The club building covered a large area and was a full six stories tall. Finding the Chess Club and the Table Tennis Club one by one would be no easy task.
Luckily, after walking around the first floor, Mu Tianchen spotted a sign at the stairwell. It helpfully listed the locations of all the clubs.
Following the sign, Mu Tianchen arrived at the Table Tennis Club on the fifth floor.
"Excuse me, is anyone here?"
Mu Tianchen knocked lightly on the door. The sound of ping-pong balls was clearly audible from inside, but it was still proper to knock. It was only polite.
"Yes, come in," an upperclassman replied from inside.
Mu Tianchen pushed open the door and looked around carefully.
The room was twice the size of a normal classroom. It seemed they had knocked through the wall between two adjoining classrooms. There were eight tables in all, almost every one surrounded by upperclassmen playing or watching.
That made sense. After all, this was the Table Tennis Club, and the tables took up quite a bit of space. The players needed room to move.
"Are you here to sign up? Sorry, we've already filled all our spots."
The upperclassman who had answered seemed to be in charge of recruiting. He had blond hair, and when he saw Mu Tianchen, he assumed he had come to sign up and immediately turned him away.
"No, I'm here for something else."
"Go ahead."
"I'm Mu Tianchen, a first-year. May I ask if you have any betting matches here? I'm really interested in that."
"A first-year? How did you hear about this? And which class are you in?"
No first-year had come here to ask about this before. After all, they couldn't advertise this sort of game openly, and the students had only just started school, so it was normal for them not to know about it.
But he'd asked about it outright. The blond upperclassman began to wonder if he was from Class A.
"Huh? I just happened to hear some upperclassmen mention it while I was eating in the cafeteria. And I'm from Class D."
When they heard he was from Class D, several upperclassmen watching the games turned to look at him. Their eyes were like a pack of wolves sizing up a lamb for slaughter.
Mu Tianchen could feel it.
"I see. We do have betting here, and there are two ways to do it. The first is to bet on someone else in a single match. Each bet is ten thousand points, and anyone can place one. The winning side gets all the points from the losing side, then splits them evenly. If the amount doesn't divide evenly, the club makes up the difference."
As he spoke, he pointed toward a few tables surrounded by people. When he'd heard that Mu Tianchen was from Class D, he'd clearly shown a hint of contempt.
"But in that case, wouldn't the person with better skills have a much higher chance of winning every time?"
"You don't need to worry about that. We pair players with roughly equal skill levels, and we redraw the matchups after every five games. It mostly comes down to luck."
Mu Tianchen thought the whole thing sounded fishy. If even people who couldn't play could come and bet, and the club kept making up the difference, wouldn't it lose a fortune? He didn't believe they were being that generous. They had to be rigging something along the way.
"What about the other option?" Mu Tianchen asked.
"The other one comes down entirely to your own ability. It's one-on-one, best of three, and you can bet whatever number of points you want. We usually bet thirty thousand. The winner takes all the points." He looked Mu Tianchen up and down. "But think it over carefully. If you're not good enough, you could lose all your points."
When Mu Tianchen heard that, he pretended to be so frightened that he froze for a moment.
The upperclassmen who had been watching laughed out loud. In their eyes, they were probably mocking this timid underclassman for being too useless to take the risk. Typical of someone from Class D.
After making sure they'd gotten a suitably poor impression of him, Mu Tianchen slowly spoke up.
"Maybe I'll... try the second option. I don't really like being surrounded by a bunch of people. It's a little... scary."
"Hahaha, sure. Then I'll be your opponent." The blond upperclassman had been a little suspicious at first, but at his tone, his contempt was plain to see.
He was probably already picturing Mu Tianchen throwing a tantrum and crying after his crushing defeat.
"You're a junior, so you can choose the bet. But we have a rule: for one-on-one matches, the minimum is ten thousand points."
"Then let's bet eighty thousand."
"Sure—wait, eighty thousand?! Are you serious? I thought you freshmen only got a hundred thousand when you first arrived?" The blond upperclassman agreed without thinking. Only after the words left his mouth did he realize that the amount was far beyond what he'd expected, and he stared in surprise.
More and more people nearby turned to watch.
"Yeah, but don't we get a hundred thousand every month? I'm pretty frugal, so I don't spend much. I don't mind even if I lose it all." Seeing the upperclassman's expression, Mu Tianchen decided to fan the flames a little more. "Besides, what I always see on TV is 'high risk, high reward,' right?"
So he'd learned it from TV. That put the blond upperclassman completely at ease.
"Eighty thousand it is. But if you lose, don't go around saying I picked on a junior."
"A bet is a bet."
"Good. Come over to that empty table."
Mu Tianchen followed the blond upperclassman over to the table. After taking the paddle from the person in charge, they took their positions and began the match.
"You serve first," the blond upperclassman said, letting him take the first serve.
Mu Tianchen took the ball and, after the person in charge called, "Begin," sent over a very ordinary first shot.
After they'd volleyed back and forth a few times, Mu Tianchen realized that the upperclassman was just as bad as he'd expected.
But ending the match too quickly would be no fun, and it would alarm the upperclassmen watching nearby.
He decided to hold back on purpose, making the other man think he wasn't very good either and giving him the illusion that he was always just a little short of winning.
So, after the score reached 2–2, they came to the deciding point. Mu Tianchen waited for the upperclassman to make a mistake, then ended the match.
"Damn, I shouldn't have missed the direction he hit it!"
The blond upperclassman seemed to regret his mistake. But since he'd lost, he still had to pay up; he couldn't afford to lose face. After handing over the points, he started another match, still unwilling to accept defeat.
Mu Tianchen used the same method again and made him lose two more matches in a row.
Now the upperclassman couldn't keep playing even if he wanted to—Mu Tianchen had completely cleaned him out.
"How could this happen?!" The blond upperclassman angrily pounded the table, making a loud bang. Seeing that, several of the upperclassmen nearby hurried over to comfort him.
Once he'd calmed down, he seemed to realize that something was off. He pointed at Mu Tianchen and demanded furiously,
"Were you doing that on purpose?"
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