Chapter 647: A Chain of Psychological Attacks
After listening, Earth Monkey squeezed the cards in his hand hard and asked in a deep voice, "What kind of idiom is that supposed to be?"
"Sharp, oh so sharp." Qiao Jiajin ignored Earth Monkey and nodded frantically. "'King,' huh? Then I'll follow with 'King's bastard son'!"
"That's a great idiom!" Chen Junnan grinned. "'Son'... I'll follow with... 'Son of a rat, ugly monkey'! Oh man, 'ugly monkey' is just too perfect."
"Monkey?" Qiao Jiajin thought for a moment. "I'll go with 'Monkeys are really ugly'..."
"Enough!!" Earth Monkey slammed his hand hard on the table.
Luckily, the table was sturdy enough, but everyone felt the floor shake slightly from the impact.
"Oh ho...?" Chen Junnan leaned back, swinging his legs up onto the table.
"Are you two ever going to stop? Can you just be quiet?" Earth Monkey said, his face full of displeasure.
"Damn it..." Chen Junnan cursed impatiently in return. "Brother Monkey, is this a library or what? Do I need to stay completely silent for the entire bet or something?"
"Then I'd really like to ask you." Earth Monkey sneered. "In a game where every move requires strategy and calculation, you're resorting to the most despicable tactics. If you win like this, will you even be satisfied?"
"Completely." Chen Junnan replied. "And you?"
"Motherf*cker!" Earth Monkey slammed the table again and stood up.
Qiao Jiajin and Chen Junnan shot up from their seats at the same time, their presence matching Earth Monkey's without backing down.
Qiao Jiajin pointed aggressively at Earth Monkey and shouted, "What's up?! You fat monkey! Wanna throw down?!"
The three glared fiercely at each other, as if a fight could break out at any second.
Qi Xia, however, remained silent, sitting calmly in his seat with a cold, observant gaze. Chen Junnan's job was going smoothly—he just needed to keep disrupting Earth Monkey's train of thought, making it impossible for him to strategize, and winning the game would become difficult for him.
Perhaps Earth Monkey himself didn't know that on this day, gathered in this small casino, three people from the "End of the World" were notoriously hard to mess with.
"You guys... really do seem like regulars at a casino." Earth Monkey calmed himself and let out a cold laugh. "Back in the real world, I used to deal with people like you every day. I almost miss it now."
"Isn't that great?" Chen Junnan lifted his chin. "Little lord here is taking Brother Monkey down memory lane, and I'm not even going to charge you for it."
"But the me now and the me back then are pretty different." Earth Monkey shook his head, seeming to have calmed down. He took another cigarette from his pocket and pursed his lips to hold it. "Do you know what the biggest difference between the 'End of the World' and the outside world is?"
"Outside, there are no talking monkeys." Chen Junnan replied.
Earth Monkey ignored him, quietly lit his cigarette, and said, "Outside, there are things I wouldn't dare to do. Here, no one stops me."
"Oh? You mean 'killing'?" Chen Junnan asked.
"Yes." Earth Monkey nodded. "But you're right about one thing—I can't kill you. Still, I could walk over right now and rip out your tongue, leaving you spitting blood and mumbling incoherently for the rest of the time."
"What a coincidence." Chen Junnan shot back without flinching. "Let me make one thing clear: if you rip out my tongue, I'll not only spit blood and mumble, but I'll also curse through my bloody mouth and sing 'Good Luck Comes' thirty times in your ear, spraying blood all over your face. Every time you open a card, I'll spray once until I run out of blood. Then I'll crawl on the ground and carve the word 'tragic' on your ankle. What do you think of that plan, huh?"
Earth Monkey hadn't expected this man to have been holding back before. In terms of sheer verbal sparring, Earth Monkey realized he had no chance of winning against this guy—his thoughts were even getting blocked.
And coming from anyone else, those words might have been dismissed, but from Chen Junnan, Earth Monkey felt they carried a high degree of credibility. The man seemed capable of following through.
"That's enough, Chen Junnan." Qi Xia spoke up. "Sit down first."
Chen Junnan immediately sat down without another word. Qiao Jiajin also shot Earth Monkey a glare before slowly taking his seat.
Earth Monkey glanced at Qi Xia, frowning, as if surprised that these two seemingly lawless men would obey so easily.
"You better watch yourself," Earth Monkey said to Chen Junnan.
Chen Junnan leaned back, swinging his legs in a circle before crashing them onto the table. He cupped a hand to his ear and turned his head with a cheeky expression. "Can't hear you! What'd you say?!"
Earth Monkey decided to ignore him. He sat down and looked at his own hand: "New Year's Eve."
Among all the cards, only "New Year's Eve" allowed him to obtain "One, Two, Three" in the first round.
So Earth Monkey's best chance of winning was to form a straight.
As Qi Xia stared at Earth Monkey, he suddenly felt something was off.
It was a strange visual sensation.
Within his field of vision, something seemed to have changed in a very subtle way.
Two seconds later, Qi Xia turned his gaze to the wooden box in the center of the table.
That box had been sitting there all along, but Qi Xia felt an acute sense that it had changed.
The position hadn't moved, the shape was the same, but something about it felt different.
Could it be...
Qi Xia turned to Qiao Jiajin and said, "Fist, look at that wooden box."
Qiao Jiajin glanced at the box and asked, "What about it?"
"Do you think its color has changed?" Qi Xia asked.
Qiao Jiajin and Chen Junnan both turned to look carefully at the box.
The box's patterns were vivid, and its overall color was still a deep brown—nothing seemed different.
"Has it...?" Qiao Jiajin asked. "Conman... Do you see it as white?"
Qi Xia shook his head and wiped the blood from his eyes, thinking he might be overthinking things.
Maybe some blood had gotten into his eye, or the dizziness from earlier was affecting his vision. In any case, Qi Xia felt the box's color had shifted slightly.
At least it looked different from when he first saw it.
It seemed... lighter somehow?
But when he stared directly at the box, the color seemed to be exactly as it always was.
Qi Xia shook his head. The fog that had been clearing seemed to be gathering again. But now, he had a clear solution.
He put both hands under the table, grabbed his already broken right little finger with his left hand, and gritted his teeth as he squeezed hard.
The fog dissipated instantly.
That broken finger had become his switch to clear the fog. If he could survive this game, he still had nine more fingers to sacrifice.