Black Card

Black Card is an urban supernatural web novel by Xiao Seliang, uploaded to Qidian on December 12, 2016 and completed in November 2017, totaling roughly 3.268 million characters across 1,437 main chapters. The story begins on a dispirited night for Shi Lei, a senior at Wudong University: after a failed job interview, he is nearly struck by a speeding Porsche and in the process witnesses the death of the previous Black Card holder and is chosen as the new cardholder. The black bank card bears the words "Slave Development Bank," and the signature strip on the back holds six digits that look like a password; bound to the card is a consciousness calling itself the Scepter. The card's rules are simple and ruthless: a certain credit limit is issued each week, and the holder must spend it all within a set time or face punishment; the limit multiplies as the level rises. After failing his first task, Shi Lei is shaved bald; from then on, spending cautiously yet extravagantly, he works out through practice all the restrictions on what counts as consumption and what counts as spending enough, and gradually climbs the ladder of authority. Accompanying the rules of wealth are family and power entanglements involving Wei Xingyue, Song Miaomiao, Sun Yiyi, and others, as well as struggles with mysterious organizations such as the Eye of the Night. The work takes spending money—an unconventional pleasure point—as its entry, turning money into a mandatory survival contract, and between street-level wealth contests and surreal premises it portrays an ordinary young man pushed by wealth to grow and finally to make peace with the rules.