This was a victory for all three of them.

“What did I do?” Xing Ye thought for a moment and said, “I just helped my opponent gather some support, that’s all.”

He looked at the nearly broken-down Shao Lin and said, “Strange, isn’t it? You thought there was no way I’d let you win. So even if you didn’t do anything this round, you believed you'd get shot, which would give me a chance to win the 10 special chips you and the dealer would contribute to the pot after getting shot. Only by getting those 10 chips could I reach the 20 needed to pay off my debt. If you had won, we both would’ve lost in the end. So why would I possibly let you win this round, right?”

That was exactly what Shao Lin thought. He couldn’t understand why Xing Ye would do something that would ruin both of them.

Xing Ye gave a faint smile and said, “If you must die with understanding, I’ll tell you the reason.”

He turned to look at Yan Hebi in the audience. Yan Hebi walked up carrying a box. He opened it to reveal a stack of white papers, each printed with a QR code.

“These are the contracts I made with 20 passengers in the casino,” Xing Ye said, holding one of the papers. “The terms are simple: if I help them win bets in the side games, I get 10% of their winnings. If they lose, I cover 100% of their losses. It’s all written in black and white, clear and fair. The contracts were even provided by the casino. I didn’t breach anything.”

The dealer took one of the contracts, his fingers trembling slightly.

No one else could see the contents of the contracts — only the dealer could.

Xing Ye continued, “Since I have these contracts, I couldn’t just focus on the main game. I had to pay attention to the sidelines too. In the side bets, I had the lowest odds. Because of my string of wins in the duel arena, both the casino and the passengers believed I would definitely beat Shao Lin. So my odds were 1.2:1, while Shao Lin’s were 3:1. Under those circumstances, of course I would help Shao Lin win — only that way could my clients earn the most chips.”

The dealer took a sheet passed by the croupier showing the side bets. Though there weren’t many people, they were all high rollers. Each of them had placed 100,000 passenger chips the moment Shao Lin took the gun.

At 3:1 odds, 100,000 chips would return 300,000, netting a profit of 200,000. With 20 passengers, the casino would have to pay out 4 million passenger chips.

4 million passenger chips = 400 million points = 40 billion RMB.

Of course, a casino’s valuation would be higher than 40 billion, but even the top casinos in the world only make a few billion in net profit annually. This payout could bankrupt half the casino.

And Xing Ye would receive 10% — that is, 400,000 passenger chips, convertible into 40 special chips. Even if the dealer delayed paying out for another two hours, Xing Ye would have plenty of time to pay off his debt.

Seeing that Shao Lin still didn’t understand what had happened, Xing Ye pulled out his phone and opened the system interface, pointing at the background prompt: “The game has long reminded us — money from passengers is the easiest to earn. And the casino allows side betting. So why would I focus on fighting other players for a few meagre chips, instead of earning the passengers’ trust and flipping the entire casino?”

Despite losing, the casino’s efficiency remained high. The 20 passengers had already received their payouts, and a server came carrying a box containing Xing Ye’s share. All were purple chips worth 1,000 passenger chips each — 400 in total. These were the highest-value chips in the casino. The black chips supposedly worth 10,000 didn’t actually exist — they were fabricated by the system just to trick players.

Xing Ye checked the time — less than an hour had passed. He counted out 100 purple chips, added the 10 he hadn’t yet used, and returned them all to the casino. In the end, he was left with 300,000 passenger chips — equivalent to 30 million points.

The dealer and Shao Lin were stunned.

They both thought Xing Ye would try to win on his own turn. They never expected him to manipulate the sidelines to let Shao Lin win instead.

All the passengers had placed their bets precisely after Shao Lin took the gun. If they had done it before the dealer fired, the dealer would have noticed and used his special ability to win immediately, denying Xing Ye and Shao Lin any chance to shoot.

But since the bets were made after Shao Lin got the gun, and done in an organized, coordinated way, the casino was completely caught off guard.

“Don’t bother thinking about it,” Xing Ye said to the dealer. “Even if you’d decided to win with the first shot, I wouldn’t have let you.”

The dealer replied, “I was the one spinning the revolver, and the casino’s special ability granted to me was the power to shift the bullet’s position at will. As long as I wanted, I could win.”

Xing Ye responded, “Sure, but did the gun want you to?”

As for how he made Shao Lin win — the answer was simple. First, he used Kua Fu Chasing the Sun to pause time for one minute. During that pause, he used a QR code on the revolver: “You’re already a mature [object].”

This QR code, which Xing Ye found in the Puppet City world, symbolized the city’s independence from Benedict’s control. It was a delayed-activation code that gave inanimate objects the attributes of life — the ability to act on their own according to the user’s intelligence. The smarter the user, the more powerful the effect. It was unstable, lasting 10 minutes, and after redrawing, only 5 minutes.

