Chapter 164 – City of The Cursed (Part 1)
by Salted FishYour Uncle wasn’t originally called Your Uncle. In Fairy Dreamland, his name was Passing Sorrow. But as he kept playing, every teammate who passed by him would spit out, “Your uncle!” Thus, his encounters with sorrow became more frequent. Eventually, one day, unable to bear it any longer, he plunged headfirst into sorrow’s embrace and left Fairy Dreamland.
Nowadays, Your Uncle still isn’t called Your Uncle. After successfully ghosting the Mirage Server at the cost of one account, he was reborn in Huaxia Summit as Little Lucky Charm.
But people still like to call him Your Uncle—whether they’re friends, comrades, or enemies, whether they’re running dungeons, PKing, or fighting world bosses. Sometimes it’s a noun, sometimes an interjection.
Occasionally, Your Uncle feels like he might have a streak of bad luck in his fate. But afterward, he always dismisses it as an illusion. People tend to remember the bad things more easily, he firmly believes. It’s just that his lucky moments are too few, and he’s encountered too many coincidences, earning him the title of the God of Misfortune. It’s the greatest injustice of the century.
A life full of hardships has forged Your Uncle’s blindly optimistic personality, while immense social pressure has tempered his iron-willed, true-manly heart. Whether it was countless times in the past or this Las Vegas route, it’s all about Your Uncle’s determination—knowing the mountain has tigers, yet charging up it anyway. He wants to seize fate by the throat and demand an explanation for his luck!
[System] Little Lucky Charm rolled 26.
[System] Spring Field Blossom rolled 3.
[System] Spring Field Blossom wins.
[Local] Dragon Slumber: He lost again…
[Local] Giordano: That’s twelve in a row…
[Local] Lonely Alien: Earlier, when rolling dice, he never got above 20…
[Local] Officer Big Bear: And after switching to Blackjack, he hasn’t rolled below 25…
[Local] Eight Hundred Miles Express: Spring Field Blossom, how do you feel about winning this round with just an Ace and a 2?
[Local] Spring Field Blossom: Zero sense of achievement =_=
Your Uncle stared at his two Kings, unable to comprehend why he was always the one getting hurt.
Blackjack is a game of guts and luck. For example, if your first card is a King (worth 13 points), you have to decide whether to take a second card. If the second card is a 9, 10, Jack, Queen, or King, your total exceeds 21, meaning you bust—no matter how low your opponent’s hand is (like that 3 just now), they’ll still beat you. But on the flip side, if your first card is a King, as long as the second is below 9, you have infinite possibilities to get closer to 21. If you don’t take the second card, you’re stuck at 13, which is absolutely uncompetitive.
As a pure-blooded man full of courage and wisdom, Your Uncle had to take the second card. And so, he lost.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was… Dammit, twelve losses in a row! Every single time, he busted! Can’t even gamble happily anymore!!
[Local] Spring Field Blossom: Again?
[Local] Little Lucky Charm: Absolutely!
[System] Little Lucky Charm draws a King, 13 points.
[System] Spring Field Blossom draws an 8, 8 points.
Again?
Even someone as unshakable as Your Uncle started feeling uneasy. Stubbornly refusing to turn back after hitting a wall is determination, but refusing to turn back after hitting it is just stupidity. Twelve consecutive busts, and 60% of them followed this exact pattern—drawing a King as the first card.
Take it, or not?
By his usual temperament, he had to take it! How could he let fear defeat him!
But even the government advocates a scientific outlook on development. Learning from failure seemed like the more rational approach…
Screw it, don’t take it!
Gritting his teeth, Your Uncle suppressed his free-spirited soul while praying his opponent would draw something below 5…
[System] Little Lucky Charm chooses to stand.
[System] Spring Field Blossom draws a King, 21 points.
[System] Spring Field Blossom wins.
Flips table! (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻
He accepted being toyed with. He accepted that his fate was cursed. But the one cursed skill he was born with was half-assed—useless when he didn’t want to screw people over but ignored when he actually wanted to use it! Can’t this just work properly for once?!
If he didn’t win one game here today, he wouldn’t be called Your Uncle anymore!
[System] Little Lucky Charm continues.
[System] Spring Field Blossom leaves.
[Local] Little Lucky Charm: Why’d you leave?
[Local] Little Lucky Charm: Did you sense my luck was about to turn, so you quit while you were ahead?
[Local] Officer Big Bear: Buddy, I gotta ask… have you ever actually seen what good luck looks like in your life?
[Local] Little Lucky Charm: Duh! My guardian constellation is the Goddess of Luck!
[Local] Eight Hundred Miles Express: Then she must be crying her eyes out in the bathroom right now…
Las Vegas is a massive ship—a paradise for adventurers, forever sailing. Every player who boards starts with 500 chips, which serve as their gambling capital. Some can turn them into fortunes overnight, while others might end up penniless. Either way, if a player wants to leave, they must return 500 chips and ensure they have at least 500 left—since each chip equals 1 point, the remaining chips convert into their base score when they enter Lover’s Constellation. Of course, if the three-day limit expires, even if they have fewer than 500 chips after returning the initial 500, they’ll still enter with a low score.
