Becoming the Richest Man Alive

He did not hear anything from the man anymore. Perhaps, the man had already returned to the starting point, which was too far
away for Eugene to hear.
Thankfully I only need a small jump to get over this.
Eugene exhaled slowly. Thinking about the man encouraging and supporting him from behind made his heart fill with courage.
Bending down on his calves, he leaped and managed to land on the balcony, which was the endpoint.
“I’m coming now!”
At that point, Eugene’s face was teary. As his calves released all the tension from the high anxiety state abruptly, they started to
cramp.
Clenching his teeth and bearing the pain, Eugene stood up. It was the first time he realized that there were still good souls in this
world. He had made up his mind to use the twenty million that he had just won to clear that poor man’s debt. He also intended to
give another million for him to start afresh, thinking that the man could quit gambling for his son’s sake since he could already
overcome his fear of death for his son.
Eugene looked toward the mansion opposite, wanting to tell that man the great news.
However, no matter where he looked, whether it was on the iron bridge or the balcony, he could not see anyone.
What? Did he leave already? Eugene was confused. Suddenly, a huge shadow loomed over his heart as a thought flashed
through his mind. Did he fall off...
He quickly refuted his thought. Impossible. If he fell, he would have screamed. Even if I were as focused as possible, I would
have heard at least the echoes between these two mansions.
In the past, he had seen someone jump off a seven-story building after becoming bankrupt from gambling. That person started
screaming shortly after jumping off. The firemen providing assistance at the scene also said that every single person they had
seen jumping off buildings regretted it right after doing so and would scream throughout until they made contact with the ground.
Sometimes, because the building was too tall, people at the bottom would only hear a splat without the screaming.
The organizers walked up to the balcony. They seemed somewhat unhappy at Eugene’s victory.
“Congratulations on being the only person who took on the challenge and survived.”

Eugene frowned. “The only person? Where did that man just now go to?” This time, he suspected that he was hallucinating.
Perhaps, that person was just an illusion of his own fear.
While Eugene’s mind was preoccupied with this, he was dragged away by those people.
These foreign mafias are really so cruel in their tactics. They simply view human lives so lightly. Casper was secretly terrified.
Eugene said, “The people you’ve offended this time are involved in underground businesses; some of them are foreign mafias.
Their countries do not have bans on firearms, so these people are accustomed to violence and immoral acts.”
“That’s nothing to be scared of. Whether we’re in Chanaea or not, I am not afraid of these aliens.” Casper was not worried at all.
Instead, he was more interested in Eugene’s story at the moment. He wondered whether that man really existed or was just an
illusion. In the end, he was convinced it was the latter. He asked Eugene, “So, what’s the ending of your story?”
Eugene grabbed a stick of cigarette in his hand but did not put it in his mouth. “I got the twenty million and went to search for that
man. I didn’t believe that he was just an imagination and needed to find him.”
Therefore, Eugene went to one of the mafia bosses from the organizing party. Since the latter had placed a bet on him and won
a lot of money, he treated Eugene rather nicely. Eugene wanted to know the plight of that man whose name he did not know.
When he told the boss his intention, the latter waved and said, “You don’t have to find. Other than you, everyone else fell off to
their deaths.”
Eugene was shocked. The boss tossed him a tape that contained the recording of the iron bridge challenge between the
balconies. The whole process was recorded, so Eugene would know the truth after watching it. He carried the tape in his hands
as though it was an important and heavy shrine. His heart felt inexplicably heavy.
It turned out that reality was always more surprising than one’s imagination.
The poor man did exist in the recording and was not a result of Eugene’s imagination. In the recording, he kept encouraging
Eugene to walk to the finishing line while he attempted to return to the starting point.
However, the distance of over ten meters was so great for him that he would never be able to cross it.
One could never know what a height of several hundred meters truly felt like to someone with acrophobia, but to that man, it
definitely was like a gigantic moat.

