The End Of The Gamble

“Why so quiet? Did you really do something to the dice?”

At that, Heo Jutae’s eyes wavered. With acting that poor, it was a wonder he had made a living off fraud this long. He had picked the wrong trade altogether, so I decided to help him find a new life.

“Judging by that reaction, something’s pricking your conscience? Now I’m suspicious. I think I’d better have a look at those dice.”

My hand went for the dice.

“Grab that bastard!”

Heo Jutae’s shout was barely out before the Great Saber Gang’s men around us pulled their weapons and came at me.

It didn’t throw me. I had known it would come to this.

In my past life this sort of thing happened often enough once a game got going. The moment the cheats sensed their tricks were about to come out, they turned the table over.

I threw myself straight at Heo Jutae. He recoiled in alarm, but I was faster.

— Clamp!

I hooked the bastard’s wrist with a Seizing Hand,

— Slam!

and took him by the hair and drove his head into the table.

“Kuk!”

A scream burst out of Heo Jutae. I drew the dagger at my waist and laid it against his throat.

“Don’t move. Your Boss loses his head.”

I pressed the blade deeper into his throat, and blood ran down in a thin stream from where the edge had cut him. The underlings closing in on me faltered and came no nearer.

Meanwhile Duho set about clearing them out. He picked up a chair and planted it on the head of the first man to rush him.

— WHUMP!

Bone cracked and the wooden chair shattered. Splinters flew in every direction, and the man who had taken it to the head rolled his eyes back and pitched over.

“Why, you—!”

One of the bruisers saw his fellow drop and swung the axe in his hand at Duho’s flank. Duho did not give ground. He drove in close and brought his fist up from below.

— Snap!

“Gwak!”

Something snapped out of joint, and the bruiser’s elbow bent backward. The axe left his hand, flew off and buried itself in the wall. As he went to his knees clutching the arm, Duho’s fist smashed into his face.

— THWACK!

“Gwek!”

The bruiser went face-down on the floor.

After that it went the same way. One strike, one man. The Great Saber Gang’s men went down.

That left Heo Jutae and a few underlings standing in front of me, unable to move one way or the other. Duho dusted off his hands, and I spoke to him.

“Good work.”
“This much is child’s play. I don’t come up short with my fists anywhere I go — I mean that.”

Duho crowed, thoroughly pleased with himself. It was more than I could stomach, so I needled him.

“And a man like that — what happened at the Bound-Hand Duel, then?”
“I’d drunk too much the night before, I was in a bad way that day, all right? We go again, I win.”
“Is that so? Shall we set a date, then?”
“…That’s hardly what matters right now!”

Duho barked it out and whipped his head away.

“Something to see, is there? Unless you fancy ending up like the ones on the floor, clear off.”

He glared at the ones still standing there at a loss.

“Hiik!”
“Run for it!”

Cowed by his bearing, the Great Saber Gang’s men threw down their weapons and fled.

I let the change of subject stand. I had a few more words in me, but any more and he might genuinely sulk. However much you tease a man, you don’t touch the last of his pride.

I lifted Heo Jutae up by the hair and met his eyes.

“Now that the nuisances are gone, let’s have a constructive talk.”
“Let go of me! You think you walk away from this! When our Boss hears of it you’re finished! No — not just you, your house and every soul in it, all of you are dead men!”

Heo Jutae shrieked it, shaking all over.

That was when I took his head and drove it down into the table.

— Slam!

“Kuhk!”

I took him by the hair again, lifted, and drove him down.

— Slam!

“Hurk!”

— Slam!

“Spare—!”

— Slam! Slam! Slam!

I went on driving his head into the table, over and over.

The likes of you, taking my family’s name in your mouth?

A bottom-feeder who sucked the blood and sweat out of people was threatening my family. I could not forgive it.

Come to think of it, these men had tormented me more than a little in my past life as well. I swallowed bitter humiliation paying that money back, and my mother and my younger brother and sister were hurt and made sport of. As the memory of that life came back to me, more strength went into my hand than I meant.

— Crunch!

The table could not bear it and split in two. Splinters flew everywhere with a great clatter.

— Whish!

The hand holding Heo Jutae swung down through empty air.

Only then did I come back to myself. I looked around. The people who had been watching avoided my eyes, and even Duho only stared, his eyes gone round.

I moved my gaze to my own hand. Heo Jutae was a wreck. Blood ran from his nose and his mouth, and a gurgling sound came out of him.

“Hooo—”

I took a short, deep breath and settled the killing intent boiling up in me. The rage that had filled my chest guttered down bit by bit.

I let myself get too worked up.

On a battlefield that would have been as good as death. However much the man had threatened to kill my family, I should not have let my feelings show like that. Not even if he had truly taken them hostage. Letting an enemy see what I felt was the same as telling him where my weakness lay.

I’ve gone slack.

Was it because everything had gone smoothly since I returned to the past? My father alive, my family unharmed, myself growing stronger by the day, and somewhere in all of it I had grown comfortable without noticing. If my composure broke over a thing as small as this, how was I to protect my family and make my house the first under heaven?

A cold head, a hot heart.

I must not be shaken by a paltry provocation. Anger clouds judgment, and clouded judgment leads straight to death. I had learned it at Blood Sand Plain until I was sick of it, and keeping body and mind still as a calm lake was one of the reasons I survived the battlefield.

