Su Feifei opened the little bag hanging at her side, pulled out an entirely unremarkable Huaxia Bank credit card, and said to another attendant, “Go exchange a hundred million in chips for this young lady as well.”

Li Tianpeng read their faces — Su Feifei’s expression, which plainly treated money as though it weren’t money, and Ye Tianxie’s total lack of any reaction at all — and finally understood that he had genuinely misjudged them. These two really could produce a hundred million.

Heh. All the better. A hundred million landing in his lap for nothing — what a beautiful thing.

The chips were brought out for both sides at once. Only then did the casino accept that this wasn’t bluster. It was real.

A super-wager measured in hundreds of millions.

They didn’t bother with any so-called VIP room, simply taking the nearest table, with the surrounding crowd of gamblers as witnesses. Li Tianpeng, his smile unwavering, sat down casually on one side. “Shall we begin? Go on, then. How do we play?”

“What are the options?” Ye Tianxie sat down opposite, facing the dealer standing between them, and asked a question that nearly made the assembled gamblers laugh out loud.

“Show Hand?” The dealer blinked, offering it tentatively.

“…What’s Show Hand?” Ye Tianxie turned to Su Feifei.

“I don’t know either… Is there anything else?”

Pfft—

Several men who had been watching the show over their tea sprayed it clean across the floor. They didn’t even know Show Hand and they were gambling like this… Hell, what kind of world was this?

“Keno?”

“What’s Keno?”

“Texas hold’em?”

“…”

“Three-card?”

“…”

“Then… blackjack?”

“…”

The dealer’s face had begun visibly twitching. Ye Tianxie, still deliberating, finally spoke before the man could break entirely. “Do you have dice? Let’s just do that… We’ll play high-low. Five rounds, twenty million a round.”

“Dice? I know that one! I’ve seen it on TV!” Su Feifei called out happily.

Dice, it must be said, are the simplest and the most classic of gambling implements, and though the rise of newer and more thrilling games has steadily eroded their share of the industry, they will never be forgotten so long as gambling itself survives.

There are a great many ways to play dice, and in the gambling of this era they mostly served an auxiliary role, with every sort of complex and thrilling variation on offer… So when this man and woman settled on the single most idiotic possible use of them — roll and compare, high wins — for a wager measured in hundreds of millions, the expressions on the gamblers around the table were something to behold.

By now even an idiot could see that Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei had never set foot in a casino before… And to gamble like this on a first visit — was it youthful arrogance, a fit of temper, a short-circuited brain, or simply more money than they knew what to do with? Yet to stake a hundred million without a flicker of expression — how many people in all the world had the means, or the nerve?

Li Tianpeng, for his part, remained perfectly composed, nodding placidly. “Fine. I don’t care how we play. Dice, then, high-low… How many?”

“Three,” Su Feifei answered before anyone else could.

Li Tianpeng waved at the dealer. “Go. Two cups and six dice.”

The game was set up at once: an enormous table bearing nothing but two identical cups and six dice. The dealer placed three dice into each cup and looked up. “Would the gentlemen prefer to shake for themselves, or shall I shake on your behalf?”

“Doesn’t matter. You shake.” Li Tianpeng flicked his mouth dismissively, then cut a challenging glance at Ye Tianxie. At the same time, he had already sent men to look into who Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei were… Understated clothes, and a hundred million produced without blinking. These two were no simple pair. He had, after all, been thoroughly taken in.

The dealer nodded and looked to Ye Tianxie. Ye Tianxie’s brow shifted, and he said coolly, “Can’t be bothered. You shake.”

An identical flicker of mocking light passed through the eyes of Li Tianpeng and the placid-faced dealer, and vanished just as quickly.

“Tianxie, you’re definitely going to win.” Su Feifei gave him a look of pure feminine charm and whispered it in his ear. Blurting out a hundred million had certainly owed something to the fury she’d felt watching him be sneered at — but she didn’t regret it in the slightest. This man beside her, strange and mysterious in every direction, was hardly the sort of man who lost.

He definitely wouldn’t… And even if he did, so what? It was only a hundred million. She’d been saving her father’s pocket money for years; she probably had a few billion tucked away by now.

Whether the people grinding themselves to death every month for a thousand or so would survive hearing that thought is another question.

“Let’s begin. First round. High wins.” Ye Tianxie sat with his arms folded, expressionless. This was, all things considered, his first time gambling — and his first time with dice. Dice were also the only thing he could play, or knew how to play. High-low… a fool’s game that a three-year-old could master completely.

“As you like.” Li Tianpeng’s mouth curled into a mocking arc. He signaled the dealer between them with his eyes.

