If you want to know the true face of the underworld in any town, don't go to the inns or the pleasure houses. Go to the gambling dens.
Because if the inn is the underworld's purse and the pleasure house is its face, the gambling den is its gut.
Everyone dresses things up nicely on the outside, but the moment you cross a gambling den's threshold, that skin peels right off.
The knack for fleecing people, the knack for leashing them with debt, and the gall to do it all without batting an eye......
There's no hiding any of it. That's how guts are. Look inside, and it's all black.
In my last life, I had once eaten a gambling den's rice myself. I worked every job there, dealing tiles included, and learned how this business works.
So I knew.
That the biggest gamble in a gambling den is made not by the customers, but by the owner.
"You in there. Come on out."
Deep in the back alleys of Byeokgye County. In front of a manor without a single signboard, I cleared my throat once and called out.
A mean-looking mug poked out through the gap in the gate. The gatekeeper looked me up and down, and when I let a bundle of bank notes show between the folds of my robe, the gate opened without another word.
When I stepped inside, the acrid smell of tobacco, the clack of dominoes and a storm of cursing and shouting came pouring out all at once.
It was dark. Every lamp set on a table was crowded with faces. Domino tables, dice tables, card tables...... The lamps were as bright as midday, yet every face was dark.
Just then, a man was heading out by the entrance, grinning from ear to ear. With the front of his robe bulging like that, he must have won quite a lot today.
Someone threw a look at his back, and a few men went out after the man who had just left.
Could that man hold on to that smile before the day was out?
When I reached the exchange counter, some haggling was in full swing beside the old man flicking his abacus beads.
"That bastard's debt. The fifty-tael one. I'll buy it for forty."
"You'll have to give me forty and five more. I'm holding his house deed and his field deed both as collateral."
"Forty-three. Not a copper more."
Debt papers.
The debtor was still sitting at the tables while his debt changed hands in a corner. Every time the debt found a new owner, the interest went up. A few trips like that, and fifty taels became a hundred before you knew it.
They knew it, and still they borrowed against their house deeds without a second thought. Because they believed that once they were back at the table, they could fix everything.
When the haggling over the debt papers seemed more or less done, I set my bundle of bank notes down in front of the old man.
"Cash these for me."
The old man squinted at the notes, then counted out silver and pushed it across.
A hundred and eighty taels.
They were Geumseong Money House notes that fetch full value anywhere under heaven, and he still skimmed a whole tenth. The amount didn't matter for this game anyway, so I just took it.
"Brother, you had more money squirreled away? What are you going to do with it?"
"What else? You come to a gambling den, you gamble."
At a big table further in, I spotted two familiar mugs.
"Hey."
When my shadow fell across the table, the young master's hand froze on his dominoes like stone.
"How did you get in here, you bastard?"
The thug shot to his feet.
"This bastard's got no fear left in that thick skull, huh? You have any idea where you are?!"
That was when it happened.
"Enough."
A low voice came from the head of the table. It belonged to a middle-aged man with a pipe between his teeth.
Jade rings dangled from every finger, and his eyes were half closed. That bastard was the owner of this den. It seemed he had already heard about me.
When you got down to it, this den and the dandy young master's crew standing behind it were all on the same string.
The Black Snake Gang, which held every back alley in Byeokgye County in its fist.
And the man with the pipe was just a middle manager the Black Snake Gang had set over its gambling tables.
The glint leaking from between his lowered eyelids clicked like abacus beads. They were eyes weighing my purse.
"Still got money left to lose, have you?"
"I'm the kind who can't live with losing."
The pipe man smiled and spoke to the thug.
"Make him a seat."
There were no empty seats at the table, but the thug jerked his chin at a scrawny gambler sitting at the end. Two burly men came over and hooked him under the arms.
"W-wait! Just one more round! One more round and I'll win it all back......!"
Nobody answered him. They just dragged him off to the back of the den. He'd probably be fine. From a glance, he still had more fingers left than not.
