It had to be said, Su Feifei had real talent for becoming a gambler. A short spell at the slot machine and her face was already flushed, fine beads of sweat gathering on the bridge of her nose, her breathing visibly quickening. Having exchanged another two thousand in chips, she darted over to a roulette table and set about studying how to play it like an extremely curious child.

At the top of the tallest building in the entertainment district, a young man with a languid expression was flipping listlessly through the feeds on the screens in front of him. This was the central control room of the Li Group’s entertainment complex. When the feed switched to the casino, the image abruptly froze. The middle-aged man standing at his side, expression respectful, followed his gaze and saw at once what had caught his attention.

Girls with good figures were everywhere. Girls good enough to stun a man at a glance and hold his eyes there were vanishingly rare — and her face was no less remarkable than her figure, a beauty carrying something bewitching enough to grip the soul. Even with more than forty years behind him, he could hardly think of a girl to set beside her. Small wonder the young master had noticed her instantly.

“Looks like this trip wasn’t wasted after all.” The young man stared at Su Feifei on the screen, his narrow eyes narrowing further, a dangerous smile spreading across his face. He rose and said coolly, “Come on. We’re going down to the casino.”

Another ten-odd minutes passed, and Su Feifei’s chips were cleaned out again. Far from discouraged, she went straight back and cheerfully exchanged another two thousand. Two thousand… to the only daughter of Su Luo, the richest man in Asia, that wasn’t worth a single hair off nine oxen — off ninety oxen.

“Miss Su, is it really that much fun?” Ye Tianxie said, thoroughly glum. He could not for the life of him work out why a thing a three-year-old could operate had this woman lit up like she’d been injected with something.

“Hee. It’s genuinely thrilling. When you win it feels like an enormous achievement, and when you lose you want to smash the machine.” Su Feifei stuck out her tongue. That violent swing of emotion was exactly the extreme thrill that had hooked countless gamblers before her.

Ye Tianxie was speechless. “You’re not a natural-born gambler, are you?”

“Hmph, of course not. I have excellent self-control. Look — I only ever bet the very smallest amounts, and I’ve only lost four thousand so far.”

Ye Tianxie very much wanted to shout that in half an hour she had “only” lost four thousand — and what, exactly, were ordinary people who worked themselves half to death all day for a hundred supposed to make of that?

“If you have such excellent self-control, then let’s leave now. There are plenty of fun places; I’ll go with you until dark.”

“Aww… just a little longer, please? It took me forever to get here even once. Look, there’s still so much over there that looks fun…”

Su Feifei leaned into him affectionately, pouting and swaying and turning on the full wheedle. It was the first time she’d shown him this little-girl side of herself, and perhaps because the excitement was carrying her, she felt not a trace of awkwardness about it — it came out perfectly naturally. Ye Tianxie, on the other hand, broke out in goosebumps… That voice, that expression, plus her figure, added up to a weapon with lethality approaching Guoguo’s pitiful, watery-eyed stare.

He was on the verge of surrender when a voice made him frown.

“Beautiful. May I get to know you?”

A tall, slim man about Ye Tianxie’s age and a little taller came down the stairs and stopped in front of them, wearing a warm, comfortable smile. His gaze settled on Su Feifei and stayed there without the slightest reserve, and his words were of course addressed to her. Ye Tianxie, standing beside her, he did not so much as glance at, as though the man simply weren’t there.

Before coming down, the young man had spent a while watching from the entrance. In a place packed with the wealthy, where a single hand routinely ran to five figures, Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei’s hundred-a-spin bets were pitiful by comparison. And their clothes — Ye Tianxie’s casual outfit, whose colors didn’t even coordinate, looked for all the world like something off a street stall, a hundred for the whole set with two pairs of socks thrown in. Add that the pair of them had needed a research session to figure out roulette, and they were obviously a couple visiting a casino for the first time out of curiosity. Still, if they could afford to drop a few thousand at a time, the family probably had a little money.

Being approached was neither surprising nor unfamiliar to Su Feifei. She stole a glance at Ye Tianxie’s expression, her eyes flickered slightly, and she pressed closer against him, adopting a somewhat frightened posture. “But my boyfriend told me I’m not allowed to talk to other boys.”

The muscles in Ye Tianxie’s face twitched once, then returned to normal.

Only then did the young man turn his eyes to Ye Tianxie. And though Ye Tianxie had a face that stirred envy in him and an indefinable strangeness about his presence, the young man, secure in his own standing, looked at him with an air of pure, lazy superiority. “My name is Li Tianpeng. And you are?”

Ye Tianxie gave him half an eye, then looked away and couldn’t be bothered to look back.

Li Tianpeng laughed coldly to himself and went on. “What, not talking? Frankly, I’m quite taken with your girlfriend. But a gentleman doesn’t seize what belongs to another. I could take her by force easily enough, but that sort of thing really isn’t in me… How about this — let me give you a way to make me give up. You and I have a wager. If you win, I’ll never think of your girlfriend again. If you lose, well, nothing much happens; it just proves I’m better than you. Heh heh. Care to?”

