Chapter 829 — Ulterior Motives

Gu Mengyao had been born into a wealthy family, and she had heard plenty over the years about uncles and elders of that generation going off to Macau to gamble. Most of them came back empty-handed and sulking, so from a very young age she had understood that gambling was, for the most part, a swindle.

Shen Yushu fed the last game token into the slot machine with obvious reluctance, but the result was as tragic as ever: the machine swallowed the token too.

Watching the tokens pouring out of other people's machines, Shen Yushu grew furious and gave the slot machine in front of her a kick.

"Bang!"

The machine did not budge an inch, but Shen Yushu's ankle throbbed with pain, and she was beside herself with rage. "What a piece of junk! It's just a con! They call me Shushu, the one with explosive luck and unbeatable fortune—so how come I haven't won a single time?"

"All right, Xiaoshu, I told you these things are all rigged, but you wouldn't believe me," Gu Mengyao said with a smile. "Nine out of ten gamblers lose. Don't touch this sort of thing again."

"Oh..." Shen Yushu had already accepted in her heart that Gu Mengyao was right, but she was plainly unwilling to let it go. "Arrow-brand Bro, teach it a lesson for me!"

"Huh?" Wei Zhao looked at the slot machine with an odd expression, then pointed at himself, then at the machine. "It?"

"Yeah!" Shen Yushu nodded.

"Heh..." Her words stirred something in Wei Zhao. He walked over and drove a kick into the token slot of the machine.

The circuitry inside these slot machines was crude and the whole casing was light, so when Wei Zhao kicked it, the machine actually hopped off the floor. The token chute was wrecked as well, and all at once tokens came clattering out in a torrent...

As for Shen Yushu's earlier kick, there was no comparing it to Wei Zhao's.

"If you want to win money at these things, this is the only way," Wei Zhao said, pointing at the machine as tokens kept spilling out. The machines were illegal to begin with, so he felt not the slightest pang of conscience about wrecking one.

"Oh, it's finally paying out! Arrow-brand Bro is the best!" Shen Yushu did not care in the least about the few tokens she had lost earlier; she had only been sore about it, as though a swindler had made a fool of her. Now that Wei Zhao had avenged her, she naturally cheered with delight.

Wei Zhao's kick left the other players stunned. No one had ever heard of anyone daring to do such a thing in an arcade—wasn't that asking for death? Did he think the local thugs who watched over the place were nothing?

But once these people saw clearly that it was Wei Zhao, they had nothing to say. They had all witnessed Zou Ruoguang's attitude toward him earlier, and now they all adopted an attitude of non-involvement; no one made a move to stop Wei Zhao.

The arcade manager heard the crash and came running, arriving in time to see the spectacle, but he did not disturb Wei Zhao. Instead he ran into the billiard hall across the way, found Zou Ruoguang, and reported what had happened.

After hearing him out, Zou Ruoguang did not think it amounted to much. On the contrary, he said with some relief, "All right, I understand. He only smashed a slot machine—it's a mercy he didn't smash up the whole entertainment center."

At that, the arcade manager nodded hurriedly and ran back, congratulating himself on not having meddled. It seemed Zou Ruoguang had no intention whatsoever of stopping Wei Zhao.

As for the tokens scattered on the floor, Shen Yushu did not much care anymore. She only felt better for having vented her anger; whether the tokens on the ground could be exchanged for cash at the counter was of no consequence. Besides, she had grown bored of the games here and did not plan to keep playing, so the tokens were useless to her anyway.

"Sister Yaoyao, why don't we go play in the billiard hall across the way? What do you think?" Shen Yushu had given up on the arcade's amusements, because she truly could not find anything fun here.

"The billiard hall? Xiaoshu, you know how to play billiards?" Gu Mengyao asked, a little puzzled.

"No, but I've seen it on TV. The players all look really cool—it should be fun, right?" Shen Yushu merely wanted to see what it was like.

"All right." Gu Mengyao nodded without objection.

In the early days, billiard halls were poor in both environment and facilities, and the patrons were mostly petty thugs and small-time scoundrels. But as world billiards competitions grew popular, billiards gradually came to be accepted by people and became one of the recreational pastimes of the successful.

Naturally, the pool hall inside the entertainment complex remained a mixed and murky crowd. The people who came here to play ranged from petty thugs to rich young masters, though successful men of means were somewhat scarcer—they had their own private clubs and had no need to set foot in a public amusement complex like this.

Wei Zhao, Gu Mengyao, and Shen Yushu made their way to the billiard room across from the arcade. Wei Zhao had kicked up such a commotion earlier, yet Zou Ruoguang had not done a thing to him—had even treated him with great deference—and all of it had played out before the eyes of the petty thugs who loitered here. So those who had entertained improper thoughts about Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu could only tuck them away; no one dared provoke the two girls again and invite unnecessary trouble. Ending up like Red Hair, beaten to a bloody red mess, was simply not worth it.

There was, however, one exception. He had not put his designs on Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu aside at all—on the contrary, his interest had only grown keener. That man was Zhen Yingjun, and the more he looked at Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu, the more he felt the two of them were absolutely top-notch.

That kind of top-notch was something one could encounter but never seek out. In a school of vast size, having even one such girl was no small feat—and now he had run into two at once, which filled Zhen Yingjun with a profound sense of good fortune. He felt Heaven itself was watching over him, handing him two pretty little things in one stroke.

What was more, from his seasoned, practiced eye, Zhen Yingjun had observed that Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu were very likely still untouched, unopened by any man—and such girls were the very cream of the top-notch. Zhen Yingjun felt that if he did not make his move, he would be doing Heaven's arrangement a grave injustice.

Zou Ruoguang, too, had caught Zhen Yingjun's rather infatuated gaze and could not help but frown. Frankly speaking, he had no wish to offend Wei Zhao; he knew Wei Zhao was someone he could not afford to cross. But this Zhen Yingjun was likewise someone he could not afford to cross—word had it the Zhen family held considerable power around the East Sea, commanding a notorious underworld outfit, the Firelance Squad, every one of them armed with a handgun. These were true, hard-nosed criminals, and a thug of Zou Ruoguang's level could not even dream of matching them.

"Young Master Jun, have you really set your heart on it?" Zou Ruoguang asked cautiously.