Chapter Eight: The Underworld Judge Miscounts the Cards—Accidentally Gives Wang Er Ma Three Extra Ones

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Underworld Card Game: From Fighting the Landlord to Six Conflicts
Volume One, Chapter Eight: The Judge Miscounts the Cards: Gave Wang Erma Three Extra

The morning fog at the final match was thinner than before, and the paper banners hanging from the eaves of the City God Temple’s card arena fluttered in the breeze, causing the shadows on the table to tremble along. Wang Erma pinned an osmanthus flower given by Xiao Li behind his ear—earlier Xiao Li said, "Osmanthus wards off bad luck in card games," but really he was just worried Wang Erma would forget to play his cards; this scholar ghost couldn’t remember the cards but fussed over little things like this.

“Final round! Winner takes all!” The Judge shouted hoarsely through a tin megaphone, his voice even raspier than before, perhaps still irritated by Xiao Li’s poem, cheeks puffed out. He set the megaphone on the table, pulled a cloth pouch from his pocket, revealing a freshly opened deck—earlier, soup had spilled all over the table, soaking the old cards and making them slippery. King Yama had specially sent Xiao Hei to fetch a new deck from the Underworld card vault.

“I’ll deal the cards this time!” The Judge patted his chest confidently and adjusted his thick bifocals, three pairs stacked like frosted glass, “I guarantee no mistakes! The last time was just an accident!”

As soon as he finished, a little red-clad imp muttered softly nearby, “You said that last time too…”

The Judge, sharp-eared, shot the imp a glare: “Kids, keep quiet!” The imp quickly shrank back, hiding behind Meng Po, who was crouched on the ground picking up the paper scraps Xiao Li had tossed earlier. Seeing the imp approach, she handed him a melon seed.

Opposite Wang Erma sat two teacher ghosts from the “Sour Poetry Team.” The one on the left was vigorously wiping the table with his sleeve, so hard that melon seed shells scattered to the floor; the other was tapping his fingers rhythmically on the card box. Xiao Li stood next to Wang Erma, clutching a fresh sheet of paper, the tip of his brush dipped in Meng Po’s soup as ink, ready to record the cards, though his hand still trembled—he was startled by the soup spill.

“Deal the cards!” The Judge cleared his throat and began handing out the cards to the three players. His dealing style was odd: left hand holding the deck, right hand drawing one card at a time, pushing each forward by half an inch as if afraid the cards would bite his hand. The cards were slippery; two slipped from his grasp with a “plop,” one falling by Old Zhou’s feet. Old Zhou had been crouched nearby watching and quickly picked it up, wiping it off with his sleeve, quietly asking, “Judge, did you count right?”

“Nonsense!” The Judge glared at him, took the card, and placed it before Wang Erma. “Mind your own business!”

Wang Erma looked down at his hand and immediately felt something was off—usually, cards in Fighting the Landlord spread in a small fan shape, but today the cards sprawled across half the table, the edges nearly reaching Xiao Li’s feet. He frowned and counted: “One, two, three…” Reaching the seventeenth card, the teacher ghost opposite had already played a 3, so he stopped and casually played a 4.

“That’s not right.” Old Zhou leaned in, crouching beside Wang Erma, nervously pointing at the cards, “I watched the Judge deal, you got over twenty cards…”

“Don’t count nonsense!” The Judge was busy dealing to the teacher ghost and didn’t look up, “I can’t mess up dealing! Fighting the Landlord is 17 cards each, three players, 51 cards total, no mistake!” He counted on his fingers, but got stuck at the third finger, switching hands to continue.

Xiao Li placed his paper on the table and helped count: “'Master Wang’s pile looks like a little mountain, counting one by one is endless—' Hey, where am I?” He lost track after twelve cards and just pushed the cards toward the center, “Anyway, you’ve got more than me!”

Wang Erma didn’t care about the number of cards—when the teacher ghost played a pair of 5s, he had to respond. He rummaged through his hand and surprisingly found two pairs of 6s, a pair of 7s, and a straight from 3 to 8, wondering suspiciously: Is my luck this good today? Too unnervingly good.

“Playing a pair of 6s!” Wang Erma laid the pair down, but as soon as the cards hit the table, the Judge groaned, his glasses sliding to the tip of his nose as he stared at Wang Erma’s cards: “Why do you have another pair of 6s? I’m sure I already dealt those to you!”

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“You dealt the cards? Ask me?” Wang Erma laughed, “Judge, did you deal me as if it were ‘Four-Conflict’?”

“Nonsense!” The Judge stiffened his neck and started rummaging through Wang Erma’s pile, “Let me count! One, two, three… seventeen, eighteen, nineteen… twenty!” His voice caught as he reached twenty, his face flushing from his ears to his neck.

“Twenty cards?” The teacher ghost on the left put down his cards, displeased, “Why does he have three extra?”

“I… I’m counting the total number of cards!” The Judge hurriedly gathered all the cards from Wang Erma, the teacher ghost, and the undealt pile, shuffling them together and counting: “One, two, three… forty-two!” He slapped his thigh after counting, “No mistake! Forty-two cards! Exactly!”