The dealer nodded and set both hands moving, shaking rapidly, the dice rattling inside. Li Tianpeng wore a light smile. Ye Tianxie, meanwhile, had lowered his head and half-closed his eyes, not sparing the dealer so much as a glance. The gamblers around them stared fixedly at the two shaking cups, not daring to blink, laughing privately to themselves: these two clearly still had no idea who Young Master Li was. This was his family’s casino. Would he lose on his own ground? There was only one possible ending — that young man, so obviously putting on airs, would be stripped of every last coin. And knowing Li Tianpeng’s character, he certainly wouldn’t stop at the hundred million on the table…

The dealer looked utterly unremarkable, but the regulars all knew him by his nickname: the Devil’s Hands.

Clack!

Both cups came down together, and the rattling stopped. The dealer glanced at Li Tianpeng and then Ye Tianxie, inviting them to choose.

“Fine. I’ll open first.” Li Tianpeng straightened, unhurried. Ye Tianxie remained in the same utterly relaxed posture, though as the cups landed, his half-closed eyes opened.

Li Tianpeng’s cup lifted, and three dice appeared to the room… three, four, three. Ten exactly. Not a large number at all. The dealer turned to Ye Tianxie, whose brow rose. “Open it.”

The cup lifted. Ye Tianxie’s dice were… three fours, straight across.

“Yes! We won, we won!” Su Feifei, who had been very tense indeed, let out a delighted cry. Ye Tianxie smiled slightly, without any particular excitement, and instead shot Li Tianpeng a cool, mocking glance. Li Tianpeng’s mouth twitched, and he snorted. “Your luck seems good today.” That said, he pushed the twenty million in chips in front of him straight across to Ye Tianxie and said nothing more.

The gamblers watched coldly. A few frowned, but anyone with eyes knew what was happening — Li Tianpeng was simply letting his opponent taste something sweet before crushing him. Give a man a taste first, and he’ll find it far harder to walk away. It was a tactic that had never once failed on a fresh face in a casino.

Twenty million a round, on a dice roll — nobody there had seen so absurd a way of gambling in their entire lives. Just looking at that pile of enormous denominations was a lethal kind of thrill.

Ye Tianxie flicked Su Feifei’s hand with a finger, startling her into silence. Stacking the chips that had been pushed over to one side, he said with a faintly smug smile, “Again!”

The two cups began shaking once more. The dealer’s technique was extraordinary — he didn’t even open his eyes as he worked, the two cups dancing in midair to a chaotic rhythm. At last they came down, and the breathing around the table stopped again, every gaze fixed on the cups.

This time Ye Tianxie’s opened first: five, five, four.

A flicker of smugness crossed his face. Li Tianpeng saw it and sneered inwardly.

One round. Not two hundred at stake, not two thousand, not twenty thousand, but a full twenty million. Who could afford numbers like that, and who could truly be indifferent to a wager of that magnitude? Li Tianpeng showed no tension because victory was already in his hand; he had never once considered that he might lose. And Ye Tianxie… however astonishingly calm he appeared on the surface, nobody would believe a man could face a wager like this with a heart of still water.

Li Tianpeng’s cup was turned over. Three numbers: six, five, five.

“Hahahaha.” Li Tianpeng clapped his hands and waggled a contemptuous finger at Ye Tianxie — and in the space between those waggling fingers, he distinctly saw a twitch pass across Ye Tianxie’s face. “The wheel of fortune turns! Again!”

“What’s there to gloat about? Pathetic,” Su Feifei muttered coldly. Her eyes returned to the cups in the dealer’s hands. Li Tianpeng — she had finally remembered why the name had sounded faintly familiar the first time she heard it… the Li Group’s first heir. This casino belonged to his family in the first place.

Which meant that if the dealer was working entirely at his direction…

But that light flick against her fingers earlier kept her from saying more. Instead she simply watched, quietly, to see how he intended to deal with Li Tianpeng… And she wasn’t worried in the least. On the contrary, her chest was full of excited anticipation. A few days together couldn’t possibly let her understand all of him, but of one thing she was certain: this was a man who never came out on the losing end. He had a plan.

However agitated she appeared, what she was actually thinking was known only to her. She was savoring the process of watching Ye Tianxie gamble against this man, and the outcome — win or lose — hardly mattered… Because couldn’t this be counted as him fighting a duel with another man… over her?

Ye Tianxie silently pushed the twenty million he’d just won back across the table, his expression as unruffled as ever. “Let’s begin. This time — low wins.”

“As you like.” Li Tianpeng smiled faintly, entirely unconcerned.

(End of Chapter 129)