Back to the present…
Weighty Words turned the card over and placed it before him. The front of the hint card was printed with a black ball of twine.
“Am I going to get tied up?” Weighty Words looked at the picture and guessed. Before he finished, the way Ambitionist, Autumn Zither, and Feng Bujue looked at him changed.
“What…” Weighty Words was about to ask what was wrong, but before the question left his lips, he was shocked by what was happening.
At that moment, from a spectator’s perspective, Weighty Words’ hair started to expand like a ball of yeasted dough and soon became a large, fluffy afro. Then, this pool of ’hair’ started to ’rain’. Of course, what fell was not water but waterfall-like hair. This process stopped about thirty seconds later. Weighty Words’ crew cut seemed to have bloomed into a giant mushroom, and under the hat of the shroom dangled a curtain of long hair. If he stood up, his body would have been hidden behind the curtain. From afar, he looked like a black, fluffy jellyfish.
“When you think you have gotten the thing you want, you will actually have lost even more.” Weighty Words repeated that as he used his hands to part away the curtain-like hair to reveal his face. “Even though I recently considered changing my original crew cut into another hair style because of Dream Inc’s announcement that a new hairstyle adjustment option would be given in the latest Thriller Paradise patch, I doubt I’d pick something like this…”
“When you think you have gotten the status of the king of salons, you have lost your honor and taste,” Feng Bujue mocked snidely.
“Hahaha…” Hearing that, Autumn Zither guffawed, but seconds later, more blood poured out from his wound. “Cough… Stop… don’t make me laugh, or else I don’t think I’ll hold on for another hour. Compared to the rest of us, yours is much better.”
He poked his fingers through the bars and pushed on his glasses out of habit.
“I’d rather have a cage over my head.” Weighty Words kept pushing away the hair, or else he would not be able to say anything.
“Gentlemen, let’s continue,” Moriarty said, his tone still even. “Mr. Words, your timing is perfect. Before you arrived, your three teammates all completed their turns. At this moment, I believe you have familiarized yourself with how to play the game.”
“We’ve seen the effects of the cards, but what about the game rules?” Feng Bujue said. “We can’t just keep on playing by following your orders, right?”
Moriarty turned over to exchange a look with Holmes before telling the players, “Language is a type of power.”
He raised an arm and made the introduction. “Please remember that because in this space, or in this round table game, that is the most basic rule.”
Moriarty used his hand to point at the cards on the table.
“As for the basic rules of this game, every player has to use the four types of cards—hints, questions, conjectures, and assumptions— at least once.” His eyes scanned the players’ faces. “But there is a problem. At this table, only Mr. Holmes and I know the ’truth’. As gentlemen who didn’t know the truth, there is obviously no reason for you to choose the hint card.”
“That’s why we have to enter the game with the hint card, huh?” Ambitionist asked.
“Yes,” Moriarty answered. “We left the messages with the ’hint’ element at various parts. So that in the process of going up the building, you can see for yourself, the influence ’language’ had on other characters.”
“Can I understand it this way? In this word, ’language’ is a kind of power, and ’hint’ is a skill that possesses a negative element,” Autumn Zither concluded.
“Not quite.” Holmes chimed in. “But close enough.”
“At the table, there is no positive and negative element. The premise of deciding the card’s effect is whether the language that you use is of value or not,” Moriarty added. “Now it is my turn. I will give a hint to give you an example. Hint—there are no lies in this world.”
When he was done, a hint card moved to the professor. Moriarty turned it over and showed it to the guests. The front of the card was blank. “See, no punishment.”
About five seconds later, a smirk leaked out from Feng Bujue’s cheeks.
“Humph… I get it now.” He toyed with the blade and looked at ease. “Since you are ’in the know’, what you said can help us get closer to the ’truth’, so your ’hint’ has its value.
“And us who don’t know merely said the ’language’ that you left for us. Even though they are called hints, at this table, they are meaningless and of no value.”
“Indeed, looks like you have gotten it.” Moriarty smiled in reply.
Weighty Words thought about it and concluded, “Then… in this game, for us not knowing the truth, choosing a ’hint’ will get us punished because the people who know don’t need the hint from us. And for the people who know, an assumption is a choice that cannot be made because you have known the truth from the start, so there is nothing to be assumed.”
“But the problem is,” Ambitionist interrupted, “every player must use each of the four cards once, yes?”
He tossed a sharp gaze at Moriarty.
“Yes,” Moriarty answered matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry, Mr. Holmes and I are not the kind to cheat.”
“As participants who don’t know the truth, the first sentences that you used to enter the game will be taken as hints.” Holmes puffed out the smoke. “But the people who know are not limited by this. We can start the game with any kind of card. But… for the first four rounds of the game, neither party, be it the people who know or those who don’t know, can pick the same card more than once.”
“In other words… every player has to select each of the four cards in the first four rounds,” Ambitionist said. “Then does that mean… from the fifth round, we can select repeated cards?”
Moriarty scoffed. “Yes, from the fifth round, you can select ’questions’ for every round if you wish.”
He pointed out the plan that Ambitionist was thinking of.