“Pfft—” Meng Po brought over some soup and couldn’t help but laugh, spilling half a bowl on the floor. “Judge, Fighting the Landlord is for three players, not four—forty-two cards would be for four decks? No, four players!”

“Ah?” The Judge was stunned, his triple bifocals slipping to his chin, forgotten, staring blankly at the cards. “Three players… how many cards should that be?” He scratched his head and counted on his fingers for a long time, then suddenly slapped the table: “Oh! Fighting the Landlord is three players! Seventeen cards each, fifty-one total! These cards… only forty-two?”

At this, the entire room fell silent, then someone snickered, which erupted into laughter like a bomb going off. The little red-clad imp rolled on the floor laughing, clutching Meng Po’s leg and shouting, “Judge can’t count!” Xiao Li pounded the table laughing so hard he dropped his brush, still chanting, “‘Judge can’t count cards, forty-two instead of fifty-one, three-pair glasses worn for nothing, better go home and learn arithmetic!’” Even King Yama turned away, shoulders shaking from suppressed laughter.

“Stop laughing!” The Judge panicked, grabbing the cards and throwing them on the floor. The cards slipped and scattered like confetti. He crouched to pick them up, muttering, “I counted five times…”

“Counting five times won’t help, Judge.” Wang Erma picked up the three extra cards—an Ace, a 2, and a small Joker—all good cards. “You must have mixed up ‘Fighting the Landlord’ with ‘Four-player Mahjong.’”

“I didn’t!” The Judge stubbornly threw the cards back on the table, “I was just… distracted by Xiao Li’s poem!” He glared at Xiao Li, who quickly covered his mouth to hide his smile, though his shoulders still trembled.

King Yama finally turned around, trying to suppress his laughter, and sternly said, “Judge! What kind of mess is this? Dealing wrong cards in the finals and still denying it! I’m punishing you to copy the ‘Underworld Card Game Player Count Table’ ten times!”

“Ten times?” The Judge’s face darkened, “Your Majesty, can I do five? My hands are sore from counting cards…”

“Twenty times!” King Yama raised an eyebrow.

“No, no, no! Ten it is!” The Judge hastily waved his hands like a cat whose tail was stepped on. He pulled out a small notebook and pen, squatted, and began writing, stopping after two characters to ask, “‘Player count table’—how do you write that?”

The whole room burst into laughter again.

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“All right, all right, continue playing!” King Yama waved dismissively and said to Wang Erma, “Old man, give me the three extra cards; they’ll be discarded.”

“No way, Your Majesty.” Wang Erma stuffed the three cards back into his hand, eyes squinting with laughter. “Judge’s ‘gift’ can’t be returned. Besides, having three extra cards makes it more interesting—if I win with these, that’s fair, right?”

“Fair, fair!” The little red-clad imp shouted eagerly, “Judge dealt wrong, so it’s Master Wang’s lucky break!”

The two teacher ghosts didn’t object either—the Judge’s miscounting was too amusing, their irritation evaporated. The one on the left chuckled, “Fine, let’s play like this! If you lose, no complaints; blame the Judge for helping you.”

The Judge crouched writing the “player count table,” muttering without looking up, “I didn’t help him… I just miscounted…” so softly it was like a mosquito’s hum.

When the game resumed, Wang Erma’s hand, bolstered by the extra three cards, was unstoppable. The teacher ghost played a straight from 5 to 9; Wang Erma had 6 to 10. The teacher ghost played a bomb of four 3s; Wang Erma had four 4s. When only the small Joker remained, Wang Erma played it confidently and won.

“Won!” Xiao Li jumped up, throwing his paper into the air. This time, the wind didn’t carry it away; it landed perfectly on the Judge’s notebook. The Judge glared at him but then looked back down to write, a slight smile tugging at his lips—he had secretly peeked at Wang Erma’s cards when he played those extra three cards, but the old man hadn’t used them at all; he won purely by his own cunning.

Wang Erma pushed his cards onto the table and leaned over to watch the Judge write—the notebook bore the crooked words “Fighting the Landlord: 3 players” with three small circles drawn beneath, as if afraid of forgetting again. “Judge,” he patted the Judge’s shoulder, “stop writing. Next time before dealing, have Xiao Li make you a poem, something like ‘Three-player game, don’t miscount cards, miscount and copy ten times more,’ guaranteed you won’t forget.”

The Judge didn’t reply but crossed out the “ten times” and changed it to “five times,” then shot Wang Erma a glare—that old man sure knew how to hit a sore spot.

Meng Po brought over the remaining soup and handed a bowl to the Judge: “Drink some sweet soup and calm down.” Then she said to Wang Erma, “You should drink some too. Next round it’ll be Old Zhou’s turn; gotta build some confidence for this stingy old guy.”

Old Zhou had been crouched silently nearby, but when he heard Meng Po mention him, he quickly stuffed melon seeds into his pocket and whispered, “I…I’m not nervous,” though his voice trembled like shaking chaff, his fingers nearly crushing the card box.

Wang Erma looked at him and then at the Judge crouched on the floor writing the “player count table,” unable to help but laugh—this Underworld card game was far more entertaining than any table in the human neighborhood. Just had to keep an eye on the card count, or one day the Judge might deal “Six Conflicts” as if it were “Fighting the Landlord.”