Chapter 255 Notes from Bedlam Asylum (V)
At 7:30 in the morning London time, in Bedlam Asylum, in the card room used for patients' entertainment.

Ke Yinzhi picked up a deck of playing cards that Francis had touched from the cabinet, and sat down in front of a card table with Fanquan.

"Wouldn't you know it just by looking at it?"

He held his chin with one hand and opened the deck of cards marked with serial number 02 as he spoke.

Then, gently turn it over while keeping its internal order unchanged. Start with the top card and check the cards one by one.

The playing cards given by the asylum are standard 54-card playing cards.

除了两张副牌“大王”和“小王”以外，其余52张正牌里，每种牌型各有4张，分别是：A、2、3、4、5、6、7、8、9、10、J、Q、K。

Then, while keeping the order of the playing cards unchanged, Ke Yinzhi checked the deck of cards with serial number 05 and the deck of cards with serial number 09 respectively.

Soon, he and Fanquan discovered that the top and bottom arrangements of the cards in each deck of playing cards adjusted by Francis were different.

But they all have one thing in common: whenever the middle of a deck of cards is turned over, there will be adjacent kings and jokers inserted, which seems to symbolize some kind of "interruption".

Ke Yinzhi raised his eyebrows and thought for a while with interest, then suddenly turned his head and looked at Fan Quan with clear eyes.

"Mr. Gu Zhenning, if Francis wanted to use these playing cards to clearly express and convey text messages, what kind of logic do you think might be used to convey it?"

Hearing this, Fanquan thought for a moment, and then replied: "If you want to use playing cards to clearly express text information, then I think there is only one way: that is to use the numbers on the playing cards to represent the order of the alphabet, and then use this logic to convert the numbers represented by each playing card into letters."

He paused. "Then use adjacent playing cards as letters to form English words to form complete sentences. Of course, if you think this way, a deck of playing cards is definitely not enough."

"It's basically the same as what I thought." Ke Yinzhi said slowly, "According to our thinking, the A card is equal to the number 1, which is equal to the first letter of the alphabet - 'a', the 1 card is equal to the second letter of the alphabet - 'b', and the 2 card is equal to the third letter of the alphabet - 'c', right?"

Anti-Dog nodded: "Yes, the analogy applies to the 10th letter: playing card 10 = number 10 = the 10th letter of the alphabet - 'j'."

He thought for a moment and then continued, "But there are 26 letters in the alphabet, and it is not enough to represent them with playing cards. This is a problem."

"Perhaps we can further classify them by the suits of the playing cards?" Ke Yinzhi asked as he flipped the cards and studied Francis' arrangement.

"It is possible, but judging from the two decks of cards we turned over, it seems that this conjecture is not true."

Fan Quan spoke slowly, his eyes focused on the playing cards just like Ke Yinzhi's.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes slightly, turned his gaze slightly, and discovered that every deck of cards that Francis had touched had a special arrangement rule.

Just as he was about to speak, Ke Yinzhi took the lead and suddenly said, "Oh... I understand."

Fanquan turned his head to look at him and was silent for a while: "Tell me, let me hear if what you think is the same as mine."

Ke Yinzhi thought and said, "For letters from 1 to 10, Francis used three playing cards to form a combination. For example, if he wanted to express the 11th letter of the alphabet, which is the number 11, he would use the playing card A (number 1), sandwiched with a playing card other than 1 to 10, and then another letter A (number 1) at the end."

As he spoke, he sat down at a card table and used the paper and pen on the table to list the corresponding rules.

Poker Ace (equivalent to the number 1, the first letter of the alphabet - "A")
Poker A-Poker J-Poker A (equivalent to 11, which is the 11th letter of the alphabet - "K")
Poker A-Poker K-Poker A (same as above)
Poker A-Poker Q-Poker A (same as above)
“和我想的一样：用三张牌的组合来表示大于10的数字，这样就可以完整地表达1-26的数字，而这26个数字分别对应着字母表上的26个字母。”

Fan Quan spoke slowly and took a barely perceptible deep breath.

He began to doubt whether Black Judge had the ability to read minds. In fact, his thoughts had always been exposed to Black Judge, or maybe the two of them just happened to be in the same frequency.

Ke Yinzhi raised his eyebrows. "So, how do you think we should express the number 20?"

Hearing this, Fan Quan lowered his head and thought for a while, then took the paper and pen from him and began to list several combinations of expressing the number 20 on the paper.

