Player in Desperate Straits

[Ensemble cast, dark themes]

[The male lead seems like a degenerate gambler who drinks and carouses, living only for the moment. Hidden skills: card-sharp and con artist.]

Bai Yan owes seventy million in debt and is thrown into a live-action survival game.

The audience places bets while the contestants fight to survive. He must clear one game after another and pay off his debt before he can regain his freedom.

The rich sit in the audience, placing bloodthirsty bets. Under the spotlights, the cost of losing is far worse than simply being eliminated.

As the games progress, one mystery follows another: an undercover investigator with a hidden identity, a mysterious mole with the code name "Abyss," a childhood friend who seems to have turned evil, and spectators who threaten him with the evidence they hold against him...

Everyone wears a mask, and every step hides a deadly trap.

Will he be assimilated by this cruel game and sink into depravity, or bring down the mastermind and escape the darkness for good?

He used to be a con artist who manipulated people's hearts, a gambler who treated life as a game.

This time, he'll wager everything in this deadly gamble.

"I want the house to lose everything."

Reader's Guide:

1. Ensemble cast, no couples, friendship-focused.

2. Set in an imagined future. All settings are fictional and unrelated to reality.

3. The protagonist used to be a card-sharp who made a living through fraud, but commits no crimes after the story begins, because he's been caught and put in the game.

4. An uplifting message, with a focus on outsmarting the rules.

I love this story so, so much, and I will definitely finish it because I truly adore it. Thank you for reading (sending love).

Theme: A scoundrel's path to redemption