Chapter 81: A Little Gambling Lifts the Spirits; Heavy Gambling Hurts the Body

Chapter 81: A Little Gambling Lifts the Spirits; Heavy Gambling Hurts the Body

Picking up from the previous chapter, the woman looked me over for a while and said, “Are you looking to make money, or are you looking to pick up girls?”

I said, “Forget the girls. What ways are there to make money?”

The woman said, “In my opinion, a little gambling lifts the spirits; heavy gambling hurts the body. I’d advise you to play a few small rounds first. Want me to keep you company?”

I said, “Here? Fine. How do you want to gamble?”

The woman said, “Let me guess how much money you have. If I guess right, you give me a little. If I guess wrong, I give you a little. How about it?”

I said, “All right. Then guess how many points I have.”

The woman began using same-frequency sensing to search my brain. I immediately disguised myself as someone who only had five hundred points. After sensing for a while, the woman said, “Around five hundred points, with a margin of error under ten points. Am I right?”

I said, “That little bit of skill won’t do. Wrong. Pay up.”

The woman said, “How much? I have to verify it.”

I showed her one thousand points. I did not want her to see the portion above one thousand.

After she looked, she smiled and said, “Who would have thought a little place like ours would get a rich man walking in? Anyone with one thousand points is either rich or noble. Research funding is only twenty points a year. Where did you get so much money?”

I smiled. “Won it. Won it in the virtual world.”

The woman said, “Impossible. Even the virtual world can’t make that much money. Since you’re this rich, why don’t I introduce you to a place? What do you think? Though gambling on fights and boxing might be a little much for someone your age. You’d have a higher chance of getting hurt. Betting on other people’s wins and losses is no fun when you’re this rich. Why not gamble on force of consciousness? The rules are simple, and the money comes fast.”

I asked, “How do you gamble on force of consciousness? I’ve never played.”

The woman said, “That’s easy. It doesn’t hurt anyone either. People of the same rank gamble against each other, or several people of the same rank enter a group bet. Winner takes all.”

I said, “There won’t be any tricks, right?”

The woman said, “Everything’s out in the open, with everyone watching. It’s not Ghostdark City in the virtual world, with demons dancing all over the place.”

I thought about it, then said, “Fine.”

At that moment, I really did feel a little bored, and I wanted to make some money to spend. Along the way, I could take a look at how people at the bottom of the real Elite World lived.

The woman turned and made a gesture toward the people inside. Immediately, two big men came over. After the woman exchanged a few words with them through consciousness, the two big men led me through the back door of the bar and into an alley.

I felt as if I had walked into a den of crooks and wanted to back out and not gamble anymore. But the two big men, one in front and one behind, boxed me in with fierce expressions and would not let me turn back. I used same-frequency sensing on them. They were nothing more than street punks.

The Elite World had this kind of thing too?

Forget it. If they wanted me to go, I would go.

Was I supposed to be afraid of people like this?

We left the alley and came to the entrance of a high-rise building. The two men did not take me through the main entrance, but instead went to a small side door. From the outside, the small door did not look like much, but only after walking in did I realize that it led to the basement of the building.

And when I entered the building’s basement with the two men, I discovered that the basement was actually a huge hall.

There were many square zones inside the hall, and each square zone had its own gambling event. Some had gambling tables, some played cards, some had arenas, and in others, a group of people sat cross-legged on the floor with an intelligent cat in the middle serving as referee. They were probably gambling on force of consciousness.

At that moment, a manager in charge came over. After understanding why I had come, he tested my force of consciousness with a Spirit-Measuring Instrument. Startled, he said, “Rank ten? We don’t get many rank tens here. Most are small fry from rank one to rank five. If you’re willing, do you dare gamble one round with our boss? Starting at one hundred points.”

I said, “Fine. But I’m only strong rank nine, not rank ten. If we’re gambling one-on-one, I agree that you can arrange someone at rank ten, but not above rank ten. Otherwise, that’s cheating.”