Poker 2 - Poker J - Poker 10 (equivalent to 20)

Poker 2 - Poker K - Poker 10 (same as above)
Poker 2-Poker Q-Poker 10 (same as above)
Ke Yinzhi looked at the combinations listed by Fanquan and said with interest: "I see, when the playing card 10 is at the end of the combination, it is automatically regarded as '0'."

Fanquan nodded and continued, "This arrangement can indeed be used to repeat all 26 letters of the alphabet using playing cards, but there is a very important problem."

Ke Yinzhi continued: "The problem...is that a deck of playing cards can easily run out of cards, since there are only four regular cards of each type."

"That's right." Anti-Dog nodded, "So at this point, Francis will take a simple and clear approach to say 'This deck of cards is running out of cards, switch to the next one.'"

Ke Yinzhi smiled: "The method he used was to put the two independent decks of cards, the big king and the small king, together to remind the person who is looking at the cards, 'the content of this deck of cards ends here.'"

"Yes," Fanquan said, "When the remaining playing cards in a deck of cards are not enough to continue to express the letters of the alphabet, Francis will stop operating on this deck of cards." "He will then put the 'king' and 'joker' behind the last 'playing card symbolizing the letter' to indicate that 'this deck of cards is no longer needed and you can check the information of the next deck of cards.'"

"I see."

Ke Yinzhi shrugged and murmured, "Then according to our logic, if we want to fully and continuously read the text message that Francis conveyed in the cards, there is only one problem that needs to be solved."

Fanquan adjusted his nonexistent glasses and said, "How do we determine the order in which to open each deck of cards? That's the final question."

"Yes, for example, you write 'I Hate' with the letters of each card in the No. 1 card box, 'he' at the beginning of the No. 2 card box, and 'you' at the beginning of the No. 3 card box. Both beginnings can be connected. So how do you know whether you should open the No. 1 card or the No. 3 card after the No. 2 card box?"

As he spoke, Ke Yinzhi turned his head and looked at Fan Quan with interest.

Anti-Dog was silent for a moment: "Do you remember that before coming to the card room, Francis arranged the 24 books on shelf number one in the library?"

"I remember." Ke Yinzhi said, and suddenly paused, "I see. You mean the serial numbers of the 24 books represent the order in which the 24 decks of cards are opened?"

"That's right. How to confirm the order of the card box has to start from the library. The books with serial numbers 1-24 that Francis is fiddling with on the bookshelf should represent the order in which the 1-24 decks of playing cards are opened." Fanquan said, "From top to bottom and from left to right, the serial number of the first book is 21, and the serial number of the second book is 5, so the first deck of playing cards we should open is the 21st deck of playing cards, and the second deck of playing cards that follows is the 5th deck of playing cards.

He paused. “With this idea, we can convert all the numbers before the “king” appears in each deck of playing cards into letters of the alphabet, and we can get what Francis meant.”

"To be precise, it's not what Francis meant, but what the people who played this game with him meant."

As he spoke, Ke Yinzhi raised his hand to support his chin and explained nonchalantly, "Francis knows nothing and is just 'playing games'."

Fanquan shook his head: "I don't really understand, I just cooperated with you."

"I can see that, but you've helped me a lot." Ke Yinzhi smiled, "If I wasn't in the mental hospital, maybe I would consider being friends with you, Mr. Gu Zhenning."

He paused and said casually, "Of course, I think I can consider getting you out of here and making you my colleague. I haven't thought about having an assistant in all these years, and you're the first person who made me think of this. But... I have to wait until I get out of here before I can say anything."

Anti-dog pretended to be confused: "What on earth are you talking about?"

"You'll know later. For now, you'd better treat this as the ravings of a mental patient."

While teasing, Ke Yinzhi looked through the card box that Francis had operated, and soon confirmed that every deck of cards that this memory freak had moved could basically be quickly converted into letters of the alphabet according to their rules.

Taking the deck of cards No. 9 and the paper box No. 15 in his hand as examples (the second to last and the last paper box respectively), try to record on paper the order of the cards before the big and small jokers appear.

The second to last set of playing cards:

Playing card 9 (represents the 9th letter of the alphabet: I)

Poker 2-Poker J-Poker 3 (representing the number 23, which is the 23rd letter of the alphabet: W)

Playing card 9 (letter I)

Poker A-Poker J-Poker 2 (representing the number 12, which is the 12th letter of the alphabet: L)

Poker A-Poker J-Poker 2 (same as above)
Poker A-Poker J-Poker 2 (same as above)
Playing card 5 (letter E)

Playing card A (letter A)

Joker (indicates that the number of cards is not enough to express, so it is interrupted and you can look at the next deck of cards)

The last set of playing cards:

Poker 2 - Poker J - Poker 2 (the number 22, which is the 22nd letter of the alphabet: V)

Playing card 5 (E)

Daxiaowang (indicates interruption, end)
Finally, Ke Yinzhi read out the complete English sentences represented by the two sets of playing cards.

