Episode 79. The Gambler’s Song
When the strongest falls silent, the weak learn quickly to keep their mouths shut.
With Dong Bang-yeon still barely breathing and the arena stunned into quiet, I bent down and picked up Pyeong Gunsa’s folding fan. The white paper was speckled red with his blood.
I flicked it open and waved it lazily, letting my gaze sweep across every face in the arena.
“What a pathetic bunch you are,” I said.
The words circled the pit, bounced off the stone, and came back to hit me in the chest.
“…Yeah. I was pathetic once too.”
I looked over at Dong Bang-yeon. He’d wrapped his ruined left arm, trying to stop the bleeding from the earlier storm of blades.
I cleared my throat and began to hum a tune every gambler here knew by heart.
“I’ve spent thirty years in the gambling hall…”
Silence. Even the breathing seemed to stop.
Pyeong Gunsa used to sing it; the dealers sang it, the broke, the debtors, the barkeeps—anyone who lived in this rotten little world. Now it came out of my mouth, flat and low.
“Sat down with black hair, rose up with white.”
From the stands, a few hardened gamblers quietly joined in.
“Worked so hard for all that money, brought it here and lost it funny…”
I nodded and repeated the line, my voice echoing under the high walls.
“Worked so hard for all that money… brought it here and lost it funny.”
I pointed at them with Pyeong Gunsa’s fan as I sang.
“Was it only mine I burned?”
A chorus of hoarse voices answered on cue.
“Of course it wasn’t.”
“My friends’ cash, my kin’s savings—how’d I toss them without wavering? Went back home after a while, no one there would even smile. Took the stash from behind the wall, and raced right back to the gambling hall. Every face I passed along, stared at me like I’d done wrong…”
The gamblers in the stands sang the last line with me, like it was a prayer.
“Every face I passed along… stared at me like I’d done wrong…”
I stood there, fan in hand, and carried the song onward.
“If I never come back home, tell them I died with the dice and the dome. On my way here, just before, cards and tiles like never before… flashing in my weary eyes…”
I locked eyes with one of the surviving Narak Society thugs and repeated the refrain.
“Today’s the day my luck turns bright. Today’s the day it all goes right.”
The gamblers took it up without thinking.
“Today’s the day our luck turns bright. Today’s the day it all goes right.”
The song died. I spoke in my own voice again.
“But today? Your luck’s shit.”
Silence.
“Because this place closes tonight. Game’s over. Go home, you idiots.”
Their blank faces annoyed me. I snapped.
“I said get out, you bastards!”
I lunged, smacking one man across the head and booting him square in the ass.
“Move it, you heard me. We’re closed. Are your ears clogged with dice? Pathetic pieces of trash.”
I smacked two, three more at random. Finally, the addicts scattered—some stumbling, some running, all with that same empty look of animals pushed away from the trough.
“If you still have a home, go there. If you don’t, beg in the streets, at least you’ll earn your food honestly. Last one to leave, I’ll cut his hands off.”
A couple of stragglers still hesitated. I kicked one hard enough to send him rolling.
Thunk!
He sprang up and bolted; the rest followed. With that, the Narak Society all but dissolved.
I waved the fan and looked around. Almost no one left—only those too tied to this place to flee: dealers, record-keepers, the ones who knew where the money actually lay.
I raised my eyes to the stands. There sat the Gambling King, Gu Yang-bok, alone.
“Looks like you’re ruined,” I called up to him.
He stared down without answering, smoke from his pipe curling into the darkness.
“Thought your dogs could tear me apart if you tossed them all at me?” I asked. “I told you this wasn’t gambling. It was rigged from the start. So what do you think, Dong Bang-yeon? Doesn’t it feel different, taking your shots after feeding challengers aphrodisiacs and drugs… and then finally meeting someone like me?”
Gu Yang-bok’s voice floated down at last.
“Listen carefully, boy. Before I came here, I sent a letter to the Nam Myeong Association.”
“Ah. Nam Myeong,” I murmured.
“Told them something was interfering with business. That tribute might be delayed. Short letter, but it’s enough. They’ll send someone. I’ve paid them too much, too long, for them to ignore this.”
I nodded. “Makes sense.”
“You think if you wreck this place, all the money will fall neatly into your lap?” he asked. “World doesn’t work that way. Rampage all you like, this path ends where the true Black Dao stands. That’s why I stayed here, satisfied with just this den.”
Gu Yang-bok took a lungful from his elegant pipe and exhaled a thick, white plume.
“You don’t understand the world, kid.”
I snapped the fan shut and flicked it toward Dong Bang-yeon.
Whip—clang!
Still nursing his arm, he crossed his twin swords and barely deflected it. At that exact instant, I drew the Black Cat Blade, flame erupting along its edge as I slashed forward.
The burning sword-qi cut across his torso in a diagonal line, cleaving him open.
Splash.
Three Narak officers jolted, then bolted—one north, one east, one south.
What gave them the confidence to stay this long, I wondered? Probably their blind faith in Gu Yang-bok watching from above.
I sheathed the Black Cat, snatched Dong Bang-yeon’s twin swords from the ground, and threw one east, one south.
Thwack! Thwack!
Two fleeing backs were skewered and nailed to the walls.
The northern runner leapt up into the stands and cried out, “Master, we must escape!”
