2: Chapter 2: 100,000 Yuan Startup Capital Through Online Loans! Discovering the [Longevity] Entry!

On the commercial street, people came and went.

Lin Zhe stood in place for a full ten minutes, looking over the entries of every passerby around him.

The system hadn't lied to him; everyone had tags on them.

[Severe Depression], [Single Dog], [Workplace Veteran], [Congenital Heart Disease].

They were all sorts of things.

He tried asking the system in his mind.

"How are these entries priced?"

[It is up to the host to negotiate with the target. As long as both parties are willing, one yuan is fine, and one hundred million is also fine.]

Now Lin Zhe understood completely.

Information asymmetry!

This was a business based on naked information asymmetry!

In this world, no one else could see these entries except for him.

Some people were gifted but buried on assembly lines their whole lives.

Some people were worth billions but could only wait for death on a hospital bed.

If he could sell unneeded talents to those who desperately needed them; sell the lifespan of the poor to dying tycoons...

Lin Zhe's Adam's apple bobbed.

He touched the phone in his pocket; the hundred-something yuan in his account clearly couldn't fund any business.

He had to get a startup fund first.

Looking for a job was out of the question.

Borrow money? It would be good enough if his relatives and friends didn't come to him to borrow money.

Lin Zhe walked over to a bench by the side of the street and sat down. He swiped open his phone screen, went straight to the app store, and searched for "loan".

There was no time to hesitate.

He was a programmer with three years of work experience. His social security and housing provident fund had always been paid at the highest tier, and his credit card had never been overdue.

This was the only credit asset he had left.

Filling out information, facial recognition authentication, linking his bank card.

No hesitation at all.

Within ten minutes, the approval results from three platforms popped up simultaneously.

"Jieba loan disbursement: 40,000 yuan."

"Weili Loan disbursement: 30,000 yuan."

"Jingxi Black Strip loan disbursement: 30,000 yuan."

The three sums of money rounded out to exactly one hundred thousand yuan, sitting securely in his savings account.

Looking at the six-digit balance displayed on his phone, Lin Zhe took a deep breath.

If it were yesterday, saddled with this one hundred thousand yuan high-interest online loan, he would have been too anxious to sleep all night.

But now, this was just the lever for him to pry open a new world.

He had the money; next was to find a suitable "commodity".

Lin Zhe stood up and scanned his surroundings.

This was the Heartland Plaza in the city center, lined with luxury stores. Young men and women came and went, and desires were infinitely magnified here.

To find someone willing to engage in such an absurd transaction, he had to look for those who were backed into a corner and desperately craved money.

He walked over a hundred meters along the outer ring of the mall and stopped by a fountain.

A boy wearing an ordinary T-shirt was sitting on the steps, pulling at his hair while on the phone.

The boy's voice was loud, carrying irrepressible anxiety.

"Xiaoya, twenty-four thousand is really too much. My monthly living expenses are only two thousand, and I've already spent next month's in advance..."

"Can we not buy that bag? I'll get you a different gift, take you out for a big meal?"

A sharp female voice came from the other end of the phone.

Even without the speakerphone on, Lin Zhe could hear it clearly.

"Chen Yu! If you aren't even willing to buy me a bag, how can you talk about loving me?"

"Jiajia's boyfriend bought her a Chanel. I only asked you to buy an entry-level LV, and you're making excuse after excuse!"

"If you can't afford it, don't bother me. Don't contact me ever again!"

A beep-beep sound followed.

Chen Yu stared blankly at the darkened phone screen, his eyes red.

Lin Zhe scrutinized this boy named Chen Yu.

A few tags appeared above his head.

[Simp], [Severe Internal Conflict], [Desperately Needs Money].

As well as the last entry, which was shimmering with a faint light.

[Longevity (lifespan is longer than ordinary people)].

Lin Zhe's eyes lit up.

Ordinary people might not have much of a concept of "Longevity," thinking that as long as they don't get sick, they can live on forever.

But in Lin Zhe's eyes, this [Longevity] entry was a gold mine.

An ordinary college student, healthy, energetic, capable of living into his eighties.

Yet right now, for a twenty-thousand-yuan bag, his dignity was being trampled into the dirt.

Between twenty thousand yuan now and several decades of lifespan in the future, for Chen Yu, which was more important?

Lin Zhe didn't rush to strike up a conversation; instead, he took half a step back and posed a question in his mind.

"System, if I buy his Longevity entry, what will happen to him?"

This question was crucial.

If he paid the money and the moment the entry was stripped away, this college student collapsed by the fountain and died, that would be a huge problem.

The system's mechanical voice rang out immediately.

[Replying to host, stripping the Longevity entry will not cause immediate death. After the target loses the Longevity attribute, their base lifespan will return to the human average. There are no other physiological side effects.]

Lin Zhe let out a complete sigh of relief.

In other words, this kid might have been a long-lived person capable of reaching ninety or one hundred years old, but after having the entry extracted, he could only live to seventy or eighty.

Seventy or eighty years old—for young people nowadays, that's a figure with absolutely no real sense of reality.

Lin Zhe took out his phone and looked at the one hundred thousand yuan that had just arrived in his account.

This amount of money wouldn't even make a splash in a first-tier city like Jiangcheng, but it was enough to deal with a college student backed into a corner.

He walked over and sat down on the steps, half a meter away from Chen Yu.

Chen Yu was irritably pulling at his hair, his phone with a black screen tossed at his feet, muttering curses.

"Twenty-four thousand for a bag, is she sick... where the hell am I supposed to get twenty-four thousand!"

Lin Zhe turned his head, his tone calm.

"Short on money?"

Chen Yu turned his head sharply, scrutinizing Lin Zhe with vigilance.

"Who are you?"

Lin Zhe pointed at the phone by his feet.

"Twenty-four thousand for an entry-level LV bag; your girlfriend was quite loud on the phone just now."

Chen Yu's face instantly flushed red; he grabbed his phone and stuffed it into his pocket.

"None of your business! Eavesdropping on other people's phone calls—are you a psycho!"

After saying that, he stood up and was about to leave.

"I don't have twenty-four thousand." Lin Zhe leaned back on the steps, slowly spitting out the words, "But I can give you fifty thousand."

Chen Yu's footsteps came to a dead halt.

He turned around, his brows knitted into a knot, looking Lin Zhe up and down.

Lin Zhe was wearing an old plaid shirt, and his jeans were washed white; he didn't look like a rich person no matter how you looked at him.

"Are you sick or something?" Chen Yu sneered, "Fifty thousand? You're giving it to me? Even scammers are more professional than you. This pickup routine of yours is too low-level. What do you want to scam me out of? Campus loans or kidney harvesting?"

Lin Zhe didn't refute him; he opened his mobile banking interface and turned the screen directly toward Chen Yu.

Available balance: 100,135.20.

The mockery on Chen Yu's face froze, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

For a college student whose monthly living expenses were only two thousand yuan, this six-digit figure placed right before his eyes was more effective than any big principle.

"You... what do you mean?" Chen Yu's voice was much smaller.

Lin Zhe withdrew his phone.

"I said it, I'll give you fifty thousand. To buy something from you."

Chen Yu stepped back, his hands subconsciously covering his stomach.

"I'm not selling my organs! And I won't take out nude loans!"