The Little Fortune God and the Wonton Lady

The steam from my wonton pot rose into the chilly night air, blurring the neon lights of the bar across the street. I was just an ordinary street vendor, a “nobody” in the bustling city of Shanghai, until the night my world flickered like a glitching television.

As a woman in heavy makeup and gaudy clothes dragged a small child past my stall, translucent lines of text—”Bullet Comments”—began to scroll across my vision.

“Look at this supporting female lead. To make the male lead regret, she’s actually abandoning her son.”

“Let her. The kid grows up to be a dark, twisted villain anyway.”

“True. Even with a net worth of a trillion, doesn’t he end up committing suicide over a girl in the end?”

My heart skipped a beat. A trillion? I looked at the “little flour ball” standing obediently by the stool. His amber eyes were clear, his face chubby and innocent. The woman ordered a bowl, but before it was served, her phone rang. She glanced at the child with cold indifference and vanished into the shadows, leaving him behind.

“Trillion-dollar baby,” I whispered, my heart softening as I placed a steaming bowl of shrimp and pork wontons before him. “Do I look like your mother, little one? Careful, it’s hot.”

The boy looked at me, his tiny mouth twitching. “You’re pretty. Du likes you.”

Villain? No. This was an angel.

“Then… try calling me ‘Mama’?” I asked, half-joking, half-hopeful.

“Ma!” he chirped. My heart melted instantly, but the screen in my eyes went wild.

“Who is this woman? So thick-skinned! Du is the only son of Shanghai’s Crown Prince. Calling a wonton seller ‘Mom’?”

Crown Prince of Shanghai? Well, I had just stepped into a very big pond.

As the city lights dimmed and the streets emptied, the boy—Du—fell asleep against my shoulder. I packed up my stall, strapped him to my back, and began my journey from “nobody” to “billionaire protector.”

The Bullet Comments informed me that Du’s grandfather, desperate for his heir, had thrown ten solid gold model cars—each weighing ten kilograms—into the Zhongyi Canal in a fit of rage over the boy’s disappearance.

“Ten kilograms of gold… ten times?” I didn’t hesitate. I traded my meager savings for a whale-sized fishing net and spent half the night waist-deep in the freezing canal.

“WTF? This extra is a legend. How does she know about the gold?”

“Look at her wonton cart—the wheels are turning into ovals from the weight!”

“Forty million yuan right there. She hit the jackpot.”

By 4:00 AM, the gold was hidden in my shack. The next day, I sold one car for 45 million. I took Du to buy candied haws. When he asked if he’d ever be hungry again, my heart broke. His biological mother had starved him to keep him “obedient.”

I hugged him tight. “From now on, you eat whatever you want. We are a team.”

For months, we lived a double life. By day, we sold wontons—Du in a fluffy rabbit suit, charming every customer. By night, I followed the Bullet Comments to “harvest” discarded treasures from the main characters’ drama. When the female lead, Sun Ruoruo, threw away a crate of limited-edition designer bags and jewelry during a fight with the male lead, Xie Wenyuan, I was there in the bushes, dodging mosquitoes to claim the prize.

“Rename her the ‘Queen of Scavenging.’ Everything falls into her lap!”

With 50 million in the bank, I moved us to a high-end apartment in the capital, changed Du’s name to To Me Lac (meaning “Abundance and Joy”), and enrolled him in an elite school. I told him, “Mê Lạc, you must study hard. Don’t end up like your auntie, who has no culture and has to sell wontons.”

The comments laughed: “She doesn’t know he’s an IQ genius. He’ll finish high school by age ten!”

The peace shattered during Mê Lạc’s second week of school. I was called to the principal’s office. Mê Lạc had fought a boy named Xie Xiaolei—the son of the male lead.

“You’re just a bastard with no father!” Xiaolei sneered in the office.

Before Mê Lạc could move, I stepped forward and gave Xiaolei a resounding series of smacks to the backside. Then, the door swung open. Xie Wenyuan walked in. He froze, staring at Mê Lạc—a mirror image of himself.

“Who are you? What is your relation to Wang Jiao?” he demanded.

I played the role of a grieving, poor relative perfectly. “I’m her cousin. She’s broke and dumped the boy on me. Your son called him a bastard—isn’t he insulting you too?” I fake-sobbed. Mê Lạc, seeing my “distress,” cried even harder.

I walked away with a 500-million-yuan “mental damages” check.

But the world of the elite is small. At a high-end restaurant, we ran into Sun Ruoruo. She insulted Mê Lạc, calling him a “beggar thief” for taking a chocolate. The tension spiked when the grandfather, Old Man Xie, appeared.

He didn’t take Mê Lạc away. Instead, he summoned me to his mansion. Ten gold cars sat on his shelf. I thought I was going to jail. I fell to my knees, hugging his legs, wailing about my “80-year-old mother” and the “10-year-old child.”

The old man laughed. “To Tieu Mach, I’ve watched you. You didn’t buy a mansion and abandon him. You worked. You protected him. I want you to be his official nanny. I’ll pay you 300,000 a month.”

I was in. I was the bridge between the “villain” and his rightful inheritance, but I kept him in our small home, grounded and loved.

Years passed. Mê Lạc grew into a brilliant young man, sweeping academic awards and launching a biotech lab that earned billions before he even graduated. He wasn’t the “villain” anymore; he was a titan.

The “Originals” fell apart. Wang Jiao tried to reclaim him for money; I chased her off. Xie Wenyuan tried to “recruit” him after his own company began to fail; Mê Lạc threatened to crash his stocks in ten seconds if he ever touched me again.

“He’s not your son,” Mê Lạc told Xie Wenyuan through a security camera. “I have only one parent.”

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Mê Lạc and I returned to my old village. The grass was high, the air cold, but we stood there—the “Nobody” and the “Villain”—now the masters of our own fate.

I looked at the young man standing 1.9 meters tall, the “Trillion-dollar baby” who now took care of me. The Bullet Comments had long since stopped mocking me. They were silent, watching a story they no longer recognized.

I whispered to my younger self, the girl who once starved in the cold: “Tô Tiểu Mạch, the seeds you gathered have finally turned into a golden harvest.”

Mê Lạc squeezed my hand. “Let’s go home, Mom. I’ve made wontons.”

The cycle was broken. The villain was a hero, and the extra was the lead.