The four cards in the young man's hand with the crooked nose really were QQ95. One of the queens was hidden up his sleeve, ready to replace either the 9 or the 5.
After everyone had been dealt their cards in this round, but before the betting began, the man in the brown-tinted glasses had already seen through every card at the table. Using gestures and sign language, he'd told the young man with the crooked nose what every player was holding.
Taking the hidden card into account, the young man with the crooked nose had figured that he only needed to swap out one card to beat everyone else at the table.
That was what gave him confidence. It was why he'd dared to bet so recklessly and get his accomplice to bet along with him. The two of them had played off each other, keeping Jiang Yue betting until they reached the single-round limit.
Just as Jiang Yue had said, this hadn't been a showdown between evenly matched opponents. It had been a sucker's game.
But the final step in the young man's sleight-of-hand card swap had gone inexplicably wrong.
It was something he never could have imagined.
With his awakened speed, his card-switching trick was so fast that it took less than a second. Not only could the naked eye not catch it, but even the countless electronic eyes overhead couldn't detect it.
He'd blocked nearly every angle, and with his technique, he'd never worried about getting caught, even under everyone's watchful eyes.
Yet he'd been caught all the same.
At the exact moment the young man with the crooked nose switched the cards, it was as though he'd been struck by a curse. For that one second, his hands and feet had stopped obeying him, as