Fortune Erosion

On the day his spiritual vortex opened, Chu Guanlan tested as having Superior Mystic Fortune, an unprecedented genius in the Chu family for a hundred years.

The next moment, a hand reaching across a thousand miles plunged into his vortex and forcibly siphoned away ninety-three percent of his fortune.

His Superior Mystic Fortune fell to Inferior Common Fortune.

The broken engagement came. The people who took his allowance came. Even the clan's collateral branches dared to block the entrance to his courtyard.

No one knew that the black ring he had worn around his neck for sixteen years had opened its eye at the moment his fortune was stolen.

It could retaliate. If someone took a thread of fortune from him, he would devour ten of theirs.

The price was one more fortune-corrosion mark on his vortex. Once the marks filled it, his vortex would shatter, and he would die like a snuffed-out lamp.

Worse, the deeper the marks grew, the harder it became to tell which threads of fortune were truly his.

A man who survived by keeping accounts feared one thing most: that his own abacus would start giving the wrong answer.

"If I don't have enough fortune, I'll make up for it with brains."