"Albedo-nii," Klee called out.
"So it's Klee, and Ryou too." Albedo greeted the group with a smile.
Ryou stepped forward. "Albedo, did you just get back to the city?"
"Mm. I've already taken care of everything." Albedo smiled at him. "I still need to stop by the Knights of Favonius headquarters, so I should get going."
"Alright." Ryou nodded.
After Albedo left, Keqing glanced at Ryou. "That Albedo just now…"
"That was the real Albedo," Ryou said with a nod.
"But didn't he not have that star-shaped mark on his neck?" Mona moved closer, clearly suspicious.
"Well…" Ryou smiled. "Call it intuition."
"What intuition? Why not just say whether he was real or fake?" Mona rolled her eyes.
"He was real." Ryou nodded again.
"Enough thinking about that. Let's go buy groceries first." Ryou adjusted Klee in his arms and headed for the market.
By the time they finished shopping and were on their way back, Ryou noticed a large number of Knights of Favonius gathered outside the Goth Lottery Shop.
People were being taken away, and the shop itself had already been sealed off.
"Yanfei's making her move," Keqing said, frowning.
Ryou gave a small nod and lowered his voice. "Do you think she'll be able to trace anything back to the Goth shop?"
Keqing nodded. "She will."
"Don't worry. This won't affect us. That Goth lottery shop was nothing but a cheap imitation, and they priced everything at ten times what we did."
"With sales like that, they were never going to last. On top of that, they've never even produced a single winning ticket. Our place has already paid out quite a few prizes, including major ones."
"And Klee already took home five hundred thousand Mora, didn't she?" Ryou said with a grin.
Klee scratched her head awkwardly, which only made Ryou laugh.
"Don't overthink it. I already told Xingqiu what to watch for."
"Come on. Let's go have a look at the shop. We'll know what's happening soon enough."
"Mm." Keqing nodded.
When they arrived near the lottery shop, Ryou saw a crowd gathered around the entrance.
An old man at the front coughed and said, "These lottery shops are a curse. If you ask me, every last one of them should be shut down."
"Just a while ago, I saw several people driven into complete desperation."
The middle-aged man beside him sighed. "Tell me about it. That stuff ruins people."
"Shops like the Goth Lottery Shop, and those other two as well, all ought to be sealed!"
"I heard a lawyer from Liyue stepped in. She's a good person."
"No kidding. Those crooked jackpot shops and scam stores were all flying the same sign."
Hearing that, Ryou only shook his head slightly. The next moment, he saw Lumine walking over with a girl beside her.
Lumine raised her voice and shouted, "We have a winner! Glory hit the one-million-Mora prize!"
"What?" a man nearby shouted.
A middle-aged man's eyes went wide. "Someone actually won one million Mora?"
"Glory? I can't believe it's you!"
Ryou noticed that the crowd had been buzzing in shock at first, but the moment they heard Glory's name, the noise dropped noticeably.
An old man let out a long sigh. "That girl really is lucky. If she has that one million Mora, maybe she can finally treat her eyes."
Hearing that, Keqing's heart softened. She looked up at Ryou, deeply moved.
A million Mora was nothing to them. But to hand that much to someone like Glory… that was kindness.
My man really is too good.
Keqing stepped forward and wrapped herself around Ryou's arm, about to say something, when Klee suddenly complained, "Keqing-nee, not so tight. You're squishing me."
Ryou burst out laughing.
"And you're still laughing?" Keqing shot him a glare. She had been genuinely touched, and he had ruined the mood in an instant.
They stepped into the lottery shop.
"Cousin," Xingqiu said as he came over. "Someone just hit the one-million-Mora prize."
"If someone won, then pay it out." Ryou glanced at Yanfei. "Yanfei, you came here under orders with the Knights of Favonius. What exactly are you here to do?"
"I'm here to investigate a few things," Yanfei replied honestly.
After seeing Glory and hearing the discussion around her, Yanfei had already pieced together most of the situation.
That only made it harder for her to bring up what she had come for. The moment she saw Tabibito there, she had more or less guessed what kind of arrangement this was.
She couldn't bring herself to arrest anyone.
Glory's situation was too special. One million Mora meant little to Yanfei, but to that girl, it was a lifeline. If she kept digging, she knew she would eventually uncover something. But if she did that now, she would be the one destroying a girl's hope.
Yanfei looked at Ryou for a long moment. In this matter, she knew she had lost to him.
It wasn't that she couldn't do it.
It was that, as a person, she couldn't.
"The investigation will naturally be handled by the Knights of Favonius," Yanfei said. "But… there's no need to rush."
