The Bait is Cast
All or nothing.
A single showdown staking heaven and earth.
Would you win it all?
Or lose everything?
Is a man's life not a continuous series of such gambles?
That was why Jang Il loved the gambling table.
It was no exaggeration to say it was a place where the winner took all—a physical manifestation of the ultimate gamble.
Thus, Jang Il frequented the gambling dens almost daily, earning himself quite a reputation as a notorious gambler in Changsha.
"Tsk. Now all I need to do is hit it big."
...Though that reputation was actually that of a pathetic sucker on the brink of ruin.
Like any typical sucker, Jang Il kicked open the front gates of the gambling house today, chanting his usual mantra.
Please, let lady luck smile on me today!
"Hey, you suckers! The master has arrived!"
It was the same line he bellowed every single day.
Naturally, there should have been a response.
Huh?
The atmosphere inside the gambling house was bizarre.
Not a single employee, who would usually swarm him with sycophantic flattery to catch some crumbs, was in sight.
...What's going on?
The tables for sword-tiles, mahjong, double-sixes, and all sorts of games were completely deserted.
Normally, every table would be packed with players, surrounded by walls of spectators.
Today was different.
They're all crowded over there.
Both customers and staff were huddled around a single table.
As Jang Il approached the table in question, a thunderous cheer erupted.
"Whoa! Look at that!"
"Is he really going to win again?!"
"No way, is this guy insane?!"
The spectators had gathered like a swarm of locusts.
"Whoaaaa!"
Another roar shook the room.
It was louder and more deafening than before.
It almost sounded desperate.
Overcome with curiosity, Jang Il wriggled his way into the crowd like an eel.
"Stop pushing! Ah! I said stop pushing!"
"Hey, who's shoving?!"
"You! It's you, you bastard! Stop pushing!"
"Heh, sorry about that."
Jang Il offered a half-hearted apology as he squeezed through, finally managing to poke his head out through a gap.
...Who is that guy?
The mysterious man was playing with a black bamboo hat pulled low, seemingly unbothered by the discomfort.
It meant he was an outsider trying to hide his identity.
Holy crap!
One look at the money piled in front of the man explained everything.
It was a literal tower of bone tiles.
In gambling houses, instead of bulky gold ingots, players used exchangeable bone or wooden tiles as currency. In front of this man, the highest-denomination bone tiles were stacked so high they formed a veritable pagoda.
Are they playing sword-tiles?
Sword-tiles was a game where players compared the order or combinations of drawings and numbers on thin bamboo pieces. Because the rules were simple and intuitive, it was one of the most popular games in the gambling house.
"Damn it! I'm in!"
"Me too! What are you going to do?"
At that moment, two of the three men sitting at the table accepted the challenge.
Since they had accepted, it was now the mysterious man's turn to set the stakes.
The moment they agreed, the man acted.
Slide.
"I'll match it."
With those words, he pushed all his bone tiles into the center.
Is he crazy? An all-in?
With that much money?
Jang Il wasn't the only one thinking this.
"It's an all-in! Another all-in!"
"How many times has that been?"
"Who cares how many! That lunatic has gone all-in every single time he bet!"
In gambling, when players were down to their last coins, they would push everything they had left into the pot—a move known as going "all-in."
It was a desperate, point-of-no-return tactic. Yet, according to the spectators, this stranger had been betting his entire fortune on every single hand.
He's a complete madman.
Even for a frequent patron like Jang Il, this was a sight he had never witnessed in his life.
No wonder the place was packed.
Everyone wanted to see how long this lunatic's streak would last.
As if on cue, the players at the table revealed their tiles simultaneously.
"Whoaaaaaa!"
The crowd erupted into a frenzied roar.
"Again! He won again!"
The man in the black bamboo hat had won yet again.
He had survived another all-in.
"Damn it!"
"Is this game rigged?!"
"How the hell does he win every single hand?!"
The players who had bet against him—in other words, the losers—began to throw tantrums.
But the man in the black bamboo hat reacted as if he merely heard dogs barking in the distance.
"Mmm, delicious."
Clack, clack!
With a sweeping motion, he raked in all the bone tiles piled in the center of the table.
"Are you going again?"
"Of course! A real man keeps going!"
"One more round! One more round!"
In this moment, spectators and gamblers alike chanted in unison.
The man calmly stood up from his seat and spoke.
"Well, I think I'll stop here."
"...Huh?"
"Taking free money is nice, but this is getting boring."
"?!"
While everyone, including Jang Il, stood there with their jaws hanging open.
Step, step.
The man gathered his mountain of tiles and strode toward the exchange counter.
Now, it's about time they took the bait.
Having swept up almost all the cash in the gambling house in just half a day, the man—Jeok-un—thought to himself.
"C-Customer! Wait, please wait a moment! Sir!"
"Hmm?"
"P-Please, lend me your ear for a second. I have a... a proposal for you."
A pale-faced employee of the gambling house rushed over to him.
The employee, dressed in lavish attire that marked him as a manager, leaned in and began to whisper conspiratorially into Jeok-un's ear.
Jeok-un already knew what the man was going to say, but he played along.
"Sir, the stakes here are rather small. Would you perhaps be interested in playing at a much larger table?"
