"Do we have to drink all this?"
He asked the black-robed man timidly, and of course he got no answer, and Barnard wrote a paragraph.
Compared to the previous words, this paragraph, written in the empty space between the ads for maids and detectives, was obviously much sloppier.
"No, some of the liquids in these bowls are obviously very problematic. If we drink them all, we will die. The past has taught us that while the [Mysterious Place] is strange and dangerous, there are rarely challenges that lead to certain death."
He hesitated for a moment and wrote another paragraph, "Maybe this is just a test of courage for us. We just have to drink a certain number of bowls within a limited time."
Is that so? That's just a guess. After all, the two have wasted a lot of time since they have here, even if it was mostly Jenkins asking questions.
Barnard set Jenkins' pen down, stuck it carefully on the paper and then wordlessly picked up another golden bowl. He lifted his head and drank it all, and for the first time his face showed an expression of surprise.
"What luck." He set the bowl down and quickly wrote on the note: "I have a new ability." "Will it help solve the current situation?" Jenkins immediately asked hopefully. Barnard's excited expression immediately fell silent and he took the note back: "No." "Should not I interrupt his excitement?" Jenkins thought silently, and the middle-aged man next to him returned to his tense silence. But the silence was enforced. It was Jenkins' turn again. Only 7 of the ten bowls were left to choose from. He tried to tell the difference between each bowl by eye, but unfortunately realized that they all looked the same. It is important to note that there are no large electronic, mechanized assembly lines at this time. The current factory is more of a "flesh and blood" factory than Foxconn. Therefore, in theory, it is absolutely impossible for two identical to be produced. "Is it a supernatural creation?" Jenkins could only guess. He knew very little about these things, and the information available was not enough to assess the situation he was facing. He hesitated, reached out again and silently did his math:
"Ten bowls, now a curse, a reward and a clean water. If that's the right probability, then the situation I am in is not the worst. No, the sample is too small, and in this case you should calculate according to the worst outcome, which means there is only one reward, and the clean water is less than three bowls..."
"Am I dead?"
He ruminated in his head, and other thoughts kept popping up. Jenkins took the bowl next to the candle and drank it down.
It was the second time he had drunk these liquids, so "he finally "paid attention" to his sense of touch and taste while "drinking".
"Why does this bowl feel like wood?"
While he thought about it, Jenkins put the bowl down.
He was still alive and looked unharmed.
"Sour, tastes like expired black tea."
He explained to the nervous man next to him, and the man breathed a sigh of relief.
No, it's not as if nothing had happened. Something seemed to appear next to the three points of light in front of him. Jenkins concentrated on the air in front of him and finally realized that it was a bubble.
At the same time, he also realized that there had originally been three bubbles in his field of vision, but he had not noticed them.
Now Jenkins had a total of three points of light and four bubbles.
After hesitating for a while because he did not know whether this was good or bad, Jenkins told Barnard, who was standing next to him, about the situation. Of course, he did not mention the number of bubbles originally present.
Barnard showed a surprised look on his face, then became depressed. "Nothing, that's just as well." Slowly, he wrote, "You are lucky, let us talk about it after you go out..."
A bowl each, two rounds have passed, but the black-robed man still has no intention of letting them go.
"How can we leave?"
Jenkins finally could not help but speak to his counterpart. Though he knew in his heart that this was too rash, he had to do it.
No answer, still a terrible silence.
Barnard tugged at Jenkins' dust- and sweat-covered sleeves and shook his head.
The man's face showed a determined expression again. He did not write another word, but picked up the bowl in front of him, raised his head and drank it down again.
After pausing for two or three seconds, he shook his head and wrote the two words "clear water".
Jenkins did not know whether to cry or laugh. His expression must have been very ugly at that moment. The silence of the man in the black robe meant that he would continue drinking, but half of the ten bowls were over and only one "mine" had been entered.
Whatever you think about it, it is clear that the ten bowls were originally meant to stand for bad outcomes. Most of them were meant to stand for the words "strange" and "dangerous" that Barnard said. So his remaining options are probably poison and curse.
But he had to choose. Barnard had bravely tried three times. Jenkins had no reason and no way to force him to drink another bowl. The black-robed man opposite was not a good man at first sight. If he turned the tables now, they really would not see the sun tomorrow.
"I am just unlucky."
Even if Jenkins was not a whiner , he could not help but sigh in the face of what could almost be described as despair.
Barnard could imagine what Jenkins could imagine. But he did not know how to comfort the young man in front of him, so he had no choice but to silently reach for pen and paper and try to let him decide for himself.
"Think about it, is there another other clue? Can we only gamble on luck?" Shouted Jenkins in his heart, but it looked like the behavior of a clown before death.
He held out his hand hesitantly, tried it a few times and took it back again.
"Mr. Barnard, do you think there's any difference between these ten bowls?"
He turned his head, stared in front of him and asked hesitantly, his palms extremely slippery with sweat.
"These ten bowls look exactly the same, all wooden bowls with messy lines painted on them. Williamette, the [Mysterious Place] will not force us into a dead end, so there must be a way out in the remaining bowls."
The second half of his words were a kind consolation to the distraught young man in front of him, but Jenkins did not even notice.
Wooden bowls?
He frowned as he looked at the hastily written word on the paper, reassuring himself over and over that the word in his inherited memory only meant "a wooden bowl, usually in the sense of old, chipped, worthless scrap"