And so Zhao Yao got home, ordered Matcha to watch the house, went on to settle his visa and booked his plane tickets to Macau. As Zhao Yao had once went on a holiday to Macau, he managed to get his visa and plane tickets within a day and boarded the plane that very night.
9pm on the same day, Zhao Yao's plane arrived in Macau. Leaving the airport, the night view in Macau made Zhao Yao nervous as he let out a sigh.
With the time freeze power, gambling should be the best platform to earn big bucks and in the whole of China, there was nowhere safer than Macau to do this. In this extravagant city, many lost their entire fortunes while others brought home millions or even billions of RMB.
The most important thing was Macau's worldwide reputation, where Zhao Yao could win money without fearing for his life.
"Successful or not, we shall see."
Taking a bus from the airport, Zhao Yao arrived directly at the Grand Lisboa Casino- Macau's biggest casino hotel. The Grand Lisboa painted extravagance with its compelling atmosphere, design, facilities and tip-top services.
Just as he walked into the casino's main hall, he was greeted by the sight of a sea of people, and there were gambling tables everywhere.
Hope, madness, pain, disappointment as well as riches all in one place gave the casino its deadly charisma.
In Macau, all casinos exchanged chips for HKD currency.
Coming from a humble background, Zhao Yao had to be extremely frugal to pay for his university tuition fees. He even had to work odd jobs for extra cash.
Thinking about all the odd jobs he had done, from distributing flyers, serving as a cashier, working at drinks stalls and convenience stalls, Zhao Yao could not help but feel emotional.
After four years of doing odd jobs plus one year of full time work, Zhao Yao painstakingly saved up some money.
But in the blink of an eye, Zhao Yao's hard earned money had turned into casino chips, each worth a hundred thousand HKD.
If he were to lose those chips, his years of efforts would have gone down the drain.
The thought of that made Zhao Yao very careful not to bet on the very first table he saw, but instead, he walked around the whole casino once to observe.
The casino's main hall was where the regular gamblers played, with Baccarat as the main game. Shoutings and cheerings could be heard now and then.
Watching as chips worth a few thousand HKD each exchanged hands, the money on each and every table amounted to a few times, no, tens of times, no maybe even hundreds of times his monthly pay. Zhao Yao had a conflicting feeling about the worth of money as the thought of his accumulated pay over ten years might very well be someone else's win or loss that night.
But this was all in the past. With his time freeze power, Zhao Yao felt like everything would be going his way in the casino.
In a moment's silence, Zhao Yao casually flipped over the card on the table, revealing a 2 of clubs, before putting it back.
When time resumed again, no one noticed what he had done.
"Once I have more money, I can consider playing baccarat."
Zhao Yao approached a roulette table. The table was not crowded, with only 4-5 people at it; their eyes focused on the roulette wheel as a small white ball made of ivory bounced and rolled.
The so-called 'roulette game' took place on a large wheel consisting of many small squares. When the wheel was spinning, a ball would be rolled along the wheel, which eventually would land in one of the small squares.
The objective of the game was to predict what color or number the ball would eventually end up. You could be adventurous and predict both the number and color.
Betting on a single number gave the highest odds of 1 to 35, which meant that winning would earn you 35 times your bet, and this was what Zhao Yao had in mind.
As the ball started to slow down, Zhao Yao walked to the position closest to the wheel and froze the time.
He grabbed the ivory ball immediately and gave it a push, before retracting his hand back to its original position.
As soon as time resumed, Zhao Yao had already returned to his original position and actions, and the people around him were too excited to notice what had just happened.
The ball, after Zhao Yao's push, bounced a few more times before landing into the square number 12.
A few men and women simultaneously let out cheers and sigh- of course, there were wins and losses, but the wins were merely those combinations with higher chances of winning but lower returns, generally twice or thrice the bet amount.
An enormous amount of luck was required to win the bet on a singular number.
Seeing that the ball had landed in square numbered 12, Zhao Yao frowned as he wanted the ball to land in the square numbered 15 but failed.
"The bounce of the ball was more than expected."
Zhao Yao decided not to bet but just stood beside the roulette wheel and watched as the dealer rolled the ball each time. When the ball was going to stop, he would interfere.