The Rigged Flow of Fortune
Yoo Eunhyeon studied the man who had approached him.
Someone trained in martial arts. A guard, maybe?
By now, if an opponent was weaker than himself, Eunhyeon could tell at a glance whether they had cultivated martial skill. He put on an easy, good-natured smile and answered as if nothing could be more natural.
“I couldn’t sleep, and I was bored, so I just followed my feet. The scenery’s fine and the night breeze feels good—next thing I knew, I’d wandered this far. Is this a place I’m not supposed to enter?”
The staff member regarded him for a moment, then shook his head.
“Of course not. Any rightful guest of this establishment may go wherever he likes. I’m simply stationed here to look after first-time visitors. Since you can’t sleep and find yourself bored, you’ve come at the perfect time. This is precisely the place for people like you. Would you care to step inside?”
“Is there something interesting in there?”
“That depends entirely on how you choose to enjoy yourself. If you enjoy it properly, I can guarantee the fun.”
The smiling attendant gestured toward the detached building. Eunhyeon’s curiosity rose of its own accord.
Sensing no threat whatsoever, he carefully stepped through the door the man held open for him.
“Please enjoy yourself.”
Leaving the attendant’s voice behind, Eunhyeon crossed the threshold—and immediately squinted against a sudden glare. With the light came a change in the air. Unlike the cool night breeze outside, a hot, heavy energy seemed to drift from beyond the passageway that led underground.
As he descended the stairs, a pale haze of smoke and a sharp, acrid scent filled the air. It was a smell Eunhyeon knew well.
This smoke… tobacco? We’re underground, yet somehow the place is ventilated. How did they even build this?
Feeling a faint draft seeping from within, he murmured the thought aloud in mild wonder.
A moment later, the true nature of the place revealed itself.
“Open it!”
“Four-five-six! Yi-Ding-Ji, fifteen Wu!”
“Aaaagh! I’m ruined!”
“That’s more like it!”
A man shook three dice inside a large cup; the instant they tumbled free, every eye locked onto the result. Laughter and fury swirled together across the tables in a single roaring current.
The silver coins and betting slips sliding back and forth made it obvious what these people were doing—no questions necessary.
“‘Something interesting,’ he said… so this is it?”
Eunhyeon let out a quiet sigh.
Cheonganbo—the Heavenly Stems game. A wager where the dice faces were matched to the Heavenly Stems to determine the payout. Once Eunhyeon roughly grasped the rules, he found he could no longer look away. At first it was merely novel; once he understood the system, the pull only deepened.
“Ah! Six-six-six! Heavenly Stem! It’s out!”
“Uwaaagh!”
“It hit! Hahahaha!”
When the highest hand in the game—the one they called a Heavenly Stem—rolled free, cheers and groans erupted at once.
“Ohh…”
Eunhyeon breathed a soft note of awe at the spectacle he had never seen before. Even watching from the sidelines was this thrilling; he could only imagine how it felt for those actually playing.
“Maybe I should give it a try myself?”
The thought was only natural.
The moment he muttered it, a man who looked like staff materialized at his side as if by magic, smiling smoothly.
“Sir, need to change some money?”
“Just one nyang of gold for now.”
Following the attendant’s guidance, Eunhyeon exchanged one nyang of gold for a hundred nyang of silver. He had never intended to spend it all. If luck ran even a little his way, he figured he might leave with a few extra nyang of silver in his pocket.
“Which table looks good…”
Having decided to play, he no longer stared blankly. He began turning his gaze from table to table, watching every movement of the players.
“Heavenly Stem! Another one!”
“Damn it! I’m done! How can three Heavenly Stems come up before thirty rounds are even finished? And how does that bastard keep calling them right?!”
At that instant Eunhyeon’s eyes swung toward one particular side of the room.
The moment the Heavenly Stem hand appeared, three men shot to their feet in fury and abandoned their seats.
With empty chairs available, Eunhyeon drifted over as if by chance. Under normal circumstances those seats would have filled at once, yet even after he sat down the places to either side of him remained strangely vacant.
“Why isn’t anyone sitting?”
He muttered, sensing something off. Perhaps it had been needless worry—the empty seats soon filled again.
Still, an odd atmosphere lingered, so he did not rush in. He simply watched in silence.
“Hahaha! The hands are sticking to me today!”
Only after three or four more rounds did the man at the table come into clear focus—the one raking silver coins toward himself as if sweeping them up with a broom.
He laughed heartily and gathered the silver without the slightest hesitation. True to his boast that the hands were favoring him, he strung together win after win, making no effort to hide his pleasure.
