Chapter 1
My dad’s name is Long Aotian.
Even as a kid, I knew he wasn’t ordinary.
“There’s five million on this card, Qingqing. Buy yourself some candy.”
I was in fourth grade. Dad had forgotten my birthday present, so he casually tossed me a bank card.
I took it, looking bewildered.
“Thanks, Dad. But I’m not Qingqing. I’m Ningning.”
“Oh… Ningning! Of course I know you’re Ningning. I was joking! Right, that card was for snacks. This is your actual birthday present.”
An awkward smile crossed his face—as ordinary-looking as Louis Koo’s—and he handed me another card.
“Ningning, there’s ten million on this one. Go buy yourself some ice pops.”
That was my dad.
A man with two wives, eight special lady friends, fourteen children, and no hope of remembering my name.
A man who tried to solve every problem with money, even when the problem was his ten-year-old daughter.
As a kid, I envied the other children terribly.
They got Barbies, stuffed animals, toy kitchens…
Dad started giving me cards with nine-digit balances before I could even manage two-digit arithmetic.
And bank cards were the only things he ever gave me.
Ah, the two great troubles of my childhood—
Never being able to count all the digits on those bank balances.
And never finding a single shopkeeper willing to let me buy anything with them.
My dad was an extraordinary man.
He knew every written character by three, made his entire village rich by eight, became the country’s most famous child prodigy by thirteen, entered university at fifteen, and was the richest man in the country by thirty.
With all those cheats powering his life, he was too busy to stay connected to mine.
I’d barely see him a few times a year.
Whenever I did, he’d look at me and sigh.
When I was little and didn’t know better, I thought it was because he’d missed me.
Later I learned that he simply thought I was too ordinary. Not at all what Long Aotian’s daughter ought to be.
Ordinary as I was, though, I had a cheat of my own—
A pirated-novel reader.
In fourth grade, I happened past a street stall. One extra glance changed my entire life.
The book that changed it was called The City’s Greatest Genius. The man on the cover looked exactly like Dad.
Of the ten women surrounding him, the one standing in the corner in a white dress looked exactly like Mom.
Drawn by a strange sense of familiarity, I opened the book.
And a whole new world opened up.