He used the code after proposing that the dealer be limited to 1 minute per shot. By then, the revolver in the dealer’s hand had become sentient and independent — a revolver that could think for itself. And with its newfound maturity and awareness, it refused to be controlled. So it chose to make the dealer lose.

Even after Shao Lin had moved the blank, the intelligent revolver moved it back. While Shao Lin’s “Celestial Shift” ability was powerful — unbeatable in terms of spatial transfer — the revolver simply didn’t want to cooperate. Shao Lin could only use that skill three times per 24 hours. The “Mature” QR code, however, remained in effect for five minutes after redrawing. The gun waited for Shao Lin to shoot, and at that instant, quietly switched the bullet back.

That’s why Xing Ye had insisted on the one-minute shooting limit — to prevent Shao Lin from stalling until the “Mature” effect wore off. Kua Fu Chasing the Sun could only be used once every 24 hours. The “Mature” QR code also couldn’t be used repeatedly on the same item. If they missed that moment, there would be no second chance.

Of course, even without that rule, Shao Lin would still have fired quickly — the looming debt ensured he wouldn’t let the game drag past the hour mark.

How was Xing Ye able to win so perfectly? It was precisely because of the casino’s greed. The time limit designed to pressure players ended up giving Xing Ye the opening he needed.

As for why 20 passengers were willing to sign contracts with Xing Ye, that was thanks to Yan Hebi. His title “Friend of Women” allowed female NPCs to agree to harmless conditions. Xing Ye’s contract was clearly beneficial to the passengers, with no downsides, and casino contracts were binding. Naturally, they accepted.

Even without Yan Hebi’s influence, no one would have refused such terms.

This was a high-stakes gamble that could have gone disastrously wrong. But Xing Ye had calculated everything: the passengers’ motivations, the casino’s greed, and Shao Lin’s desperation. In the end, he won — just barely.

Shao Lin was utterly defeated. Even after giving up his 5 special chips and everything he had earned in the casino, he still owed over 300 million yuan. In the real world, he was relatively wealthy — a rising elite — but not enough to pay off such a debt.

He glared at Xing Ye with all the hatred he could muster, as if trying to burn his image into memory, to hate him for the rest of his life.

Shao Lin had once lost to Xing Shuo, but that only sent him back to the novice world. When he climbed back up from the bottom again, fuelled by hatred toward his younger brother Xing Shuo, all he wanted was to crush all the complacent, obedient players—stepping over their corpses to challenge the final level.

But who would have thought he would encounter Xing Ye—a man even stronger and more terrifying than Xing Shuo.

Xing Ye met his hostile gaze and said, “Your vision is too narrow. All you think about is killing other players to take their player chips. You never considered that we’ve always been in the casino, bound by its rules. Unless we overthrow the entire casino, we’ll never get out. That’s the rule of this round of the game. We’re just turtles in a jar. The casino is raising us like venomous insects, watching us kill each other. If we don’t break the jar, we’ll forever be ants waiting to be slaughtered.

“I don’t think you’re incapable of seeing this—you simply saw it but didn’t want to do anything about it. Challenging the system is hard. It’s easier to trample those players you see as weak-minded, become the strongest insect, and walk out safely that way.

“But you forgot—we’re playing a game about challenging fate. On this path, there's never been a downstream current. You can only go against the tide.

“You picked the wrong enemy.”

Shao Lin glared at Xing Ye with hatred and said, “I’ll come back. I will come back in the game! This casino can only trap my consciousness. Someone in the real world is taking care of my body. I won’t die. As long as the next batch of players enters, I’ll find a way to drag them into the game and step on their heads to leave this world. When that time comes, just pray you don’t meet me again in the game—because I will kill you. I’ll even make sure your real self dies too!”

Xing Ye wasn’t shaken at all by his glare. Instead, he smiled and said, “Classic villain monologue. I’ll be waiting.”

Shao Lin was dragged away, while Xing Ye returned to his room with a mountain of chips under the dealer’s twisted stare.

Yan Hebi clutched his chest, so excited he looked ready to run into a wall. He said to Xing Ye, “Boss, you’re amazing! I’ll follow you for life!”

But Xing Ye, calm as ever, said, “I couldn’t have won on my own.”

“Kuafu Chasing the Sun” was a skill given to him by his younger brother. And in a gamble like this, the one who had quietly set the stage and offered him luck was the little mirror—Lu Mingze.

Only now did Xing Ye fully understand what his brother Xing Shuo had once said behind the door: one person can’t win this game alone.

This was a victory for three people.

Oh, and with Yan Hebi’s ‘Friend of Women’ title—fine, make that four people.

 

Translator : DarNan