I run a casino in the immortal realm.

Zheng Yifei barely slept that night.

It wasn't that he wasn't sleepy; it was Zhang Biao's words that made him adjust the security level of this courtyard from "remote" to "anyone could break in at any time."

He tucked the dagger under his pillow, affixed the Vajra talisman to his left chest, tucked the Golden Sword talisman inside his belt, and stored the Spirit Gathering Array Plate in a hidden compartment in the bed.

The kitchen knife beside the stove leaned against the door frame, and a small string of broken copper pieces hung on the door latch—worthless, but they would make a noise if someone pushed the door open.

I kept my ears perked up all night.

The alley was indeed quiet. Apart from a stray cat stepping on a roof tile in the middle of the night and making two crisp sounds, there was no other noise.

But silence itself is a signal.

Even in the poorest and most dilapidated shantytowns of Heishanfang City, you can still hear neighbors snoring, children crying, and old men coughing at night.

The seven or eight households in Wutong Lane were as still as the dead after nightfall; they didn't even dare to light a single lamp.

The people here are used to hiding themselves.

After daybreak, Zheng Yifei washed his face with the spiritual spring water, ate a cold steamed bun, put on the mask of a round face in his thirties, and went out.

The business at Datong Casino was not as good in the morning as it was in the evening. Only three tables were open on the second floor, and there were only a few gamblers. The bookmaker was also a new face.

Zheng Yifei chose a table where people guessed whether it was odd or even and sat down.

Today's dealer is a fat man, at the fifth level of Qi Refining. His methods are disciplined, and there are no signs of cheating.

There were only about ten gamblers, and their attention was scattered.

He placed his bets using the exact same rhythm as yesterday.

Bet 10, win. Bet 15, lose. Bet 20, win. Bet 10, win. Bet 25, lose.

The wins and losses alternate naturally, with the winning rate controlled between 55% and 60%.

After an hour and a half of effort, the spirit stone was finally obtained.

He lost two big bets, then a gambler next to him called and won a bet. He deliberately lost thirty dollars to create the impression that his luck had run out, and then got up and left.

After leaving the gambling den, I counted my money and found I had made a net profit of 203 yuan.

enough.

The waiter at Wanbaolou greeted him indifferently as he entered. A rogue cultivator at the fourth level of Qi Refining wasn't a rare customer here; dozens came in every day.

"What's the price of a Tier 1 high-grade defensive formation?"

A younger manager appeared behind the counter and flipped through the booklet. "A protective formation for the courtyard or a self-defense formation?"

"Houseguard".

The young shopkeeper looked up and glanced at him again. "First-grade superior-level Qi-stabilizing Guardian Array, 150 spirit stones. Covers an area of ​​half an acre and can withstand a full-force attack from a Qi Refining level 9 cultivator for half an hour. Daily maintenance costs eight low-grade spirit stones."

Eight spirit stones a day.

That's 240 yuan a month.

Just maintaining the operation of this formation is enough to feed a single spiritual farmer family in Black Mountain Market for several years.

"I'll take it. Also, five high-grade Golden Sword Talismans and five high-grade Vajra Talismans."

"Golden Sword Talisman is five spirit stones each, Vajra Talisman is the same price, ten talismans for a total of fifty spirit stones."

Two hundred spirit stones were slapped onto the counter.

The young shopkeeper moved much more nimbly, taking out a nanmu box and two stacks of talisman paper from the spiritual materials cabinet behind him, and checking them one by one.

The array plate is a palm-sized bronze disc with dense array patterns engraved on the front and eight spirit stone slots embedded on the back. Ten talismans are sealed with oiled paper, and the golden spirit patterns faintly glow through the paper.

Zheng Yifei put the items into his inner bag and left Wanbaolou.

Back in Wutong Lane, he spent half an hour setting up the formation.

The array plate was buried under the bluestone slab in the center of the courtyard, with eight spirit stones embedded in the slots, activating the spiritual power.

An invisible spiritual energy barrier rose from the ground, covering the entire courtyard wall area.

He tested it and found nothing unusual from the outside, but the barrier would immediately solidify and sound an alarm if anyone climbed over the wall without permission.

With the Golden Sword Talisman and Vajra Talisman hidden on his person, he can fight back even against cultivators at the ninth level of Qi Refining.

