Chapter 022: Cheat, and You Lose a Hand!

Chapter 022: Cheat, and You Lose a Hand!

Everyone in the room understood the odds: never checking a hole card, then calling an all-in and raising, when only one single card in the deck could win the hand—leaving it purely to chance was next to impossible.

But what Wu Chen said as he rose made something click into place.

A card you already knew you held, and a card you gambled blind on—those were two entirely different things.

Take zhajinhua, for example. Playing blind, throwing money in recklessly, and having it turn out to be three of a kind at the reveal—that was one thing. Looking at your cards first, seeing three of a kind, then throwing money in—that was something else entirely.

The first was luck defying all reason.

The second was good fortune too, but nothing about the play itself was wrong. It wasn’t a gamble on chance at all—it was simply knowing you held a winning hand and pushing hard to maximize it. Perfectly ordinary.

“You… you looked? That’s impossible! When did you even—” Yao Bin’s voice cracked into a shrill shout. The composed, scholarly man had come completely unraveled, eyes bloodshot, stunned senseless by the loss.

“Why do you think I did it—every single hand, from the first to the thirty-eighth, straightening my hole card before deciding whether to look?” Wu Chen said, pushing his chair aside and stepping out from behind the table.

“You old hands at the tables—sure, you’ve got experience. Nothing wrong with relying on it. Where you went wrong was arrogance. Did you really think you could read my whole style off a handful of hands?”

“What if I was putting on a show for you the entire time?”

Yao Bin’s eyes went wide. Wu Chen hadn’t spelled it out fully, but he understood well enough.

That seemingly compulsive habit—straightening his hole card, turning it to face himself—had been deliberate all along.

In the instant his hand turned the card, Wu Chen had already seen what it was.

When it came to gambling, Wu Chen placed no faith in luck whatsoever. Luck existed, sure, but against a true master, its role shrank to almost nothing.

From the very first hand, he’d been reading his hole card the entire time. Sometimes, when he appeared to check it only at the very end, that too was theater—he’d already known long before.

But his technique was too refined. Too fast.

No one could catch it—not even Yao Bin, a top expert from Macau. From where they sat, Wu Chen had simply been straightening a crooked card lying on the table.

Thirty-eight hands running, and he’d done it every single time.

“I figured, if I wasn’t going to cheat outright, and wasn’t going to manufacture my own opening, I’d have to wait for a real chance to finish you off—probably fifty hands, at least. Turns out my luck really was decent today. Took me only thirty-eight.”

As he spoke, Wu Chen had already circled the table and come to stand in front of Yao Bin, Li Ruobing following close behind.

Yao Bin’s eyes were still stretched wide, red-rimmed, his whole body trembling. For a gambler, one big loss wasn’t the terrifying part. How he’d lost it—that was the terrifying part.

“You really thought I believed in luck?” Wu Chen tilted his head, smiling faintly. “You really thought the flaws in my play, the cracks in my composure, were real flaws? That my little habitual movements were genuine habits? Or maybe, since I bluffed you once before, you figured I just liked taking risks, and this was another bluff?”

“And you wanted to take me on as a student? Teach me? Are you even qualified for that? You thought because I’m young, I had to be beneath you?” Wu Chen spared him nothing—every ounce of mockery, every barb.

It had been a trap.

Yao Bin understood now. From the very first hand Wu Chen sat down, he’d been laying it.

Never checking his hole card—fake.

Faith in luck—fake.

Every little habitual tell—fake.

Every reckless, aggressive bluff—fake, all of it groundwork for this one final hand.

Every piece of it, fake.

Yao Bin couldn’t even trace back how he’d walked into the trap step by step. His mind had turned to paste.

Only regret remained.

Regret that he’d called that last hand. Regret that he’d agreed to Wu Chen’s proposal to raise another hundred million each.

He understood now.

Wu Chen hadn’t been lucky.

Not even slightly.

The thirty-eighth hand was simply the one he’d been waiting for—a moment where his cards would eventually outrank Yao Bin’s. The only real question had been how to use it, how to squeeze out maximum value.

