Chapter 337: Self-Knowledge

"Too auspicious?"

Ning Zhe lifted his head, his gaze sweeping over the balcony railing toward the empty audience seats below.

Lan Shiwén, Lan Shiwén, how many times have you ‘returned’ now?

At this moment, Ning Zhe was glad he had forcibly tied Lan Shiwén to his wagon, but now it was regrettable—he wished he had cracked open Yan Yukuan’s skull back in Chenyù Valley Prison, so he could have discovered the presence of the “Tai Sui worms” then…

There was no way around it—who could possibly imagine that you had to open a corpse’s skull to find hidden traces inside the cranial cavity?

Little Lan probably died many times because of this.

A shade of gray-white flashed through Ning Zhe’s mind—he remembered the cemetery outside Guzhen, where he had dug up the grave of a security guard named Tian Chengyun, only to find the ashes box beneath the stone slab completely empty.

Ning Zhe had originally thought this was just someone’s precaution to prevent Tian Chengyun from being resurrected by an Ascender investigating the matter; now it seemed the truth ran far deeper than he’d imagined.

In just a few seconds, Ning Zhe thought of many things—as if an invisible thread twisted and wound, linking together a series of seemingly unrelated events.

Suddenly, a sharp crack echoed from the room behind the curtain, snapping Ning Zhe’s thoughts.

A new loser had appeared.

Closing his notebook and tucking it into his chest, Ning Zhe did not reply to Xia Yubing but directly pulled back the curtain to look inside—there, a man gritted his teeth and muttered “shit,” gold liquid dripping down the outside of the glass before him, like snails crawling up a tree trunk.

As expected, under the combined targeting of Bé Dàng and Mei Lín, the first loser was indeed him.

There are only four players on the field, and two of them are targeting you—how could you possibly come out unscathed?

Ning Zhe walked slowly into the room; the silk curtain fell behind him. The withered straw effigy still lay silently in the center of the gambling table. Across from him, the gambler had extended its pale, corpse-spotted hand.

The atmosphere on the table grew tense; all eyes fixed on the man who had “strayed” into the casino, waiting to see what stake he would offer.

“T-this… this one, is it okay if I give you this?”

The man carefully unclasped his wristwatch and placed it on the table, pushing it toward the gambler, his forced smile carrying a flicker of hope and a touch of sycophancy—as if begging the gambler for mercy.

Mei Lín frowned: “What’s going on?”

Is that wristwatch a Granted Item? Something of equal value to the straw effigy from the Fuli Misi Leite family? It doesn’t look like it.

Clearly, the gambler also thought so.

The thin, elongated hand remained suspended above the table, swaying slightly up and down, urging him on.

“Stop pretending to be stupid,” Bé Dàng said. “If you can’t offer a stake of equal value, the gambler won’t let you go. Gambling demands fairness—you can’t be unaware of that.”

The man opened his mouth, glanced between the straw effigy on the table and the mechanical wristwatch set with emeralds in his hand, and exclaimed in disbelief: “This can’t be right? How is this possible? You’re saying my watch is worth less than a crude straw doll in the devil’s eyes?”

Mei Lín glanced at his watch and said coolly: “It’s a mechanical watch from the ‘Goldemari’ luxury brand, the Aurora series, with emerald inlays—a limited edition of only 512 pieces worldwide, always in demand but rarely available. By conventional luxury standards, it’s indeed valuable… but that straw doll isn’t a conventional luxury. It’s not something money can buy.”

“Only life can be weighed against it,” Bé Dàng said, pointing a finger at his temple. “A human life.”

Before life, even a luxury watch, limited to 512 worldwide, is merely a carved piece of ordinary metal.

“How could this be…” Hearing their words, the man’s face twisted with despair, his teeth clenched in disbelief: “A stupid straw doll? How can you say it’s as precious as life? What kind of joke is this?” In truth, it was even more precious… at least within the gambler’s value system.

Mei Lín and Bé Dàng said nothing. The room fell silent again, save for the man’s faint, disbelieving mutterings. On the table, the gambler’s hand swayed once more, urging him to hurry and place his stake so the game could continue.

“Interesting,” Ning Zhe sat back in his seat, observing the man’s slightly dazed expression with interest—he was clearly shaken by what he’d just heard.

Yet even so, Ning Zhe saw no trace of acting on his face; every muscle twitch, every bead of sweat sliding down was utterly natural, devoid of any falseness.

He probably isn’t faking it.

“This guy is probably just an ordinary mortal who knows nothing.”

Ning Zhe concluded inwardly: “Like Yan Yukuan in Chenyù Valley Prison, this man is likely another tool used by Fen Wu, his memories altered, brought here for some purpose—and like Yan Yukuan, he doesn’t even know his memories have been rewritten.”

This man truly knows nothing about Ascenders, Granted Items, or supernatural phenomena. His memory holds none of that nonsense—he’s just an ordinary man with some money, and every action he’s shown so far has been genuine, requiring no acting.

“But Fen Wu placed him here for a reason.”

As Ning Zhe pondered, the gambler’s hand swayed again—its patience was wearing thin.

Seeing this, the man’s face turned pale. Trembling, he removed his ring, pulled out his wallet, and spread all his cash and bank cards on the table, his expression one of despair mixed with a faint, desperate hope. He shoved everything into the center of the table:

“Take these, take all of them—I give you everything I have, everything valuable is here. Spare me, spare me…”

The gambler ignored him, rising silently. Its tall, bony frame cast a massive shadow under the light.

“No, no, please, don’t…”

Ning Zhe propped his chin on one hand, watching the man’s mental collapse with thoughtful gaze, and suddenly thought:

“According to Lan Shiwén’s account, the gambler’s appearance in the opera house isn’t a random anomaly—it’s been deliberately guided. The one guiding this is almost certainly Fen Wu.”

“If it’s Fen Wu, then everything that’s happened so far has been aimed at me—more precisely, at Zhao You. Fen Wu is unlucky; he needs Zhao You’s rule of attracting fortune and avoiding misfortune to compensate for his own flaws.”

And Zhao You has already been lost to the gambler.

“So Fen Wu’s goal has already been partially achieved—he successfully used the gambler to strip Zhao You away from me. Next, he’ll try to transfer Zhao You from the gambler to himself.”

How?—By gambling.

“If you win a game where the stake is ‘a ghost,’ you can claim Zhao You. But for the gambler to offer a ghost as a stake, you must also offer something of equal value.”

In other words…

Ning Zhe’s gaze toward the man grew ambiguous.

This man—this ordinary mortal, brainwashed by Fen Wu without knowing it—is currently carrying at least one 【true ghost】.

(End of Chapter)