Want to Build Las Vegas With Me? (1)
There are two men known as the Two Eccentrics of the World.
One is called the Eccentric Hero—a man of thoroughly eccentric temperament who nevertheless performs chivalrous deeds without the slightest regard for his own gain or loss, and so earned the moniker.
The other is none other than the Gambling Fiend, Jang Ho-seung.
The reason Jang Ho-seung was given that title was exceedingly simple.
He was a master of the jianghu utterly mad for gambling.
He shuttled between Suzhou and Hangzhou, the most glittering holy lands of chance in the Central Plains, and spent night after night lost in the dens.
Today was no different.
Cards whirled, dice tumbled, silver coins stacked high, and promissory notes fluttered through the air. Someone cheered. Someone screamed. Someone swept the money from the table; someone else was swept from the table of life itself.
A living hell of hungry ghosts on earth, born of human greed.
Even today's winners, drunk on the taste of victory, would keep returning until the day they became losers and vanished. The faces changed, but the gambling houses thrived on forever.
And there, the Gambling Fiend Jang Ho-seung was already on his fifth straight loss of the night.
"Even!"
"Damn it!"
When the overturned rice bowl was flipped and he saw the pips on the two dice inside, Jang Ho-seung ground his teeth.
His favorite game was none other than dice. You put two dice carved from animal bone into a bowl, shook them every which way, and bet on whatever came up when you opened it. You might call a number from two to twelve, or odd and even, or whether the painted faces would be red or black.
"Damn it! This is really off. How the hell do you miss five times in a row?"
"Haha, Lady Luck seems to have abandoned you today, Branch Leader."
"Damn it! You bastards fleecing the Branch Leader's pockets—next hand, roll the dice!"
"Yes, yes. What'll it be?"
"Number match. Six or higher!"
"Then I take under six. The stake?"
"One tael!"
"Very well. Rolling."
The sound of dice dancing inside the bowl. Concentrating on that rattle, the Gambling Fiend shouted.
"Now!"
Snap!
The rice bowl stopped, its contents revealed, and for the first time that day he broke into a broad grin.
"Ha! Seven! Finally won one!"
"Congratulations, Branch Leader."
"Looks like my luck's turning. Everything till now was just practice."
Chuckling, the Gambling Fiend pocketed the silver the dealer handed over.
From then on, as if he had caught the wave, he won three straight hands. Having recovered nearly all his losses, the dealer began to coax him gently.
"Easy there. You've got your touch back."
"Wahahaha! Not a chance! I'm not leaving tonight until I've stripped you down to your underclothes!"
"Aigoo, how terrifying. How about it, then? This next hand—shall we go big, like real men?"
"Big? How big?"
"What's life for? Let's go hot—how about twenty taels?"
"Twenty taels…"
He had lost about ten taels earlier and recovered roughly eight. The table was riding a hot streak. And a born gambler never hesitated before a great wave of fortune that came his way.
The Gambling Fiend boldly pulled from his robes not coins but an entire silver ingot and slammed it onto the table with a clang.
"We go big! One guan of silver!"
"O-one guan?"
One guan of silver was fifty taels. One guan was a year's living for a poor family of four; a low-ranking official's annual salary was about a guan and a half. Not enough to rewrite a man's destiny, but still a mad act—to throw a year's worth of ordinary labor into a single bet.
But that was a gambling table for you.
The dealer swallowed hard and shook the dice. With such a stake on the line, the eyes of the Gambling Fiend, the dealer, and every surrounding spectator locked on.
The dice danced inside the rice bowl.
And into the ear of the Gambling Fiend, who was holding that fierce concentration, Hwi-yeom sent a voice transmission.
Sparks leapt in the Gambling Fiend's eyes.
"You dare?!"
CRACK!
His hand smashed straight through the rice bowl and into the tabletop beneath. His fingers closed around the dealer's knee.
"B-Branch Leader! What are you doing!"
"Hold still."
The Gambling Fiend pulled a small pebble-like object stuck to the dealer's knee. The dealer's face went deathly pale.
"What is this?"
"I-I have neuralgia in my knee, so I wear a stone that helps with the treatment."
Hearing Hwi-yeom's transmission, the Gambling Fiend brought the dice near the magnetite—and the face showing six snapped right onto it.
Fire blazed in the Gambling Fiend's eyes.
"You mongrel dog—you dared to cheat your elder?"
"I-I'm sorry. I was blinded by money for a moment…"
"Your knee hurts? I've got a bit of medical knowledge myself—let me fix it for you!"
His hand seized the dealer's knee where the magnetite had been and crushed it. With a sickening crunch, the dealer clutched his leg and rolled on the floor screaming.
"AAAAAARGH!!!"
Looking at the knee, now deformed like poorly kneaded clay, that dealer would live the rest of his life limping on one leg.
He had crippled one of the gambling house's own people in the middle of the den, yet no one came out to threaten the Gambling Fiend. Of course not—who would threaten the Gambling Fiend? If anything, the mood was that getting caught pulling a rigged game on a gray-zone figure whose moniker proudly included the character for "eccentric," and walking away with nothing worse than one ruined leg instead of a severed neck, counted as merciful.
From the start, the fact that these gamblers had tried to con the Gambling Fiend—Branch Leader of the Haomun's Dohon Branch—proved they weren't in their right minds.
The Gambling Fiend looked around, spotted Hwi-yeom, and waved.
"Was it you? The one who helped me?"
"It was."
"That jade-green robe—a direct scion of the Sichuan Dang Family. And young, with refined features. There's someone who's been making the whole world buzz lately that comes to mind. Are you that Sichuan Crouching Dragon?"
"A burdensome moniker."
"So it is you. Sit down first. You saved me from getting cleaned out of my silver—least I can do is share a drink."