When I sat down in the empty seat, the pipe man blew out smoke and asked.
"We were in the middle of dominoes. That suit you?"
"Of course. Money lost at dominoes tastes best won back at dominoes, doesn't it?"
The pipe man smiled and jerked his chin, and the brute dealt the tiles.
The methods ran in the same bloodline. Dominoes carved with marks, and a skilled deal.
I took the first three or four rounds.
A hundred and eighty taels of silver swelled to two hundred and fifty—then slowly began to be whittled away.
Every time I lost, I bet bigger, and the more I did, the more perfectly I looked the part of an out-of-town loafer gone wild-eyed over winning his stake back.
At last......
"Your luck's just no good today."
My last fifty taels went over to them, clean. Then the thug came and stood behind me.
"Told you so. Why come here at all? If you're out of money, walk out on your own two feet before you end up crawling out in a bad way."
"Watch your mouth, you fucker."
Byeong-ho stepped in front of him, glaring at the thug like he meant to kill him.
Instead of getting up, I reached into my robe.
"Do you take goods in kind?"
Before I even heard an answer, I set a wooden box on the table and opened the lid.
A dark red root came into view inside the box. The cold blue energy held in every one of its rootlets shimmered faintly blue even under the lamplight.
At that extraordinary energy, the noise of the gambling den died for a beat.
"It's an Iron-Blood Azure Root."
The pipe man's half-closed eyes opened wide for the first time. Before he was a man of the martial world, he was a merchant. He'd have an eye for goods.
"It's a spirit herb that only sprouts where blood and iron have pooled for centuries on an old battlefield. What would that come to in money, I wonder? A thousand taels? Ten thousand? Hey, old man. Come over here and give me another one of those moronic appraisals of yours."
The old man who had cashed my notes earlier flinched when I called him.
The pipe man's eyes couldn't tear themselves away from the Iron-Blood Azure Root, and since he seemed unable to put a number on it, I settled the matter for him.
"Here. Let's play one round with this gambling den as the stake."
I pushed the dominoes toward the bastard.
"If you win, you get the Iron-Blood Azure Root. But if I win, this den is mine."
And I added one more thing.
"Every one of your lives included."
The pipe man's lowered eyes lifted.
"Where did you get this?"
"Since when does anyone ask where things came from at the table? Relax. It's not the kind of thing that'll make you sick if you eat it and keep your mouth shut."
The pipe man studied me and thought it over for a long while, then let out a snort of laughter.
The dominoes were marked anyway. A chance to change his life had come along in a game he couldn't lose, and a man who refused that was no gambler.
"Fine. Whoever wins this round takes it all."
For the first time, the pipe man handled the tiles himself.
He was a different class from those bastards earlier, I'll give him that.
If that pair were shell-game hustlers at a country market, this was the knife work of a butcher who had grown old boning customers' purses.
The thirty-two dominoes shuffled like flowing water, and in the middle of it I saw a pair of Heaven tiles quietly slip over to the pipe man's own seat.
It was the kind of sleight an ordinary eye could watch for a hundred years without catching, but my eyes saw it.
With every round I lost, I had burned another pile of dominoes into my eyes, marks and all, as they showed in the lamp's shadow. I'd knocked around the underworld for twenty years, after all. This much was nothing.
There was one thing those bastards didn't know.
Real marks aren't carved into the dominoes. They're carved into your eyes.
A nick on an edge, a dot on a corner, a knife cut against the grain......
Of the four hundred taels of silver, I had spent half memorizing every face of those thirty-two doctored tiles, and the other half on setting up this game.
The tiles went around.
Two in front of me. My eyes told me both were junk tiles that wouldn't even score.
"Before we flip."
I reached for the oil lamp on one side of the table.
"The light's awfully dim. We're flipping tiles worth ten thousand taels, and in this gloom I might win and think I'd lost."
I slid the lamp gently toward me.
The flame wavered.
As the lamp moved, every shadow on the table rippled at once.
The instant the shadows over my junk tiles and the pair of Heaven tiles the pipe man had drawn to himself turned over.
