The Tang Lord Learns to Gamble

"That is correct, Clan Head."

The Tang Clan Head's gaze was anything but friendly, no matter how I looked at it. What was this? Some kind of power play? For intimidation, though, the fury burning in those eyes felt far too raw.

"Pungyeong Unit Captain."

The middle-aged martial artist standing at attention beside the Clan Head swiftly laid out a table. Dice, golpae tiles, wooden cups — all of it familiar to me.

"First, let's play a round."

"You and me, Clan Head?"

Hold on — gambling the moment we meet face to face? And with the head of the Tang Family, no less?

I had entered the Clan Head's hall with my chest puffed out, dreaming of a fat reward. Now, suddenly, a gambling table. The abrupt swerve into a gambling drift left me reeling, unable to get my bearings.

"Indeed! I asked for the finest gambler among the nangin of Sichuan — so I must test whether you are qualified, must I not?"

I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, but there was no reason to refuse a gambling table when the Tang Clan Head was practically shooting fire from his eyes. I sat down and listened to the rest of the transmission.

Tang Do-gyeong got that good at gambling?

I knew that learning capacity skyrocketed during enlightenment, but the idea that he had improved enough to clean out the people of his own clan was astonishing. It was true that I had passed gambling techniques on to him — but I had only demonstrated the movements over and over, without a single word of explanation about the principles.

And what the hell had that brat Tang Do-gyeong been thinking? Did he have no sense at all? He had stripped the Clan Head of his hidden weapons at the gambling table?

"Well then… if I may be so bold, I shall show you a little of my skill."

My thoughts were still a mess, but one thing was clear: this was a place that demanded my full strength. I had already been found out by Tang Do-gyeong when I tried to hide my true ability, so there was no chance it would work on the Clan Head. And the reason I had been summoned to the Tang Family in the first place seemed to be that they wanted someone who gambled even better than Do-gyeong.

I started with a few short rounds of Twin Tiles using the golpae. It was a game much like modern blackjack — two tiles, aiming for a total of twenty-one. Factoring in the hand rankings, it might even have been a hybrid of sutda and blackjack.

In a murim without poker cards, nothing beat Twin Tiles for gauging basic gambling skill.

It was only a handful of rounds, but the Clan Head's gambling ability was sturdier than I had expected. With experience like that, no matter how gifted Tang Do-gyeong was, he shouldn't have been able to clean him out completely.

I had said it before, and I would say it again: even a god of gambling cannot win ten games out of ten. A perfect win rate is not a product of my skill — it only becomes possible when the opponent is terrible.

"Ahem. We hardly have the time for a long game."

Impatient old man. What he meant was that formal gambling was unnecessary — just show him the techniques. I set the golpae down at once.

The game the Clan Head wanted was almost certainly yabawi, so I picked up the cups.

"Four cups. Two dice. Do you agree?"

"Ahem. That seems a touch disadvantageous for you, does it not?"

Not a touch — massively disadvantageous. With two dice, the paths of motion became absurdly complex. In practical terms, the difficulty jumped more than fourfold.

"Haha. Even so, I have some small claim to skill in the gambling arts. This level should be about right."

The Clan Head's brow twitched. Gambling is not all sleight of hand. Against Tang Do-gyeong I had deliberately limited myself to manual technique because I wanted to lose to him — but true gambling skill is structured to orchestrate every critical element of a wager.

Shaking an opponent's concentration is the barest of bare essentials.

I pressed a simple psychological gambit and played on.

Before long, every scrap of the fake money that had sat before the Clan Head was piled on my side of the table.

"Huh…"

Tang Gwang-ryeol, head of the Tang Family, stared at me as if I defied comprehension.

From his position, that was fair enough.

The Clan Head's eye technique was, without question, the finest I had encountered among every martial artist I had ever met. He tracked everything with his eyes — even the parts where I thought, Surely he can't follow this.