The manager in charge whispered a few words to a chip runner beside him, and the chip runner ran off.

Before long, a plump man walked over and introduced himself as the boss.

As soon as the man arrived, he clasped his hands to me and said, “Brother, are you new here? I haven’t seen you before.”

I said, “Does it matter whether you’ve seen me before? It’s not as if elite people can’t change their appearance.”

The fat man said, “That’s true. Fine. The Spirit-Measuring Instrument just showed that you’re rank ten, so we can only count you as rank ten. Of course, for fairness, I’ll use the same Spirit-Measuring Instrument and let you watch me test as well. I’ll arrange another rank ten for you. How does that sound?”

I felt there might be something fishy behind this. For example, the Spirit-Measuring Instrument could be secretly calibrated. Also, the rank of the person gambling against me could be disguised. At least I could do that. For example, I could suppress myself to rank six and let you see that.

Perhaps skilled people really were bold. I still rather wanted to see how they planned to cheat, so I agreed.

The fat man dropped heavily into one of the square zones and said, “I happen to be rank ten. The Spirit-Measuring Instrument shows it. You can see for yourself. Now, shall we gamble on a direct clash, or on moving objects?”

I was worried they would rig the object-moving contest, which would be no fun. So I said, “Direct clash. That’s faster. I prefer settling everything in one round.”

The fat man said, “Good. Straightforward! I like straightforward people. Since it’s one round, let’s go straight to one thousand points. How about it?”

I immediately understood. That bionic woman must have already exchanged information with the casino boss. Very likely, she was someone the casino had sent outside. Her guiding me into a small gamble had merely been to see how much money I had. Once they knew I had one thousand points, they immediately notified the boss. That was why the boss had opened with a one-thousand-point wager.

But was I afraid of that?

So I said, “Fine. Then one thousand points.”

The chip runner immediately exchanged one thousand points’ worth of chips for each of us.

A wager of one thousand points counted as rather lavish in this little casino. It was roughly equivalent to one million Hua coins in the Mundane World. Especially when everything would be settled in a single round, it was even more exciting to gamblers with a heavy gambling streak. Some people had also come specifically to watch a rank-ten match. After all, rank-ten people rarely came to casinos for matches. Wherever a rank ten went, they counted as a major figure. People like that generally looked down on places like this.

So the moment the two of us started gambling, we immediately drew a large crowd of gamblers, who gathered around and began placing bets on the outcome of the match.

With same-frequency sensing, I discovered that this fat man’s force of consciousness was actually rank eleven. Although the Spirit-Measuring Instrument displayed rank ten, the instrument had probably been tampered with.

Forget it. This little difference really was not much to me.

However, most of the regulars among the gamblers knew the fat man’s true strength, so almost all of them bet on him to win. Only people with one or two measly points bet on me.

The rules were also very simple. Neither side could use martial techniques. We could only attack each other with force of consciousness. Whoever left the square was out.

The moment I sat down, the fat man, showing no martial virtue whatsoever, suddenly launched a full-force attack with his force of consciousness.

A force-of-consciousness attack was not like a martial technique, which everyone could see. Force of consciousness was invisible. Besides, the two of us were still separated by some distance. So the fat man was obviously trying to strike first, using a sneak attack while I was not paying attention. In any case, apart from the people directly involved, the onlookers could not see it.

His opening force, right from the start, reached King Qinguang’s final full-force level.

I did not choose to clash head-on with him, even though I could have resisted it. Instead, I used the same move I had used against King Qinguang, diverting the force of consciousness from his sudden attack into a vortex.

This was something he had not anticipated at all. In his judgment, this kind of crooked, off-angle method had no effect on victory or defeat. He could not hit me, but I could not hit him either.

I did not rush. Calmly and unhurriedly, I spun the vortex faster and faster, until many of the surrounding objects were pulled into it and began flying up with it.

The audience was a little baffled by my flashy stunt.

What had originally been a static contest of force of consciousness had suddenly been turned by me into something like martial techniques. The momentum of this vortex was huge, shocking almost everyone watching, and it drew even more people over.

