Lang Qianqiu, who had been watching from above, probably felt the same and couldn’t help but speak up. “You! Stop shaking the cup. He’s obviously playing you. There’s no such thing as a correct posture. He must be cheating!”
Hearing that loud, boisterous voice, Shi Qingxuan covered his face again.
The ghosts below shushed heartily, and a rain of dice was hurled at Lang Qianqiu. They jeered at him loudly.
“Ignorant child, stop talking!”
“So noisy! We’re just getting to the exciting part!”
“That Daozhang’s rolls get higher each time he follows our Chengzhu’s teachings, that’s the undeniable truth!”
“That’s right! What do you know?!”
Lang Qianqiu was furious. “You, you unruly, bald-faced liars… Aaah!!”
He suddenly stopped mid-sentence, and his face turned bright red. A couple of female ghosts below him had brutally yanked on his dangling belt and scolded him aloud.
“Xiao-didi,4 stop causing a ruckus. If you keep on spouting nonsense, us jiejie will pull off your pants!”
Lang Qianqiu had never been threatened like this before and was so angry he was rendered speechless. “You…you!!”
Getting beaten to a pulp by a mob of ghosts would’ve been fine, but having his pants pulled off would be a dreadful embarrassment for a dignified martial god like him. Immediately, Lang Qianqiu didn’t dare to say anything more. Xie Lian looked up and saw the other god sending him eye signals with all his might. It was both hilarious and pitiful, so he could only lower his head.
Xie Lian looked at Hua Cheng and pleaded in a small voice, “…San Lang.”
Hearing his tone, Hua Cheng chuckled. “Leave him be. Let us continue.”
“…”
Xie Lian gave up and, once again, held the cup and shook twice. As expected, this time, he got two fives.
The crowd cheered harder at this and their teasing of Lang Qianqiu grew more frenzied.
“Did you see that? Higher than last time!”
But Xie Lian had already realized that Hua Cheng was just fooling around with him. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He was sure that there was indeed no such thing as a correct posture, and to someone like him, any posture would be incorrect. From here on, he might as well give up on any hope of transforming his luck.
Just as he was about to give up and expose himself on this last shake, Hua Cheng stopped him.
“Wait.”
Xie Lian could feel the hands covering his pressing down a little harder, so he stopped moving altogether. “What’s wrong?”
Hua Cheng asked, half-jokingly, “I don’t believe this gege has mentioned what will happen should he lose?”
Hearing him call Xie Lian “gege,” Shi Qingxuan and Lang Qianqiu both wore complicated expressions on their faces. The crowd of ghosts also felt massive shivers run down their spines, and there were even a few who were so shocked that their heads dropped to the ground.
It was a little embarrassing to say, but because he was in such a hurry before, Xie Lian hadn’t considered his side of the bet.
“Um…”
At first, he considered also betting ten years of his life, but a heavenly official’s life span was quite long, so ten years probably wasn’t worth very much. Money or treasure? He didn’t have any. Spiritual power? He didn’t have much of that either. Xie Lian surprisingly couldn’t think of anything he could bet with at the moment, so he could only ask advice from the owner of the Gambler’s Den.
“Do you think there’s anything on me that’s worth betting with?”
Hua Cheng chuckled at his question. “Anything’s fine. What have you got on you?”
Xie Lian pondered briefly, then lightly coughed and told the truth: “I…only have a half-eaten bun with me.”
Hua Cheng burst out laughing. Even though he laughed, no one else dared to do the same, even if they wanted to.
When he finally settled down, Hua Cheng nodded. “That’s fine. The bun will do.”
The moment he spoke those words, they not only shocked the crowd of ghosts but the croupiers at the gambling table as well.
Since the opening of this Gambler’s Den, there had been countless inconceivable bets made: organs, life span, emotions, abilities…but none were as inconceivable as the one today, a half-eaten bun.
Even Lang Qianqiu couldn’t contain his surprise, and he sputtered, dumbfounded, “What…what’s the meaning of this? Are you saying that I…that I’m only worth a half-eaten bun?!”