After admiring the Silla Maid's graceful dancing, drinking half a jar of Yellow Fermented Wine, and enjoying that lavish meal, Huo Qilang took Yuwen Rang to a little teahouse. By the time they had listened to half an episode of "Dead Zhuge Liang Frightens the Living Sima Zhongda," she had already found out where the cockfighting house was.
The two promptly headed to their next entertainment.
Yuwen Rang came from wealth and had played at cockfighting before, but that had been the sport of great households: raising roosters worth a hundred gold pieces apiece, then finding opponents to compete against. Today, however, they went where ordinary townsfolk gathered. Unable to buy fighting cocks of their own, these people merely watched the house's birds fight, then wagered small sums on the outcome. It was called cockfighting, but in truth it was gambling.
Huo Qilang bought a few measures of cloudy wine here and shared them with Yuwen Rang, laughing and shouting as they watched Golden Feather battle Iron Spur. Around the ring, battle cries shook the heavens; inside it, feathers flew. They won some bets and lost others, all for the fun of it.
Yuwen Rang could hold his liquor well, and that very strength was why he had been assigned this task. The fine Yellow Fermented Wine at the restaurant had given him no trouble, but after pouring a good deal of inferior cloudy wine on top of it, he felt his stomach churning unpleasantly.
He watched her discreetly. For every measure he drank, Huo Qilang could drink more than three without so much as changing color.
After losing a large wager, they left the cockfighting house and went to the dog-racing grounds to watch fierce hounds run. Here, betting was more than simply picking a winner: one had to