After all, they rarely saw a match at this level. Matches in many other areas even stopped because of it, and people all ran over to watch.

I did not care.

I wanted to play him until he was tired, then give him one strike.

I spun that vortex faster and faster. The force of consciousness belonging to both of us no longer needed to be projected; it was directly pulled along by the powerful vortex.

To outsiders, this vortex might have looked as if it had been set in motion by the fat man. After all, the fat man had poured the most force of consciousness into it.

But the fat man himself knew the pain of it and had no way to say so. He understood that if this continued, he would fall into my trap. So he tried to control the speed of the vortex.

But how could I possibly give him that chance? I easily spun the vortex faster and faster, making it so that no matter how much force of consciousness he put in, it could only be sucked into the vortex.

The fat man understood that he was certain to lose. After all, a person’s force of consciousness was limited. He could tell I was not using too much strength. If this kept going, he would soon exhaust his force of consciousness.

Suddenly, he took out a golden compass, activated it, then tossed it into the air. Immediately, countless streams of force of consciousness were drawn toward him.

So that was it. He had started borrowing external force. This clearly was no longer a one-on-one match. It had become one person against many people.

No wonder this fat boss had made the wager so big from the start. He had never intended to lose. His trump card, as it turned out, was the ability to borrow other people’s force of consciousness.

I immediately motioned for the manager in charge to come over and pointed out that the other side was cheating. He was using a tool to absorb force of consciousness from many people outside the match and pour it into the contest. This was a duel, not one person against a crowd.

Some of the higher-rank people nearby had also seen the problem and began discussing it cautiously. But since it had nothing to do with them, no one stood up to say anything.

The manager in charge loudly declared, “The casino rules clearly state that in matches at rank ten and above, any tool may be used. Borrowing other people’s force of consciousness is also a display of force-of-consciousness ability.”

The gamblers watching immediately burst into waves of boos. Clearly, the casino had never had such a rule before.

It seemed they had adopted this shameless method specifically against me, the newcomer.

In that case, I had no need to be polite either.

I happened to want to test the power of my fourth green jade token.

So I took out the fourth green jade token and placed it on top of my main chip. I pressed it lightly.

Hum—

An incomparably powerful force of consciousness rapidly absorbed all the force of consciousness inside the vortex I had created, gathering it into a huge air bomb that suddenly exploded, blasting everyone present—including the fat man—several dozen meters away.

Apart from me, who remained sitting steadily in the middle of the casino, everyone was knocked outward in all directions by this move of mine. A clear space roughly fifty meters in radius had been emptied out around me.

Only after a long while did the fat man crawl back to his feet. He stared at the green jade token in my hand and shouted in terror, “You, you, you—you’re actually one of the Shadow Pavilion’s people!”

I flicked my clothes, stood up, and said, “You were the ones who said matches at rank ten and above could use any tool. I didn’t borrow anyone else’s force of consciousness. What, are you not convinced?”

Blood flowed from the fat man’s mouth, his head was covered in sweat, and he kept nodding. “Convinced. Convinced. I’m convinced.”

As he spoke, he signaled for the manager in charge to settle the account.

After the account was settled, I collected the money.

Only then did I look at the uneasy eyes of the people around us and say, “Let me make one thing clear. I am not from the Shadow Pavilion. I’m just an idle customer drinking at a bar. They were the ones who dragged me here. I have not broken the rules here. If they aren’t convinced, or if any one of you isn’t convinced, I can fight again.”

No one said anything. Even the fat boss looked as if he could not wait to send me, this plague god, away as fast as possible.

The moment the green jade token came out, the whole situation changed immediately.

It seemed this fat boss still had some knowledge.

Just when I thought I could smoothly earn the money and leave, a familiar voice came over.

“I’m not convinced! Gu Beichen. Do you dare gamble one round with me?”

I looked up and saw a woman slowly walking in through the small door.

Damn it. Why was she here?

Pu Liuqian!