Chapter 023: You Know Art Too?

Chapter 023: You Know Art Too?

While the rest of the room was still reeling from the discovery that Yao Bin had cheated, Wu Chen gave no warning at all. In one swift motion he’d hauled the man to the table’s edge and brought the blade down.

The knife was the one Li Ruobing had just stepped out to borrow from a bodyguard.

Wu Chen had asked her to fetch it right after the cards were sealed.

At the time, she’d had no idea what he wanted it for. If he’d truly meant to pull something dangerous, she was armed herself—why a knife, of all things?

She’d bristled at being “ordered around,” but had fetched it anyway.

Now, finally, she understood. Now she knew exactly what the knife had been for.

Cheat, and lose a hand—a rule recognized the world over, whether on a cruise ship in international waters or in an underground casino.

Yao Bin only felt himself yanked hard off balance, stumbling, nearly falling—and then the pain hit, searing and absolute.

“Ahh! My hand! Aaahhh!” His scream sent a jolt through everyone in the room.

But it didn’t last. Past a certain threshold, pain went numb, and the body simply shut down in shock.

Wu Chen had truly done it.

Yao Bin’s left hand was gone from his body for good.

A few droplets of blood spattered across Wu Chen’s clothes. A trace landed on his face as well.

Clang.

He tossed the bloodied knife onto the table without ceremony, holding both hands slightly raised as he glanced down at himself—his blue suit and white shirt speckled with blood, a bit more on his hands and face.

“Anyone have tissues?” he asked, perfectly calm, gesturing around the room. His composure was almost unnerving—as if the man who’d just severed someone’s hand hadn’t been him at all.

The calmer he seemed, the more frightening it became.

It wasn’t for show.

He was simply used to it.

Somewhere in the long thousand-year loop, he’d once spent a stretch of time passing the hours by studying gambling techniques with obsessive focus.

He’d drifted through every underground casino in Donghai, big and small, clashing with people along the way—once chased through a dozen streets past midnight by dozens of armed men, and once turning the tables to chase a crowd himself, blade in hand, through streets just as many.

With no consequences to weigh, everything eventually resetting anyway, Wu Chen had lived that stretch of time utterly without restraint, chasing thrills for their own sake.

What hadn’t he seen, by now?

This was nothing.

Li Ruobing pulled tissues from her bag and handed them over first. A step or two away, Bao Wei had already reached for a tissue box, only to quietly set it back down once he saw the Eldest Miss had beaten him to it.

Wu Chen wiped his face, then his hands, then dabbed at the blood spots on his suit.

Li Ruobing turned and murmured a few quiet words to the bodyguard behind her.

“You really had no need to cheat at all. You couldn’t have beaten me regardless. Breaking the rules like that—either don’t, or if you do, don’t get caught. Get caught once, and it’s over for you.”

From the thirty-fifth hand through the thirty-eighth—four rounds total—Yao Bin had stolen the ace of spades but never once used it.

Card manipulation only worked if it matched what was already in hand, so after lifting the card, he’d simply been waiting for his moment.

Wu Chen could picture the man’s state of mind well enough.

Yao Bin hadn’t come into Crown Entertainment planning to cheat.

Not until he’d run into Wu Chen.

Right before the thirty-fifth hand, he’d happened to have exactly a hundred million left.

Overall, he was still ahead—but the game had slipped from his control entirely, the lead bleeding away, hand after hand, and he couldn’t stop it.

Shen Guangjun had paid him handsomely, and he’d made promises in turn—not only to win back the three hundred million lost here before, but to win more besides. That much had been guaranteed.

He’d realized, eventually, that beating Wu Chen honestly simply wasn’t…