“I will leave.”

Fan Quan whispered the meaning of this English sentence in Chinese in his mind: "I am about to leave here..."

He took a deep breath of the heavy air and thought to himself.

"I see. TK has been using the memory freak Francis to help him pass information to the caregiver who is his contact person."

"Because Francis is the card room manager, every Saturday when the card room is about to be cleaned, other patients are not allowed to enter the card room, and only Francis is allowed to enter. Because of this, he can play a 'game' with TK. The game is to open the cards in the card room according to the order specified by TK, and rearrange each card up and down."

In order to verify the idea he and Ke Yinzhi had just come up with, Fanquan also opened a deck of cards.

He tried to translate the deck of cards into words according to the pattern the two had inferred, by arranging them in an upward and downward order.

Soon, he once again verified that this conjecture was correct: the numbers represented by the playing cards could indeed be perfectly converted into English letters without any hindrance.

At this moment, Ke Yinzhi interpreted the three decks of playing cards in his hand, thinking about the meaning with interest: "The combination of these three decks of cards means: William has been caught by the Control Bureau. Don't worry about him. He is probably in danger. What we should think about now is to move the base and stay out of the spotlight for a short period of time."

Anti-Dog interpreted the two decks of playing cards in his hand and thought to himself: "What these two decks of cards mean is: The people from the Control Bureau already know that I am in the mental hospital, but they haven't found me yet."

"Sure enough... This is how TK conveys information to the caregivers. Then, I have to screen TK out of the asylum before the Black Judge does and take him away."

Thinking of this, Fan Quan took a breath barely noticeable.

Then, he immediately opened the chat panel with his mind.

[Anti-Dog: Caibing, please help investigate the surveillance cameras in the card room. The scope of the investigation is every Saturday. See if there is a caregiver who comes to check the playing cards in the cabinet every Saturday.]

at the same time.

On the other side of the card table, Ke Yinzhi rested his head on the back of his chair, leaned back, and thought.

"But the nurse couldn't enter the library. She didn't know the order in which Francis arranged the books. How could she know the order in which to open each deck of cards? Even if she could decipher the English words represented by the cards, if the order was wrong, the message TK wanted to convey to her would become incoherent."

Thinking of this, Ke Yinzhi suddenly raised his head from the back of the chair and said to Ke Mingye, "Sir, can I go to the toilet?"

"Don't take too long." Ke Mingye glared at him with a cold tone.

"learn."

Ke Yinzhi smiled, walked into the toilet of the card room, closed the door, and sat down on the toilet.

He pressed the earring, and the projection panel popped up, and then his fingers began to perform a series of operations on it.

Soon, Ke Yinzhi found the operation records of the monitors in Bedlam Asylum:

- Only one supervisor would use the library's surveillance cameras on Saturdays, because his job was to ensure that no patients sneaked into the library and card room on cleaning day - of course, except for Francis, the librarian with special permissions.

So, it goes without saying that TK has two receivers in total.

The first responder was the care worker who cleaned the card room;

The other contact person is the supervisor who uses the library surveillance cameras every Saturday.

Follow the steps.

The supervisor saw through the monitor the order in which the memory freak Francis placed the books on bookshelf No. 1 in the library, then confirmed the number represented by each book through the serial number, and then told the nurse the numerical sequence.

Next, when the caregiver goes to the card room, he will open the 24 decks of cards in the corresponding order, and then convert the numbers represented by each deck of cards into letters to form complete English sentences.

Finally, as long as they are skilled enough, they can easily get the information that TK wants to convey to them in a short time.

It has to be said that this method is indeed very complicated and secretive: because in the eyes of others, Francis, the "memory freak", is a complete psychopath, so often no one cares about his behavior.

Besides, after all, all he was doing was reordering the books, taking apart the cards, rearranging them, and putting them back.

No one would have thought that for so many years, TK had actually been taking advantage of Francis' characteristics and such seemingly illogical behavior to convey information to the people of the "Revolutionary Evening Bell" organization.

There was even no way to ask Francis directly who TK was because he couldn't remember names or faces.

It is extremely cunning.

"TK, I finally caught you..."

Ke Yinzhi flipped through the employee list, his eyes fixed on the face of one of the supervisors, a deep light flashing in his pupils.

