The Win-or-Loss Bet

The darkness concealed many faces.

Unless people knew one another well, it was hard to make out each other's features in the dim light.

There was little conversation in the gambling arena, only bursts of curses as people vented.

Even the middle-aged man passing the time in hushed conversation with Zhang Xuezhou let a few dirty words slip from his mouth now and then.

"How can people like us, who run our businesses honestly, keep up with the times? Newfangled things keep coming out, carrying away our savings wave after wave," the middle-aged man muttered. "This fucking world!"

"At least we got something in return," Zhang Xuezhou said.

"Of course we got something," the middle-aged man said. "But it's also like a set of shackles, keeping people like us bound so we have no choice but to work ourselves to the bone to cope."

"That's true," Zhang Xuezhou agreed.

"People like us are the most pathetic. We know perfectly well about so many things, but we don't have the ability to do them," the middle-aged man said dejectedly. "We can't pick any of it up, but we can't put it down either. We can only hover in the middle, neither up nor down."

If he let go of everything, the middle-aged man could live very well.

He could travel everywhere, feast on lavish meals, play the benefactor and support the poor...

But that good life was only relative to ordinary people.

Compared with those a level above him, he could only watch helplessly as he struggled along in his broken-down body, while stronger people his own age enjoyed their youth and the wealth left behind by the losers.

It had always been big fish eating little fish, and little fish eating shrimp.

He was one of the little fish caught