Gu Yang-bok calmly seized him by the head and smashed his skull into the chair.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
On the third strike, the man slid limply to the floor. Gu Yang-bok kicked the corpse aside and roared, “Who told you to run?!”
By the time he yelled, I was already behind him.
He realized it mid-kick; his movements suddenly went slow, heavy.
He turned, forcing out words. “You said… Zi Xia Guesthouse…?”
His twin palms shot out at the same time as the question. I didn’t dodge. I met his strikes with my own, palms to palms, and let his power slam into my hands.
His internal energy was thick, honed over a lifetime of gambling and scheming, but I had devoured a heaven’s worth of power already. I let it flood into my channels.
As we clashed, I spoke.
“Gu Yang-uncle. I really thought you were a kind man once. Didn’t even realize a good-natured innkeeper was exactly what a gambling hall needs.”
His eyes went wide. To him, I must have been nothing but a stranger, yet I talked like I’d known him for years.
“Who are you?”
I smiled faintly.
“Just a guesthouse errand boy.”
That was all he’d ever understand.
I turned my flame-chicken energy loose, burning his power away, then flipped into the Absorbing Star method and sucked the rest straight from his dantian. His scream filled the arena, thin and ragged.
When his face finally took on that hollow, drained look of a man whose life had been scooped out from within, I let go.
He collapsed, barely clinging to life, staring up at me.
“Nam… Myeong… Association will…”
“Nam Myeong, Black Dao, whatever. I’ll handle it,” I said. “Any last words, Gu Yang-uncle?”
Facing his death, the so-called Gambling King asked, almost cheerfully, “No… share for the house?”
“No.”
I lifted my foot and stomped down on his throat.
Crunch.
“No house share, you greedy bastard.”
I looked out over the empty seats and declared the result myself.
“Listen up, everyone. The owner of Zi Xia Guesthouse wins.”
I applauded myself as I walked along the rail, then yanked a torch from the wall and tossed it onto a pile of discarded betting slips—names and sums written on every piece.
Whoomph.
Fire caught and spread quickly. I pulled another torch, tossed it onto Gu Yang-bok’s corpse.
Flames crawled up his clothes, wrapping the dead Gambling King in a final, mocking embrace.
Wherever I go, something ends up burning. That’s just the kind of man I am.
I tore down torches and flung them wherever the wood was driest. Soon the arena roared, a giant brazier lit by the lives and coins of countless fools.
Walking through the growing inferno, I began to sing again—the gambler’s song, this time alone.
“I’ve spent thirty years in the gambling hall…”
I sang every verse, every bitter line, as the place that had eaten so many lives finally went up in flame.
By the time I was done, I was laughing. Really laughing. I vaulted down into the pit, spread the fire further, even thought I might piss myself in a dream later, remembering this.
Drawing the Black Cat, I danced among the flames, sword wrapped in Samadhi True Fire. Each arc of the blade flung embers outward, making the blaze scream higher, hotter. When the fire swallowed my flames, the whole place looked like a wrathful god had descended.
For a long moment, I just stared, dazed.
“If only this power truly belonged to me… this beauty, this cruelty, this strength…”
I lay down on a patch of ground still warm but not yet aflame and looked up at the night sky.
“I’d sweep the stars into my fist,” I murmured, “and rain fire down on every cultist who ever chased me. Wherever I walk, words would die on tongues. Sword-lords who cut through mountains would kneel at my feet. I’d slap those so-called Three Calamities across the face. That’d be me.”
I paused.
“…I mean, not yet. Ah. Hot.”
I shot upright. Around me was a sea of fire.
“…”
I did not claw my way back from death and time just to burn to death in a gambling pit.
I slashed downward.
Fwoooosh!
The sword wind split the flames briefly, but they surged back in. I frowned, then gathered power in my legs and swung once more—hard.
The blade-qi tore forward—One Sword, Two Worlds, the sort of all-purpose cut every respectable sect invents at least once.
The fire parted cleanly, shearing aside in two towering walls. The stands beyond cracked and split as if carved by a giant’s chisel, opening a path straight out.
I walked that path, leaving the gambling hell I’d sliced open behind me.
Outside, the gamblers’ district was chaos. People ran, screamed, hauled water, or just stared.
“Fire!” someone shouted.
I looked up at the burning sky and answered, deadpan, “Fireworks.”
“Fire!”
“Fireworks. Huh?”
I stopped. Something tugged at my mind, like a chore I’d forgotten.
“Ah.”
I shot forward in light steps, racing back toward the Phoenix Pavilion. I skidded to a stop outside the great guest tent and yelled:
“Lady Bai! Lady Hei! You in there?”
My own laughter answered me. Outside, men screamed “Fire!”; inside, two women with sealed meridians lay in absolute hell.
From within the tent came broken noises—half sob, half moan.
I hummed as I pulled back the flap and stepped in.
“When evening falls and moonlight flows…” I sang, weaving through the compartments. “Are you here? No? Not here?”
“H… here…!” came a desperate, warped voice.
I grabbed the canopy and yanked it aside.
Bai Xiao-e in white, Hei Xiao-ling in black—both drenched in sweat, hair plastered to their faces, eyes bloodshot and wild—stared up at me.
“…”
Outside, someone sprinted past the tent, shouting, “Fire!”
I looked down at the two of them and said, very seriously:
“It’s not a fire.”
I leaned in.
“…It’s a firework show.”
Both women’s eyes rolled back in perfect unison, and they fainted on the spot.