RPAGF Chapter 98
Chapter 98
Chapter 98: The Xiangjiang Duo
4:29 AM.
After more than 3 hours of madness.
Creak~
Jiang Nan pushed open the bathroom door.
He casually tossed the unconscious Piano onto the king-sized bed.
Thud!
Piano sank into the covers.
Jiang Nan walked to the bedside with an expressionless face and buttoned up his shirt.
Then he extended a finger and poked it into Piano's soft flesh.
"Ahhh!!"
Piano let out a cry of pleasure.
She bounced off the bed like a spring, instantly wide awake.
When she saw the man before her, she threw her arms around Jiang Nan's leg.
"Master~"
"You were absolutely amazing~"
"Let's keep going—Piano can go another 300 rounds!"
"……"
Jiang Nan looked down at this woman with her flushed face and boundless energy, thinking to himself.
'This woman is a born vessel of repression.'
'I've heard of guys who go out in seconds, but I've never seen a woman like this.'
'This one's like a 2-and-a-half-minute call that recharges in 10 seconds. What a freak.'
She'd clearly passed out countless times.
Yet she came back every time at full strength.
Still, the Dragon Bloodline surging through him hadn't taken control of his lower half.
Swish!
A notepad page was slapped onto Piano's still-nuzzling face.
【Time's getting late.】
【Time to handle real business.】
"Huh?"
Piano glanced at the clock on the wall.
It was already past 4 in the morning.
Less than 2 hours remained until dawn.
"Alright……"
She rose reluctantly, dressing herself right in front of Jiang Nan while throwing flirtatious glances at him the whole time.
"Then, Master, please allow Piano to escort you to the Card Room."
……
Jiang Nan nodded and headed back to the lobby with Piano.
First things first.
Jiang Nan smoothly slapped Piano's freshly redeemed Parchment Mortgage Contract back onto the counter.
"Collateral."
The Ghost Nurse behind the counter had clearly come to recognise this particular 'ruthless man' by now.
Without a word, she tossed out 500 Ghost Coins.
"What a heartless man with his stick……"
Piano watched herself become collateral again, and rather than getting angry, she covered her face and laughed in a deeply unsettling way.
She had clearly developed a taste for it.
"But I love it!"
"This feeling of being used and wrung dry at Master's whim……"
"It's absolutely wonderful!"
Besides, she glanced at Jiang Nan.
Master himself was still under collateral—what did she have to complain about?
They were both debt-ridden gamblers, nothing more.
After that.
The 2 of them paid the 20-Ghost-Coin Admission Fee, leaving them with 560 chips in hand.
Just as the 2 were about to push the door open and enter—
The badly burned Ghost Nurse suddenly scratched her head and stretched out a charred hand to stop them.
‘Wait……’
‘Hold on.’
She picked up the battered registration ledger, her disfigured face creased with confusion.
"Weird…the ledger shows you didn't pay last time you came in?"
Jiang Nan's expression didn't change.
Of course not.
Last time, after putting himself up as collateral, he'd walked straight in with 500 Ghost Coins and gone all-in. Hadn't paid the Admission Fee at all.
The Ghost Nurse had somehow forgotten about it entirely.
"Hiss……"
The Ghost Nurse drew a sharp breath, her heart racing in a panic.
'Collected one fee short? And this guy actually came back out alive?!'
'If the higher-ups audit the books and find out…they're going to chop my hands off!'
So she looked left and right, and when no ghost was watching—
She quietly picked up a pen and scratched out the gap in the ledger.
Only then did she wave them through with a perfectly casual air.
‘Go in, go in!’
Piano, having witnessed the whole thing from the side, was immediately reminded of how Jiang Nan had walked straight in last time with 500 Ghost Coins and gone all-in!
The more she thought about it, the more it sent chills down her spine…
This man hadn't paid the Admission Fee at all last time.
'What kind of luck is this? Even ghosts make mistakes in his favour and comp him for free?!'
