Chapter Four: Whose Luck Did You Steal?

Lin overlaid the timestamps. Every guaranteed success produced a nearby failure of equal probability in the opposite direction. Luck Coin did not create fortune. It assigned failure to a random stranger. At nine, Obsidian launched a global “Luck Index.” Zhou announced that the company would voluntarily bear every cost, then used a coin to guarantee one hundred billion yuan in first-day subscriptions. The number soared. Across the city, alarms lit up in hospitals, airports, and subway stations. Obsidian had named millions of unsuspecting citizens as its risk pool. “Ordinary probability fluctuations,” Zhou told the cameras. Lin seized the broadcast feed and put the accident map on the main screen. “You said the company would bear the cost.