Shuwan was still lying on her bed, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. She stared at her cracked phone screen. The glow from the messaging app seemed to shine through the shattered glass, illuminating her bruised face.
Messages in the group chat titled “The Gods and Good Fortune” kept pouring in like a waterfall, making her phone vibrate nonstop in her hand.
Erlang Shen: “What kind of group is this? Who dared add me without permission?! What god or spirit would dare do this!”
Chang'e: “Same here. I was calmly feeding my rabbit in the garden when I suddenly got a notification saying I’d been added to this group.”
Erlang Shen: “Confess right now! Who’s the admin?! If no one confesses before I count to three, I’ll send the Heavenly Hound to track every one of you down! And when it catches you, it’ll bite your butts clean off!”
Shuwan furrowed her brow deeply.
“What kind of ridiculous group is this? Are they a bunch of lunatics pretending to be gods? Or maybe a cosplay community that’s gotten way too deep into their roles?” she thought sarcastically.
Her life was already a complete mess.
And now she had to deal with weirdos on the internet too.
Caishen: “Whoa, whoa, calm down, Erlang Shen! Relax, relax... I’m the admin. Hehehe. Don’t be so aggressive. I only created this group as a place for the gods to gather and share stickers so we wouldn’t get bored in Heaven.”
Rabbit God: “Yeah, my sticker collection has been running low lately. Honestly, I was so startled just now that I almost dropped my carrot.”
Sun Wukong: “You’re all making such a fuss! All you do is argue. Especially you, Erlang. All you’ve ever done is threaten people with your dog. Hahaha! Stiff three-eyed god!”
Shuwan could only shake her head as she watched the ridiculous argument.
She was about to leave the group, but her thumb froze when she saw the next message.
Kitchen God: “Honestly, I’m not happy about being added to this group. It’s disrupting my concentration while I cook. Unless... the admin gives me a red envelope as compensation.”
Caishen: “Whoa, you want a red envelope too?”
Chang'e: “He’s right. Where’s our red envelope? You can’t just add us to a group without a proper welcome gift. What do you think, @Erlang Shen? There should be a red envelope, right?”
Erlang Shen: “Of course! I want a big red envelope! If there isn’t one, I’ll leave this group right now and destroy this app’s server!”
Caishen: “Hey, wait! Don’t get mad! All right, all right... I’ll send the red envelopes now. Just wait a moment. I’m preparing them!”
Shuwan snorted softly.
A mocking smile formed on her lips, which were still sore from her mother’s slap earlier.
“He’s really going to send a red envelope through a chat app? It’s probably just digital money, or maybe a fake empty envelope. These people are seriously crazy,” Shuwan muttered.
But before she could finish speaking, the small wooden table beside her bed suddenly began to glow.
A soft yet dazzling golden light appeared out of nowhere, enveloping the surface of the little table.
Shuwan flinched and immediately sat upright in shock.
She sat stiffly, eyes wide, staring at something that had suddenly appeared physically on the table.
A red envelope—a red envelope—with an elaborate golden dragon pattern.
“This... really appeared?” Her voice trembled. “Am I dreaming?”
With trembling hands, Shuwan slapped her own cheek.
Smack!
“Ow... that hurt!”
She grimaced, but a moment later, a wide smile spread across her face.
“So I’m not dreaming. This is real!”
Carefully, she picked up the red envelope.
The paper felt incredibly smooth and high-quality, cool to the touch, and carried the scent of a flower she had never smelled before.
When she opened it, her heart nearly stopped.
Inside was a fifty-yuan bill.
Shuwan immediately examined the money carefully.
She held it up to the dim light in the room and ran her fingers over its surface.
Everything looked genuine—the watermark and security thread were both there.
“Oh my God... I must have gone crazy... or maybe the world’s gone crazy,” she muttered in disbelief.
The money had appeared out of thin air after the group admin said he would send a red envelope.
Suddenly, her phone rang again.
A private message notification appeared on the screen.
Shuwan opened it at once.
This time, the message was from Rabbit God.
Rabbit God: “God... do you have any cute carrot stickers? I really want to collect them. I’ll trade you a photo of the Moon Goddess bathing. Interested?”
Shuwan stared blankly.
“A carrot sticker?”
The offer sounded completely absurd.
But after seeing the red envelope, she no longer dared dismiss everything as a joke.
Shuwan: “Um... I don’t have one right now. But if you can wait a moment, I can make one for you.”
Rabbit God: “Really?! Wow, please make the cutest one in the entire universe!”
To prove whether all of this was actually real, Shuwan decided to test it.
She quickly opened a search engine and looked for a cartoon carrot with a cute smiling face and large, sparkling eyes.
Then she used a sticker-making app to turn it into a chat sticker.
Shuwan: (Sends a dancing carrot sticker) “How is it? Is this what you wanted?”
Rabbit God: “WOW, THAT’S SO CUTE! Thank you, kind-hearted god! As promised, wait a moment. I’ll send a photo of the Moon Goddess now.”
Shuwan held her breath.
A short while later, an image file appeared in her private messages.
When she opened it, her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
On her cracked phone screen was a woman whose beauty seemed impossible on Earth.
The woman—believed to be the Moon Goddess—was bathing in a small heavenly lake.
The water emitted a soft glow, while her smooth, pale back was faintly visible behind the thin mist drifting through the air.
Shuwan gasped and hurriedly turned off her phone screen, afraid her mother might suddenly enter the room.
“She really sent it...” she muttered, her face flushing.
But suspicion soon returned to her mind.
“But... what if this is just an illegal group sharing pornographic photos or videos while hiding behind the names of gods? There are plenty of syndicates like that these days,” she thought skeptically.
But then her gaze fell once more on the fifty-yuan bill still in her hand.
The money had appeared through supernatural means.
No ordinary criminal group could make a physical object appear instantly from a phone screen.
Shuwan lay back down on her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling as her thoughts spun into chaos.
The pain in her stomach from Bo’s kick was still there, but now something far greater occupied her mind.
“Tomorrow... I have to find out the truth for myself at school,” she murmured. “Is this group really filled with gods who can bring me good fortune... or is all of this just a beautiful dream in the middle of my miserable life?”
That night, for the first time in a very long while, Shuwan fell asleep clutching a tiny glimmer of hope.
Beneath her pillow lay a very real red envelope.