Deep in Gambling Debt, I Became the Master of the Eight Schools

My name is Chen Fan. I’m twenty-one years old, an ordinary third-year student at Fudan University in Shanghai. In the summer of 2018, a moment of greed drew me into the quagmire of online gambling. In just three months, I lost not only the tuition and living expenses my parents had given me, but also ran up half a million yuan in loan-shark debt. When the debt collectors blocked the school gates, threatening to break my legs and go to my hometown to find my parents, I thought my life had reached its end. Just as I was about to jump from the teaching building, an old man in a traditional Chinese tunic appeared before me. His name was Elder Su. He was an unremarkable croupier at the Lisboa Casino in Macau, and the current head of the Sparrow Sect, one of the Eight Ancient Schools said to have existed in the underworld for hundreds of years. Elder Su told me that beneath the modern city was a hidden underworld. It was made up of eight ancient sects that had existed since the Ming and Qing dynasties. After several hundred years of upheaval, they had now spread into every corner of modern society. Elder Su said I was born with a talent for the Sparrow Sect’s art, a gambling prodigy rarely seen in a century. He was willing to pay off all my debts, on the condition that I become his apprentice and successor to the Sparrow Sect. With nowhere else to turn, I accepted Elder Su’s offer. From that moment on, I stepped into a world I had never imagined existed.