A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 266 Hello, Jie Jie
"Here are your chips, please keep them safe. May gold flow into your pockets like the wind. If you wish to pray for good fortune, the casino has separate prayer rooms, available for all seven major religions, designed and built by qualified priests."

"We don't have many rules here. Please do not cheat, do not steal, and do not worship evil gods. If you have a conflict with other gamblers, please do not resort to violence; we will mediate impartially."

"For mortgage and loan services, please go to the third floor for consultation. Golden Wind provides all asset appraisal services, as well as unsecured personal loans with interest rates as low as 0.8 yuan per day."

Quinn took the chips from the waitress, who was dressed very provocatively in an inverted V-shaped bunny girl outfit, her fair skin exposed to every VIP.

Most of the waitresses were dressed like this. I don't know where Ike found so many beautiful women, from fair to dark-skinned, with black hair and blonde hair, and all kinds of figures, from plump to slender.

Seeing Quinn staring at the bunny girl's chest, the beautiful woman was quite generous and even puffed out her chest so he could see it more clearly. Xia Dai'er, who was standing next to her, immediately became jealous, but since she was in disguise, she couldn't say anything. So she secretly pinched his waist to tell this pervert to stop looking.

Quinn was actually looking at the necklace on the bunny girl's chest.

Every waiter and dealer in the Golden Wind Casino wears the same pendant.

The pendant's design is quite peculiar; it's a right-handed swastika, entirely black and very inconspicuous.

In Taymourne, pendants, rings, and other ornaments are often associated with religious beliefs. Examples include the inverted cross of the Church of Light, the silver bell of the White Church, the moon of the Full Moon Church, and the half-grown, half-withered tree of the Church of the Returning Tree.
Even when women choose jewelry, they tend to select styles that align with their religious beliefs. Those who worship the sun prefer gold, those who follow the Kagyu religion favor diamonds, and believers in the full moon choose items with a moon-like luster.
However, to Quinn's knowledge, no religious symbol is this swastika.

On the contrary, Buddhism on Earth
Mi Yutong's father was a devout Buddhist, and there were countless incense sticks burning in his house. Quinn knew something about this.

In Buddhism, the swastika symbol happens to represent the sun.
But it was gold.

The all-black swastika symbolizes Nazi fascism, but it differs slightly from the swastika before us. The Nazi swastika is left-handed, not right-handed.
Seeing that Quinn was still thinking about something, seemingly still immersed in the beautiful scenery of the bunny girl, Xia Daier pulled her sunglasses down a bit and stared at him with great displeasure.

"Hmm? What's wrong?" Quinn asked, noticing his girlfriend had stopped moving and was standing nearby like a cat with its fur standing on end.

"What are you looking at?" she grumbled.

"I didn't see anything," Quinn said honestly.

"She squeezed it out! She's probably not even half my size."

After saying that, Xia Dai'er snorted and turned her head away, ignoring the scoundrel.

"Hey, hey," Quinn chuckled, "It's a misunderstanding."

The two walked one in front of the other, and he kept his girlfriend company while observing the casino.

The more I look at Quinn, the more I feel a sense of déjà vu.

The origins of playing cards in Temuran date back over a thousand years. It is said that the hero Link and the girls in his party were bored on their journey to defeat the Demon King, so he devised a card game with fifty-four cards, each with different suits and the "Demon King" and "Sun" symbolizing the royal flush. He named it 'Playing Cards'.

This card game was very interesting and profound, and within a few short years it swept through the entertainment-scarce world. Along with it, a new gameplay element emerged: losing a round meant taking off a piece of clothing. Unfortunately, this version was quickly phased out in Merlin's time and replaced with a gambling-style chip-based wager.

Quinn knew that playing cards were explicitly recorded as an invention of the hero.

What he didn't know was that the various card games currently being played in the casino—Baccarat, Dragon Tiger, Blackjack, and Texas Hold'em—were also left behind by his fellow villagers.

Or was it Ike's own invention?
The casino's design is also extremely unique. The entire gaming hall is as spacious as a hotel lobby, and the pillars are concealed by greenery as much as possible to reduce the feeling of confinement. There are no windows inside or outside the casino; it relies entirely on bright lights for illumination.

These lights weren't the usual gas lamps, but more expensive magic crystal lamps, powered by an arcane matrix to produce a brightness comparable to sunlight, so bright that you couldn't even see your own shadow while walking inside the casino. Under such light, people easily lose their sense of time, thus spending countless hours gambling inside.

