CH 44.2

“Never let a magician touch a poker game, let alone compare poker with them.”

“Because that will only make you realize how mysterious and powerful magicians can be.”

The blond man smiled gently, “Welcome to the Sand Sea Guild.”

There was a trick to winning the 23-point game. One just needs to be skillful enough to change cards in order to prevent clashes with the opposite person’s card.

But swapping cards during a game like this one needed skill as all the cards were laid out. However, such games were a magician’s paradise, and he was worried that Bai Lixin would be too clever to take the bait, but he turned out to be a fool despite looking smart.

He was hooked as soon as he was fooled.

This 500,000 points was the easiest he had ever won.

The demon-masked NPC cupped the contracts in one hand and raised them to the air.

The paper immediately glowed with a pale blue fire from above, and in just a few seconds, the two pieces of paper turned into ashes and disappeared into thin air.

The demon-masked NPC, “The contract is reached. This will be a single-round game, ties will lead to extra innings.”

With that, he reached his hand into the air again and pulled out a brand new, unopened deck of cards from it.

Demon mask, “This is a brand new, unopened deck of cards, from which I will remove the joker cards.”

As he spoke, he ripped open the plastic seal.

Even through the white gloves, the crowd could still see that the NPC’s fingers were very long and slender, with well-defined bones showing on the gloves that fit snugly on his hand.

An NPC’s hand outrank so many good-looking players in seconds?!

This system’s aesthetics are too good!

Demon mask’s fingers were very flexible; just the action of unwrapping the playing cards looked like a finger dance performance.

After taking out the playing cards in front of all the players, Demon Mask started to stack the cards.

The action was very eye-catching. The blond man was a magician, and everyone thought that the way he made the cards fly from the air was very beautiful. But looking at Demon Mask’s movements, one could see real elegance.

The cards moved back and forth between Demon Mask’s hands, and the four-sided edges of the cards looked like flowers blossoming.

Surprise flashed in the blond man’s eyes, but his eyes focused more intently on the cards in the Demon mask’s fingers.

It was too fast.

The shuffling of the cards was too fast.

His eyes could barely keep up with the speed of the cards.

Suddenly, Demon mask sped up once more, and the cards where numbers could still be faintly seen all turned into a blur of black shadows.

The blond man’s forehead was already covered in a light layer of thin sweat as his brow furrowed involuntarily.

What was wrong with this NPC?

The 200th floor was a haven for gambling, but even there, no NPC could operate like this.

I told you to shuffle, I didn’t tell you to go beyond.

Fuck.

Didn’t they say that the lower the floor, the worse the NPCs were?

This was not an NPC, this was a fucking *sweeping monk, right?

When all the cards he had identified at the beginning were finally lost, the blond man simply gritted his teeth and gave up looking at them.

He secretly opened the points mall, found the entertainment section, and then found a deck of cards of the same suit as the one in front of him.

He redeemed the cards into his backpack and only after doing so did he look at Bai Lixin.

Bai Lixin’s obsidian eyes were still fixed on the NPC’s hands, looking very serious.

The blond man didn’t care. Even if he couldn’t keep up with the speed, he could just change the cards later.

The NPC, who was supposed to be low-key, turned an initial shuffle into a whole personal show. Demon Mask shuffled for about thirty seconds before he stopped.

The cards lay neatly in one of Demon Mask’s hands with the backs up, and an electronic voice came out from beneath the mask, “Please stand back.”

The cards had been shuffled and the demon-masked dealer walked over to the long table. He began to place the cards in a left-to-right, top-to-bottom direction.

The cards were like obedient soldiers in his hands, and with a flick of his fingers, the cards peacefully lay where they belonged.

It took only thirty seconds for the dealer to place all the cards upside down on the table.

Then he pulled another unopened deck from the void, and from it, he took the Ace of Hearts and King of Hearts, and randomly placed each one in front of the blond man and Bai Lixin.

“For the first draw, the two players should draw number cards according to these cards.”

The blond man and Bai Lixin each drew one. The blond man drew the 3 of Hearts, and Bai Lixin drew the Queen of Hearts.

