At the mention of "cultural essence," Kael, Elder Muyu, and the others finally perked up a little.
They hastily ate a few mouthfuls to finish their meals, after which several staff members brought over a few square green tables.
Several cases were opened.
Clatter-
Piles of small tiles, smooth to the touch, tumbled onto the tables, engraved with symbols and patterns they could not understand.
"This is..."
Elder Muyu curiously picked up a tile. It felt cool in his hand.
"Some kind of rune stone?"
"No, it's called mahjong."
Lin Mo gestured to the staff.
The crisp clatter of shuffling tiles instantly drowned out everything else.
He began explaining the rules.
"See these patterns? Characters, dots, and bamboo-three suits. East, south, west, north, red, green, and white are special runes."
"What you need to do is draw and discard tiles, arranging the thirteen tiles in your hand into fixed combinations."
"For example, three identical tiles, or three consecutive ones..."
The people from Terra listened in utter confusion.
Thorin pinched a tiny mahjong tile between his fingers. In his enormous hand, it looked like a bean.
He frowned, his face full of impatience.
"We're playing this? It's like children playing house."
Kael tried to understand it through a Mage's logic.
"A game of permutations and combinations based on calculation and probability?"
"You could put it that way." Lin Mo nodded.
"But there's something else to it, called luck."
Lin Mo briefly demonstrated how to stack the tiles, roll the dice, and draw tiles.
Then he divided them among several tables.
The Half-Orcs and Centaurs were too large, so they had to use specially made oversized mahjong tiles and sit in a circle on the floor.
The first round began.
For a while, the scene was utter chaos.
"What... is this for?"