'Is this what makes Master so extraordinary?'
'Even the rules bend around him!'
……
Inside the Card Room.
The 2 settled at an empty gambling table.
Piano stood obediently to the side as a cheerleader-spectator.
Their principal was insufficient for now.
Going in as a pair would risk splitting their firepower—it was better for Jiang Nan to go alone first and build up the snowball.
Hum!
Dark energy surged, and the Slot Machine at the centre of the table materialised once more.
3 icons began spinning wildly.
A few seconds later.
Ding!
They locked onto a Playing Cards symbol.
Jiang Nan glanced at Piano and raised an eyebrow.
Piano immediately understood and helpfully explained.
"Master, this is Fight the Landlord."
"3-player game, 1 deck."
"For mid-to-low-tier tables, the system will match you against players of the same species for fairness—meaning humans."
‘Humans?’
Jiang Nan grew curious.
He also wanted to know what kind of people had managed to survive inside this man-eating hospital.
Surely they couldn't all be 'repression royalty' like Piano?
The next moment—
2 thick plumes of black smoke rose from the chairs across the table.
2 men in prison uniforms materialised.
Behind them floated 5 faint wisps of black smoke—spectators from their floor.
Piano looked carefully, and her expression immediately turned grave.
"Hm?"
"It's actually them?!"
She leaned close to Jiang Nan's ear.
"Master, these 2 are a bit tricky."
"The old man on the left—shabby as they come, but insists on wearing sunglasses to look cool—is Heavy Case Tiger·Cao Hua."
"Combat record: 389/59."
"The young man on the right with that sleazy face is Tonight's Tiger·Zhou Xing."
"Combat record: 389/59."
Jiang Nan looked over.
The 2 were clearly old partners, each striking their own pose.
Cao Hua wore a battered leather jacket he'd clearly picked up from somewhere, along with sunglasses missing half a lens.
Zhou Xing wore a white vest and was endlessly shuffling a deck of cards between his hands.
"……"
Jiang Nan instantly identified which faction inside the hospital they belonged to.
Based on his thorough interrogation of Piano in the bathroom, he knew this hospital was controlled by 5 major factions.
【Card Players' Association】: A long-established human prisoner organisation managing floors 2–6.
【Arashin-kai】: Tiffany and Piano, floors 7–8.
【Director's Faction】: The ghost medical upper brass—also home to the high-stakes tables—floors 9–10.
【Cursed Creatures】: The Foot-Spa Ghost, floors 11–18.
【Silk-Stocking Gang】: Silk-Stocking Desperado, floors 19–20.
And these 2 clowns before him were the number-2 figures of the Card Players' Association!
"I heard these 2 came from Hong Kong Island's Star Island Prison—infamous throughout the prison world."
Piano said through gritted teeth.
"And they didn't cross over just recently. They've been here for years!"
"They're the hospital's old-timers!"
At that moment, Zhou Xing spotted Piano standing behind Jiang Nan and immediately launched into a snide greeting.
"Oh~"
"Isn't it my old defeated rival's daughter, Piano?"
"Didn't I hear you gambled yourself broke and got your Gundam Parts stripped off?"
"What's this? Changed careers to become a maid?"
"Following some young pretty boy like this?"
Zhou Xing wore a grin of pure mockery.
Piano's hands balled into fists.
Her father.
The Frankish Nation's Gambling God—he had lost to the man before her all those years ago!
They said the man had supernatural abilities!
Looking at it now, it was clearly a superpower!
But now—
With someone to back her up, she turned the taunt straight back around.
"What business is it of yours how I am!"
"Zhou Xing! In front of my Master today…you only deserve to kneel and sing your surrender!!"
At this point, Cao Hua—who had been playing it cool the entire time—finally spoke.
He removed his sunglasses.
"Oh?"
"So it seems……"
"You're the good-looking kid who played Russian Roulette and didn't fire a single shot in a full minute?"
Cao Hua recognised Jiang Nan at a glance.