“Impressive.”
Just then a spectator standing nearby must have overheard the murmur. He clapped Eunhyeon lightly on the shoulder.
“First time here, brother?”
The man addressed him with easy familiarity as “brother.” When Eunhyeon showed a flicker of surprise, the stranger laughed boldly and introduced himself.
“Ah, rude of me, speaking out of turn at first meeting. Name’s Wi Dong. What’s yours, brother?”
“Yoo Hyeon.”
“Oho. Brother Yoo, then.”
Since the other man had not given a full name, Eunhyeon blurred his own as well. Wi Dong paid it no mind and continued in the same casual tone.
“How does it look to you, Brother Yoo?”
“It looks fun enough… but something feels strange. Even granting a high win rate, how does he keep landing such strong hands so accurately?”
A flicker of suspicion crossed Eunhyeon’s eyes. Wi Dong seemed to notice; he folded his arms and gave a rather self-important smile.
“I know a thing or two about games like this, so allow me a word of advice. In this sort of play there is such a thing as the flow of luck. Of course, whether you can catch that flow or not—that’s skill.”
“Then that man must be quite the expert.”
“Exactly. Right now the flow belongs to him. Jumping in without patience is what amateurs do. For now, just watch.”
Wi Dong’s words did not entirely convince him, but Eunhyeon accepted the final suggestion and kept his eyes fixed on the table.
The man did not win every single hand. Now and then he suffered larger or smaller losses, yet even those seemed part of some flexible calculation. Slowly but surely he was filling his purse.
Hmm. Even so, something still feels off…
As people left and new ones took their places, Eunhyeon sensed a subtle dissonance he could not name.
Every time the man won—especially when he won with high hands—the natural energy in the air quivered ever so slightly. It was not internal energy itself, but the faint ripple natural energy made when internal force moved through it. No one else nearby seemed to notice.
Flow of luck, my foot… He’s pulling a trick.
Only then did Eunhyeon realize the man was secretly controlling the game. The instant the insight struck, he casually turned his gaze elsewhere.
No one around him was openly circulating internal energy. That was only natural: disciples of the Black Kerchief Sect who appeared to run the place were watching the crowd with sharp eyes. Anyone caught pulling something foolish would not leave easily.
As time passed, the man’s win rate climbed to an almost unbelievable level. The stares of the Black Kerchief Sect disciples and everyone else fixed on him. He ignored them all and continued the game as if nothing were amiss.
Then something glinted in Eunhyeon’s vision.
Looks like a slender needle. Some kind of concealed weapon?
Before long he had fully grasped the man’s method. In the Heavenly Stems game, dice were placed inside a bamboo cup and shaken. An attendant handled the shaking, but the person who had bet the highest hand was the one who checked the result.
While the dice were still tumbling inside the lowered bamboo cup, the man flicked a needle so tiny it was nearly invisible and manipulated the faces.
So that’s possible. Quite the skill.
The technique itself deserved admiration, yet to work such a trick so brazenly right under the noses of Black Kerchief Sect disciples—Eunhyeon could not help but be astonished.
He had no idea who the man was, but he was clearly no ordinary person.
In the meantime two more players lost everything and left the table. The seats were eventually filled again, yet the pace had definitely slowed. Noticing this, the man suddenly began stringing losses together, shaking the table’s momentum.
“Well now. Looks like my luck’s run dry.”
Watching the man put on that act, Eunhyeon snorted quietly to himself.
What a load of nonsense.
Seen with eyes that already understood everything, the performance was nothing but repulsive theatrics.
At the same time Eunhyeon murmured inwardly and started to rise. He had no desire to expose the man’s scheme and cause a scene, nor any reason to sit at a table whose outcome was being artificially controlled.
Just then Wi Dong—the same man who had spoken with him moments earlier—caught him by the shoulder.
“Brother Yoo, where do you think you’re going? Come play with me!”
“What?”
“Looks to me like that fellow’s flow of luck has finally run out. The luck’s ready to change hands. Whoever it lands on, if we hit big we’ll split enough to cover each other’s stake. What do you say?”
“No, I’d rather not…”
From Eunhyeon’s perspective the words were pure gibberish; the room seemed to spin. He acknowledged the other player’s skill, but it was martial skill, not gambling luck. He was about to refuse when a sudden thought flashed through his mind.
Wait… no. What if I manipulate the natural energy myself…?
And so, pretending to be reluctantly persuaded, he sat down at the table. Before he left, there was one thing he needed to confirm.