Chapter 7. Gambling and Fighting
Dojeon, or fighting for money.
Literally, it was just that: combat and cash. You predicted the winner, placed your money on him, and sixteen matches were fought in succession. The winners then faced one another until the final victor emerged. A simple structure. Of course, the true winner was the man who had bet on the winner all along.
I was already inside Tujeonru by then, and all sixteen bouts had been completed. As I watched the matches, I studied the handouts the arena provided on each fighter with close attention.
The information on those sheets listed everything from a fighter’s inner power to the martial arts he used and his win-loss record. If the bouts actually unfolded according to those profiles, making money would be absurdly easy. But if it worked that way, would a den of heterodox gamblers really be called a gambling pit? Some of the fighters had been planted by the organizers. A kind of cheating, designed to make sure they came out ahead.
That meant I had to identify who was concealing more than they should, and who was acting too boldly for their level.
Most of them fought according to their actual ability, but in my eyes, three of them were clearly not showing their true strength.
The first was Lee Hwigyeom, who introduced himself as a wandering swordsman. According to the sheet, his inner power was no more than third-rate, and the technique he used was the Three Talents Sword Art, the sort of thing you’d find traded around at a market stall. But as befitted a man who called himself a wanderer, he had plenty of real combat experience.
He had even barely beaten a second-rate swordsman in one of the bouts. Though from where I stood, that too had been arranged so he would win by a hair.
The second was the heterodox swordsman Sajaan. He had second-rate inner power and used a technique called the Death-Severing Sword. By my judgment, he had decent bones for martial arts. The problem was that the Death-Severing Sword he was using was only a third-rate technique.
Sajaan won after dragging the match out into a long exchange. It wasn’t that he lacked skill so much as the fact that his Death-Severing Sword was fundamentally a defensive sword art. Still, if he trimmed down the breadth of that defense just a little, he’d be able to show real strength.
Honestly, the first two weren’t bad. But the third was on an entirely different level.
His name was Omu. The handout said he had first-rate cultivation, used a pugilist’s style, and was currently addicted to drugs.
“Pae-gwon. Omu...”
I knew this man. I remembered him from my previous life. He had been active before I became the strongest under heaven. He was called the man with the fist of a tyrant king, and he carried the title Paegwon. Back then, he was regarded as the person closest to the greatest fist in the world.
His entrance had been anything but ordinary from the start. At some point, he had emerged as a master of the heterodox schools and began beating orthodox masters to death with his bare hands, exactly as if swatting them aside. When he was making a tremendous name for himself as a master of the heterodox path, he vanished all at once. Some gossipmongers said the orthodox masters had assassinated him; others said he died of illness.
All nonsense.
I was the one who killed him. But this time, I was going to use him.
Omu’s bout was different from the others. He stood in the arena with a vacant expression in his eyes. Just as the sheet had said, those were the eyes of a man addicted to drugs.
With the gong announcing the match, Omu’s bout began. His opponent was a fist fighter named Sa Suryong. Since it was Omu’s match, I watched it even more intently.
Unlike the dazed Omu, Sa Suryong launched a headlong attack. As time passed, more and more wounds opened on Omu’s body. He failed to respond quickly to Sa Suryong’s relentless advance. No, he was pretending not to respond.
The one-sided beating looked different to me. Omu let the dangerous strikes slide past and kept his vital points tightly guarded. Then, when Sa Suryong finally threw a decisive blow to end the fight, Omu deliberately stumbled and drove his fist into the man’s dantian. Sa Suryong staggered under the blow and collapsed.
Yeah. A fraud.
Omu’s body was covered with wounds. And after winning, he wore that vacant look again. I didn’t know what his intent was, but he was hiding his true strength and taking part in these bouts. That only helped me. If he kept up that clumsy act of barely winning, fewer people would bet on Omu, and the more that happened, the more money I stood to make.
“All right. Time for me to enjoy myself too.”
I headed to the betting counter to take part properly. Even as I moved, the heterodox martial artists around me kept glaring. The matter with Woo Dae-un had apparently made their hostility sharper. It didn’t bother me much.
“Who are you placing your bet on?”
When I stopped in front of the counter, a sharp-faced old man held out his hand with a bored expression.
“Two silver taels on Lee Hwigyeom, two on Sajaan, five on Omu.”
At my words, the bookmaker’s eyes widened, then narrowed into a sneer.
“I see your type often. The sort who bets on the low-odds picks across the board. I’ve never seen it end well. You won’t regret this?”
“Give it to me.”
The old man wrote the amounts onto wooden tags bearing their names.
I took them, returned to my seat, and waited. After a short while, the gong rang out again to announce the start of the next round.
Dong.
“Lee Hwigyeom wins!”
Dong-
“Sajaan wins!”
Dong-!
“Omu wins!”
Just as I expected, all three of them won. And all by the narrowest of margins.
The old bookmaker came up to me, took back the tags, and paid out the winnings.