I swapped the two with the tip of my sleeve.
A sleight of hand I had learned for a mission in my last life. The habits of a time when fooling other people's eyes was both my living and my lifeline were still alive and moving in my fingertips.
"That's better."
When I set the lamp back in its place, the wavering shadows settled and the table grew bright again.
From the moment I started moving the lamp, the pipe man had kept his eyes on his own tiles, looking displeased. His eyes were open, but they missed the one thing they should have seen.
"Well, let's flip."
The bastard turned his tiles over with a flourish.
Two junk tiles.
"......?"
For the first time, the pipe fell from his mouth. He shoved it aside and looked at his tiles again and again, holding them in both hands. It was the face of a man whose head simply could not take it in.
I turned my tiles over.
A pair of Heaven tiles.
"Looks like I win."
The table froze. The young master's face went white as paper, and the thug's jaw dropped.
Only the pipe man kept staring down at my tiles, then slowly raised his head. It seemed he had only now realized he'd been had.
The bastard raised his hand.
SHING-SHING-SHING—!
The ring of steel rose on every side. Bastards planted all over the gambling den drew their weapons at once.
Ones I'd taken for gamblers, ones I'd taken for hired hands, the gatekeeper, even the one who had been haggling with the old man at the exchange counter. At a glance, over thirty blades gleamed in the lamplight.
The gamblers who sensed trouble grabbed back their stakes and bolted. The light in the pipe man's eyes died fast. As if to say playtime was over.
"Nice trick. But the game isn't decided until you're out that door. Don't tell me you didn't know. Looks like you've knocked around this business plenty yourself."
Byeong-ho's eyes blazed as he took his stance.
"So you're showing your true colors. Filthy bastards. Come on, then! The first one to come at me dies by my hand, no matter what!"
At a brazenness so far beyond common sense, the smile on my lips only grew.
The Fujian Branch Head was too decent. Everything else about him was fine, but that was the trouble. He had even me confused about whether this was the underworld or the orthodox world.
Yes, this was the underworld. Win and you get robbed; lose and you get robbed. Promises go as flimsy as paper in front of a blade, and the rules belong to whoever wins.
Words like trust and loyalty are only for putting you at ease before the knife goes into your back.
The bottom of the underworld has always been this kind of place.
There was nothing new about it, so a laugh came out of me on its own. It was the face I knew, so maybe I was even a little glad to see it.
"Quite a crowd you had hiding in here. How many is this, anyway? Even I can't handle this many...... I thought it was my lucky day, but it looks like today's the day I die, Byeong-ho."
"Brother! Is this any time to be saying that?!"
At my whining, Byeong-ho glared at me. The pipe man spoke with cold eyes.
"Too late to beg now."
"I'm not begging."
I slowly stood, planted a hand on the table, and said.
"I believe I told you I can't live with losing. But if I lose my life and my money both, I'll be so bitter and aggrieved I won't rest easy even in the afterlife. So what should I do......?"
I slowly looked around, then broke into a grin.
"Right. You can have my life, but not the Iron-Blood Azure Root. This is mine. I'm taking it with me to the grave."
I opened the box, crammed the Iron-Blood Azure Root roughly into my mouth, crunched it a few times, and swallowed it whole.
At the unbelievable sight, the gambling den went silent.
Even the pipe man couldn't make sense of it; his half-slack eyes trembled.
"......Is he a lunatic?"
"......Swallowing a spirit medicine now, in this situation......?"
I heard someone mutter.
It was crazy, all right.
Swallow a spirit medicine, and qi circulation has to follow. The deeper you burrow inward to rein in the medicine's savage energy, the more defenseless your body outside becomes, like a newborn's.
And right now I was surrounded by thirty blades. The moment I closed my eyes, either a blade would fall on my head or the commotion would scatter my wits in qi deviation. Either way, it was a spot where death was certain.
So it was only natural that the question crossed their faces: 'What's that lunatic counting on?' Before the question could fade, my smile split wide.
