Lucky Clown

"Wake up, wake up."

Liu Zheng was slapped awake by a barrage of heavy blows.

He opened his eyes to find Oxhead's enormous face filling his vision.

"Boss, you should brush your teeth after eating."

He said it instinctively.

"Not like I've ever seen you brush yours."

Oxhead rolled his eyes.

"Hurry up. We're running out of time."

He hooked Liu Zheng up with his broken horn.

"Did we get the money?"

He stretched his limbs and asked.

He felt no different from before he sold his flesh. Did it not matter much as long as he didn't become an Empty Shell?

"Here."

Cow-Horse opened his mouth and spat out a wallet.

Liu Zheng picked it up and opened it. It was stuffed with a thick stack of bills printed with patterns he couldn't understand.

"Where are we going next?"

He asked.

"You still have to deliver takeout, kid, so those entertainment activities are off the table."

Cow-Horse said regretfully.

He had cooked that pot of ratman soup for tonight, but who knew this kid would refuse to follow the script?

"Making money comes first."

Liu Zheng consoled him.

"True. Let me think about what you can do."

Cow-Horse fell into thought.

"You definitely can't do boxing matches. Even a flyweight could kill you with one punch."

He shook his head first.

Liu Zheng did not argue.

With his current strength and speed, he could win championship belts until his hands went numb in the real world.

But in this bizarre world, he could only bully the security guards at the entrance to a residential complex.

"Smuggling won't work either. I'm going on vacation in a few days, so I don't have time to find buyers."

"Scavenging bargains won't work either. You don't look like you've got much of an eye for valuables."

Cow-Horse proposed several plans, then rejected them one by one.

"Forget it. Let's go."

He walked toward a door.

"What are we going to do?"

"Obviously, we're going to gamble."

Cow-Horse replied.

"There are so many people."

Looking at the bustling crowd inside the Gambling Den, Liu Zheng could not help but sigh.

Though there were barely any people inside.

Aside from himself, the closest thing to a humanoid was a demon with ram horns and a tail.

The other customers could only be described as looking extremely freeform.

If they ran into the real world, they could star in twenty or thirty horror movies and still have some left over.

Noticing Liu Zheng studying him, the demon even raised his glass in a friendly gesture.

"Don't provoke that guy."

Cow-Horse warned.

"Is he dangerous?"

Liu Zheng obediently looked away.

"He probably won't attack, but he's the biggest gambler in this Gambling Den. If he sets his sights on you, this little money won't be enough to lose."

Cow-Horse said.

"Then why did you bring me here to gamble?"

He asked speechlessly.

He had thought Cow-Horse had some surefire way to win.

But this was it?

"Bullshit. Besides gambling and robbery, what else can make you rich overnight?"

"Then why don't we rob someone?"

Liu Zheng asked seriously.

With the skills the two of them had, wouldn't robbery be a complete slaughter?

"If you want to die, go ahead. I don't. Besides, it's not like I came unprepared."

Cow-Horse opened his mouth and spat out an iron box.

Liu Zheng took it, but instead of opening it immediately, he stared at Cow-Horse's huge mouth.

"What?"

He was getting annoyed by the stare.

"I'm just curious. How much more stuff can you pull out of that mouth?"

Liu Zheng said.

"None of your business. Come on, open it."

Cow-Horse urged.

He opened the iron box. Inside was a playing card.

A joker. A clown card. There were usually two in a deck; in reality, they were generally called the big and little jokers.

Name: Lucky Clown Card

Type: Item

Quality: Fine

Effect: While holding this card and dressed as a clown, luck increases. The increase is positively correlated with the quality of the costume.

Can be taken out of the instance: Yes

The clown on the card wore blood-red lipstick and smiled with an eerily earnest expression.

"Where am I supposed to dress up as a clown?"

Liu Zheng asked speechlessly.

"I prepared for this ages ago."

Cow-Horse shoved a hoof into his mouth and dug around hard. At last, he pulled out a gaudy clown outfit and a multicolored jester hat.

"You really had this prepared already, huh?"

The corner of Liu Zheng's mouth twitched as he watched the performance.

"Of course. Otherwise, would I really let our money go down the drain?"

Cow-Horse replied.

"Then why were you putting on that whole analytical act earlier?"

"We had to go through the process. Otherwise, it would feel a little too predetermined."

Cow-Horse shrugged.

Under his gaze, Liu Zheng changed into the clown outfit.

The clothes were loose enough to slip directly over his vest.

"What about the makeup?"

He pointed out the flaw.

"That's easy."

Cow-Horse suddenly thrust his head over and sliced Liu Zheng's tentacle with his broken horn.

Blood gushed out.

"See? Now you've got lipstick."

He said proudly.

"If we win money, I'm definitely going to beat you until you're eighty percent dead."

Liu Zheng said expressionlessly.

"As long as you can earn me my retirement fund, ninety percent dead is fine too."

Cow-Horse said without a care.

"Heh."

He dipped his hand in the blood and painted a vivid red smile on his face.

"Lucky Clown Card" has taken effect.

The system notification sounded immediately afterward.

"Which one do we start with?"

Liu Zheng looked around and asked.

The Gambling Den was not large, but it had every kind of equipment. It had basically all the gambling devices he recognized.

Of course, recognizing them was as far as it went.

"Now that you're a Lucky Clown, naturally we should start with something that relies on luck."

Cow-Horse nudged him toward a Pachinko machine.

This kind of machine was considered a Japanese specialty in the real world, popular to an incomprehensible degree.

Whether in Tokyo, Osaka, or Hokkaido, where the human content was extremely low, Pachinko parlors could be found everywhere.

Middle-aged and elderly men in particular would rush in first thing in the morning to claim their favorite machines, then sit there all day with boxed lunches and cigarettes.

Liu Zheng had never played proper Pachinko, but he had played the limited edition found outside elementary schools in China.

A wooden board, a few nails, a glass marble, and a smoking owner sitting on a small stool.

He had lost quite a bit of pocket money on those things.

"Hey, you. Exchange some chips for us."

Cow-Horse shouted.

Before long, a waist-high blob of slime wriggled over.

"Upsy daisy, wibby wabby?"

It made a garbled sound.

"Give it the money."

Cow-Horse told Liu Zheng.

"How?"

Liu Zheng asked.

No matter how he looked at it, the thing did not seem to have hands for receiving anything.

"Just toss it in."

Cow-Horse replied.

He loosened his grip and let the wallet fall onto the slime.

The wallet slowly sank into the slime's body, then vanished.

Liu Zheng was surprised to discover that its body only looked transparent.

"Gurgle gurgle, blub blub."

After another string of mutters, the slime wriggled away.

In the spot where it had stood, it left behind a pile of chips covered in mucus.

"What did it just say?"

Liu Zheng asked as he picked up the chips.

"It said the Gambling Den is running a promotion today. Deposit ten thousand and get a thousand free."

Cow-Horse said.

"Then aren't we guaranteed to profit?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself. Look at the chips in your hands."

Cow-Horse gestured with his mouth.

Liu Zheng looked down at his arms. There were black, red, yellow, and white chips.

The black ones were worth 1,000, the red ones 100, the yellow ones 10, and the white ones were also 1,000.

"The white ones are the freebies. They can't be exchanged for cash. Only if you win with them will they be converted into other chips. Did you think the Gambling Den was stupid?"

Cow-Horse said.

"Oh."

He picked up a yellow chip and tossed it into the Pachinko machine's coin slot.