Chapter 129 The Roundtable Game

After more than an hour of puzzle-solving, Ji Chang finally broke free from his memory space. The surrounding white light signaled a change in environment. As he was still adjusting to the light, Qiu Feng's voice sounded beside him, "Now, everyone's finally here."

Ji Chang looked over at the sound and was immediately shocked.

At that moment, Qiu Feng had a short sword stuck in his chest. The sword "nailed" his body to the chair, and the wound was still bleeding.

"Don't panic, he's fine... temporarily not in mortal danger," Honghu said in his usual calm tone.

Hearing this, Ji Chang turned to look at the other side.

Honghu wasn't injured by any sharp weapons, but his entire head was "imprisoned" in a small metal cage, like an unremovable helmet.

The cage was a rectangular prism, only slightly larger than Honghu's head, with a round hole at the bottom that fit snugly around his neck. To be honest, the design was a bit bizarre, yet also somewhat amusing.

"What exactly is this..." Ji Chang quickly understood the situation before him. He found himself sitting at a round table, with many strange cards spread out on the surface. Around the table were six chairs. Besides the four players, there were two unfamiliar characters present.

The two NPCs, or Bosses, looked calm and unscathed. But the players were in a different state...

"The quest should be updated, right?" This was Feng Bujue speaking.

Brother Jue's current condition was also far from optimistic. His cheeks had been slit open, with upward-sloping scars extending from both corners of his mouth, as if he had a permanent smile etched on his face.

"Are you trying to imitate the Joker to the point of insanity..." Ji Chang couldn't help but say.

He said "imitate" for a reason, because Feng Bujue was holding a blood-stained folding knife in his hand, suggesting that he had indeed cut out the "smile" himself.

"Hmph... consider it that way," Feng Bujue replied with a cold laugh.

[Current quest completed, main quest updated] The system prompt sounded in due course.

In the quest logs of the four players, the entry [All surviving players enter the "Reasoning Club."] was finally checked off.

As for the quest [Escape the memory space and return to the seventh floor of the "Testing Building."], although every player had it, it wasn't a shared quest, but rather four identical individual quests. Therefore, the players had completed them separately.

"Oh... is that so..." Feng Bujue saw the new quest that had appeared in his quest log [Defeat Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty in the "Roundtable Game"] and said with a smile, "Not an easy task..."

"Saying it's difficult while putting on such a cheerful expression... what's with that..." Qiu Feng muttered in a lifeless tone.

"Haha... aren't you having fun too?" Feng Bujue laughed.

Qiu Feng said, "Where do you see fun? I still have a bleeding effect on me."

Feng Bujue shrugged, "Heh... Honghu is the most comfortable."

Honghu made a sour face through the bars, "I feel like this iron cage on my head has made me lose something very important."

Ji Chang looked utterly bewildered, scratching his head as he asked, "What exactly are you guys doing?"

"Let's talk about that later," Feng Bujue said. "You first say a line from the 'messages' that you haven't 'encountered' in the memory space yet."

"Haven't encountered..." Ji Chang's eyes flickered as he wondered if this was Crazy Bro giving him a hint.

During the puzzle-solving process in the memory space, Ji Chang had indeed encountered several situations that closely matched the circumstances implied by "those messages." If he hadn't encountered them yet, there should be two lines left...

Sherlock Holmes took a puff of his pipe and said in his British accent, "I believe that you, like these gentlemen, clearly remember the contents of the five messages. So, please say one of them so that the game can continue."

Moriarty added, "But don't say a message that you have already encountered, because the 'hint' effect of those sentences has been used up and cannot be used as a condition for entering the game."

Ji Chang looked around, countless thoughts flashing through his mind. He saw that his teammates were all sitting obediently in their seats. Even with a sword stuck in someone's chest, no one seemed to be resorting to violence, indicating that the current situation couldn't be resolved with brute force.

"Um... When you think you've gotten what you wanted, you've actually lost more," Ji Chang said.

In the memory space, he hadn't experienced a storyline that matched the meaning of this message.

As soon as he finished speaking, a card on the table began to move without anyone touching it, slowly sliding towards Ji Chang.

"Hmph—" Holmes exhaled smoke. "Turn it over, Mr. Yu."

Since the other party said "turn it over," it meant that the card was currently face down. Ji Chang looked down at the card, its back printed with a word – [Hint] – amidst a borderless blue pattern.

Ji Chang then looked up at his teammates. Honghu and Qiu Feng both looked solemn, while Feng Bujue had a smile on his face...

"If I'm not mistaken..." Ji Chang's hand was already on the card, but he didn't flip it over. Instead, he looked at the two Bosses and said, "The sentence that Crazy Bro chose is... Use a smile to greet tragic misfortune, and use a hundred times the courage to deal with all this unhappiness. And Honghu chose... There is no place in the world like one's own home."

"Heh... correct deduction," Holmes replied with a smile. "That's right, the cards will produce corresponding effects based on the content of the 'hint'."

Ji Chang chuckled and then said to Qiu Feng, "I can't guess which sentence you said, Qiu Feng."

"Sincere good deeds, without expecting anything in return," Qiu Feng replied listlessly.

"Hmph..." Ji Chang muttered. "It seems no matter which sentence you say, there won't be a good outcome." He then turned his face to Moriarty and Holmes, "So... what if I don't flip this card?"

"What else can you do?" Feng Bujue replied for them, "The game will stay on your turn and can't continue. Then everyone will just stall, stall until you're judged by the system as being inactive in the game, or everyone collectively disconnects due to the game time being too long."

Qiu Feng added, "By the way, the items in our knapsacks can't be used again. If you stall for another hour or so, I might bleed to death."

Honghu also supplemented, "And if you want to resort to violence against the professor and detective to solve the problem, you better recall that wall of light that sealed the first floor door... Guess whose masterpiece that was."

Ji Chang gave a dry laugh and shook his head. "Okay, I'll flip it, so what if I get hurt..." He muttered, flipping over the card in front of him.