"Byeong-ho, I need to do some qi circulation. Stand guard for me."
Byeong-ho's head whipped around. His face had gone pale blue. No wonder.
Roughly between second-rate and third-rate. None of them was much of a fighter alone, but there were thirty of them in all.
For me, maybe, but for Byeong-ho alone it was a different story. He would have to bet his life.
On top of that, the pipe man was roughly Byeong-ho's equal, if not better.
"I'm counting on you."
Taking in the sight of Byeong-ho's pale face, I slowly closed my eyes.
Confidence, at its root, comes from spite. The venom that says you'll get what you want by any means.
This was the method I had chosen.
I meant to make him learn it with his own body, here, where there wasn't a single hole to slip out of.
Of course, the risk was big enough to get me croaked. If it failed, I'd die a dog's death right here. Pointlessly, on the blade of some punk from a third-rate gambling den.
But so what? This life was one Byeong-ho had already saved once, in my last life. So there was no reason I couldn't bet it for him.
Above all, I knew Byeong-ho.
That once he had someone to protect, he'd pull it off no matter what. If I didn't believe in him, who would?
You come to a gambling den, you gamble.
This was a gamble with Byeong-ho, with my life as the stake. A gamble where I put everything I had on my trust in him. And I was going to win.
......The Iron-Blood Azure Root's energy was rising.
As if to prove it was no ordinary spirit medicine, something hot surged up from my belly and in an instant became a wave that shook my whole body.
"Kill him!"
"It might not be too late!"
"Cut his belly open, now!"
The shouting and the clash of weapons grew fainter and fainter. Ching, clang, thunk. That was Byeong-ho's iron staff. Raaaaagh. Soon Byeong-ho's voice faded too.
I burst into flames as if my body had been thrown into molten lava. Then I sank into the infinite sea.
When I opened my eyes, it was morning.
Wherever the night's chaos had gone, a quiet dawn light greeted me. The floor was covered with nothing but fallen bastards. About thirty, at a glance.
Looking ahead, I saw Byeong-ho on his knees with his head hung low. He was drenched in blood. Had he killed them all and died himself, like in my last life?
"You done?"
Byeong-ho slowly opened his eyes.
I looked at his face for a long while.
His clothes were rags, the backs of his hands were split open, and the hand that held the iron staff seemed to be twisted and broken, since it was bound up in cloth.
And yet, strangely, he looked much bigger than before.
"Your eyes have changed."
They were the eyes of someone who had come through his riddle.
Byeong-ho gave a little laugh.
"Thought I was going to die."
"You didn't, did you?"
"That's what makes it so strange. I was sure I was a dead man."
Byeong-ho was quiet for a moment, then looked up at the ceiling.
"Honestly, I wanted to run. This is Brother misjudging my skill. I'm no superman like you. At this rate I die for sure. I've got to choose. Throw Brother over my shoulder and run, or run on my own."
I listened without a word.
"But then I saw how peaceful your closed eyes looked, Brother."
Byeong-ho looked down at the iron staff bound to his hand.
"You really seemed to believe in me."
"......"
"So I thought."
He grinned.
"I'd better believe in myself too."
I looked into Byeong-ho's changed eyes for a long while, then got to my feet.
Then I drew a light breath.
The Iron-Blood Azure Root's energy stirred quietly in my qi center.
I had gained a spirit medicine and a gambling den, but today's most valuable harvest seemed to be something else.
Byeong-ho spoke up sheepishly.
"What you were talking about, Brother...... I think maybe I get it a little."
"Look. Didn't I tell you today was my lucky day?"
At that, Byeong-ho burst out laughing.
I looked around the gambling den. Crippled bastards lay everywhere. Broken tables. Shattered wine bottles. Bloodstains. And in the middle of it all, Byeong-ho, who had held his ground to the end.
A breeze slipped in through a gap in the window. I propped Byeong-ho up and walked toward the den's ruined door.
Behind us, the dawn light was slowly seeping in.