Sensing Shen Mengqing's unspoken meaning, Duan Kun immediately smiled, though it was a cold one.
He slowly walked up to Shen Mengqing and said with a grim face, "My darling Mengqing, you and Ruichi are lucky this time!"
"Next time... don't expect anyone to descend like a divine soldier!"
"Your body, I, Duan Kun, will have!"
"And Ruichi, I will also trample upon!"
With that, Duan Kun turned and left.
As he reached the doorway, Duan Kun suddenly turned back to look at me, his eyes flashing with cold light, and said, "Kid, I hold grudges!"
"When you walk alone at night in the future, you damn well better be careful!"
Hearing this, I replied with a cold laugh, "Heh heh!"
"Fine! You're a tough nut to crack! Just you wait!"
"Our paths will cross again! You'd better pray you don't fall into my hands!"
Having completely shed his pretense of hypocrisy and unleashed his vengeful threats, Duan Kun, with a furious expression, quickly left Ruichi with his entourage...
As soon as Duan Kun left, the members of Ruichi's dark lantern team looked at me with changed expressions.
Many of them were secretly sizing me up with looks of admiration and curiosity.
Among them, Li Sheng, Qi Bin, and Lu Yong all seemed to have something to say but hesitated.
Clearly, they were eager to know how I had seen through Duan Kun's cheating.
Just as Lu Yong was about to ask me, Shen Mengqing said from the side, "What are you all standing around for? Hurry up and collect the money, then clean up this place?!"
"Although it's too late tonight, we still need to open for business as usual tomorrow! So, get moving!"
"Li Sheng, Qi Bin, Lu Yong, Chen Xiang, the four of you come to my office!"
As Shen Mengqing spoke, the surrounding people scattered instantly and began to busily tidy up...
When I emerged from Shen Mengqing's office, I was carrying a small black leather case.
Due to Duan Kun's disruption earlier, Ruichi had not been open to the public that night.
After cleaning up, seeing that it was already two in the morning, Shen Mengqing simply let everyone off work.
She also stated that there would be a surprise waiting for everyone when they came to work tomorrow.
Upon hearing this, almost everyone showed expressions of delight, and then they left Ruichi in groups of twos and threes.
At this moment, no one was paying attention to or dwelling on how I had seen through Duan Kun's cheating methods.
Because compared to the truth, they cared more about their own immediate interests.
With profit at hand, human greed and authenticity were undeniably revealed!
.........
As soon as I stepped out of Ruichi's main entrance, I saw Shen Mengqing parked by the roadside in a black Porsche Cayenne, signaling me to get in her car.
On the way to take me home, after driving for only two minutes, Shen Mengqing asked with a gossipy tone, "Chen Xiang, can you tell me why you saw through Duan Kun at a glance?"
A cheater who could become a lantern keeper was by no means an ordinary person.
Although Shen Mengqing was a woman, women's minds... were inherently more delicate than men's.
Duan Kun's enraged remark about "divine soldiers descending" immediately made Shen Mengqing sense something was amiss.
Therefore, in the office earlier, Shen Mengqing discussed the absent Zhang Qiang and my reward the most with us.
And now, with those two issues resolved, Shen Mengqing had immediately reverted to her role as a gossipy woman.
Seeing her determined to get to the bottom of it, I took a deep breath and recounted the whole story, from beginning to end...
As the saying goes: when things are out of the ordinary, there must be something strange!
Since Duan Kun had been winning all along, it meant he must have been up to something!
As for what that something was, it was up to me and Ruichi's dark lanterns to uncover.
The reason I was able to discover and grasp concrete evidence of Duan Kun's cheating before all the other dark lanterns was entirely due to a sentence that Uncle Tuo had once told me, which gave me inexplicable inspiration.
Uncle Tuo's original words: The difference between an ordinary cheater and a top-tier cheater is not the cheating technique, but the details.
I hadn't fully understood the mystery behind this statement before, but since I embarked on the path of the cheater's blue way, especially after the incident with Yu Shuang, I gradually came to understand.
The so-called details were reflected in the fact that ordinary cheaters, when cheating, would only focus on themselves.
Whether it was stealing cards, switching cards, hiding cards, etc., they stubbornly believed that only they themselves were the most trustworthy and reliable.
No other person or object could be!
As for top-tier cheaters, they would not be constrained by themselves.
They used anyone or anything other than themselves as their cheat, meaning everything could be a cheat!
Although Duan Kun hadn't reached Yu Shuang's level of top-tier cheating, he was smart and knew how to adapt to the situation.
In a major situation like challenging the venue today, Duan Kun knew that everyone at Ruichi's attention would be focused solely on him.
Therefore, he came fully prepared.
Those cash stacks were not only chips but also the things Duan Kun relied on and trusted the most!
When I followed Shen Mengqing downstairs earlier, besides the remark about four aces, I had managed to capture some of Duan Kun's behavior at the gambling table.
Although my back was to him then, I could clearly see the entire process when he made his bets.
Just like when he gambled against me, Duan Kun never bet in round numbers; he always added some odd change.
At that time, after discovering this peculiar habit of Duan Kun's, I didn't feel any doubt.
Because at the gambling table, a cheater is a thousand faces.
But when I sat down to gamble with him, I discovered something was wrong.
It started with him repeatedly deliberately exposing flaws, trying to lure me into calling him out for cheating.
Under normal circumstances, ordinary cheaters would absolutely not and dare not do such a thing, even if they had been winning all along.
But Duan Kun was fearless.
It was this clue, which wasn't really a clue, that allowed me to find a sliver of a lead.
I deduced that the reason Duan Kun dared to deliberately expose flaws and provoke me repeatedly was because he had reached a point where, as soon as he finished cheating, he could leave without a trace of evidence.
Under what circumstances could this be achieved?
The mystery lay in: the extra cash!
Cash was different from chips; no matter how many chips you threw in, it wouldn't attract much attention.
But cash was different. Because cash... was visually striking!
So, Duan Kun boldly used this to his advantage, completing his cheating right under everyone's noses.
Because a playing card, hidden in a stack of cash worth one hundred thousand per bundle, was difficult to find.
Starting from the third card, every time he made a bet, Duan Kun would secretly hide the actual card in the stack of cash and then openly throw it into the pot.
To divert attention, especially to avoid being discovered by me and Shen Mengqing, Duan Kun would always make bets with odd change, using those loose cash amounts to distract us.