The Undefeated Gambling God -1
The Fighting Dog, Tang Do-gyeong, had always been the one picking the fights. He was a mad dog who lived for combat, and no one in their right mind wanted friction with a man who carried the Tang Family's colossal backing. Born of a clan that repaid every grudge tenfold, and gifted with martial skill so exceptional it left little room for argument, Tang Do-gyeong had walked through life without ever once being the target of a challenge.
"Heh heh. This body will personally discipline you with its arts of deception."
Always the provocateur, never the provoked — Tang Do-gyeong felt the world tilt.
He drew a deep breath, steadied his mind, and turned his head away.
Yeo Il-ye, the very reason he had come to Sichuan, stood right in front of him. She was an opponent he had wanted to fight for a long time, though the chance had never come. And now, rumor had it she had recently gained enlightenment and risen in realm?
With a rival like that before him, he could not spare a glance for some small fry.
That was what he believed — until Ho Cheon-an opened his mouth.
"You're scared."
Tang Do-gyeong's head snapped around as if he had been slapped across the face.
"So you truly wish to die."
The reason he was called the Fighting Dog was not merely that he picked fights with anyone. From childhood he had challenged masters of higher realms without hesitation, and even when those challenges left his limbs broken and his internals wrecked, he had never once retreated. That was how he earned the moniker.
It was his pride — and the wellspring of everything he did now.
A street-wandering nangin who lives by cheap tricks dares look at Tang Do-gyeong and call him scared?
A fury so fierce it momentarily erased even Yeo Il-ye from his mind surged up inside him.
"You two as well. How dare you raise a ruckus in this sacred hour when Lord Jeon-gwi's power is being revealed. It seems I must show you the unfathomable might of Lord Jeon-gwi."
"You think I'll dance on a board laid by the likes of you?"
Tang Do-gyeong snarled and strode toward Ho Cheon-an — then stopped cold.
A Silver Favor Token!
His eyes narrowed on the Jeomchang Silver Favor Token, the name Yeo Il-ye engraved upon it in clear relief.
"...Is that genuine?"
Yeo Il-ye nodded without a word. Greed flooded the rage still coloring Tang Do-gyeong's eyes. With that token alone, he could demand a fair one-on-one duel!
"This body is a vessel that channels Lord Jeon-gwi's power. Come, then — will you try to see through Lord Jeon-gwi's might?"
Ho Cheon-an drew out wooden cups, slipped the Silver Favor Token inside one, and began to shake them. A savage smile spread across Tang Do-gyeong's face. So the best this man could offer was a shell game — yabawi.
Training the eyes was essential for anyone who practiced the dark arts of hidden weapons, where projectiles too small to track with ordinary sight flew by the dozen. Every martial artist tempered their vision, but the Tang Clan's eye-training methods — built around mastery of hidden weapons — could claim to be the finest under heaven.
He was certain he could see straight through the sleight of some fellow who looked, at best, Second-rate or First-rate.
"I hear you carry that famous Blood Jade Tablet. Stake it. The rest of you as well."
Yeo Il-ye and Black Cat were equally thrown by the sudden turn.
"What are you hesitating for? The winner takes every treasure on the table. What you do with those treasures — how you use them to command the losers — is entirely up to you, is it not?"
"Heh. Yes... yes, that's right."
All at once the board felt, to Tang Do-gyeong, like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If he could claim that female nangin's treasure, a duel with her would become possible. And if he claimed whatever Yeo Il-ye put up, he would earn yet another duel with her!
He could thrash this insolent swindler and multiply his duels at the same time!
Without hesitation Tang Do-gyeong snatched up the blanket spread across the table and flung it aside. He had half expected something hidden underneath, but the table was a simple affair — a thin board on legs — with nothing concealed below.
Bang!
Having cut off every avenue of trickery, Tang Do-gyeong slammed his Blood Jade Tablet down onto the table.
"What on earth is going on..."
Black Cat studied Ho Cheon-an. She could never quite tell what her senior was thinking, and the confident smile visible beneath his black bamboo hat was somehow irritating.
Not a bad scheme, though.
Yeo Il-ye, Ho Cheon-an, and Black Cat all shared the same private wish to shake Tang Do-gyeong off. If the four of them played yabawi, an unspoken three-against-one would form.
Being drawn into Ho Cheon-an's designs left a sour taste, but she had no clever counter of her own. She admitted there was nothing to do but ride the current.
Black Cat sighed and untied her face veil. Because she constantly circulated Shadow Image Qi Gong, the black veil had never been seen — and the luster it shed was, to any eye, far from ordinary.
"It's woven from the whiskers of a thousand-year imugi."
"A treasure, then."
Tang Do-gyeong accepted Black Cat's stake. Every gaze swung to Yeo Il-ye. Her original purpose had been to extract Ho Cheon-an safely. She had meant only to prevent friction with the masters of the Golden Family — and what was the result?
Ho Cheon-an and Tang Do-gyeong stood locked in open confrontation.
By stepping forward carelessly she had nearly repaid kindness with enmity. To make amends, she had no choice but to follow Ho Cheon-an's proposal.
"Haa."
Yeo Il-ye exhaled. She had come to the Golden Family without even the sword she usually wore. Aside from the coin pouch at her breast, she carried nothing.
"I don't have it with me here, but I will stake my cherished sword, Sau. It is a blade mixed with some cold iron — of lesser grade than what you two have offered — but it is all I have to put forward."