No seizing by force — only crushing a man with presence, wealth, and method until he was left with nothing, until the woman he’d set his eye on abandoned her man and threw herself into his arms of her own accord. That was a process he savored… and one Li Tianpeng was far from performing for the first time.

Before Ye Tianxie could offer any opinion at all, Su Feifei’s eyes were practically shooting stars. She shook his arm eagerly. “That sounds fun! Tianxie, he wants to bet you, so bet him! It’s not like it matters.”

As if Ye Tianxie couldn’t see straight through her little scheme. The soft pressure against his arm was doing something to his composure. He let out a breath and said lazily, “Fine. What are the terms?”

Li Tianpeng smiled lightly. “Simple. One million each; how we gamble is up to you. Although—” his eyes turned contemptuous, “—if you don’t dare, or you can’t even produce a million… heh heh, that’s fine too. We’ll pretend I never said any of it. I’ve never had the patience for a wager under seven figures.”

The scorn in his eyes was entirely undisguised, and the people around them, taking in Ye Tianxie’s clothes, wore the same look… A handsome face wasted on him. If a man has no means, he’d do better to find an ordinary woman and live a quiet, honest life. Even if he somehow got his hands on a nation-toppling beauty for a while, he’d never keep her.

Take the bet? By his clothes he didn’t look remotely wealthy, and even if he could somehow scrape together a million, he’d only be puffing up a slapped face — and would likely be gambled into ruin. Refuse the bet? Then all he could do was slink away.

The contempt in Li Tianpeng’s voice and the looks all around them sent a surge of anger up through Su Feifei’s excitement. A woman may take out her temper on her man freely at home, but out in the world, no woman wants to watch her man be bullied or humiliated — and a woman who truly cares will do everything she can to protect his face. What Su Feifei was feeling now was precisely that subtle female instinct.

Flaunting your wealth isn’t a crime. But flaunting it in front of the only daughter of the richest man in Asia…

She tightened her grip on Ye Tianxie’s arm, arched a slender brow, and looked at Li Tianpeng with an even deeper contempt. “A million? I’m amazed you had the nerve to say it out loud… This young lady doesn’t much care for high-stakes gambling, but my man has never had the patience for a wager under a hundred million. If you want to gamble, it’s a hundred million. And if you don’t dare — or you can’t even produce a measly hundred million — then you’d best clear off now, before you embarrass yourself further and ruin this young lady’s mood.”

A wave of noise—

Su Feifei hadn’t lowered her voice in the slightest. The area around them went abruptly silent, and the silence spread outward on a rush of whispers among the gamblers until, gradually, the whole clamorous casino had gone still… Because what they had heard was a hundred million.

This woman… Ye Tianxie slid his gaze sideways at Su Feifei and smiled faintly.

“A hundred million?” Li Tianpeng was visibly stunned. Su Feifei turning from soft and delicate to razor-tongued in an instant didn’t anger him at all — it only made her more interesting. But the astronomical figure she’d named was one no one could believe they’d heard, and it caught him entirely off guard.

Is she bluffing… or did I misjudge them? Can they really produce a hundred million?

Never had the patience for a wager under a hundred million… Who do you think you are, Su Luo?

“Well? Can’t produce it, or don’t dare? Oh… you mean you can’t even manage a hundred million, and you had the nerve to challenge my man?” Su Feifei pushed back her hair casually and laughed, scornful.

Li Tianpeng had issued the challenge first. Failing to answer it would make him a laughingstock. But even for the Li Group, with assets in the tens of billions, a hundred million was no trivial sum — never mind him, his own father wouldn’t have dared gamble like that.

Still, as the Li Group’s first heir, how could he be willing to lose face in front of this many people? And besides, he flatly did not believe that Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei could produce a hundred million. And even if they could — what of it? This was his casino. Who could possibly beat him on his own ground? He said, with great composure, “Very well. Excellent. A hundred million it is. As for how we play — heh, that remains yours to decide.”

That said, he smiled coolly, plucked a card gleaming with gold from his pocket, and called to an attendant. “Go. Exchange a hundred million in chips for me.”

The once-raucous casino was now eerily quiet, because something more thrilling than gambling was unfolding. Even the gamblers with blood in their eyes were watching while whispering excitedly among themselves, though no one dared jeer or shout. Anyone who came here regularly knew exactly who Li Tianpeng was and what family power stood behind him. And when that golden card appeared, every eye in the house fixed on it with a greed like a starving wolf’s.

The attendant took the card and carried it with both trembling hands, cradling it, walking with extreme care for fear of damaging it. That noble gold… There were fewer than a hundred of these cards in all of Huaxia — the Gold Emperor Card, said to allow an overdraft of a full five hundred million!

(End of Chapter 128)