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 possible. So he’d gambled on the riskier path.

What he hadn’t understood was that every bit of his high-level sleight of hand and technique lay before Wu Chen’s eyes as plainly as one is one and two is two—nothing about it could hide.

Yao Bin lay curled on his side now, right hand clamped around his own wrist, face bone-white, shaking uncontrollably.

He was losing blood far too fast.

Without treatment, he’d bleed out within minutes.

“Ordinarily, given the amount on the table today, house rules would call for more than a single hand—both hands, both feet, at minimum. But you were only playing on someone else’s behalf. Not the principal here. I won’t push it further than this.”

Wu Chen stopped wiping his collar, tossed the bloodied tissue aside, slid one hand into his pocket, and turned toward Shen Guangjun, who stood trembling against the wall by the door.

Shen Guangjun’s face had gone paper-white.

White with fear.

It hadn’t been his hand under the blade. But Yao Bin had been his hire, playing on his behalf—and cheating like this left no way for Shen Guangjun to wash his hands clean of it.

“So, Boss Shen. What do you say?” Wu Chen asked, offering him a smile.

An ordinary smile, out of habit. To Shen Guangjun, it looked like something out of a nightmare.

“I—this has nothing to do with me! I never told him to cheat! It has nothing to do with me, it was his own idea, I didn’t know a thing!” Shen Guangjun, drenched in sweat, babbled the words out in a panic—then dropped straight to his knees.

“Young Master Li, Young Master Li, you know the kind of man I am. Old Shen loves to gamble, sure, but I’ve never once cheated. This truly has nothing to do with me!”

He clutched at Li Ruotai’s trouser leg, voice climbing toward outright begging.

He didn’t dare plead with Wu Chen at all—right now, the man frightened him far more than Li Ruotai did. He’d said he’d take a hand, and he’d taken it, and afterward his face hadn’t so much as flickered.

“Deal with it.” Wu Chen gestured vaguely at the room and said to Li Ruotai, “I’m heading out.”

He turned for the door. Passing behind Li Ruotai, he leaned in and murmured, “Don’t touch Shen Guangjun inside the club. Let him take the man and go.”

Li Ruotai gave a small nod.

He couldn’t say why he’d grown so obedient toward this “brother-in-law” so quickly. Didn’t matter. He listened.

Wu Chen and Li Ruobing left the Nine-Five Supreme Room, her bodyguards trailing out behind them.

On the way to the elevator, she looped her arm through his again, easy as breathing, the men falling in step behind.

“Did it feel satisfying, cutting off a man’s hand?” she asked softly.

“Didn’t feel like anything,” Wu Chen said, glancing at her with a smile.

“Nothing at all?” Something subtle shifted in her expression—the look she gave him growing subtler still, tinged with a peculiar curiosity.

She felt, in that moment, as though she’d stumbled onto one of the world’s great unsolved mysteries.

Because she could not make sense of it. He called himself an information broker—fine, she could believe that for now, given how much he seemed to know. But he also knew gambling arts well enough to defeat a top expert. Had he trained? And he said cutting off a man’s hand felt like nothing, with such total calm…

Instinct told Li Ruobing that Wu Chen had killed before.

A woman’s instincts were usually right.

In truth, every strange thing about him—the almost prophetic intelligence, the unshakable calm, the hidden skills, even the ruthlessness—all of it traced back to a single root cause.

Wu Chen was too young.

A man barely into his twenties had no business carrying this much lived experience.

“It wasn’t my hand getting cut off. Why would I feel anything?” he said, smiling again as they stepped into the elevator.

…

Back on the eleventh floor, they skipped the room where Li Ruotai had met with Crooked Zhao and the others earlier, heading instead into a large suite.

Spacious, but decorated with understated elegance.

Judging by the framed photographs on the coffee table and the artistic photos on the walls, this had to be Li Ruotai’s private suite.

“Your brother’s got decent taste. A Cui Ruzhuo lotus painting—interesting.” Wu Chen paused by a lotus painting near the entryway, studying it with a smile.

“Taste, my ass. He’s just playing at refinement for whatever important clients he drags through here. What would he know about any of this?” Li Ruobing, unmistakably his sister through and through.

“You know art too? Studied painting?” she asked, turning to him.

“A little. Just a little,” Wu Chen said, modest, then gestured at the wall. “It’s a fake, by the way. The real one should be sitting with a collector in Hong Kong right now.”

He wandered deeper into the room, casually taking in the living space.

Understated elegance, yes—but with the hollow feel of a show home.

Just as Li Ruobing had said: it was meant for entertaining important clients, decorated with real care, but not actually used.

Near the window stood a Steinway piano. If Li Ruotai actually knew how to play it, that would be a miracle in itself.

Pure decoration.

“I’ve already sent a bodyguard for fresh clothes—they’ll be here soon. Want something to drink first?” Li Ruobing asked, walking toward the wine cabinet.

“Dom Pérignon P2, 2000 vintage. Thanks,” Wu Chen said, offhand.

She’d just opened the cabinet door when she turned back, brow faintly furrowed, a trace of surprise coloring her smile.

Because he’d named her favorite champagne exactly.

Li Ruobing wasn’t used to waiting on anyone. But after everything Wu Chen had pulled off today, pouring him a glass felt like nothing at all.

Call it a reward.

While she poured, Wu Chen sat down at the piano, lifted the fallboard, let his hand drift once across the keys—then began to play.

Gentle, lovely music drifted into the room.