"Heh heh. Makes no difference to me."
"Same here. A sword is a martial artist's life. That is more than enough."
"...Objecting alone would be meaningless, I suppose."
"Heh heh. Good. If more than one of you chooses the same cup, the first hand to touch it takes priority. You three win by finding the Silver Favor Token. My victory is deceiving all three of you so that none of you finds it. Lord Jeon-gwi's mercy for foolish commoners ends with this round — remember that."
The three nodded their assent, and Ho Cheon-an beckoned the crowd closer.
The atmosphere had turned strangely peaceful, and the onlookers drifted in to witness a grand shell game with no fewer than four treasures on the line.
Ho Cheon-an slipped the Silver Favor Token into a wooden cup and began to shuffle the four cups with dazzling speed.
...This bastard. He had every right to be confident.
A chill ran down Tang Do-gyeong's spine. Having mastered both the Tang Family's secret eye techniques and every method of tempering mental force, he had believed this was a match he could not possibly lose the moment Ho Cheon-an started the yabawi.
He had pushed his mental force and vision to their absolute limits. A man hovering between First-rate and Second-rate could not possibly fool his eyes — or so he had been certain.
But the gap between Ho Cheon-an's technique and Tang Do-gyeong's vision was vanishingly thin.
Truly a single hair's breadth. Nothing more. The wooden cups whirled in brilliant motion, and between them Yeo Il-ye's Silver Favor Token moved and moved again.
Had his mental force and eye technique been even slightly weaker, he would have lost it completely. The movement was that subtle.
Is he nervous?
Yeo Il-ye, too, had pushed her mental force and vision to the extreme. Was it because she was watching from so close — or a difference in technical mastery? Unlike the bone-tile sleight Ho Cheon-an had displayed before, this was not so perfect that even the traces vanished.
Black Cat's and Yeo Il-ye's faces darkened a shade. If the token was only barely visible even to their eyes, then Tang Do-gyeong was surely tracking its path without fail.
Ho Cheon-an's yabawi stood a high chance of ending in failure.
That was what they were thinking when it happened.
Ho Cheon-an abruptly stopped the shell game and flung the Silver Favor Token high into the sky.
Whoosh!
"Ah..!"
Watching Yeo Il-ye's Silver Favor Token soar upward, Black Cat understood. In the stretched time of her mind — expanded by mental force pushed to its limit — she let out a soft sound of admiration.
This was a speed contest from the start.
Watching Ho Cheon-an hold two cups in each hand, ready to snatch the token down at the instant his hands crossed, Black Cat grasped his intent.
She had been far too naive, fixating on the shell game itself.
Even with eye techniques that could fairly be called the finest under heaven, there was no way he would try to win against Tang Do-gyeong of the Tang Family on pure deception alone.
If he caught Yeo Il-ye's Silver Favor Token while holding the cups open for all to see, who could possibly miss where it went?
In the end, the first hand to touch a cup would win.
While Black Cat reached that conclusion in her expanded mental time, Yeo Il-ye and Tang Do-gyeong thought the same.
The cups flipped. The instant Ho Cheon-an's hands left them, three hands shot out with absolute certainty.
Black Cat had judged the board slightly unfavorable, but she still felt it was winnable. She was up against Tang Do-gyeong, a master of hidden-weapon arts, and Yeo Il-ye of the Jeomchang Sect, a school renowned for its swift sword — yet the match was still within reach.
Because Ho Cheon-an had placed the Silver Favor Token in the cup her position could reach fastest among the four.
Her hands might be a touch slower, but the geometry favored her completely.
I touched it!
A thrilling current ran through Black Cat. Even with Ho Cheon-an's help, she had beaten the Fighting Dog Tang Do-gyeong and Yeo Il-ye — her hand had reached a cup first.
I won!
Black Cat, Tang Do-gyeong, and Yeo Il-ye all thought so at the same instant.
And then each discovered that the other two had reached for entirely different cups.
"...It seems the two young ladies have chosen poorly."
"...This cup is the correct one."
"Ha..."
They had been cleanly deceived by Ho Cheon-an. He's on our side and he fooled me too? Thinking that, Black Cat flipped her cup. It was empty. Yeo Il-ye, murmuring in admiration, lifted hers as well. To think she had believed she saw that divine technique with her own eyes — from that very moment, she had already been thoroughly taken in.
Gulp.
Tang Do-gyeong slowly raised his own cup.
Nothing.
He had watched it get sucked unmistakably into that cup. He had stretched out his hand faster than anyone. And still the Silver Favor Token was not there.
Then where was it?
Tang Do-gyeong's gaze slid sideways.
One cup remained covered.
He swept his hand and sent it flying.
Only then did the Silver Favor Token, marked with the name Yeo Il-ye, reveal itself to the world.
What Ho Cheon-an had used in his performance of deception was, at bottom, only an application of gambling technique. The principles might be the same, but it was an undeniable fact that gambling technique existed solely to be optimized for gambling.
Four treasures staked as wealth.
Victory conditions fixed, and every participant in agreement.
In that instant, Ho Cheon-an's yabawi ceased to be a conjuring show and became gambling.
Ho Cheon-an. The man who had perfected every gambling art in Murim Cheonha — who could even fool the scales of Heaven itself.
To call him invincible might be too much; somewhere across this vast land of the Nine Provinces, a peer who had likewise perfected every technique might yet exist.
But in gambling alone, no one could surpass him.
He was the undefeated man.