded by emptiness.

His hands trembled as he tried to pick up the pen again, but he found that he didn't even have the strength to write.

That hardcover lesson preparation notebook already has more than a dozen pages used up, and each page has a bright red IOU pasted on it.

Li Yunjing closed the notebook; it was a thick stack and felt quite heavy in his hand.

He stood up and stretched his stiff neck.

That's about it for today.

His voice remained calm, revealing neither joy nor anger. "Six hundred and twenty yuan in total. Gao Fu, remember to pay me back."

Six hundred and twenty yuan!

This number struck Gao Fu like a heavy hammer, slamming into his already numb heart.

He suddenly raised his head, his eyes bloodshot, his lips trembling, trying to say something, but only making strange hoarse noises.

Overwhelmed by immense fear and despair, he was finally completely consumed by it.

Li Yunjing stopped looking at him and turned to Lü Ruoxi, her voice softening: "Let's go, it's getting dark."

Lu Ruoxi nodded blankly and followed Li Yunjing away from the shadow of the old locust tree shrouded in twilight.

After walking quite a distance, she couldn't help but look back.

Gao Fu was still slumped there, motionless, like a clay sculpture.

His three "brothers" stood around, looking at each other, none of them daring to step forward.

The evening breeze brought a chill, but it couldn't dispel the confusion in Lü Ruoxi's heart.

Looking at Li Yunjing's tall and silent back as he walked ahead, she felt for the first time that this childhood friend had become so distant, so... unfamiliar.

I walked out of the playground and onto the cement road leading to the school gate.

Silence, like a damp cloth, hung between the two.

Lu Ruoxi tried to speak several times, but swallowed her words back.

Finally, as they neared home, Lü Ruoxi couldn't hold back any longer and asked in a hoarse voice, "You... how can you be so amazing?"

"Shuffle the cards, and... win money."

"It's like a magic trick."

Li Yunjing did not stop walking. Upon hearing this, he merely tugged at the corner of his mouth, the smile indistinct in the dim light.

"Is it impressive?"

"Perhaps... I have some talent."

His tone was casual, even nonchalant, "When we play 'rolling dice,' don't you guys always lose to me?"

Rolling around?

Lu Ruoxi was taken aback, then recalled that when she and her close classmates played cards on the roof of a bungalow, Li Yunjing always won more than he lost. He was accurate in calculating the cards and played tricky cards, often leaving them helpless.

At that time, everyone just thought he was smart, and no one thought anything else.

Could it be... really a talent?

This explanation, however, barely manages to bring the eerie feeling of that cold harvest back into the realm of "reasonableness."

"Even if you have talent, you shouldn't..."

She bit her lip, her voice lowering, "I shouldn't have gotten involved in these things. Gambling... is bad. My dad always says, nine out of ten gamblers lose, and the one who survives is a liar."

"Well……"

"What your dad said is absolutely right!"

A wry smile appeared on Li Yunjing's face, but he had already given Uncle Lü a thumbs up in his heart.

"I know."

"I have no intention of getting involved."

"Just this once, today."

He stopped, turned around, and looked directly at Lü Ruoxi.

"Just...just this once?"

Lü Ruoxi looked up at him, her clear eyes shining, "Then why..."

Why are you hanging out with Gao Fu?

Li Yunjing picked up where she left off, his smile turning completely cold. "Because that kid needs to be taught a lesson."