The title of Russian Roulette God had spread throughout the entire hospital hours ago.
Their intelligence network reached every corner—they even had informants among the upper tiers and the Cursed Creatures.
Hearing this, Zhou Xing dropped his carefree grin too and turned serious.
He stared at the data floating above Jiang Nan's head: 【2 / 0】.
'This man…is deeply unsettling……'
'According to our intel, he doesn't seem like a gambler at all.'
'He seems more like…someone who came to cure gamblers of their habit!'
'No sign of ability use whatsoever—and he plays with absolutely no pattern!'
'It's like…he's the house!'
That kind of pressure.
He had only ever felt it from one person before.
That blonde woman!
Sweat began forming on Zhou Xing's forehead.
But……
He carried the name of Gambling Saint!
He could not lose!
He had to prove it!
Even a gambler—
Could beat the house!
So he looked toward Cao Hua, and the 2 exchanged a subtle glance.
"Kid, how many chips do you have?" Cao Hua asked.
Thud!
Jiang Nan tossed the bag of 560 Ghost Coins onto the table without expression.
The attitude—as if he hadn't come to gamble at all, but to restock inventory.
Zhou Xing thought for a moment, then steeled himself.
"Let's open with 2,000 rounds then."
Cao Hua nodded. "Let's begin."
Then, the 2 each pulled out 1,000 and 440 Ghost Coins respectively.
Hum!
Dealing began.
Cao Hua immediately claimed Landlord, taking first position, while Zhou Xing chose third position.
Piano instantly spotted the trick!
In a 3-player Fight the Landlord game, the Landlord automatically goes to the first-position player!
And Zhou Xing choosing third position meant he planned to be a farmer—on the same side as Jiang Nan in the middle?
No!
It was 2 against 1!
The 2 of them were working together!
Teaming up to set up Jiang Nan!
"Master! Watch out! They're running a coordinated play!"
Piano was just about to call out a warning—
Clack!
Suddenly.
A massive, rotund female ghost dressed in an oversized bunny-girl outfit stepped out from the darkness.
Her face was extraordinarily beautiful—delicate features, stunning—but her figure……
Could only be described as a sumo wrestler.
A perfect study in divine and monstrous at once!
She pulled out a shotgun and aimed it directly at Piano, then raised a placard.
【Spectators are forbidden from speaking!】
【Violators will be…sat to death!】
Piano: "……"
She clenched her fists, bared her teeth, but didn't dare make another sound.
'Here it comes!!'
'This is Heavy Case Tiger's trump card—Eating Hard on a Soft Meal!!'
Piano cursed inwardly.
Word had it Cao Hua had once been a rising star in Hong Kong Island's Heavy Case Unit—and the founding ancestor of freeloading off women!
To think this talent still worked on ghosts!
But……
She glanced at Jiang Nan and laughed coldly in her heart.
‘We have one too!’
And at that very moment—
Cao Hua looked with deep, tender eyes toward the rotund bunny-girl ghost.
"Ah Zhen……I've heard of this young man's 'soft meal' exploits. I admire him greatly."
"What a pity……right now, we are enemies."
He then extended his arm and drew that bucket-waisted bunny-girl ghost into his embrace.
"Come, deal the cards for me."
"I don't want to see him win."
The rotund bunny-girl ghost showed no resistance whatsoever—instead, a deeply smitten look bloomed across her face as she gazed at Cao Hua.
Then—
Cao Hua swept his hand through the air with authority.
"Begin!!"
However.
The very next second.
As the rotund bunny-girl ghost stood up to fetch the cards—
Crack!
Cao Hua's face instantly contorted into a mask of agony.
He ground his teeth, furiously rubbing his thigh, cold sweat streaming down his face.
"What the—……so heavy……"
"My leg……my leg's going to snap……"
Piano: "……"
Jiang Nan: "……"
‘What the……?’
‘What manner of creatures are these people?’
Bunny-Bunny