Eugene could see in the recording clearly that the man’s face and lips had turned pale, and he was very close to entering a state
of shock.
Could it be that he fainted and fell off! Eugene’s heart instantly tensed up. However, the man in the recording did not faint.
Instead, he squatted with his body curled up while both his hands rested on his insulated shoes in an attempt to maintain his
balance. Nonetheless, his body was, in fact, shaking violently due to his intense fear. He was like an exhaust fan.
Meanwhile, Eugene had reached a critical stage in the recording where he was just a few meters away from the finishing line. He
extended both his arms to further stabilize himself and took each step with much care. As he was in a state of high focus, he was
unaware of the condition of the man behind him.
At this point, the man seemed to have given up on advancing. He raised his head and turned to look at Eugene. Even such a
small action nearly made him fall off.
The man watched how Eugene was about to achieve success with a plethora of mixed emotions in his eyes—envy, relief, and
reluctance. His lips started moving, and his voice was very soft, so Eugene could only read his lips to deduce what he was
saying.
“Live on... I’m begging you. You must live on...”
With that, he covered his mouth with both of his hands, stood up, and jumped off the bridge, thus disappearing from the video
into the depths.
Eugene was the only person left on the iron bridge. He was oblivious to the fact that the man had chosen to end his life and
assumed that he was still cheering for him on the other side. That was why Eugene felt energized enough to conquer the last
obstacle.
The recording only showed how the man dropped off the bridge, but Eugene could still imagine how he had covered his mouth
with all his might even when he was tormented by his terror on his journey to his demise. This was all to prevent himself from
making a noise and affecting Eugene.
He figured that was the only way for Eugene to cross the bridge unperturbed and live on.
Casper’s hand trembled slightly while holding onto a wineglass. The ending of the story was somewhat different from what he
had expected.
For once, Eugene’s eyes welled up with tears. Even a defiant and vicious person like him would tear up.

He did not light up the cigarette in his hand for a very long time until he placed it between his lips. Without saying a word, he
quietly sucked on the cigarette till his tears stopped flowing and when the cigarette ash fell off due to its own weight.
“He was such a fool... But he was the first person to defeat me.”
Eugene grabbed a new cigarette and wiped away the two streaks of tears on his face with his hands.
“His courage defeated me. Although he was such a coward and was terrified of heights and for his life, he still got onto the bridge
for his family. That was not what I expected, and that was the first time I lost to him. He was a useless gambler who could barely
protect himself by fighting two wars. Yet, he still could encourage me and help me cross the bridge. That was the second thing
he defeated me. He might be someone without any fame, but he could help a stranger he didn’t know even when death was
imminent. He overcame his natural human instincts with his willpower, and that was the third thing he defeated me in. Hence, I
lost to him thoroughly and utterly because that is something I can never do...”
The bar was silent, as no one made a sound. They were all listening to Eugene recounting his story and were shocked.
Casper turned his wineglass upside down and poured the wine on the floor as a show of respect for the unknown man in
Eugene’s story.
Although that man was not a hero or a great and noble person, he definitely deserved respect from the others the moment he
decided to jump off the bridge.
Perhaps, in the eyes of those gamblers at that time, that man was a wimp for being scared witless after only taking a few steps
and eventually choosing to end his life. However, at the very last moment, he was braver than anyone else.
Something that could not be done by anybody was, ironically, done by a timid person.
Eugene pulled the shirt covering his body. As the air in the morning was rather cool, he walked straight out of the entrance of the
pub and said nothing else.
There was actually a continuation to that story. Basically, Eugene managed to find the man’s son. He was suffering from
leukemia since young. In order to allow him to continue living, the man took on several jobs, sold his blood to the hospital, and
borrowed money from different places. Eventually, he started gambling and could not stop himself. Therefore, he got himself a
tremendous amount of debt. Afterward, he was tricked by someone to take on the metal bridge challenge to fulfill the
participation rate.

Eugene cleared the man’s debts and forked out a huge sum of money to cure the child of his illness. However, as a master of
trickery, he did not want to be burdened by anyone. Thus, he sent the man’s child to a welfare home and sent him some money
every month.
Nevertheless, after fifteen years, the child grew up and went to him. He insisted on learning the latter’s tricks, but Eugene did not
want him to go down the wrong path like him and refused the young man. However, he was extremely stubborn and threatened
to end his life if Eugene refused. As such, the latter had no choice but to relent and break his oath of not accepting any disciple.
Eugene treated this disciple as his own son, but it was precisely him who betrayed Eugene when they were in international
waters, causing the latter’s fingers and a leg to be chopped off by the others.
Eugene chose not to divulge this whole continuation because he felt that he had let that man and his child down by not educating
the latter well and causing him to be engrossed in the fight for fame and fortune. Hence, he was determined to find him again. It
was not out of vengeance or honor but his desire to bring him back on the right track personally.
Casper was not a person without use to him. Eugene had placed a huge bet on Casper as a way to return to his glory days.
“You reap what you sow... Casper, I hope I did not put my faith in you wrongly,” Eugene mumbled and got into the car.