novelraw Chapter 175: Black Gold Casino
Chapter 175: Black Gold Casino
……
Su Zhan stood before the gilded main doors of the Black Gold Casino.
Two doormen in vintage tailcoats bowed slightly. “Welcome!”
Su Zhan nodded and pushed the door open.
The scent of money hit him like a wind.
A massive crystal chandelier hung in the center of the hall.
The crystals refracted the light into shards of golden rain, scattering across the crimson-velvet gaming tables.
The dealers wore crisp uniforms and white gloves.
The crisp clink of chips never stopped.
“Welcome to Black Gold.”A maid in a qipao smiled and handed him a glass.
Where the qipao split, pale skin peeked through.
Su Zhan’s gaze swept the room.
At the roulette area, women in evening gowns puffed electronic cigarettes from jeweled mouthpieces.
At the blackjack tables, a few men hunched over laptops, calculating odds.
At the sic bo area, the dealer’s mechanical arm skillfully shook the crystal dice cup.
“Hello, sir.”
A staff member immediately stepped forward. “Would you like a rules introduction?”
Su Zhan shook his head and walked straight to the cashier.
There, four words summed everything up.
Luxury, desire.
Every inch of the building was valuable.
Every gambler exuded the scent of craving.
Even someone who never gambled would probably feel the pull here.
Behind a brass counter,
a vest-wearing attendant smiled as he pushed out a tray of shimmering chips. “Minimum exchange this session is thirty thousand. We accept cash, digital currency, or organ collateral.”
Su Zhan raised an eyebrow slightly.
Wow.
They actually put organ collateral right out in the open?
A customer next to him, exchanging chips, tore open his shirt to reveal mechanical organs in his chest. “I’ll put up this heart! Latest model—triple oxygen supply!”
The staffer scanned his chest without changing expression. “Appraised value eight hundred thousand, five percent handling fee. Sign here if you agree. One day—this heart will remain in you; if you haven’t repaid eight hundred thousand within a day, we’ll send people to forcibly repossess it.”
Su Zhan slid a stack of cash across the counter.
After counting, the staff handed over the chips.
Su Zhan took the chips.
He exchanged only the minimum—thirty thousand.
The chips flipped in his fingers, cold and smooth.
This place wrapped desire in too fine a package.
Even the air smelled of greed.
Those people—
the ones pawning hearts, the ones calculating probabilities, the ones chasing chips.
They thought they controlled the game.
In truth they were already the casino’s nourishment.
This place was one of Black City’s major income sources.
Poured in gold, driven by desire, it danced on the edge of legality and illegality.
Black City only takes a five percent fee, meaning the casino took five percent when exchanging chips—just that hefty cut alone, even without shady dealings, would make this place insanely profitable.
Su Zhan’s thirty thousand, after the cut, left only twenty-eight thousand five hundred.
That fifteen hundred was simply handed to the casino.
Damn, what a money machine!
Gambling, prostitution, drugs—Black City excelled at all three.
The local GDP here probably exceeded the Capital and Demon City!
Su Zhan stood in the casino’s front area.
To get deeper inside, he still had to pass through a security gate.
Damn!
So all that meant his two knives would be useless?
Su Zhan was a little annoyed, then turned and noticed a few lines of text beside the security gate.
[For the safety of patrons, ordinary people are strictly prohibited from carrying regulated knives and firearms or other dangerous items. Awakened individuals and Aberrants are exempt.]
?
Wow.
Not even pretending.
Su Zhan stopped in front of the gate and turned to the nearby staff member.
“What does this rule mean?”
He pointed at the notice.
The staffer lazily glanced at the sign, as if he explained it a hundred times a day. “Simple. Ordinary people with weapons cause trouble. But Awakens and Aberrants… do they still need knives?”
Seeing Su Zhan still staring at the sign,
the staffer added, “It’s like a zoo—you’re not going to ask a tiger to remove its claws before going through security, are you?”
A regular customer going through security shrank his neck and silently tossed a folding knife from his pocket into the collection bin.
“Got it.”
Su Zhan nodded and walked toward the security gate.
The detector emitted a piercing alarm.
Security guards snapped to attention.
Su Zhan only raised his hand and released a trace of spiritual energy.
The guards immediately backed away.
A staffer behind him waved lazily. “Enjoy your time~”
Awakened individuals and Aberrants exempt—those two words proclaimed one thing: privilege.
Su Zhan was one of those enjoying the privilege.
The feeling… was rather pleasant.
Su Zhan carried a free glass of champagne and wandered through the casino.
His eyes skimmed over table after table.
He was searching for the Aberrant the Transcendence Society man had described—one who gambled like an addict.
At the roulette area,
a man in a suit was frantically biting his fingernails. “One more spin! This time it’ll hit!”
Then he slammed his last chip worth thousands onto the table.
At the neighboring blackjack table,
a woman in an evening gown had wagered her engagement ring.
When the dealer revealed the cards,
she laughed—an ugly sound that was worse than sobbing. “I knew it… Raise the bet! I’ll put up company shares!”
And the young man at the sic bo table.
He won three rounds straight and was flushed with excitement.
Now he’d lost down to his underwear.
He still insisted on “borrowing luck” to keep gambling.
“One more round and I’ll recover it! Mortgage the family home! Right now!”
Su Zhan watched these gamblers coldly.
Their pupils dilated, breathing quickened, fingers trembling uncontrollably.
When they won they trembled with rapture; when they lost they scratched their skin like beasts, as if insects crawled beneath.
An old man suddenly collapsed; his mechanical heart sounded an overload alarm.
Staffers skillfully dragged him to a rest area and injected sedatives, while people at nearby tables barely glanced over.
That Transcendence Society guy… had to be crazier than these people.
Su Zhan didn’t join any games—he simply drifted around, observing the patrons.
Occasionally someone invited him.
Su Zhan just waved them off. “I just watch this game, I play others.”
That excuse usually satisfied them.
If you said you didn’t gamble at all, it would be too suspicious.
If you don’t gamble, why are you in a casino?
Obviously you have another purpose.
So Su Zhan’s line was: not this table’s game, but other games.
He guarded his post from day into night.
Sometimes he had to sit at a table and play a few rounds, otherwise continuous wandering looked suspicious.
Hmm…
Win a few rounds, lose a few rounds.
Su Zhan felt life’s meaning ebbing.
Was his gambling luck always this bad? If not for the mission, he wouldn’t have come here.
Oh well—consider it necessary funding for the task.
At night the crowd swelled.
The casino had no windows and no clocks.
That way the patrons could sink completely into it, forgetting day and night, losing track of time.