Chapter 149: Low-End
"Boss Ji, what brings you to Bai Le Gong today? Do you have some free time to play?" A sharp-eyed manager in a suit recognized the distinctive Ji Xuan.
"Yes, I'm bringing the big boss for a stroll. Help me arrange a few people to show us around."
"No problem."
The manager glanced at Chen Xi, who was following behind, and felt that there was no need to arrange any accompanying hostesses. Instead, he simply pulled three particularly eye-catching young men from among the attendants.
"Sir, what should I call you?"
"My surname is Bai."
"Is there anything you'd like to try, sir? We have all kinds of entertainment here." One of the quick-witted young men immediately chose to address Bai Mo, who was clearly the lead among the three.
"Let's walk through the casino first." "How about we go our separate ways?" He replied to the attendant who had spoken to him, then turned his head to the two people behind him and said.
"Mmm (Alright)." The three went their separate ways, which momentarily stunned the manager, who had initially thought he wouldn't need to arrange any accompanying hostesses.
He had originally not intended to use his abilities to bully people, but a sudden change of mind occurred. He recalled that when he first gained his powers, he had considered showing off in a casino with his X-ray vision. However, this idea had always been submerged under various cultivation-related matters and had never been realized. This time, it could be considered fulfilling a small wish from back then.
Seeing that the guest was interested in playing, the attendant Xiao Huang immediately, and tactfully, pulled out a chair for him.
Bai Mo sat down just as a round concluded, and the dealer began to deal cards.
"Place your bets, everyone." After dealing one face-up card and one face-down card, the seductive dealer in a bunny-ear outfit said in a sweet voice.
"The gentleman just now said that all your expenses tonight will be charged to his account." Bai Mo, who had been staring blankly in his chair, turned his head to look at Xiao Huang behind him, seeing him return with a basket of chips, which he placed at Bai Mo's seat.
"Oh."
Using his divine sense, in the time it took Xiao Huang to retrieve the chips, he had already seen all of his opponents' face-down cards, including the dealer's. Simultaneously, by scanning the sequence of every remaining card in the dealing machine, he calculated that, barring any surprises, he, with a face-up Four of Spades and a face-down Six of Diamonds, would certainly lose to the dealer, who started with a pair of tens.
Nevertheless, just for fun, he casually took a few chips from the basket and tossed them onto the poker table.
Although it was a casual toss, the chips, each marked with "Five Hundred," seemed to possess a telepathic connection, re-stacking themselves neatly into a single pile in the center of the table.
This small action immediately drew the attention of the sharp-eyed dealer and the floor staff. However, bound by casino rules, even though they knew that someone capable of such a feat was not simple, they could only watch without concrete evidence.
Over the past few months, there had been instances of ability users entering to fleece money with their powers, so the casino had subsequently made corresponding preparations to prevent such occurrences.
Soon, the players completed a round of betting. Without any surprises, the third card Bai Mo received was the Ace of Spades, exactly as he had calculated.
Since he had already foreseen his eventual loss, he merely tossed a few more chips into the pot.
"The only variable in this game is not knowing when others will choose to fold. One person folding will directly alter the next card everyone receives. But there are only a few dozen such scenarios, so I just need to calculate them all." He said, idly fiddling with the Ace of Spades in his three fingers, while staring blankly at the table out of boredom. He was only playing this predestined game to test his own computational abilities.
However, by observing the emotional auras radiating from the other casual players around him, combined with the cards in their hands, he had already made an almost accurate guess, so there was still no suspense.
The plot unfolded exactly as he had envisioned, and the dealer, indeed, swept the table at the end of the round.
He patiently played a few more rounds, but in each game, he could predict the outcome almost from the first card dealt. Soon, he grew bored and instructed Xiao Huang behind him to take the remaining chips and leave the table. One of the casino staff members, who had been observing Bai Mo, also detached himself to follow them.
"Low-end showing off is really this boring... It seems I was too naive back then to even want to show off and get rich in a casino. Betting on dice there would probably be just as dull; with a sweep of my psionic power, I could get any number I wanted. It's still more exciting to play with computers." He slowly walked towards the slot machines within the casino.
"Mr. Bai, our slot machines here range from one yuan per spin to a thousand yuan per spin, very convenient."
"Let's start with the one-yuan machines. I'm afraid he'd be heartbroken if I played the thousand-yuan one."
Xiao Huang didn't reply, simply leading Bai Mo silently to the corresponding area.
The slot machines in Bai Le Gong had already adopted international standards, no longer using the old coin-insertion method. Instead, one would first pre-pay with a large denomination bill, then their current balance would be displayed on the screen. Upon settlement, a cash voucher would be dispensed, which could then be redeemed for cash at an automatic conversion machine.
The moment he pressed the button, he continuously compressed his divine sense, increasing the precision of his observation, wanting to see exactly what would happen inside the machine's casing.
"There's a small CPU at the core... as long as I can grasp the underlying mechanism, I should be able to directly modify software information at the hardware level through psionic power." He recalled the vast amount of computer knowledge he had previously learned from the Mind Crystals. As one of the fields most eager to share knowledge, nearly a quarter of the Mind Crystals Bai Mo acquired were related to this area.
Because a professor specializing in assembly language and machine code conversion happened to be bored, he had poured a massive amount of machine code translation methods—which were practically unheard of in daily life—into the Mind Crystals. So, even though Bai Mo had barely written any code, he was able to remember the machine languages corresponding to various CPUs after reading such a Mind Crystal, thanks to his increasingly powerful brain after achieving psionicization.
Through hundreds of tests, or hundreds of bets, Bai Mo continuously observed the changes in the CPU's transistor switches after each wager. He gradually grasped the innermost workings of such a slot machine, slowly attempting to use psionic power to modify the opening and closing of individual transistors within its CPU, thereby influencing the final outcome without affecting the machine's apparent operation.
Of course, to Xiao Huang, who stood by his side, Bai Mo—completely absorbed in his exploratory experiment—appeared to be an abnormal person, sometimes staring blankly and sometimes giggling foolishly at the slot machine.
But since he was a guest, Xiao Huang could only secretly reassure himself that the other party was merely eccentric, not an idiot, and then add more money for him when the numbers on the slot machine display showed he was running low.
Meanwhile, the casino staff member who had originally intended to keep an eye on Bai Mo was also left "don't know whether to laugh or cry" after seeing him giggling foolishly at the slot machine.
Suddenly, a "clink-clank" sound drew the attention of everyone around.
"Congratulations, you've hit the jackpot!" As soon as that sound rang out, the attendant behind him and the staff member beside him realized that perhaps the idiot wasn't the other person, but themselves!
"How did he do that?! Could it be that he was actually chatting and confiding in the slot machine just now?! Is that why he was giggling foolishly?".
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