"I found you, TK. Next you have to be one step faster than the Black Judge."

Fan Quan thought about it and pushed up the non-existent glasses on his nose.

Just then, he received a reply from Cai Bing.

[Cai Bing: I found it. The nurse who is responsible for cleaning the card room on Saturdays is fixed. There is only one person. She will open each deck of cards to make sure there are no missing cards in the card box, because a patient once got angry about this.]

[Anti-dog: This caregiver is TK's contact person. She appears to be checking whether there are any missing cards in the card box, but in fact she is observing the order of the cards and learning the message TK wants to convey through the order of the playing cards.]

[Cai Bing: Who knows? This is your business. Here, this is her personal information. I can help you with this.]

【Ice cutting: (Photo)】

[Anti-dog: Orange peel, photos and information Caibing has posted in the discussion group. ]

[Anti-Dog: You are a caregiver, so it is easier for you to find and approach this caregiver than for us. The task of forcing him to tell you who TK is is now yours. Act quickly.]

【Good orange peel: Received. 】

At this moment, on the other side of Bedlam Asylum, in the nurses' lounge.

The air was a little noisy, and several caregivers in the same lounge were complaining about having to work in the cafeteria later.

Some people say that you never know when some psychopath will pour his own shit into the plate when picking up his meal, and then you have to clean it up again while enduring the stench.

Some people say that it’s good enough that they don’t smear shit on your face. Since you are a caregiver here, you don’t have to complain so much and just get used to it.

Someone else said, do you think he is a little strange today?
As they spoke, several caregivers turned their heads slightly and cast a strange look at Orange Peel, who was wearing a caregiver's uniform and a human face mask.

After Orange Peel sent the message on the chat panel, he put down the truck keys in his hand on the table, picked up a folding fruit knife, and took a deep breath.

According to the original plan, the care worker he played had to drive a truck away for a short time in 20 minutes to buy a batch of milk and daily necessities from the supermarket in London. But now the plan has changed, he has to find the care worker within minutes and force him to tell the true identity of TK.

Orange Peel hid the fruit knife in the pocket of his nursing uniform, then lowered the brim of his light blue hat, quickly set off, and opened a crack in the door of several adjacent nursing lounges to look for someone.

Soon, when he arrived at the third nursing lounge, his sharp eyes found a person who looked like the one in the photo given by Cai Bing.

Orange Peel slowly approached the caregiver from behind, avoiding the surveillance camera's shooting range, and extended the blade of the fruit knife.

Then, he silently placed the tip of the knife against his back.

The orange peel was pressed against his ear, whispering in a voice that only he could hear.

"Come with me to the bathroom. Don't make any noise during this time. Just nod your head in response, or I will kill you. Don't doubt me."

Hearing this, the nurse swallowed and nodded slightly.

Then he was forced to follow Orange Peel into the staff restroom, walked into a cubicle and closed the door.

The moment the door closed, Orange Peel pressed his palm against the wall of the compartment, then inserted the knife between his fingers and spoke in a gentle voice.

"I know that you are TK's contact. You have been helping him pass information to the organization in the mental hospital for many years. But there is one thing I must tell you. TK's identity has been exposed. I now need to know who he is and rescue him."

After he finished speaking, before the man had time to think, blood suddenly surged, and a finger slowly fell from the wall.

The nurse was stunned at first, then his face turned pale.

Just as he was about to scream, a bony hand covered his mouth.

Then, a sound as gentle as lake water, but like the hissing of a poisonous snake, slowly sounded in his ears.

Like the devil's whisper.

"If you don't tell me who TK is in five seconds, I'm going to cut off another finger and dig your eyeballs out."

Orange Peel lowered his voice and took out the demon sword Muramasa from his bag. If the opponent did not obey, he would chop off his head with the demon sword Muramasa and use the characteristics of the equipment to gnaw at his soul.

"I'm a professional, man. You won't even feel any pain until your eyeball falls out."

He paused and tilted his head slightly, a gentle smile on his face.

"Well, I'll start the countdown from now on. Before I start the countdown, I want you to tell me the name of the patient."

As he spoke, the killing intent flowed like water, surrounding the caregiver in front of him. He was like being trapped in a swamp, unable to breathe or move at all.

The next moment, Orange Peel could feel the man in his arms struggling frantically, so he calmly withdrew his right hand that was covering his mouth.

"Amamiya Eagle!"

The nurse shouted hoarsely, "TK's identity... is Amamiya Ying!"

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(End of this chapter)