Chapter 340: It Really Arrived!

The number on the cardboard changed.

It changed from 15,000,000,000 to 14,999,800,000.

That line of numbers, made blinding by the beam of white light!

It was exactly two hundred thousand less!

The scene went quiet for about half a second.

Then came a burst of whispering!

That whispering swelled into a buzzing roar within seconds; the sound of two thousand eight hundred people speaking at once overlapped, making the entire theater like a giant iron pot being heated, the Water inside starting to bubble!

The barrage in the live stream was even more intense!

【How was this done?】

【It's two hundred thousand less!】

【Is it real or fake?】

【Isn't this just changing a number? What's the big deal?】

【Yeah, it's just a number on cardboard, not a real bank balance.】

【Isn't that how magicians always play?】

【Wait, did that woman's balance change too just now?】

【She said it was 200,000 more than before.】

【So she got 200,000 more, and Brian got 200,000 less?】

【Just a numbers game.】

【Make the money in the bank account change too if you can!】

The barrage of skepticism surged in like a tide!

Wave after wave.

People who were shocked a second ago were already calmly analyzing it the next.

The audience's speed of thought is very fast—from "Wow" to "Wait" to "Isn't this just," the whole process took no more than five seconds.

At the same time!

The audience at the scene also began to react.

A middle-aged man sitting in the third row turned his head and said to the person next to him: "It's just the number on the cardboard that changed, it's not real money."

His voice wasn't loud, but the five or six people around him all heard it; some nodded, some curled their lips, and some took out their phones to start typing on Twitter.

In the northwest corner of the auditorium, Monica was still standing where she was, clutching the invitation in her hand, the beam of the flashlight drawing irregular circles on the ceiling.

Her heartbeat was fast, so fast she could hear the sound of blood flowing in her ears.

Two hundred thousand!

If this were real, she could replace that Toyota she had been driving for twelve years, buy her son that laptop he had always wanted, pay off all her credit card debt, and still have a large sum left over.

But was it real? She wasn't sure.

Chu Chen on the stage did not move.

He stood in that beam of white light, both hands tucked back into his trouser pockets, the curve of his mouth maintained, like a pattern painted there that would never fade.

He watched the people whispering in the audience, watched the barrage scrolling on the side of the LED screen, and watched the voices of doubt surging in from all directions.

He waited for about five seconds.

Then Monica's phone rang.

It was the notification sound for a text message.

But in an environment where two thousand eight hundred people were talking at once, the barrage was scrolling crazily, and the sound effects of the live stream were rising one after another, that notification sound was almost impossible for anyone to hear.

Only Monica herself heard it!

Because the phone was in her hand, screen facing up, stacked together with the invitation.

She lowered her head.

On the screen was a text message from the bank!

Her bank was Bank of America, an account she had used for nine years and whose balance had never exceeded four digits!

The sender's number for the text was the bank's official short code; she was familiar with that number because she received balance alerts from it every month!

The content every time was "Your account balance is XXX. XX USD," and that number had never exceeded one thousand!

But this time was different.

The content of the text had two lines:

"Your account has received a transfer of 200,000.00 USD. Current balance: 200,580.00 USD."

Monica's eyes widened!

Her lips parted, but she made no sound!

Her hands also began to tremble violently; the phone and the invitation almost slipped from her fingers!

She stared at that line of text for a full three seconds, then suddenly raised her head, held her hand above her head, with the phone screen facing the direction of the stage, the direction of the audience, and the direction of those two thousand eight hundred people who were still doubting.

"I received it!" Her voice was sharp and high-pitched, like a knife cutting through the air of the theater, "The money arrived! It's two hundred thousand! It actually really arrived!"

The people around her were the first to react.

A middle-aged woman sitting to her left leaned over to look at her phone screen, and then that woman also let out a scream!

A young man sitting behind her stood up, stretched his neck to look toward her phone, shouting "Let me see, let me see."

In less than ten seconds, that small area in the northwest corner turned into a pot of boiling porridge.

Chu Chen's voice came from the stage, unhurried: "Monica, please hold your phone a little higher, so more people can see."

Monica held her phone above her head.

She stood on her tiptoes, the two lines of text on her phone screen appearing exceptionally bright in the dim light of the theater.

"I received it too."

Just as the crowd was astonished by Monica's balance, a middle-aged white man in the southwest corner also shouted excitedly!

"Twenty-three thousand dollars. I received twenty-three thousand dollars."

A third person looked down.

A fourth person looked down.

The fifth, the tenth, the fiftieth, the hundredth!

Sounds of "Oh my god," "My god," and "Impossible" began to ring out one after another in the audience!

Someone stood up from their seat, ran through the aisle holding their phone, and shouted, "I received four hundred thousand!"

Someone sat dazed in their seat, staring at their phone screen, motionless, like a post struck by lightning.

Someone started to cry!

Someone started to laugh!

The scene quickly descended into chaos!

【Holy crap, what? Did they really receive money?】

【Is this real? Are these people not plants?】

【That woman doesn't look like a plant; she's crying like that.】

【Wait, let me go check my account too—】

【I'm watching the livestream, why hasn't my account changed?】

【You have to be at the scene, right? This is an interactive live magic trick.】

【I'm at the scene! I received three thousand two hundred dollars!】

【I've never seen this kind of magic...】

【This isn't magic, this is sorcery.】

The speed of the bullet comments soared once again to a level the naked eye could not track.

The #ChuChenAtTheMet hashtag on Twitter saw its retweets increase by five hundred thousand in the instant the "balance transfer" was completed!

On Weibo, a blogger verified as a "New York financial practitioner" posted: "I am currently at the Metropolitan Opera House. This guy is really giving money to everyone. It's not a scam, not a hallucination, it's real money. My account has forty-seven thousand dollars more. I've never seen anything like this in my life."

Back to the stage.

Chu Chen stood in that beam of white light, the smile on his face unchanged.

He did not speak, did not make any unnecessary movements, just stood there, looking at the people in the audience who were holding their phones, screaming, crying, and laughing.

His gaze moved from the northwest corner to the center of the audience, from the center to the east aisle, and from the aisle to the corner of the last row.

He was looking at everyone, or rather, he was making everyone feel that he was looking at them.

Brian stood on the right side of the stage, less than three meters away from Chu Chen.

His phone was no longer in his pocket; it was held in his right hand, the screen lit up, the bank app open, and the number in the balance column was changing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

14,999,800,000.

14,999,600,000.

14,999,300,000.

14,998,700,000.

It was not a one-time reduction; it was a continuous, uniform, and unstoppable loss, like sand in an hourglass.

Every second that passed, that number became a little less.

Sometimes it dropped by a few thousand, sometimes by a few tens of thousands, sometimes by a few hundred thousand.

The change in the number had no pattern, like an invisible hand grabbing money from his account in handfuls, then throwing that money toward the audience, toward those people holding their phones, mouths agape, unable to believe their eyes.

The number continued to decrease!

Brian's hand began to tremble.

Not because of fear, but because he was experiencing a feeling he had never felt before—a complete loss of control!

He was a man who controlled hundreds of billions in assets; every one of his decisions would affect the lives of millions and the flow of hundreds of billions in funds!

He was used to control.

But at this moment, he could control nothing.

His money was flowing out of his account, flowing to places he did not know, flowing to people he had never met, and he had no way to stop it.

The speed of the number's decline was still accelerating!

And it was exponential!

At first it was tens of thousands per second, then hundreds of thousands per second, then millions per second.

That line of white numbers jumped rapidly on the screen, like a calculator being frantically pressed to clear, the number on the screen constantly shrinking, shrinking, shrinking!