"This young lady just won one million Mora, didn't she? Let her settle that first."
"Ah… I won one million Mora?" Glory's voice was soft and gentle. "Tabibito, that ticket should really belong to you."
"I know you were trying to help me. But I can't accept that ticket."
"If he found out, he would definitely blame me for it."
Her words silenced the entire shop.
One million Mora was no small amount. Very few people in the world could refuse a sum like that.
Yanfei looked at Glory and said nothing.
She knew Glory was a good girl. And with what Glory had just said, Yanfei could have used Tabibito as leverage if she wanted to.
After all, that ticket had been given to Glory by Tabibito, and Tabibito had already won a thousand Mora earlier. There was obviously something suspicious there.
But Yanfei understood very clearly that she couldn't do that.
"This… a million…" Itto started to say something, then stopped.
For a moment, the entire shop fell completely silent.
"Cousin," Xingqiu said, looking at Ryou.
Ryou gave him a small nod and stepped forward.
"I'm the owner of this lottery shop. The ticket was brought to our shop, so naturally the prize will be honored."
"You've all seen it yourselves. Yanfei and the Knights of Favonius are standing right here, so of course the Mora will be paid."
"I know Glory feels uneasy about accepting one million Mora, and I understand that."
"You're a lot like my wife. Beautiful, smart, and kind."
Keqing's face instantly turned red. Hearing those words in front of everyone filled her with a strange sense of pride and happiness, and she could only stare at Ryou in silence.
Ryou went on, "Glory, if you don't want to accept it as prize money, then let me count it as your treatment fee."
"Let me heal your eyes. What do you think?"
"M-My eyes?" Glory's voice trembled.
A long moment passed before she finally said, "I can tell you must love your wife very much."
"Because there's someone I love too, and I believe he would do the same for me. But… thank you all the same. The Mora doesn't belong to me, so I can't take it."
That answer caught even Ryou off guard. He hadn't expected Glory to refuse again.
"Ryou-nii, help Glory-nee," Klee said, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"So it's Klee." Glory gently shook her head. "I want to earn the Mora with my own hands. Maybe it'll take a long time."
"But I believe I can do it."
"Maybe by then, he'll have returned to Mondstadt with the Grand Master."
"Thank you, and thank Tabibito too. And Klee as well." Though she couldn't see anyone, her voice was still gentle. "Tabibito, could you walk me home?"
Lumine hesitated.
Ryou looked at Glory and said, "Glory, you're a good girl. There probably aren't many people in this world with a heart like yours."
"And don't forget—Mondstadt is a land sheltered by freedom. I believe the Anemo Archon blesses every person of Mondstadt with the wind."
"I'm sure you'll be able to see the light very soon."
"Thank you." Glory gave him a small nod.
Lumine smiled and shot Ryou a look. At the same time, Yanfei turned and left.
Ryou watched everyone go, then looked down at the ticket in his hand for a while before speaking.
"The one-million-Mora grand prize has been drawn, but Glory refused to accept it."
"So I'll hand this prize over to the Knights of Favonius and ask them to pass it on to people who truly need it."
Applause instantly broke out all around the shop.
Ryou continued, "Now that the one-million-Mora grand prize has been drawn, ticket sales will stop here."
"In three months, we'll relaunch the lottery in a completely new form."
"The new tickets will be entirely different from this round, and the grand prize will be three million Mora. The price of each ticket, however, will still remain one hundred Mora."
Once everything had been explained, Ryou let the Knights of Favonius carry out their investigation.
As expected, they found nothing at all.
Yanfei gave Ryou a long, meaningful look, but said nothing more before leaving with her people. The Goth lottery shops still needed to be dealt with, so she couldn't stay long.
Since the lottery was no longer being sold today, the crowd gradually dispersed as well.
Ryou and the others stayed on the second floor, where he poured tea for everyone.
"Xingqiu, give us the sales report," Ryou said.
"Alright." Xingqiu nodded.
"I had the people downstairs finish the count just now. As of today, we've sold an even total of seven hundred thousand tickets."
"Total revenue came to seventy million Mora. After expenses, the net profit is sitting at around fifteen million."
"So far, the only major payouts have been the one-million-Mora prize and the five-hundred-thousand-Mora prize. Even the three-hundred-thousand-Mora prize still hasn't been claimed yet."
Xingqiu went through the numbers one by one. "After all the various operating costs are deducted, I estimate the real pure profit should be around thirteen million Mora."
Everyone stared at him in shock.
In just a few days, they had already made seventeen million Mora.
And the pure profit alone was around thirteen million.
That rate of profit was downright terrifying.
[End of chapter]
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