A Little Gambling for Pleasure

Strictly speaking, although Su Bai had joined the Grave Keepers, he had yet to shed his identity as a student.

Su Bai had grown up in an orphanage and was used to a hard life, long accustomed to splitting a single yuan in two to make it last. If one day he suddenly had to transform himself into a young master who threw money around by the thousand, there was no way he could pull off that air of a spoiled rich playboy.

But there was no helping it. To wipe out the Hunter Guild, they had to start with Heavenly River International.

Li Ming's injuries had yet to heal.

Gu Jiuge had to defend the radish.

Lin Luo had just returned from headquarters in Tianjing and still had to hand over materials to colleagues in Section Seven.

Chu Ning and Qingxue were both too young. They probably couldn't even get through the casino doors, so they could only lurk outside Heavenly River International disguised as watermelon vendors.

After counting everyone up, the job of smashing up Heavenly River International could only fall to Su Bai.

Before he came to Heavenly River International, Chu Ning had carefully devised a set of guidelines for Su Bai: wear a handmade tailored suit, a famous Patek Feicui watch, and high-end Armani leather shoes; slick his hair back with a thirty-seventy part; and spritz on a little subtly elegant perfume.

The watch, shoes, slicked-back hair, and perfume were easy enough, but there wasn't time to have a suit made by hand. He had to borrow Lin Luo's tailored suit instead. It was a little too big, but it would do.

Then Chu Ning discovered to her surprise that, dressed in an outfit worth hundreds of thousands, Su Bai didn't look like a noble young master at all. Instead, he was the very picture of a "country bumpkin."

That was what happened when you forced a duck onto a perch.

The Heaven-grade private room.

A large gambling table stood beneath the dim, hazy lights, with a hundred chips laid out on each side.

Across the table sat a voluptuous blonde beauty in an elegant, dignified, bright-red qipao with slits up the sides. Great expanses of tender, jade-white skin were exposed, soft as mutton fat and delicate enough to break at a breath.

This was Sister Hong.

Su Bai sat on the other side of the table, eyes fixed on his nose, nose toward his mouth, and mouth toward his heart, not daring to raise his eyelids.

Why? Because four burly men were fucking standing outside the room, carrying guns-AK rifles.

Those things packed a punch. Su Bai had seen them on TV: one squeeze of the trigger, and a dozen rounds went rat-a-tat-tat.

Smash up the place?

Like hell he would!

If he really flipped the table, Su Bai might be riddled like a sieve the next moment. How could he possibly last until those two heroines of the martial world, Chu Ning and Qingxue, came to his aid?

What bullshit mission? Nothing was more important than his life.

"Ahem... well, Sister Hong, I'm just running an errand. There's no need for a show of force like this, is there?"

Sister Hong propped up her chin with one hand and leaned slightly forward. The two half-covered peaks of her bosom were dazzlingly white. With the hint of a smile, she stared at Su Bai. "Little brother, what's your relationship with Mr. Gu?"

Su Bai grew wary. "Is my relationship with him that important?"

Sister Hong pressed an index finger lightly against the table. "Mr. Gu won all these chips with ten yuan. That alone shows how skillful he is. I was hoping that when Mr. Gu came to patronize us again, I could test his skills for myself. What a pity. Why did you come instead, little brother? Look, everything in front of you was won by Mr. Gu."

All these?

Weren't there just a hundred?

"Sister Hong, how much is each chip worth? Ten yuan?"

"One hundred thousand."

"..."

Su Bai's heart suddenly began to race.

He understood now. He really understood.

No wonder there were four guns pointed his way outside the door.

Winning ten million from ten yuan-what was that if not cheating? Had smoke risen from his ancestral graves or something?

"Actually, I've only met that bastard Gu two or three times. I really don't know him well. How about this? I'll go back and tell him to come over."

Su Bai had just stood up when he heard the clack of a rifle round being chambered outside the door.

Unable to stand or sit, Su Bai had no choice but to fish a knockoff phone out of his pocket. He gave two awkward chuckles. "It's fine if you won't let me leave, but my bicycle's still parked downstairs. Would you mind if I called a friend to move it?"

