The essence of Sichuan Mahjong lay in building hands and counting tiles. Ren Ye had started with a Pure Straight and ten character tiles.
His hand consisted of four two-characters, three three-characters, two four-characters, two six-characters, and two seven-characters: Green Double Dragon, No Terminals or Honors.
Two four-characters had already been discarded. The woman had an exposed kong and pung of one-bamboos and kept discarding characters, so hers should have been a pure bamboo hand. Both the other man and the Bowel-Streaming Man who had dealt the winning tile were void in characters, so they had to discard any three-character they drew. Otherwise, they would have an illegal mixed-suit hand and pay the full 256-fold penalty. Besides, lying was forbidden in the ten questions and answers of the turtle soup game.
So this hand was easy to calculate.
Ren Ye asking whether his next discard would be a three-character had crushed him on both intelligence and tile-playing skill. Killing a man and breaking his spirit-it was nothing less than that.
Clatter!
256 Gold Coins flew out of the Bowel-Streaming Man's forehead in a long stream and landed neatly before Ren Ye.
He sat there in a daze, saying incredulously, "You only had ten questions... and you... you were still counting tiles... You really are a devil."
Clatter!
Ren Ye raised his hand and swept the Gold Coins into his consciousness space, saying mildly, "No, I'm not a devil. I'm just an obscure Provincial-Hong Kong-Macau Long-Distance Card King-the Qingliang Prefecture Conan King."
This smoothly executed flex hit all three of them in the face without warning. Ren Ye turned and headed out of the Inner Treasury.
Whoosh!
Once the woman saw him leave, she instantly raised the chair behind her.
Bang!
The man with silver needles stuck in his eyeballs leaped