The moment he saw the 3 of Hearts, joy flashed across the blond man’s calm eyes.

Although he hadn’t caught up with the cards during the shuffle, he had managed to catch a gap later and saw a few cards, two of which were the 3 of Hearts and the 3 of Spades.

These two cards were close together, and he remembered their placement.

It was just a matter of finding the remaining cards.

Find them?

The blond man lowered his head, his long, smooth hair immediately hiding his eerie smile.

How could he find the cards? By swapping them, of course.

The biggest loophole in this game was that the cards don’t repeat and they can’t be flipped to confirm.

In other words, only when all the cards are revealed can the player tell whether the cards are brand new and unadulterated.

When the round is over, the dealer will immediately put all these cards away, destroy them, and then get brand new cards for the next round. So time will not be wasted on flipping them over to check if the cards are more than one.

In a way, the system was saying that players could cheat by default.

The system says that you can’t cheat in card games, but it doesn’t say that you shouldn’t cheat if you can avoid being detected by the system or the dealer. As long as the tricks are so good that the dealer can’t detect them, then the game can go on safely.

The demon-masked dealer, “From small to large, the player who selected card number 3 will start the flip first.”

The blond man pretended to circle the table as he frowned slightly.

His hand reached out to a deck of cards, hesitated for a moment, and locked back in.

Around him, the players watching the show whispered.

“He doesn’t seem to know which card is which.”

“The speed of the dealer’s hand just now was…simply invincible.”

“Dude, hate to break it to you, but those are two words.”

“……”

What is a magician?

Trickery, fraud.

Using the simplest performance to perform the most sophisticated deception and disguise is the rule of high-end magicians.

The blond man continued to pretend and interfere with Bai Lixin’s judgment of himself.

After hesitating for a long time, he finally came to a card.

Picking it up and turning it over, the three of spades.

The tense expression on the blond man’s face slowly relaxed, and he gently rubbed his chest as if to soothe it, “I got lucky.”

Xia Chi: “……”

You have a lot of drama, are you a drama queen?

I thought the blond man was a high-end model. I didn’t expect him to be an actor.

After the blond man finished looking for his cards, all that was left was for Bai Lixin to make his move.

Bai Lixin also spun around the table and his hand landed on a card, flicking it over. It was a queen of spades.

Bai Lixin, “Looks like I got lucky too.”

The blond man’s face changed, and quickly returned to normal.

Xia Chi: “……”

In terms of acting skills, it’s a tie.

It was the blond man’s turn again, and this time, he still had the acting part down. He gave another textbook performance of fraudulent acting.

The two men’s expressions were calm, but the people around them were nervous.

Everyone was holding their breath and their hearts were in their throats.

The 3 of Hearts, again.

The blond man didn’t jubilate after getting two in a row right.

He had to do the main event next. He stopped circling and acting pointlessly and started looking for a position that would be convenient for him to make a swap.

Using an exaggerated performance to divert attention was just a preparatory move for his next actions.

Bai Lixin didn’t act again this time. He simply looked around the table and lifted a card straight away.

The Queen of Hearts.

The blond man’s face changed again.

He didn’t know if his opponent was intentional or not, but Bai Lixin seemed to follow him in choice when choosing cards

When he picked up a spade, Bai Lixin also picked up a spade.

When he picked a heart, Bai Lixin also picked a heart.

Had Bai Lixin really seen the cards and memorized all of them?

He had been careless and underestimated the enemy.

Cold sweat quietly invaded the man’s back, and if not for the cover of his hair, others would have been able to see his sweat-drenched lapels.

Since things had gotten so bad, he could only bite the bullet.

As the blond man continued to pretend to walk around the table, he stood in the dealer’s blind spot. He made a tangled expression, and his trembling body seemed to silently express his nervousness and fear.

“He looks so nervous, he really doesn’t look like he can make it.”

“Don’t you see the tricks?”

“What tricks?”

“That beauty seems to be playing tricks on that handsome foreign guy. His card suit has been the same as the handsome foreign guy twice, that can’t be a coincidence.”

