Chapter 184: Chapter 172: The Finals Chapter 184: Chapter 172: The Finals Before the final, let’s talk about a more interesting topic.

Do you know about hypnosis?

Or, I should say, psychological suggestion…

It’s that freaking cool operation that uses behavior, language, and all sorts of weird methods to interfere with someone else’s thoughts!

You’ve certainly heard of it…

But very few have experienced it.

So come on, stand up… yes, I’m talking to you, the one holding the phone with a dumb look on your face.

Now, please, those of you without girlfriends who still can’t shed the weight, stand on the ground with your legs together, knees straight, and try to touch the tops of your feet with your hands~

How about it, can’t reach, can you? (Students who can touch, please keep quiet!)

How far can your fingertips reach? Near your ankles? Or just about 5 centimeters below your knees?

Ha~, homebody~

Eat! Sleep! Sit in front of the computer, indulging in those unrealistic two-dimensional fantasies without exercising or losing weight, your muscles as stiff as the bark of a withered old tree, snap them and they might crumble into sawdust.

Of course, you’d turn out this way. (Nice~~~)

After hearing all this, does your heart ache? Do you feel even the slightest bit of regret bubbling up from the depths of your consciousness?

Then remember this feeling of regret and stand up again—legs together, back to the same position…

Differently this time, rub your forehead with your fingers, right between the eyebrows but a bit higher, while repeatedly chanting the spell in your heart, “Fatty Cucumber is the handsomest, Fatty Cucumber is the handsomest,” say it seven or eight times.

Now try bending down to touch the top of your foot again

…

…

How about it, did you reach much lower than before?

This is… okay, this isn’t hypnosis, it’s just a trick to make your ligaments a bit more flexible, but such tricks are widely used in the process of hypnosis.

Let’s take another example.

You, silently calculate in your mind

1+1=2

2+2=4

4+4=8

Now close your eyes.

So… has your vision become pitch black?

You would say—

Yes.

But please calm down and look very, very, very, very carefully, is there a faint white ring in the darkness…

To be fancier, can you only keep staring at the center of the ring, completely unable to move away?

Is that so?

… You might think—wow, how magical, is this psychological suggestion?

Then I would, very pretentiously, smile slightly and tell you… that.

All that crap is just bullshit!

…

…

Alright, having talked about psychological suggestion, let’s talk about a game rule related to the story below.

The “Situational Reasoning” Game!

This is a type of game that doesn’t need any props, any locations, any time, and can be played by a group of people with nothing better to do sitting around a kang (traditional heated bed).

The game is started by one person posing a riddle… and the other players ask questions about this riddle, but the answers can only be “yes” or “no”! As the scope of questions narrows down, eventually the entire backstory of the riddle is deduced.

And the origin of this game is a very classic puzzle…

It’s said that a soldier who had retired from the battlefield because he couldn’t speak went to a restaurant one day. He ordered a bowl of turtle soup and then began to cry. The people in the restaurant found it strange and asked him what was wrong. But nobody present understood sign language, so the soldier could only nod or shake his head.

Let’s recreate the scene below:

1: “Are you crying because of the taste of the soup?”

Nod.

2: Is it because it tastes too bad or too good?

Shakes head

3: Does this flavor bring back any memories for you?

Nods

4: Is it related to your family?

Nods

5: Did your wife ever make you turtle soup, do you miss her?… Did your son make turtle soup?… Miss your daughter?

…

…

After that, many people asked many questions, and the veteran kept shaking his head, finally, someone seemed to think of something and asked a question

…

Have you ever had real “turtle soup” before?

Shakes head vigorously!

It was only after this question that the true nature of the story began to unfold…

It turned out the soldier and his father went to war together, but they got trapped in the camp, running out of ammunition and provisions. The father, injured by shrapnel and with no hope of surviving, begged his best friend to cook his flesh into a soup so that his comrades and son could share it, and then lied to his son that the soup was made of turtle. Years later, now an old soldier, tasting real turtle soup for the first time, he realized what he had drunk back then was nothing of the sort. So, what was the meat used to make that soup? Thinking carefully, he immediately grasped the truth of the past, breaking down and crying uncontrollably in the restaurant.

This game has since been passed down, and it also got this slightly more mainstream name… “The Turtle Soup Game”.

…

What, you think this story isn’t satisfying enough?

Then, let me tell you about a few “soup circle” puzzles that are rather heartwarming and cute…

Puzzle One:

A wealthy woman adopted a lovely daughter, and from time to time she would put the same hat on her daughter. One day, after putting the hat on her, she happily took her daughter to the hospital. Please theorize the story?

Key Question:

Did the wealthy woman adopt a daughter because she liked children?

No

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Puzzle Two:

One late night, the protagonist, living on a farm, was woken up by the noise of the neighbors arguing, followed by the sound of a vase shattering and chopping wood, and then, it seemed like cows were grazing right in front of his house, but he ignored it all and went back to sleep. The next morning, he tried to open his door but couldn’t. Please theorize the story.

Key Question:

Were there really cows grazing outside the door last night?

No

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Questions like these, just taking out the puzzles and answers individually might seem uninteresting, and some of the solutions might even appear ridiculous, but within the process of “questioning” and “answering,” they still hold endless fun.

…

…

Having introduced the above, we can now follow Chen Xiao into the final round of this “Elite Competition”.

…

The thirteenth door had already opened, and under the watchful eyes of the other seven participants, some puzzled, some amazed, Chen Xiao walked through it.

Inside, it was a corridor similar to what he saw after escaping from the elevator earlier. At the end of that corridor, there was a door just like it, an electronic sensor door.

As Chen Xiao approached, the door slowly opened.

And what he saw behind the door made Chen Xiao pause in surprise.

Because what he saw was a…

…uh

bar.

Yes, a bar. Its overall area was slightly bigger than that of the “Dice Game” room. The light from the deep-colored lamps was just right, with a tinge of retro decoration and carpets giving off a smoky scent. Across from the door through which Chen Xiao had entered, along the wall, there was a not-so-large bar counter with some unidentifiable bottles of alcohol on the shelves. There were several wooden tables in front of the bar, with a few casually placed sofas around them, exuding a sense of comfort and coziness.

Chen Xiao stood at the entrance, his expression unmistakably one of exasperation in response to this abrupt change in scenario.

(As for those few “Turtle Soup Stories,” because they are not my original creations, you can look up the answers on Baidu if you are interested, they are easy to find.)