A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠conventional gambler would have a hard time fleecing anyone from the Tang Family. The orthodox approach is to work your techniques in the blind spots of perception, in darkness, so quietly that neither rat nor bird notices. The Tang Family's eye arts and pupil techniques are specialized precisely for catching that sort of thing.

But gambling against the Clan Head taught me exactly why Tang Do-gyeong had cleaned out every gambler in the Tang Family, Clan Head included.

These people were no different from the early Tang Do-gyeong!

Martial-arts supremacists to the marrow of their bones!

What good was training pupil techniques and eye arts to the heavens? Even if your eyes captured the world at sixteen-K resolution and three hundred frames per second, an object in a blind spot was still invisible. No matter how superb the eye, it could not escape an optical illusion.

Did stage magic fool people by moving hands so fast the eye couldn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠follow? You could strain your eyes until they bulged — would that make you see it?

The more confidence the Tang people placed in their eye arts and pupil techniques, the more easily they fell for deception. If their eyesight had been poor, they might at least have suspected they had been fooled. Instead, the Tang people carried an ironclad conviction in the "illusion" of having seen something with their own eyes — and that made them the perfect counter to my style of gambling.

They trusted their eyes. Fool the eyes, and it was over.

Whatever gambling techniques Tang Do-gyeong was using were only copies of mine. Even with inferior mastery and weaker psychological play, pure matchup advantage had been enough for him to clean them all out.

"Still not enough?"

Time for the finishing blow. I demonstrated the cup-flip that had once stripped Tang Do-gyeong of his Blood Jade Tablet. This time I performed it one-handed with only two cups — that was the only difference.

I only needed to fool one person, so there was no need for a crowd of cups.

The Clan Head pointed with a trembling hand. The left cup. Of course — to his eyes, the die had gone into the left cup and stayed there when it was turned over.

So he chose the left. But after everything so far, the Clan Head must have known. His eyes had been wrong every time. They would be wrong again.

I gestured, urging him on. The Clan Head squeezed his eyes shut and lifted the cup.

"Huh…!"

Naturally, the cup was empty.

"I have lost."

"I have only shown a trifling parlor trick."

The Clan Head rose as if he had reached some decision and offered a fist-palm salute. I scrambled to my feet and returned it. In wuxia stories, people throw fist-palm salutes at the drop of a hat until the gesture loses all meaning — but in truth, among the courtesies one can display in ordinary life, the fist-palm salute carries the highest weight.

"Master, forgive me for testing you! But the matter is of such gravity that I had no choice but to confirm your skill. Please pardon me!"

A matter of gravity? I found myself staring at the Clan Head before I could stop myself. The old man's eyes were blazing.

Something gambling-related must have happened in the Tang Family. I had assumed it was nothing more than losing a few hidden weapons to Tang Do-gyeong.

Right — even if the Clan Head had been cleaned out by Do-gyeong, summoning me still felt like a strange chain of cause and effect. Getting cleaned out was getting cleaned out. What was calling me supposed to solve?

Naturally, a Clan Head losing to his own junior at gambling was humiliating. But it was hardly enough to call a crisis of state.

Even if Tang Do-gyeong was sitting on a pile of hidden weapons, it was not truly a serious problem. He was a Tang man himself, wasn't he? An outsider like me could not win those weapons back from him through wagers. They only bet secret weapons and poisons among their own people — they would never do it with an outsider.

"Master, will you help me?"

"Haha. And what exactly would you have me do?"

"It is very simple!"

The Clan Head said:

"Teach me how to gamble!"

"…Excuse me?"

For a moment I thought I had misheard. But the flush on Tang Gwang-ryeol's face made it clear I had not.

"Ha… haha. It is rather embarrassing to say aloud."

Watching Tang Gwang-ryeol force a smile snapped me fully awake. I still did not understand the situation, but what was I supposed to do with this atmosphere?

An elder was standing there looking mortified. My flattery instinct — no, my true nature as a functioning member of society — stirred. The situation was a little absurd, but I was standing here with the head of the Tang Family.