I will not be eaten by my own feelings again.

One mistake was enough.

I took a firm hold of myself once more and held the contract out in front of Heo Jutae.

“Take a good look.”
“Ngh…”

Heo Jutae groaned and tried to look away, but I twisted his hair and made him look.

“It’s written right here, isn’t it? That if I win, the Great Saber Gang pays out five hundred taels of gold and a sum to match the banknotes.”
“…The Boss won’t let this stand.”

Heo Jutae forced the words out. That made me laugh.

“I doubt it. All I’m doing is keeping to the contract. You’re the ones who broke up the game. The justification is on my side. I could kill every one of you here and walk out with the money, and the Great Saber Gang still couldn’t move.”

In the gangho, justification mattered. However far gone a man was, moving without it could make a public enemy of him, so not even Black Leopard could afford to act carelessly.

I flung Heo Jutae down on the floor, put my face close to his where he had fallen, and said,

“If you’ve understood, empty the strongbox or go into debt — just bring it. If the money comes up short, this time it won’t be the table that breaks but your skull.”

The next day the market street of Qingzhou was in an uproar over what had happened at Tugeum Hall. In the inns above all, packed as they were, everyone talked of Yang Mujin as though they had agreed on it beforehand.

“Have you heard the talk? That the eldest son of the Yang manor cleaned out Tugeum Hall!”
“I heard it too. Six, six, five came up and he pulled six, six, six to beat it, they say? Hah — just hearing it sets my heart going.”
“I saw it with my own eyes.”

One man raised his voice, pleased with himself, and every eye nearby swung to him.

“You were there yesterday, were you?”
“Didn’t I just say so?”
“I’ll stand you a drink — tell it properly.”

The man beside him held out a bottle. He took it, threw back a mouthful, and began.

“Aah! When the gambling-house manager’s dice came up six, six, five, everyone gave it up for lost. But then the Yang manor’s eldest talks big, says you never know yet. Honestly, everyone must have thought he was bluffing. I did too.”
“So what happened? Get on and tell it.”
“All of a sudden the Yang manor’s eldest hands the dice and the cup to his guard, if you please? I wondered what he thought he was doing. But that guard’s hands were something else. Shaking the cup like a man performing a trick, and then — clack!”

The man brought his hand down on the table.

“Set it down, just like that. And then he lifts the cup and the dice are stacked one on another. Like a pillar, I tell you. He picks them off one at a time and the pips read six, six, six!”
“Ohh — this fellow got a proper feast for his eyes. I envy you, I do.”

The man shrugged at the wonder around him.

“The more astonishing part comes after. The Great Saber Gang’s men who’d lost the wager come rushing in to overturn the table, and he put every one of them down without so much as blinking!”
“The Great Saber Gang’s men? Come off it, surely not.”
“It’s the truth, whether you like it or not. If you don’t believe me, go to Tugeum Hall and ask. I saw it clear with my own two eyes! Wrists bent back, skulls broken open… ugh, my knees go weak just thinking about it now.”

The air in the inn heated another degree at his words. The money he had won was not the astonishing part; putting the Great Saber Gang down was.

“Beating down that vicious Great Saber Gang — the Yang manor’s eldest is quite the man.”
“Isn’t that so. And the talk everywhere was that he had no martial talent.”
“Isn’t that what talk always is? And he’s the son of Iron Lion Yang Taejun, the Great Hero, after all. A tiger’s cub is a tiger, of course.”
“I thought him out of the ordinary from the time he made gold off that lightning-struck jujube wood, and his martial arts are excellent besides.”
“You know those healing pills and internal-injury medicine everyone’s been after lately? The Yang manor’s eldest made those as well.”
“A good fighter, and outstanding in strategy and medical knowledge besides — I wonder if a fine rising star hasn’t appeared in our Qingzhou.”

Everyone in the inn nodded.

At the very hour Yang Mujin’s reputation was turning, the Great Saber Gang was, quite literally, no different from a house in mourning.

— Crunch!

A horrible bursting sound rang through the office of the Great Saber Gang’s leader. Heo Jutae was driven into the floor like a kite with its string cut, and Black Leopard, his temper nowhere near spent, kicked him.

— Thunk! Thunk!

Heo Jutae gave no answer to the kicks. He was already dead, and had been a cold slab of meat for some time.

Black Leopard snorted for a good while longer, then stopped kicking and sat down.

“Uwaaaaaah!”

Black Leopard clutched his head in both hands and roared. With the treasure storehouse burned, the money he had to hand was gone. Tugeum Hall had been the one hope left, and now that too had been cleaned out.

Losing money was not the whole of it. Money like that could be made again, given time. But there was another reason he needed it now.

The tribute money.

That was the problem.

And after everything it took to get hold of that line…

He had won that line the hard way, bowing and scraping and handing over whatever was asked of him. He could not let it slip. A little more effort and he might get a few martial techniques out of it, and then the Great Saber Gang could stand tall in Qingzhou.

Dealing with that Yang Mujin would have to wait. First he had to come up with the tribute money somehow.

There’s no help for it. Nothing for it but to put my hand to that.

There was no other way to lay hands on an enormous sum of money quickly.

Venom settled into Black Leopard’s eyes.