“Tsk, so what’s this called? Trying to beat a goose and getting pecked by a swallow instead?”

“This is the sky wanting to rain, and the boss wanting to abuse the scum!”

The whispers reached the blond man’s ears, and his face paled slightly, but his eyes grew more serious.

In the act of trembling all over, the blond man’s fingers flickered.

What he didn’t notice was that the demon-masked NPC slightly turned towards him, and Bai Lixin also glanced at him.

The blond man’s index finger and thumb pinched the card and turned it over, a 3 of diamonds.

“Awesome.”

“Let’s not talk about awesome yet, let’s see if Beauty can pick the same this time.”

Bai Lixin didn’t even blink this time and simply flipped a card.

The Queen of Diamonds.

If the first two times could be described as coincidence, then three or four times would not be justified.

The suit was exactly the same three times, and Bai Lixin was really playing the blond man.

“When masters face off, there will always be one that is suppressed. I would have been amazed if I was just watching this handsome blonde man in action. But with that oriental beauty suppressing him, I suddenly think I can do it too.”

“If you think you can face him, then it would not be a strong matchup, just a one-sided abuse. A strong duel is when the matchup is even, for example you and me, but look, the blonde is completely overwhelmed. He was just pretending to be weak, but he can’t pretend anymore.”

“I beg to differ. The oriental beauty is so amazing because he takes over the light of the other party when making his strikes. *The layman watches the fun. The layman watches the doorway. But let’s continue watching and see.”

*the insider looks at the method and the essence of it, while the layman can only look at the situation and the excitement.

The audience chattered, but the blond man’s eyes grew colder.

He didn’t seem to care, but he kept a close eye on Bai Lixin as he struck.

He hadn’t noticed any small movements from Bai Lixin’s side so either his opponent’s technique was above his, or he had really memorized every card.

Once again, his confidence had taken a hit.

Under the confrontation and self-denial over and over again, the blond man was far less spontaneous than he seemed.

The collapse of the strong is often more unbearable than that of the weak.

While the weak are used to failure, the strong are only used to success.

The third card was opened, and it was down to the last card.

The blond man was about to repeat his trick when a broad hand suddenly grabbed his wrist.

He stiffened and twisted his head to look at the owner of the hand.

The demon mask was aimed at him, and the other hand reached into his sleeve, squeezing two cards from it.

There was a threat in his cold voice, “Player, please follow the rules of the game to the letter. I have already caught you cheating once, and if there is a third time, the other player will directly be ruled the winner.”

The crowd erupted.

Cheating?

The blonde man cheated?

How did they not know that?! When did he cheat? How did he cheat?

Shit, they had been licking his face and shouting “wow”.

The blond man was shocked.

Not even the 200th floor dealers could spot his trick, but this NPC on the 50th floor could see it!

The man was dumbfounded.

The players around him pointed, and the blond man tilted his head to look at Wen Ziqing. Wen Ziqing, who had been behind him as a licking dog from the beginning, also tilted his head over.

A look of shame crossed the blond man’s face, and it was no longer an act this time.

His face was on fire, so was the shame he felt after being stripped in public and paraded around.

Being caught cheating was the most degrading act a fraudulent magician could endure. He thought that he would never be caught with his level of skill.

But today, on the lowest level of the 50th floor, he had become that jumping clown!

The demon NPC didn’t have any sympathy for him and continued to urge, “Please hurry up, player. There are still 30 seconds left for you to choose.”

Choose?

Choose, my ass!

How could he possibly make the right choice!

The blond man broke down and casually picked up one of the cards on the side and flipped it.

The 3 of Spades.

The blond man was dumbfounded.

This time it was joy.

Hahahaha, the goddess of Luck was on his side!

Winning or losing was only a matter of moments, and good luck was sometimes part of success!

Even if Bai Lixin picked the right one too, it would only be a draw.

He had a second chance, and he will concentrate the next time. If Bai Lixin could see what the dealer was dealing with, so could he!

It was Bai Lixin’s turn to turn over the cards, and sure enough, it was a Queen of Spades.

Next was an extra round.