Xu Bo had made a tidy profit too. He grabbed Jiang Yue, eager to leave.
They had just turned around and had yet to step out of the abandoned hangar's shadow.
"Hold on a moment, brother."
A raspy voice cut in from behind them, thick with mockery.
Jiang Yue stopped.
A bare-chested veteran blocked their way. It was the one-legged veteran who had used Force Unloading to wear down a recruit on the Thousand-Jin Stake until both his legs broke.
"Your blood and energy haven't even settled, kid. You've barely broken a sweat."
The veteran blew a smoke ring and looked Jiang Yue up and down. "Looks like you've still got plenty left. Why not go another round?"
Jiang Yue said nothing, his face expressionless.
The veteran pointed at Butcher Zhang on the raised platform and sneered. "If Boss Zhang opens a betting pool, you get an appearance fee whether you win or lose. You're a recruit. It's free points. What have you got to lose?"
Xu Bo's expression changed at once.
He seized the hem of Jiang Yue's training uniform and dragged him into a corner.
"Don't listen to him. It's an old trick veterans use!"
Xu Bo kept his voice low and spoke rapidly, anxiety plain in every word. "They specifically lure recruits with a bit of strength into wagers. Know why Butcher Zhang opens a pool when the fighters are so badly mismatched? Because it draws a crowd!"
"A veteran crushing a recruit is bloody and brutal. That's exactly the kind of one-sided slaughter the gamblers want to see!"
Xu Bo pointed to the bloodstain at the edge of the arena, where someone had just been carried away. "You saw what happened to that recruit a few days ago. Both his legs fractured. Don't think you can go up, make a token effort, then surrender and collect your appearance fee."
"Once you're up there, you can't just walk away!"
"If anyone could surrender whenever they liked, what would stop them from teaming up with someone outside to bet heavily on their own loss and cash out?"
"Butcher Zhang is a Level One Martial Artist! That one eye of his can tell exactly whether you're giving it your all. Try to put on a fake fight and fool the house, and he'll cripple you himself."
Xu Bo caught his breath, then went on. "That recruit with the fractured legs had gone in thinking he'd just collect an appearance fee."
"He ended up holding out until he wrecked himself. Now it's affected the rest of his training, and he might even get eliminated!"
Jiang Yue listened quietly, then gave a slight nod.
The logic was clear.
They opened a pool despite the huge gap in strength because a spectacle like this gave gamblers a thrill.
A crowd meant points pouring into the betting pool. As the house, Butcher Zhang naturally took a hefty cut of the turnover.
The rules were cruel.
Jiang Yue turned his head.
His gaze passed over Xu Bo's shoulder and settled on the one-legged veteran with almost palpable weight.
He studied the rise and fall of the veteran's chest, the density of his muscles, then the load-bearing joint of his simple metal prosthesis.
The veteran knew Force Unloading, and his reserves of blood and energy far surpassed Wang Meng's.
In a fight to the death, Jiang Yue would have no chance against him.
But if it was only a contest of endurance under crushing weight...
Jiang Yue touched his dark blue-green [Tough Skin], tempered through countless bouts of punishment at his limit.
I can take him on.
Even if I lose, my recovery should keep the damage manageable...
Jiang Yue pulled free of Xu Bo's grip and walked back into the light.
He looked at the one-legged veteran, his voice perfectly even, then headed straight for the raised platform.
"Open the pool."
Jiang Yue and the one-legged veteran arrived at the iron table on the platform, one behind the other.
"Boss Zhang, open another pool. This recruit's got tough bones. I'll loosen them up for him myself."
The one-legged veteran spat out his cigarette butt and pointed at Jiang Yue beside him.
Butcher Zhang stopped tapping with his mechanical left arm.
He leaned forward slightly. His one eye swept over Jiang Yue from head to toe like a cold scanner.
After enduring a round at four hundred and fifty kilograms on the Thousand-Jin Stake, an ordinary recruit would be sprawled on the ground by now—or at least restless with surging blood and energy, his muscles exhausted.
But Jiang Yue's breathing was steady, his face looked normal, and there were barely a few drops of the cold sweat that came from overexertion.
"Back-to-back rounds?"
Butcher Zhang exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, his mouth twisting into a savage grin. "You've got guts. A recruit taking on two rounds of the Thousand-Jin Stake in a row, with a veteran who knows Force Unloading in the second. That'll draw a crowd."
He dragged a thick finger across his military data pad and nodded his approval.
"Approved."
Butcher Zhang looked at Jiang Yue, his voice rough. "This pool will get plenty of action."
"Once the bets start rolling in, your appearance fee could at least double. But you'll have to last under that pillar for a while. Don't disappoint the spectators."
Jiang Yue did not reply. He simply raised his wrist and swept it across the betting terminal.
[Points deducted: 20. Bet placed on: Jiang Yue.]
Keeping only five points for tomorrow's meals, he wagered nearly everything he had just won, along with his original stake.
Interest deepened in Butcher Zhang's eye.
He surged to his feet and slammed his mechanical left arm onto the alloy table with a deafening crash.
"New betting pool! Thousand-Jin Stake!"
Butcher Zhang's booming voice, carried by his blood and energy, drowned out the blaring heavy metal music in the hangar. "Veteran versus recruit! Veteran wins, ten percent payout! Recruit wins, five-to-one! Place your bets!"
"You can also bet on the time and final weight!"
The moment he finished speaking, people scattered across the hangar converged on the arena like sharks scenting blood.
Just as Butcher Zhang had expected, the wildly mismatched contest ignited the crowd's enthusiasm.
People packed around the hydraulic pillars in dense rings, leaving no room to squeeze through.
The crowd fell into distinct groups.
Most were scarred veterans of the Supervision Team, reeking of machine oil.
They clutched point tokens and shouted, their eyes openly mocking and cruel.
As far as they were concerned, no matter how fit a recruit was, he was just a slightly sturdier punching bag before a veteran who knew how to apply force.
Many of them plainly could not wait to see Jiang Yue's bones snap and hear him scream as he dropped to his knees.
At the edge of the crowd were quite a few newly arrived recruits who had slipped into the Grey Zone to see what it was like.
They stared at Jiang Yue in the center of the arena, stunned.
Someone recognized Jiang Yue and cried out softly, unable to understand how a civilian recruit had found the nerve to challenge a veteran.
"Fifty points on Old Cripple!"
"Bet the recruit breaks a leg! He won't last three minutes!"
Shouts, curses, and the constant chimes of confirmed bets from Smart Brain terminals mingled together, whipping the abandoned hangar into a frenzy.
The one-legged veteran walked beneath a hydraulic pillar and rolled his neck. His joints cracked sharply.
He looked at Jiang Yue. The earlier contempt was gone from his eyes; he had grown serious about the coming contest.
Jiang Yue's expression did not change. He passed through the roaring crowd and walked toward the base of the other hydraulic pillar.
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