The Legend of Tokyo Taoist

Chapter 234 Death Game (4)

At Qian Xiaoyi's signal, Inuyama Heita walked out of the game room and met Suzuki who was playing with his phone outside. Qian Xiaoyi asked, "Any news?"

Inuyama Heita said: "Yes, there is. It is said that there is a strange game arcade at night, but no one seems to know the specific content. It is very vague, and no one knows how to enter or its name."

Qian Xiaoyi also said, "I feel the same way. This is strange. Obviously, the ghost domain of urban legends requires a lot of group cognition to gather together. Could it be that the rumor has not spread to this restaurant yet? Let's go eat something first, and then we can go to other stores."

The three of them randomly found a fast food restaurant, had a simple meal, and then continued to go to the nearby game hall to play.

They played until dark, and when Qian Xiaoyi was about to vomit, they still didn't get any useful information.

"So... the news about that show turned out to be fake?" Inuyama Heita rubbed his sore wrist and complained, "I don't want to see the game console anymore."

Qian Xiaoyi sighed and said, "It seems that this may be the case. We were deceived by that program. If we can't even maintain public perception, it is even more impossible to form a ghost domain."

Just as he was about to go back, Suzuki suddenly looked in a certain direction and said, "Maybe... we are looking in the wrong direction? Could the arcade in that show be of a different type?"

"What?" Qian Xiaoyi followed Suzuki's gaze and saw that diagonally across the street, there was an arcade that specialized in playing "Pachinko".

Pachinko, also commonly known as small steel balls, is very simple to play. You just buy beads and pour them into the launching pad. The player then controls the launching force. The small steel balls will be launched to the top and then continue to fall down. Because the path down is covered with steel nails, it is impossible to predict which direction it will fall.

There is a series of holes at the bottom of the pinball machine. When the small steel balls fall into the corresponding holes, various special effects and rewards will be triggered. Generally speaking, it is not much different from slot machines and fruit machines. In fact, it is a gambling machine.

In Japan, gambling is illegal, so the small steel balls won from pachinko cannot be exchanged for cash, but must be exchanged for "prizes" at the front desk. Near the store, there will be a store that specializes in "buying" these prizes, and then players can exchange the prizes for money.

This unnecessary action is undoubtedly a cover-up, but it is this action that exploits legal loopholes. Moreover, behind the pachinko shops are usually various underworld organizations and loan sharks, and the profit chain is intertwined, so pachinko game halls, which are obviously gambling places, can appear on the streets openly.

There are other similar industries, such as horse racing and the sex industry, which basically all use the same tricks. Many things are said to be illegal, but as long as they are covered up with a fig leaf, the government will basically not care. After all, these are huge taxes.

Qian Xiaoyi was stunned when he noticed the pachinko parlor. Although many pachinko parlors would directly indicate on the sign outside the store that they are dedicated to playing pachinko, there are also some parlors that place some other machines on the periphery to disguise themselves as game halls. In that case, they can indeed be considered game halls in a sense.

"Could it be that we went in the wrong direction at the beginning?" Qian Xiaoyi patted his head and said, "My fault. I didn't realize there was such a store. Okay, I'll go in and ask. You guys wait outside."

Generally, such stores have regulations that minors are not allowed to enter, so Qian Xiaoyi went there alone.

After entering the store, he immediately heard all kinds of exaggerated winning special effects sounds, stimulating the desire of players. This store has a complete range of pachinko, with many machines with different themes, which opened Qian Xiaoyi's eyes. After all, it was the first time he saw a pachinko machine that played Ultraman fighting monsters while playing small steel balls.

Different machines have different prices, ranging from the lowest 4 yen per small steel ball to machines that charge 100 yen per shot.

Qian Xiaoyi exchanged the cheapest steel balls for 1000 yen at the front desk. He walked around the store curiously, holding a plastic basket filled with steel balls. Middle-aged and elderly people concentrating on playing steel balls could be seen everywhere in the store, but there were few young people.

After finding an empty seat and sitting down, Qian Xiaoyi began to pretend to have fun and chat with the old men around him. Unfortunately, these guys only had eyes for the pachinko machines in front of them and ignored him, which made Qian Xiaoyi helpless.

Everyone around was holding down the firing button and firing small steel balls continuously. Qian Xiaoyi was the only exception. He fired slowly, one ball at a time. This thing was a gold mine, but Qian Xiaoyi was reluctant to invest money in it. If he played like them, it would only take a few minutes to fire hundreds of small steel balls.

From time to time, the store would erupt with exaggerated sound effects and the excited shouts of a player. At first, Qian Xiaoyi would take a look, but soon lost interest. After all, in gambling, the purpose is to set a probability to make people lucky and stimulate other people's nerves, so that more money can be made.

Just when Qian Xiaoyi was still trying to get close to the old man next to him, two figures passed by him from behind, holding a large basin of small steel balls in their hands, and walked towards the exchange office.

"I got it! It's true!"

"I can't believe this is real! Shi, our luck has turned!"

"Yeah, Ashu, let's go to that place and have a drink tonight!"

The two hooligans happily took the "prizes" they had exchanged in their hands and walked out of the store in high spirits, planning to have some fun after exchanging the prizes.

Outside on the roadside, Inuyama Heita and Suzuki were waiting for Qian Xiaoyi to come out of the store. Two thugs walked past him. Inuyama Heita didn't pay attention at first, but when they got closer, Ajian reminded him in his ear: "Inuyama, look at those two people."

Inuyama Heita turned his head and found that the two thugs seemed to be surrounded by twisted black energy and had dark clouds over their heads, and he feared that a disaster was about to happen.

"These two people are not in good condition. They seem to be entangled by something. They should be in bad luck now." Ajian said: "But they look like they are very happy~ Hmm? Inuyama, what's that expression on your face?"

Inuyama Heita looked at the two people's departing backs in surprise and said, "I seem to... know them?"

Before Ken could ask, Inuyama Heita immediately said to Suzuki, "Suzuki-san, there's something wrong with those two people. I'll follow them first, and you call out Brother O."

After saying that, he immediately followed.

He really had an impression of those two people, and was deeply impressed.

——Aren’t they the scoundrels in the Lucky Mutual Aid Association who were ordered by Matsui to go to his part-time job to scam him and blackmail him? !

(End of this chapter)