He’d spent thirty-seven hands laying the groundwork, then finished Yao Bin in a single stroke.

Even a small hand could win a fortune.

Across all thirty-eight rounds, Wu Chen had never waited for some monster hand—straight flushes, four of a kind, hands that rarely surfaced at all.

A single pair of nines had been enough to take Yao Bin’s hundred and ninety million.

The size of his own hand had never mattered.

Bigger than the other man’s—that was all it took.

And this time, Wu Chen hadn’t only taken Yao Bin’s money. He’d shattered his confidence as a gambler, root and branch.

Truthfully, Wu Chen hadn’t wanted to be quite this merciless. No grudge between them, no old hatred—each man simply served his own interest. But Yao Bin had broken the rules.

Wu Chen stood before him now, Shen Guangjun a single step away.

At that moment, Boss Shen’s face looked worse than if his whole family had died, sweat soaking his forehead. He had no money left, and debts piling up besides.

He’d already lost every scrap of his company’s liquid cash the last time. The war chest he’d brought today had been borrowed, every yuan of it.

Of the hundred fifty million, a hundred thirty was gone. Twenty million remained.

A meaningless twenty million. Even Yao Bin couldn’t touch Wu Chen—Shen Guangjun knew there was no clawing his way back with what little was left.

And that twenty million wouldn’t even cover what he owed.

A company without cash flow was a terrifying thing. Even an empire worth hundreds of billions could collapse overnight.

Let alone Shen Guangjun’s company, worth only in the tens of billions to begin with.

Serious trouble, indeed.

“Boss Shen, I—” Yao Bin turned, stiff and slow, to face him, no longer sure what words remained.

Shen Guangjun had paid a fortune for him. And he’d lost.

Lost badly.

Shen Guangjun’s expression darkened by degrees. He knew he’d been played by Li Ruotai again—but this was Li Ruotai’s territory. He couldn’t lash out here, couldn’t afford to leave behind so much as a harsh word.

He knew Li Ruotai’s days were numbered. But numbered wasn’t the same as over. Not yet.

“We’re leaving. We’ll discuss this back home.” Shen Guangjun’s voice was heavy. Before he turned to go, he shot Wu Chen one last venomous glare.

Yao Bin fell in behind him, moving toward the door.

“Hold on. We’re not finished,” Wu Chen said, eyelids lifting.

Bodyguards moved to block the doorway at once—Li Ruobing’s men.

“What is the meaning of this?” Shen Guangjun, already simmering, erupted. He glared at Wu Chen but shouted at Li Ruotai instead. “Young Master Li! We’ve already lost our money here, and now you won’t even let us leave? How much more do you want to bleed out of me? Is your family really this arrogant?”

Li Ruotai had no idea what was happening either. He turned to Wu Chen.

Why stop them?

Wu Chen said nothing. He closed the distance in a few steps, then suddenly seized Yao Bin’s left forearm. “Don’t move.”

Yao Bin froze for half a second—then thrashed like a rooster with its feathers set alight.

“What are you doing? Let go of me! Let go!”

He couldn’t break free.

Wu Chen gripped his forearm and gave it a hard shake.

A playing card flew loose from Yao Bin’s sleeve.

It landed on the floor, face-up.

The ace of spades.

Every face in the room changed. So did the way they looked at Yao Bin.

“Before the thirty-fifth hand was dealt, you asked to inspect the deck—and used the chance to lift this ace of spades. You’ve had it tucked in your cuff ever since. Did you really think I hadn’t noticed? You think I’m blind? The only reason I didn’t call you out was that I hadn’t finished cleaning you out yet.” Wu Chen held his gaze. “You broke the rules. You know what that costs?”

Terror flooded Yao Bin’s face.

Wu Chen’s right hand stayed clamped on his forearm as he reached back with the other.

Li Ruobing drew a short knife from inside her jacket and passed it to him.

Wu Chen dragged Yao Bin hard against the table’s edge, pinned his left arm flat, raised the blade—

and brought it down.

A wet, splitting sound.

Cheat, and lose a hand.