The Clan Head of the Tang gate was a figure that Ho Cheon-an, a mere Sichuan nangin, would normally have had to crane his neck to look up at from a vast distance.

As a descendant of the Eastern Land of Propriety, how could I simply watch an elder squirm in embarrassment?

This was precisely the moment to deploy wit and resourcefulness and salvage the mood.

"Hahaha! Don't tell me you wagered a Clan Head's exclusive hidden weapon against Tang Do-gyeong and lost it!"

"…"

"Hahahahahaha!"

Clan Head, this is your cue to laugh. I guffawed with exaggerated heartiness, trying to lighten the air, but…

"…Ha… haha…"

Tang Gwang-ryeol did not laugh at all.

"Wait… you actually did?"

At my question, Tang Gwang-ryeol's eyes slid away. I looked toward the Pungyeong Unit Captain for help — and he, too, carefully averted his gaze.

"Oh…"

Whatever sound left my mouth — a groan, a gasp of awe — once it faded, only a crushing silence remained in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠great hall.

When Tang Gwang-ryeol still could not bring himself to speak, the Pungyeong Unit Captain stepped in.

"His Lordship merely made a small mistake. It had been so long since he last gambled that his blood was up, and the match with Do-gyeong grew rather fierce…"

"Hehehehehe. I see."

A dry laugh escaped me of its own accord, but the situation was one I knew well.

In all the years I had spent coming and going from gambling dens, how many ruined men had I seen? Countless people who, in a single moment of lost reason, paid a brutal price.

That was the demonic nature of gambling.

Of course, that did not mean I could look at Tang Gwang-ryeol the same way as before.

"…I did not stake it deliberately. At the end I simply wanted one big hand to recover my losses, and… among the weapon tokens, a single Clan Head's exclusive piece had gotten mixed in."

Sensing the change in my gaze, Tang Gwang-ryeol launched into a rambling string of excuses. In the end it was the same tired loser's plea: reason clouded, a huge wager placed, a gamble inside a gamble, and a glorious self-immolation on the table.

"Tsk. I understand the situation."

The truth was, this body of Ho Cheon-an harbored a small private pride.

Namely: I had always worked so that other people could enjoy gambling in a healthy way.

First of all, I was a specialist in rescuing gamblers who were about to lose everything and throw themselves into the Yangtze. They were going to walk out stripped of every coin they had brought anyway. Better to lose it to the desperate — at least it felt like a kind of charity.

Most severe gambling addicts would take disaster-relief money from my hand and march straight back to the dens to offer up more wealth. But there were also those who, grateful for one last stroke of luck, recovered their reason.

And that was not all I did.

On days when no high-level gambler was around for me to grind skill against, I would grab people who were about to slip clumsily into gambling and personally instruct them.

I would toy with them for an entire session with dazzling technique, drive home how dangerous gambling truly was, and then — at the very end — lose to them. The other party would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠walk away with a false enlightenment: that gambling was not about skill alone, that luck mattered enormously.

Show them real gambling ability, then let them watch even a gambler like that lose money, and most people woke from gambling's fantasy and faced reality.

Through that process, some friends lost their confidence at the tables and returned to society. Others learned their place and went on to small-stakes play as a healthy hobby.

The satisfaction of saving a household head with a bear of a wife and raccoon-like children!

My own small chivalry, played out on the gambling floor.

It had been a long time since I met a subject who made my blood run hot.

"Healthy gambling!"

"…Hey, nangin?"

Tang Gwang-ryeol — a severe case who had lost his reason at the table and even staked a Clan Head's exclusive hidden weapon! What he lacked was not merely gambling technique! It was his attitude toward gambling! His mental posture at the table! His failure to recognize the danger!

"Clan Head, your head is rotten from the roots! Healthy gambling is the path to a healthy household! Prepare yourself! I will reform you down to the marrow of your bones!"

Ho Cheon-an, of the Healthy Gambling Enforcement Squad, awakens.