The Second Gambling Duel

Beside him, Xu Bo had also raked in a hefty haul and hurriedly tugged at Jiang Yue, ready to leave.

The two had just turned around, not yet stepping out of the abandoned hangar's shadow.

"This brother, please hold a moment."

A hoarse voice laced with mockery cut in from the side and rear.

Jiang Yue stopped.

A bare-chested veteran blocked the retreat. This was the same one-legged veteran who, earlier on the Thousand-Jin Stake, had used force-dissipating techniques to grind down a recruit's legs until they snapped.

"Young brother, your blood and breath haven't scattered, you haven't even broken a sweat."

The veteran blew out a smoke ring, sizing Jiang Yue up from head to toe. "Looks like you've still got strength to spare. How about another round?"

Jiang Yue's face was expressionless; he didn't reply.

Seeing this, the veteran pointed at Butcher Zhang on the high platform and sneered, "As long as Boss Zhang opens the betting, once you step up, win or lose, you get an appearance fee. You're a green recruit—free points for the taking. Can't lose on this."

Hearing this, Xu Bo's face changed drastically.

He grabbed Jiang Yue's training uniform by the corner and yanked him forcefully into a corner.

"Don't listen to him. This is an old trick those veteran scumbags use!"

Xu Bo lowered his voice, speaking rapidly with clear urgency: "They specifically target new recruits with some skill for gambling fights. You know why Butcher Zhang is willing to open the betting even when the gap is huge? Because there's a crowd!"

"Veterans crushing recruits—it's bloody enough, brutal enough. The gamblers down there love watching that kind of one-sided slaughter!"

Xu Bo pointed at the patch of bloodstains that had just been carried away from the edge of the arena and continued, "You saw what happened to that recruit a few days ago. Both legs fractured, carried off. Don't think you can just go up, half-ass it, take the appearance fee, and surrender."

"Once you're in the ring, you don't come down!"

"If anyone could just surrender whenever they wanted, wouldn't they team up with outside bettors to pile on themselves losing and cash out?"

"Butcher Zhang is a first-rank martial artist! That one eye of his sees clearly whether you're going all out. If you dare fake it on stage to fool the house, he'll personally cripple you."

Xu Bo caught his breath and went on, "That recruit with the broken legs a few days ago? He went in thinking he'd just grab the appearance fee."

"Never expected he'd tough it out to the end and wreck himself. Now it's messing up his training, and he might even get eliminated!"

Jiang Yue listened quietly, then gave a slight nod.

The underlying logic was clear.

The gap in strength was huge, yet they still opened the betting, because this kind of hunting spectacle massively stimulated the gamblers' senses.

With an audience, a flood of points would pour into the pool. As the house, Butcher Zhang naturally took a hefty cut from the flow.

The rules were brutally straightforward.

Jiang Yue turned his head.

His gaze passed over Xu Bo's shoulder, landing like a solid weight on the one-legged veteran.

His eyes swept from the veteran's chest rise and fall, muscle density, all the way to the load-bearing joints of that simple metal prosthetic.

The other knew how to dissipate force, and his blood and qi foundation far surpassed Wang Meng's.

In a real life-or-death fight, Jiang Yue would stand no chance.

But if it was just a contest of endurance under heavy pressure...

Jiang Yue touched his own dark-cyan [Tough Skin], forged through countless extreme beatings.

"Worth a try."

"If I lose, with my recovery ability, the loss is acceptable..."

Jiang Yue pushed aside Xu Bo's hand and walked back into the light.

He looked at the one-legged veteran, his voice flat and devoid of emotion, and strode straight toward the high platform.

"Open the betting."

Jiang Yue and the one-legged veteran, one after the other, arrived before the iron table on the high platform.

"Boss Zhang, open another round. This recruit's got hard bones. I'll loosen them up myself."

The one-legged veteran spat out his cigarette butt and pointed at Jiang Yue beside him.

Butcher Zhang's mechanical left arm stopped tapping.

He leaned forward slightly, that single eye like a cold scanner, re-evaluating Jiang Yue from top to bottom.

He'd just endured a round of the "Thousand-Jin Stake" at four hundred fifty kilograms. For an ordinary recruit, even if they weren't collapsed on the ground, their blood and qi would be turbulent, their muscles exhausted.

But the Jiang Yue before him had even breathing, a normal complexion, and not even a trace of the sweat that came from overexertion on his skin.

"Back-to-back?"

Butcher Zhang blew out a thick cloud of smoke, a bloodthirsty grin twisting his lips. "Got some guts. A recruit taking two rounds of the Thousand-Jin Stake, and the second one against a veteran who knows how to dissipate force. That's enough of a gimmick."

His thick finger swiped heavily across the military data pad, nodding in approval of the match.

"Approved."

Butcher Zhang looked at Jiang Yue, his voice rough: "This round's heat won't be low."

"Once the money starts flowing, your appearance fee could at least double. The catch is, you need to hold out under the pillar a bit longer—don't let the spectators down below get bored."

Jiang Yue didn't reply. He simply raised his wrist and swiped cleanly across the betting terminal.

[Deduction: 30 points. Bet target: Jiang Yue.]

Leaving only 5 points for tomorrow's meal, he plunged nearly his entire stack—the points he'd just won plus his principal—into the bet.

Seeing this, Butcher Zhang's eyes gleamed with even greater interest.

He suddenly straightened up, his mechanical left arm slamming heavily onto the alloy tabletop, producing a deafening crash.

"New betting pool! Thousand-Jin Stake!"

Butcher Zhang's deep voice, carried by his qi and blood, instantly drowned out the ear-splitting heavy metal music echoing through the hangar. "Veteran versus Rookie! Veteran wins, one-to-zero-point-one! Rookie wins, one-to-five! Place your bets and lock them in!"

"Besides win or loss, time and final weight are also open for betting!"

As his words fell, the crowd scattered throughout the hangar converged toward the center of the floor like sharks catching the scent of blood.

Just as Butcher Zhang had anticipated, this heavily lopsided matchup instantly ignited the crowd's fervor.

Packed in layers upon layers, the area around the hydraulic pillars was soon sealed off without a gap.

The crowd was sharply divided.

The vast majority were veterans from the Supervision Team, reeking of machine oil and covered in scars.

They clutched their point chips, shouting loudly, their eyes brimming with undisguised mockery and cruelty.

In their view, no matter how good a rookie's physical fitness was, without knowing the proper techniques for exerting force, he was nothing more than a slightly more pressure-resistant punching bag in front of a veteran.

Clearly, many were already eager to see Jiang Yue's bones snap and hear him kneel and scream in agony.

Meanwhile, scattered at the edge of the crowd were quite a few newcomers—rookies who had sneaked into the gray zone to broaden their horizons.

They stared at Jiang Yue standing in the center of the arena, faces full of shock.

Some recognized him and gasped in low voices, clearly unable to understand how a civilian recruit had the guts to provoke a veteran.

"I'm betting on Old Cripple! Fifty points!"

"Betting on the rookie to break his leg! Won't last three minutes!"

The clamor, the curses, and the constant chimes of betting confirmations from the smart terminals intertwined, pushing the atmosphere in the abandoned hangar to a fever pitch.

The one-legged veteran walked under the hydraulic pillar, twisted his neck, and his joints cracked with a sharp sound.

He looked at Jiang Yue, the earlier contempt gone from his eyes, replaced by the seriousness of the upcoming gamble.

Jiang Yue's expression remained unchanged. He stepped past the roaring crowd and walked toward the base of another hydraulic pillar.