The gambling house had a place for simple meals and wine. The Gambling Fiend ordered some stir-fried meat along with drink, and when the food arrived he poured for Hwi-yeom and asked:
"So how did you spot that fraud?"
That his first question was not "Why did you come looking for me?" said plenty about his temperament.
Hwi-yeom smiled faintly.
"I watched the rounds for a while. When that dealer stopped the rice bowl, sometimes the dice inside went tak and stopped, and sometimes they went ta-dak and stopped. And every time it was the ta-dak sound, he won the money. So I figured he had a way to change the already-settled faces of the dice. But there was nothing suspicious in his hands or on the tabletop. Which meant he was working something under the table. Using magnetite for a shell game is fairly common, you see."
"I heard the sound too, but I never thought that deep… and magnetite! I didn't even know such a thing existed!"
Well, people of this era—except for sailors—normally had no idea magnets existed. So of course the Gambling Fiend would never have imagined such a trick. But Hwi-yeom had seen plenty of similar cons in the modern world, and he had caught it at once.
The Gambling Fiend marveled.
"As expected, a man with 'Crouching Dragon' in his moniker is different! Come, drink, drink! This round's on me."
"I won't refuse."
"But little brother, why did you come looking for this old man?"
"You don't seem the type who likes beating around the bush, so I'll be direct. I intend to take over Suzhou."
"What?"
The once-amiable face hardened into that of a cold martial artist, and the surrounding gamblers and dealers turned their heads with frozen expressions. Anyone else might have flinched, but Hwi-yeom continued calmly.
"I received a proposal from the head of the Juma Branch. Help clean up Suzhou, and they'll help with my business. But if we're doing that, it's better if I hold the initiative. So I came to propose a negotiation with you, Gambling Fiend."
"Boy, are you a gambling addict like me? Forget complicated talks about initiative and the rest—from my position, smashing your skull right here would be a far cleaner and more convenient way of handling things."
"You may be addicted to gambling, Gambling Fiend, but you're no fool. You know full well what would happen if you harmed me."
"You think I fear the Dang Family's revenge? The world is vast—I can just go into hiding."
"Why would the Dang Family comb the vast world looking for you? No—they would simply wait for you in every gambling house under heaven. You would never again be able to enjoy a single game of chance."
"…That's realistic enough to be a little scary! Damn it! So what, the Dang Family has become that Juma bastard's backer, and you've come to tell me to flip over and bare my belly?"
"Not at all. If I meant to subdue you by force, I would have sent troops. The Hyeopgaek Branch would be getting wiped out as we speak. There's no need to negotiate with them—they're garbage thugs who ruin the city's scenery."
"Heh. So the Dohon Branch and I are different? As you saw while watching me gamble, I don't particularly represent the Dohon Branch. Those bastards tried to fleece me too!"
"I suspected it wasn't the first time. Did you let yourself get taken knowingly?"
"If I'd known, I'd have punished him like just now! On a gambling table, the one who gets fooled is an idiot and the one who loses is a moron. That's the unspoken pact."
"Quite a free-spirited way of thinking."
"I'm just a drifter who settled in Suzhou because I like the gambling scene here. Those gamblers were getting shaken down by the Hyeopgaek Branch thugs, and if that went on the tables wouldn't be any fun—so I slapped on a Branch Leader armband that's nothing more than a name and gave them a bit of protection. So even if you try to win me over, it won't do much to win them over."
"Is that so? Then allow me to make my proposal not to the representative of the Dohon Branch, but to the great gambler Jang Ho-seung."
"I'm listening."
"I am going to turn this Suzhou into a paradise of gambling and pleasure."
"Even more than it is now?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I'll introduce countless games of chance I know, change the public perception so people can visit without aversion, pay taxes properly to change the state's perception, and through collaboration with the Pungryu Branch and the Juma Branch—who are currently so hostile that no cooperation happens at all—create a city that never sleeps, one that wrings every last coin from the tourists."
The atmosphere of anger and hostility toward Hwi-yeom had already vanished without a trace. The people of the Dohon Branch were all swallowing dryly as they stared at him, and only the Gambling Fiend still regarded him with a skeptical look.
"Is that possible?"
"It is."
"Talk is cheap. How is it possible?"
His tone assumed no concrete details would be forthcoming—but Hwi-yeom, as if he had been waiting for exactly that, launched into an explanation of the business plan.
The Gambling Fiend listened with a string of vague noises until after a while he shook his head with the look of a man whose soul had left his body.
"Enough! Enough! I can't understand a word of it! But that… whatever it is, I do get that it's remarkably persuasive."
"Thank you."
"But all our Dohon Branch can do is fleece tourists. How is that supposed to help with this so-called 'legitimate' business of yours?"
"It will."
Even in Las Vegas, dealers ran cons. More precisely, dealers who ran cons announced the fact in advance. So why would customers play such a stupid game? Simple. First, the payout was huge. Second, it stoked their competitive pride—they thought they could see through the con.
Hwi-yeom smiled.
"I'll build you a gambler's paradise. Would you like to become the steward of that paradise?"
A village of pleasure and eternal night. And the Dohon Branch would be hired as dealers for Las Vegas—no, for Lasubaegasu.
"…Not bad. But how do you plan to persuade the Pungryu Branch? I don't care as long as I can gamble to my heart's content, but Seol Baek, the head of the Pungryu Branch, has a strong lust for power. She won't be easy to convince."
"Ah, Branch Leader Seol Baek…"
Hwi-yeom smiled.
"I already finished persuading her on the way here."
"?"
What was that supposed to mean?
To the Gambling Fiend's dumbfounded expression, Hwi-yeom briefly explained what had happened on the road.