“Looks like you’ve got extraordinary luck. Those three all won, did they? Five times on Lee Hwigyeom, five on Sajaan, seven on Omu... that comes to a total of fifty-five silver taels.”
My starting capital had been nine silver taels. In a single round, it had multiplied sixfold. A fine beginning. I didn’t expect to lose, not after I had already figured out the level of their martial arts.
“Ten silver taels on Lee Hwigyeom, ten on Sajaan, and thirty-five on Omu.”
At my words, the people placing bets around me widened their eyes. But I took the tags as before and sat back down.
This time, too, those three won. Of course, Sajaan withdrew after the bout because of his injuries.
The old man stood in front of me again and asked, “How did you know they’d win?”
“How would I know? It was just luck.”
“...Do you know this? There’s no such thing as luck in gambling.”
I reached out at the old man’s words. He smiled faintly and spoke.
“Eight times on Lee Hwigyeom, five on Sajaan, twelve on Omu. That makes five hundred and fifty taels in total. Since it’s a large sum, we’ll pay you by bill.”
After six bouts had turned into a sixty-onefold return, the people around me were left slack-jawed. Along with that came a surge of killing intent. Strong, greedy killing intent.
Dong-!
By now I was getting used to the sound of the gong. I knew these men were going to win before I ever placed the money, so I didn’t feel the thrill they did. But they were different. To them, a win in one bout meant money in hand, and a loss only meant they’d get it back on the next match.
In their eyes, there was nothing at all except greed.
They say gambling is the quickest road to ruin. No, this isn’t the road to ruin. It’s hell itself.
Gambling numbs the mind. And these people were already so thoroughly addicted that they no longer even realized they were gambling. They did it as naturally as eating a meal.
As I watched the men consumed by the betting floor and my thoughts wandered, the voice that snapped me back was the same one that had introduced the event at the beginning.
“I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves. However, one of the bouts has been canceled. Sajaan withdrew due to injury, so one contest was called off. Therefore, we’ll accept two volunteers and proceed with one more match. Are there any volunteers?”
For a moment, silence fell. But not long after, one man raised his arm.
“I’ll take the first floor.”
The one who raised his arm was Woo Dae-un, the young master of the Paeggeom Sect. At the man’s instruction to come downstairs, he leapt from the second-floor seats into the arena. Then he clasped his hands in a formal salute to the crowd on all sides.
“Greetings, senior brothers and sisters! I’m Woo Dae-un of the Paeggeom Sect! If no one else volunteers, I’d like to give those orthodox pretty boys a proper beating. Would that be all right?”
With Woo Dae-un’s sudden proposal, every gaze turned toward me. At the same time, I heard voices say, “That sounds fun.”
One voice became several, spreading rapidly through the crowd.
“Yeah. Let’s see it. This should be entertaining!”
“Right. Show those orthodox cowards what this black market is like!”
Woo Dae-un laughed loudly and shouted, “You all say you want to see it, so how long are you going to stay there, you coward?”
He drew his sword toward me with a slimy grin on his face. Seeing that, I lowered my head until it nearly touched my chest.
“Looks like that orthodox brat got scared. Hahaha. Well, orthodox bastards are always like that, aren’t they?”
I couldn’t stop myself from bowing my head. From laughter, of all things. I had expected some reaction once I provoked the young master of the Paeggeom Sect, but I hadn’t expected him to respond this quickly.
He was, in fact, giving me an opportunity. A chance to get closer to the Paeggeom Sect. So how could I not laugh?
I slowly lifted my head and let out a light breath. Then I walked down toward the first-floor arena at an unhurried pace.
The gamblers I passed along the way all chimed in with comments. They were nothing but taunts like, “Well, he mostly looks like all talk. Show us something interesting, brat!”
When I took my place at the center of the arena, Woo Dae-un curled his lips in a greasy smile, as though everything was unfolding exactly as he wanted.
“You’re pretty brave, coming up here instead of running away, aren’t you? Orthodox brat?”
I ignored him and walked over to the man overseeing the bout in the center of the arena.
“Before we begin, I’ve got one question. There’s money on this bout too, right?”
“There is. With the exception of the first match, every bout has money on it without exception.”
After hearing him out, I drew in a deep breath and shouted as loudly as I could, “Disciple of the Baek Clan! Baek Mugeuk! Cultivation level: third-rate. Sword art used: Baekga Seven Sword Arts.”
At my words, the people seated in the betting stands burst into snickers.
“What’s that guy doing?”
“Is he telling us because there’s no information sheet?”
“Pretty orthodox, isn’t he?”
“Though he talks and acts pretty arrogantly for a third-rate. Pfft.”
The mockery kept coming. But I paid it no mind and shouted again, even louder this time.
“I’m putting five hundred and fifty silver taels on Baek Mugeuk!”
With that shout, the endless jeering cut off all at once. The table was set. Perfectly set. It was the perfect stage for me to rake in money.
From here on out, it was time to make real money.