But there’s one thing that sets this place apart from other zones: negative scores are allowed. For example, if you only have 100 chips left when the time expires, you’ll owe the system 400 (500 – 100 = -400), and you’ll enter Lover’s Constellation with -400 points. As for how one survives in Lover’s Constellation with such a brutal score, that’s another story.
From the moment he boarded the gambling ship until now, Your Uncle had only played two simple games—”Roll the Dice” and “Blackjack”—and his chips had dwindled from 500 to 444.
After Spring Field Blossom left, countless others eagerly stepped up. But Your Uncle calmed down. He realized he was now the Tang Monk—everyone wanted a bite. And that was fine, but where were the spider demons? The scorpion demons? The White Bone Demon? The Jade Rabbit Demon?! Damn it, all I get are Golden Horn and Silver Horn and Black Bear Monsters! Who’s gonna let you take a bite?!
“Roll the Dice” and “Blackjack” were fringe games, tucked away in a corner of the ship and barely noticeable. Thus, Your Uncle’s twelve consecutive losses only sparked minor gossip among a small crowd. As he left the corner and ventured elsewhere, the spectators dispersed, and the tiny ripple vanished into the vast ocean of Las Vegas.
All the gambling tables on Las Vegas were on the deck. The edges had smaller, less crowded tables, while the more popular games were at the center, packed with players. The deck functioned like a main city—players could chat without gambling or pretend to be Jack and Rose leaning against the railing to feel the sea breeze. But most couples who wanted to cosplay Titanic went to Eden, so now, the players on deck were mostly gathered around tables or machines.
The reason he lost so badly at Blackjack was simply a lack of deep understanding and practice. After fifteen minutes of reflection by the sea breeze, Your Uncle made up his mind—he would pick a game he actually knew well, with rules he’d mastered.
A dark force approached the Fight the Landlord table…
[System] Please select your participation method. Play / Spectate?
[System] Little Lucky Charm chooses to play.
[System] Little Lucky Charm joins Table 15.
Though the screen showed only one table per game, when players double-clicked to join, they could choose from multiple table numbers. So while it looked like a dense crowd around a single table, everyone was actually playing separately. Some games were exceptions, like “Big or Small,” where all players bet on the same table, and all spectators watched the same one as the system revealed the dice, determining wins and losses in an instant.
Your Uncle hadn’t been at the empty table long before opponents arrived:
[System] Sky.Li joins Table 15.
[System] Spring Field Blossom joins Table 15.
[System] Little Lucky Charm: Yo!
[System] Spring Field Blossom: …
[System] Sky.Li: Oh come on, you two know each other?
Since they were already in-game, all chat during matches went through the system channel. Fight the Landlord was one of the few games that didn’t allow spectators—otherwise, someone could easily spectate and broadcast their opponents’ hands in real-time =_=
Any player understood this, including Sky.Li. So when he saw Your Uncle and Spring Field Blossom chatting, his first reaction was suspicion.
[System] Spring Field Blossom: We’ve just gambled against each other. The table assignments are automatic, so don’t worry. Besides, if we really wanted to scam you, we wouldn’t be talking openly.
[System] Little Lucky Charm: Yeah, we just met playing Blackjack. He was my first! [facepalm]
[System] Spring Field Blossom: Dude, why are you acting shy?!
[System] Little Lucky Charm: Huh? No, this is shame. The shame of losing over and over because I suck!
[System] Spring Field Blossom: If you know you suck, go home and practice!
[System] Little Lucky Charm: That’s why I switched games! Why are you still haunting me?!
[System] Spring Field Blossom: Me haunting you? I’m trying to avoid you! I knew bad luck was contagious! After playing you, I kept losing everywhere else!
[System] Little Lucky Charm: You’re avoiding me? Do you know how many people beg to play with me? The line would stretch from the Stud Poker table to the slot machines! If you didn’t win, that’s your bad luck!
[System] Sky.Li: …
The overwhelming “This marriage is over!” / “Then let’s divorce!” vibes were too much. He just wanted to play a round of Fight the Landlord, damn it TAT
[System] Little Lucky Charm passes.
[System] Spring Field Blossom passes.
You two didn’t even look at your cards—too busy arguing until you timed out, huh?!
[System] Sky.Li declares Landlord.
[System] Little Lucky Charm: Looks like you’ve got good cards, Li Sky~
Who told you to translate that1Sky.Li’s name appears in English in the raws. Your Uncle translated it into Chinese.?! TAT
[System] Spring Field Blossom reveals hand.
Sky.Li was startled and checked his own cards. His hand was already decent—how could…
3, 4, 7, 9…
[System] Sky.Li: May I ask what gave you the courage to reveal your hand =_=
[System] Spring Field Blossom: My teammate.
[System] Little Lucky Charm: I didn’t tell you to reveal it!
Spring Field Blossom stayed silent. Some things could only be understood, not explained.
With his limited human brain capacity, he couldn’t even imagine how horrifying Little Lucky Charm’s hand was (how do you even live up to that name?!). He just hoped his teammate could at least play somewhat competently with more information…
[Combat] Sky.Li plays a card.
[Combat] Little Lucky Charm passes.
Life is full of unavoidable “I can’t beat that” moments—houses, kids, cars… But none were as tragic as this:
[System] Spring Field Blossom: You can’t beat a single 3?!
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