"Hmm. I heard this gambling house has fixed limits, unlike the ones run by the Black Hegemony Castle."
"We have a special table... one we only show to distinguished guests like yourself."
"Oh?"
Jeok-un reacted as if his interest had been piqued.
A look of relief finally washed over the manager's face.
Now, let's see about tearing down the pillars of this place.
In truth, Jeok-un had merely finished his warm-up and was preparing to bleed them dry.
"What kind of bullshit is this?!"
No Hwang-gu shrieked, slamming the report onto the floor.
He had no choice.
The report detailed the losses incurred in just a single double-hour.
"One million taels! One million taels?!"
One million taels.
It was enough money to build several grand estates of a thousand chambers.
That fortune had vanished in a mere half-day.
And to some nobody who had crawled out of who-knows-where.
"One million taels! One million taeeeels! Argh!"
Unable to contain his fury, No Hwang-gu threw and smashed everything within arm's reach.
Since that included his subordinates, it was only natural that his office quickly turned into a scene of carnage.
"B-Branch Manager! Please, c-calm down...!"
The staff did everything they could to appease him.
As the head of the Changsha branch of the gambling house, No Hwang-gu was entirely capable of burying them alive over a loss of this magnitude.
"Calm down? Do I look like I can calm down?!"
No Hwang-gu's eyes gleamed with murderous intent.
His narrow, slit-like eyes burned with malice. Combined with his upturned nose, thin lips, and overall wretched appearance, he looked like a literal demon of slaughter.
To anyone, he looked like a typical gambler who had lost his mind after losing a fortune.
But this contradicted the basic business model of a gambling house.
After all, wasn't a gambling house supposed to merely take a small cut of the pot and let the players bet against each other?
Logically, No Hwang-gu had absolutely no reason to be angry.
The ones who lost money were the gamblers, not the house.
"We lost one million taels! How the hell am I supposed to calm down, you son of a bitch?!"
That was the catch. The one who had lost the money was not the gamblers, but the house itself.
The gambling house routinely hired professional swindlers to rig the games.
Simply put, they ran a scam.
They used house-hired cheats to bleed the suckers dry.
First, they would lose a little to bait the marks. Once the pot grew large enough, they would squeeze them for everything.
This was how the house operated, and it had been highly successful until now.
"You're telling me every single one of our house cheats lost?! You expect me to believe that?!"
A random drifter had appeared out of nowhere and cleaned them out in less than a double-hour.
Worse, because the bastard kept going all-in, a staggering one million taels had been swept away in half a day.
"Did you check the tiles he used?!"
"W-We checked and swapped them multiple times! We even changed his seat!"
"And?!"
"...W-We couldn't find a single trace of cheating."
They changed the tiles and the seats.
Yet they still lost everything?
"Our cheats said... he's an incredible master..."
"Master, my ass! There's no such thing as skill at a gambling table!"
Slap!
No Hwang-gu slapped his subordinate across the face, spitting out his words.
"That bastard must have colluded with our cheats, you useless shits!"
"N-No, absolutely not! We did our best, but his skill was just..."
"You son of a bitch!"
Hearing them talk about "skill" over and over made No Hwang-gu completely lose his mind.
"Ack!"
"It was! A rigged! Game! How! Can! Anyone! Win! With! Skill?!"
"Gurgle...!"
No Hwang-gu beat the fallen subordinate as if trying to kill him.
Only after stomping him into a bloody pulp did No Hwang-gu stop, panting heavily.
"Investigate every single cheat we hired. There's definitely something going on."
"Y-Yes, sir!"
"Hmph! Do they think they can pull this shit knowing who my brother is? I'll chew them up and spit them out."
The moment No Hwang-gu mentioned his brother, the subordinates' faces turned pale.
And with good reason.
No Hwang-gu's older brother, No Hwang-mun, was one of the squad leaders of the Ten Heavens, the ten swords that Sadocheon prided itself on.
If No Hwang-mun got involved, even the innocent would be dragged down by association, resulting in a mountain of corpses.
"Tsk. Clean this up first."
"Y-Yes, sir!"
While his subordinates scrambled to clean up the wrecked office, No Hwang-gu walked over to the window.
In the distance, a man was approaching, accompanied by one of his subordinates.
It was none other than the culprit behind this disaster.
Hmph. A black bamboo hat? Trying to look mysterious, are we?
No Hwang-gu gritted his teeth.
A chilling murderous intent leaked from his eyes.
He turned to his men and ordered.
"Get the Gambling Ghost ready. Prepare the rigged tiles and the drugged wine as well. I'm going to take back several times what we lost—no, I'll strip him of everything he owns."
"Yes, sir!"
As his subordinates slipped away to carry out his orders, No Hwang-gu's anger subsided slightly.
There was absolutely no way he would lose.
He had summoned the Gambling Ghost, the most skilled cheat among his roster.
With the rigged tiles and the drugged wine to seal the deal, the trap was flawless.
He never fought a battle he couldn't win.
That was one of No Hwang-gu's golden rules, and it would triumph once again.
The outcome is already decided.
And the winner, of course, would be him.
"Hehehe. I'll make you regret ever setting foot in Changsha."
No Hwang-gu bared his buck teeth in a hideous grin.