There are no clocks, free and high-class food, and everywhere you go, there are bunny girls serving red wine mixed with invigorating herbs to quench your thirst. A whole symphony orchestra plays slow music to soothe the tension. Occasionally, someone wins a bet, and the surrounding waiters erupt in a deafening celebration. The dealers even sit on the gambling table for the big winner to gamble at will.
What puzzled Quinn most was that the doors connecting to the outside world were hidden in inconspicuous corners. Anyone unfamiliar with the area would simply circle back to the hall filled with gambling tables and celebratory noises if they wanted to leave.
He was certainly not confused by the design logic behind all of this.

Instead, they were puzzled by how similar this place was to casinos in Macau.

The gambling industry on Earth has evolved over two thousand years, finally reaching its ultimate form in capitalist Las Vegas, where almost every detail is designed to make gamblers squander their fortunes in casinos.
This gang-run casino in the Ashwell slum may not be called 'small,' but it is ultimately just an illegal casino used by a gang to make money. How could it be built to this scale?

Since Golden Wind offers this level of service, it naturally has a minimum spending requirement: 100 silver pounds is the minimum amount for exchanging chips, which directly filters out the vast majority of poor gamblers in Seaville.

It was only a little past noon, and the casino tables were almost all packed with people. Even the purely mechanical single-player slot machines were nearly full. The gamblers came from all over the country, and many were wealthy but had become obsessed with gambling, demonstrating just how good the business was.

Quinn casually stopped a waiter and asked, "Ron, do you have any other casinos similar to yours? They're pretty good; I'd like to find a place to have fun when I get back home."

Quinn, disguised as Shelby, looked exactly like a serious, middle-aged white man, resembling exactly the stereotypical Ron he had. The waiter, without a second thought, said smugly:

"Sir, I suggest you enjoy yourself here until you're satisfied before heading back. Forget the Kingdom of Ron, even if you crossed the sea to the Eastern Islands, you might not find a casino like ours—"

"Oh?" Quinn's tone was dismissive. "It's just a casino. Aren't they all like this?"

"Heh, you don't know this, but most of the amusement rides here were created by the Godfather himself. He has patented them in the Southern Continent and the Eastern Country. You will never find them in regular casinos. Those people who want to make the same rides will have to pay the Godfather!"

Quinn narrowed his eyes slightly; the "godfather" the waiter mentioned was only Ike Capone.

"Is it original? Is the necklace you're wearing also original?"

"You mean this?" The waiter lifted the black swastika necklace from the collar.

Quinn nodded, then asked jokingly, "It's not some kind of cult necklace, is it? I've heard some lunatics pray to evil gods for good luck."

"Of course not!"

The waiter was very professional, smiling broadly as he said, "You may not know this, but it's the badge of the Fifth Hero, Jiangnan."

"The badge of the Fifth Hero?"

Quinn frowned slightly, and Xia Dai'er also looked at the necklace with surprise. Clearly, neither of them, who were quite knowledgeable about heroes, had ever heard of the connection between Jiangnan and the swastika.

Very little information about Jiangnan has survived, ranking him second only to the third and sixth heroes among the six. Apart from the stories of wandering bards, the veracity of which is uncertain, almost no books record his life. His story is only passed down orally in some remote areas of the Western Continent.

"As the Godfather said—the hero can bestow good fortune upon us."

Quinn nodded slightly. "Quite rare."

After the waiter walked away, Xia Dai'er whispered, "Is it related to the hero? Let's buy one as a souvenir."

Quinn thought to himself that a black swastika wasn't exactly a souvenir.
"It's not certain whether it's true or not. I'll ask around later. It might just be something the gang made up to fool people."

He knew in his heart that this was most likely related to the Fifth Hero.

According to Ike's own account, he approached the Yangen government-in-exile for the sake of the Fifth Hero Jiangnan's sacred artifact.

If the Yangen government-in-exile truly possesses the Hero's Artifact, then Mr. Q, who has some connection to it, might also be aware of it.
He had a vague feeling that there might be some connection between these seemingly unrelated clues. "Quinn," Chaldale called him softly.

"Ok?"

Are you really going to gamble?

Her voice carried a hint of weak advice, but she dared not be too explicit for fear of displeasing Quinn.

After the initial sense of novelty, the girl who visited the site realized that this was not a slum in Seawell at all, but a consumer paradise built in Seawell to evade regulation.

Those who make a lot of money can enjoy the champagne-filled cheers at host clubs, but many others can lose everything in an instant.

In just a short while, she saw two gamblers kneeling or lying down in front of the gambling table, weeping bitterly. They looked as if they had exhausted all the regrets of their lives, and they were pounding the floor as if they wanted to break their hands.

However, the people around just watched indifferently, unconcerned, immersed in their dreams of getting rich and waiting for the dealer to start the next round.

“I feel very uncomfortable,” she asked softly. “What about those people lying on the ground crying? Will the casino give them any money back?”

