America: Starting from collecting corpses, leveling up to godhood

Chen Ming picked a table, sat down, and threw two large bundles of cash onto the table.

"Exchange for 20,000."

The dealer was a middle-aged white man with a noticeable receding hairline. He skillfully checked the banknotes and prepared the chips for Chen Ming.

But after receiving the chips, Chen Ming didn't rush into the game. Instead, he folded three hands in a row and leaned back in his chair to watch.

The most eye-catching person at his desk was a white man sitting to his right.

This guy was wearing a flashy printed shirt and even co-pilot sunglasses indoors, making him look like Quigmeet from House Guy.

The chips in front of him were piled up like a small mountain, at least 60,000.

Chen Ming narrowed his eyes, his gaze not falling on the other person's face, but fixed on his hand.

In the first hand, after receiving his cards, the man casually wiped his right index finger on the outside of his wine glass before taking the bottom card.

In the second hand, when the dealer dealt the community cards, the man didn't even look at his own cards. Instead, he stared intently at the hole cards that others had placed face down on the table. He then decisively bet 10,000, forcing everyone else to back down.

In the third hand, he suddenly folded again, and coincidentally, someone else had played a straight flush.

By the fourth round, Chen Ming finally understood the secret thanks to his extraordinary mental strength.

The wine glass must have a special luminescent coating, and the glasses he was wearing were developing filters—this guy was secretly marking the big cards and then reading other people's cards across the table, a very classic cheating method, but because he was fast enough, no one else noticed.

A new game begins.

"I'm raising this round, ten thousand." The man in sunglasses pushed a stack of purple chips forward and looked at Chen Ming, who had just received his cards, with a smile.

"Hey Asian guy, you've already thrown three times, aren't you going to call this time?"

The other two old men at the table cursed and threw their cards to the dealer, clearly having lost so much they didn't want to play anymore.

Chen Ming didn't even look at his two face-down cards before pushing all 20,000 chips in front of him out.

"I don't play much... I'll go all in."

The table fell silent instantly.

The man in sunglasses paused for a moment, then looked at Chen Ming's two cards—but they were completely blank and unmarked, so he couldn't decipher them.

After discovering his underhanded actions, Chen Ming naturally took precautions.

"What's wrong? Stop staring at me like that. I'm not gay." Chen Ming laughed it off.

"...I won't go with it."

The man in sunglasses finally gritted his teeth and threw away his cards.

Then he saw Chen Ming reveal his hole cards—a four and an eight, which, even with the community cards, couldn't form a pair.

"You fucking bet both a four and an eight?!"

The man in sunglasses twitched at the corner of his eye and immediately swore.

"Isn't playing this just a test of who's the bravest?" Chen Ming smiled and gathered the chips on the table in front of him, casually tossing a purple chip to the dealer as a tip.

The next half hour became a period of suffering for the man in sunglasses.

Whenever he draws a card and bets, Chen Ming will always raise back. Whenever he tries to mark the cards with paint, Chen Ming will secretly block the bottom cards with his hand, or even push out a large stack of chips without even looking at the cards.

"All in."

"Add another ten thousand."

"I followed."

The completely irrational psychological warfare drove the man in sunglasses crazy. Feeling guilty, he didn't dare to bet real money that Chen Ming was bluffing. His chips visibly shrank by more than 20,000.

"It's too cold here, I'm changing tables!" The man in sunglasses gritted his teeth, grabbed the remaining chips, and left, heading towards the Texas Hold'em table next to him with higher blinds.

But as soon as the man in sunglasses pulled out a chair and sat down, Chen Ming naturally sat down to his right.

"What a coincidence, I also thought the dealers at that table had terrible luck."

Ten minutes later, at the Omaha poker table.

Chen Ming smiled and tossed out another chip.

"Brother, we're really destined to meet."

"...I'm not playing anymore!"

After switching between three different sections, the man in sunglasses stared at Chen Ming as if he had seen a ghost, and finally pushed his chair away and rushed into the restroom deep inside the casino.

Chen Ming followed at a leisurely pace.

The man in sunglasses stood in front of the sink, frantically turned on the tap, and started scrubbing the invisible paint off his right index finger.

"Isn't it a bit late to remember to wash your hands now?"

Chen Ming strolled in slowly and locked the bathroom door behind him.

"What the hell do you want?" The man in sunglasses suddenly turned around and glared fiercely at Chen Ming.

"It's nothing, I just think the combination of glow-in-the-dark paint and polarized sunglasses is kind of retro." Chen Ming leaned against the door.

"So what if it is?" The man in sunglasses sneered, flicked the water off his hands, and strode closer to Chen Ming.

"Are you going to complain to the casino manager, Asian man?"

"Listen up, I used to be a fighter pilot at North Island Naval Air Station. If you know what's good for you, get the hell out of here and mind your own business, or I swear I'll knock all your teeth out and make you swallow them!"

Before he could finish speaking, the man in sunglasses suddenly threw a right hook, aiming straight for Chen Ming's nose.

"Snapped!"

Chen Ming didn't even blink. He casually raised his left hand and caught the other person's fist as easily as catching a baseball.

The man in sunglasses was stunned.

"Former naval aviator?" Chen Ming raised an eyebrow.

"Is the Navy hiring so indiscriminately these days? The way you're exerting yourself makes you look like a drunken pesticide sprayer pilot..."

After saying that, Chen Ming suddenly flipped his wrist outward.

"ah--!!!"

The man in sunglasses screamed in pain as he instantly lost his balance due to the excruciating pain in his wrist.

"It's broken, it's going to break! Let go, brother, let go!" He writhed in pain, his face flushed red.

"It seems your ability to withstand pressure is not as good as your cheating skills."

Chen Ming loosened his grip slightly, but still kept his joints firmly locked.

"Can we talk this out calmly now, sir?"

"You can talk about anything you want. I have 40,000 dollars in my pocket that I can give you, as long as you don't break my hand or call the alarm for security..." The man in sunglasses nodded frantically.

"Of course I'll take all the chips, consider it your health insurance payment. But I'm curious, casinos now have high-definition surveillance that can even count the wrinkles around your eyes, and security uses facial recognition and thermal imaging. How dare you still play such an outdated trick as paint here?"

"The method is indeed old-fashioned, but they will never be able to detect my paint."

"High-end goods bought on the black market?" Chen Ming raised an eyebrow.

"How could that be? Those idiots on the black market who even adulterate fentanyl don't know anything!" The man in sunglasses curled his lip, then his tone carried a strange sense of pride.

"This is an exclusive formula created by a guy who got fired from Lockheed Martin's lab."

"The military even dismisses someone like this?" Chen Ming was somewhat surprised.

While it's known that corruption is rampant within the U.S. military, dismissing someone capable of independently developing advanced stealth coatings seems a bit excessive.

If this had happened in a major Eastern country, it would have prompted the colonists to publish hundreds of definitive articles.

"You don't understand. They're firing anyone who actually does anything now and giving the positions to transgender people who can't even do basic arithmetic... These were originally meant for stealth drones." The man in sunglasses lowered his voice.

"Today's casino security guards are spoiled by high technology. They only check miniature cameras and earpieces, but I didn't bring any electronic devices."