Sister Hong giggled, practically trembling like a flowering branch. Her seductive eyes held Su Bai in a direct gaze. "We're all civilized people. What fun is all that fighting and killing? On Heavenly River International's turf, we don't take lives lightly. But little brother, since you're already here, won't you play a little before you leave?"

Hearing that, Su Bai breathed a sigh of relief. "Although I'm not that kind of casual person, since Sister Hong has spoken and wants me to play, I can only risk my life to keep you company. When are we leaving?"

Sister Hong looked slightly taken aback. "Leaving? Can't we play here?"

"Play here?" Su Bai hesitated for a long moment, then lowered his voice. "Aren't there several people standing outside the door? If they hear the sounds later... wouldn't that be awkward?"

"..."

Sister Hong gave him a strange look, studying the greenhorn before her for a long time.

Su Bai suddenly realized what she meant. "Oh, you meant playing a gambling game? I thought... ahem, well, I can play. I only know how to play dice, though. How about guessing high or low? We each have just a hundred chips. I'll shake, and you guess?"

Sister Hong clapped her hands, and a young man dressed like a waiter immediately entered the room carrying a dice cup.

Su Bai checked the weight and condition of the dice, hefting them in his hand. Only after he was sure there was nothing wrong did he set the cup on the table.

"Let's begin."

The frivolous, teasing look in Sister Hong's eyes gradually faded, becoming sharp and cold.

Su Bai likewise put away his devil-may-care expression, his gaze narrowing slightly.

As the saying went, gamble long enough and you were bound to lose.

This wasn't actually a question of philosophy or human nature, but of arithmetic.

Take the simplest bet on a die's number: if you bet one yuan and won, you received five yuan, a return rate of five. But a die had six sides, so the chance of losing was five in six. In other words, for every six plays, you would most likely lose one yuan of your stake, and that was before accounting for the casino's cut.

No matter what kind of game it was, a casino would never let a gambler's chance of winning rise above fifty percent. Over an infinite number of rounds, even if the gambler made a profit at some point, given enough time, arithmetic would drain away all the money won, leaving the gambler buried in debt.

Even if a conscientious house gave you a relatively fair game, such as guessing high or low on the dice, and nobody cheated, the only thing that could determine the final outcome was the capital each side had. The house's money was practically infinite, and under the infinite-wealth formula, your actual chance of winning would plunge below ten percent.

Su Bai was proficient in arithmetic, and he understood very clearly:

The odds of winning the game were one variable.

The gambler's and the house's capital were another.

That was why Su Bai had chosen to guess high or low on the dice, and had added the condition that the gambler and the house have equal capital.

He had made the contest a true fifty-fifty proposition. No... his chance of winning was as high as ninety percent.

That was because he had been a loner since childhood, and his only hobby was studying all sorts of strange and unusual games, such as... the various ways of playing with Rubik's Cubes and dice.

At thirteen, he could solve a scrambled five-by-five Rubik's Cube in thirty seconds, and could also arrange the number showing on every die inside a cup by knocking them together.

Add psychology and careful observation to that.

In this high-stakes gamble, Su Bai had almost a ninety percent chance of winning.

Sorry, Sister Hong. I, Su Bai, will shamelessly accept these twenty million!

Two hours later.

Having lost everything but the underwear next to his skin, Su Bai stood alone outside the entrance to Heavenly River International, his face ashen as the biting wind blew over him.

This is fucking unscientific!

Seriously unscientific!

Didn't they say that if you were good at math, physics, and chemistry, you could go anywhere without fear? I calculated the odds perfectly, so how did I end up losing every last yuan of the ten million Gu Jiuge won, and even have to pawn the suit, leather shoes, and famous watch I was wearing?

I came here to smash up the place, so how did... huh? Huh!?

Where's my bicycle?

Which bastard rode off on my bicycle?

"Achoo!!"

As countless passersby gathered to watch and point, Su Bai sneezed violently, then threw back his head and howled, "You fucking bike thief, don't let me catch you!"