Quinn shook his head.

"How could that be? After crying, he went upstairs to borrow money from loan sharks. He would pawn whatever he had, and if he didn't have money, he would pawn his life. After all, it's run by a gang."

Xia Dai'er immediately grabbed Quinn's sleeve tightly, as if afraid he would run away.

"If you don't have money, I can give you the feeling. It's addictive here."

“I don’t gamble, I’ve never played,” Quinn reassured his girlfriend.

This is a lie.

He was familiar with most of the games in the casino, and even learned how to deal face cards. He was able to become an expert in the game by memorizing cards and calculating.

Most of this was taught to him by Mi Yutong's father. Mi Beilin was not addicted to gambling and even strictly forbade his children from playing cards. Mi Yutong's younger brother could not recognize the rank of the cards until high school, but Mi Beilin himself was a good player.

How to lose a hand, and how to cleverly and naturally "lose" the stakes to the other side of the table, is a profound art.

"My brother said so."

“You can’t touch anything that’s addictive. He calls gamblers ‘gambling dogs,’ saying that their final fate will be to go to a church penniless and confess to God, saying, ‘It’s good to quit.’”

Chaldale repeated Elon's strange tale.

Quinn felt like he'd heard this joke somewhere before.

But my memory is blank. I have a vague sense of familiarity, but I can't remember it because it's shrouded in a fog.

"Addictive things?" Quinn said casually, "Some medicines can be very addictive. Your dad has been sick for so long, did he have any problems with the medicine?"

Xia Dai'er paused, then said casually, "Of course not."

"By the way, what illness does your dad have?"

"It's just...some...um, minor illnesses." Xia Dai'er abruptly changed the subject: "Since you're not gambling, let's go play that! That claw machine—"

She pointed to the claw machine in the distance and ran over first.

Quinn watched the girl's retreating figure, smiled, and followed her without bringing up the topic again.

This claw machine is quite ingenious. Unlike the large, electrically controlled glass cabinets on Earth, the claw machines in the Golden Wind Casino are purely mechanical boxes driven by gears and steam. Through the glass, you can see the intricate mechanical structure of the claw hook, and by slightly pulling the lever, you can feel the pleasant spring-loaded resistance.

Unfortunately, this thing is exactly like any other claw machine on Earth. I tried three times, and even though I was sure I'd win on the first try, the claw would loosen just before it was about to lift me up, as slack as a slightly chubby boy from Chengdu.

The minimum chip, worth 10 pence, is enough to play once. The hanging dolls can be exchanged for larger chips worth 1 gold pound at the counter. The return rate seems considerable at first glance, but the fact that only Quinn and Chaldale use this row of claw machines shows how low the actual return rate is.

Quinn didn't care. Although he had lent most of his wealth to Ankuya, he still had some money left. He blamed his girlfriend for not being able to win the prize by saying she was too clumsy, so he taught her step by step, holding her relatively petite body from behind, which he found quite enjoyable.

Smelling the fragrance in her hair, Quinn suddenly felt a little distracted, whether from enduring too long in the abyss or something else.

He instinctively became wary and reached into his pocket for his beloved ring, but the abyss relic was cold and wouldn't work unless he was wearing it.

Quinn immediately felt somewhat helpless, realizing he was walking on thin ice. After all, this was the mortal world, where the Pantheon was watching over humanity; where could desires corrupt them?

It's just a natural reaction.

Noticing the change in the man behind her, the girl said nothing, but bit her lower lip and bent her waist a little lower.

In public, no one should have noticed, right?

Quinn thought no man could dislike meaty thighs; those who didn't probably hadn't tried them before. It was like sinking into a soft sand dune, reminiscent of a mother's embrace.

After playing these subtle tricks for a while, running out of chips and still not winning the doll, the girl was clearly getting a little emotional. She whispered, "Are there any hotels near the casino? I can go back before school ends."

Quinn took a step back and took a deep breath.

"We haven't even gotten to the important stuff yet, and we're already trying to do it? Quinn, Quinn, you can't be so depraved."

“There must be rooms upstairs,” he said seriously.

Immediately, Quinn called over a waiter and asked in a low voice, "Is the boss here?"

The waiter's expression changed immediately upon hearing "boss." Outsiders would only call Ike "godfather," while those who called him "boss" were his own people.

"You look unfamiliar. May I ask who you are?"

"Shelby".

The waiter quickly left, and a moment later the thug in charge of security came over and gestured for Quinn to follow him.

“This is my friend, keep an eye on him.” Quinn paused. “Also, take one of those broken bears out of that claw machine. Even Black Egg isn’t as black as you guys.”

(End of this chapter)