Chapter 021: The Fatal Nine of Spades

Chapter 021: The Fatal Nine of Spades

The odds this time were far too favorable to pass up. Shen Guangjun, a man with a gambler’s heart to begin with, decided to take the bet. Wu Chen hadn’t even looked at his hole card—there was no way, Shen Guangjun told himself, that anyone’s luck could run that absurdly high.

Impossible. Unreasonable. Unscientific.

Shen Guangjun hurried out, Bao Wei trailing after him, to transfer funds for more chips. Crown Entertainment extended no credit—if Shen Guangjun wanted chips, the money had to move on the spot. For a boss of his standing, of course, no transfer limit applied.

And if he won, the chips could be cashed out the moment he left the club. On that front, Li Ruotai’s reputation was spotless. Rules were rules, fixed and unbending.

Everyone in the private room waited for him to return.

The cards on the table had already been covered and sealed for the time being. Sealing the cards was part of the rules, even with both sides watching closely.

Wu Chen leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. Then, tilting his head, he murmured something to Li Ruobing.

Confusion flickered across her face. She stared at him, not quite following.

“Go get it. Don’t make a scene—it’ll come in handy. Just play along,” Wu Chen said softly, smiling.

“Stop bossing me around,” Li Ruobing shot back, but she rose and left anyway.

She returned within minutes, settling back beside him. Half a minute later, Shen Guangjun reappeared too, carrying a small tray stacked with twenty five-million-yuan chips.

He’d come prepared to challenge the house with an expert this time, a war chest of a hundred and fifty million yuan in total—money he’d scraped together with real effort, much of it borrowed. Fortunately, his expert hadn’t let him down. After the first thirty-million buy-in, he’d never needed to exchange more.

So this hundred million, at least, he could still produce.

Twenty million remained in his account.

Shen Guangjun handed the hundred million in chips to Yao Bin.

Wu Chen pushed every chip on his side forward, then gestured toward Bao Wei, who’d just returned with Shen Guangjun.

With several earlier rounds of betting already on the table, Yao Bin’s final all-in came to eighty million—ninety million once the earlier chips were counted in.

Wu Chen called it, matching the eighty million; with his own earlier bets folded in, his side came to ninety million as well.

Then he raised another hundred million on top. In total: one hundred ninety million.

Except he didn’t actually have that much—only a hundred fifty million. Luckily, the hundred million Bao Wei had brought over earlier had never truly left the room. Though Wu Chen had told him to take it away, Bao Wei had simply set the small box down on a table in the corner.

He fetched it again now.

Wu Chen pulled forty million from the box, tossed it down, and pushed his whole stack toward the center.

“Calling your all-in, and as agreed, raising another hundred million,” Wu Chen said. “One hand settles it. Let’s go.”

“Fine. I call.” Yao Bin pushed his own stack forward, then picked up his hole card and rose to his feet. He adjusted his glasses, smiling. “Young man, you should know—the worst thing in gambling is impatience. Win or lose, if you can’t master your own state of mind, you won’t get far.”

Wu Chen watched him lecture on, smiling.

It seemed Yao Bin had been holding this in for far too long.

True enough—ever since Wu Chen had bluffed him on the eleventh hand, the pressure had been building. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t beat the man. Small wins, big losses—the two-hundred-million cushion he’d built early on had been bleeding away, hand by hand. Of course it had worn on him.

Losing to some famous, seasoned master would have stung less.

But losing to Wu Chen—some nobody kid—that was humiliating.

Now, finally, came his moment to let it all out.

“Truthfully, your talent runs high, but you’ve got every flaw young players…