After finishing all this, Zheng Yifei stood in the center of the courtyard and let out a long sigh.

I spent two hundred in one morning.

Does it hurt your heart? No, it doesn't.

In his past life in Las Vegas, he spent $300,000 to buy a message from the hotel's security manager.

That message saved him from an assassination attempt and kept his life. Safety is always the most worthwhile investment.

After eating a bowl of spirit rice and resting for the time it takes to burn an incense stick, he changed into another mask—this one showed a thin, long face in his early forties, with high cheekbones and downturned corners of his mouth, making him look like a mean-spirited accountant.

In the late afternoon, at the Datong Casino.

There were twice as many people on the second floor as in the morning, with all six tables open and shouts echoing throughout.

Zheng Yifei didn't go to the table where he guessed odd or even in the morning. He had just won more than two hundred yuan that morning. If he went back to the same table with a different face on the same day, the bookmaker would only recognize his luck, not his face.

However, if a bettor has a good memory and notices that the round-faced person from this morning and the thin-faced person from now have similar betting habits, it might attract unnecessary attention.

He walked to a dominoes table against the west wall and stood there for a while.

Pai Gow requires skill, involves card-matching strategies, psychological games, and, most importantly, offers opportunities for card swapping.

Eight gamblers were gathered around the Pai Gow table. The dealer was a middle-aged man with an expressionless face, at the seventh level of Qi Refining, and his shuffling movements were very precise.

Zheng Yifei observed five rounds and confirmed that the dealer had not cheated and the cards were clean.

On the sixth turn, he sat down.

The rules of Pai Gow are not complicated. There are 32 dominoes, four for each player, who are paired up and compare their hands with the dealer's.

Place your bet first, then receive your cards.

The maximum betting amount is one hundred spirit stones.

Zheng Yifei placed a bet of five spirit stones on his first bet and lost.

The second move wins three.

From the third to the tenth hand, he kept his winning rate at the same level as when guessing big or small—55%, with a slightly higher winning rate than losing rate, and the profit per hand was not large.

But starting from the eleventh hand, he began to raise his bet.

It wasn't because his luck had improved, but because he had figured out the dealer's shuffling pattern and memorized every card.

This dealer has a very subtle habit when shuffling the cards—each time he cuts the deck, his right thumb lingers on top of the deck for an extra half breath.

In that half-breath, he subconsciously pressed down the three cards on top of the deck.

This isn't cheating; it's just a professional habit.

But for Zheng Yifei, this habit means that the order of the top three or four cards in the deck is predictable.

Combined with his precise memory of the cards already played, he can deduce the probability of getting good cards in the next ten hands.

Bet big when you have a good hand, and bet small when you have a bad hand.

Gamblers only look at the results—this guy doesn't seem to have won much. But only Zheng Yifei himself knows that his betting is precisely allocated down to every single spirit stone. When he wins, he bets thirty or forty, and when he loses, he bets five or eight.

After another hour of arguing, he got up and left.

After counting the spirit stones, I made a net profit of 231.

I deposited two hundred spirit stones at Su's Money Shop, and I'll buy a high-grade spirit-gathering array once I've accumulated three hundred spirit stones.

After having dinner on the street, Zheng Yifei hurried back to his rented room.

The number of pedestrians on the street had decreased significantly, and shops were closing one after another, with only a few taverns and brothels still having their signs lit up.

Zheng Yifei circled around the alleys in the East District twice to make sure there were no tails, and then turned onto the main street of the West District.

He stopped at the intersection of the main street and Wutong Lane.

Three people were standing at the entrance of the alley.

One man leaned against the wall smoking a pipe, the embers flickering in the twilight; another squatted on the ground, scratching something with a pebble.

The third one crossed his arms and stood with his back to the alley entrance, as if watching the pedestrians on the street.

But Zheng Yifei noticed two details.

First, the three people's positions were not arbitrary.

The person smoking a pipe blocked the left side of the alley entrance, the person squatting blocked the right side, and the person with arms crossed faced the street directly—a standard triangular blockade position.

Secondly, the person squatting on the ground had the aura of a Qi Refining Level 6 person.

Those who smoke dry tobacco are at the seventh level of Qi Refining.

The fifth level of Qi cultivation, with arms crossed.

Three members of the Iron Fist Sect blocked his way home.