“Royal… Flush?” Qi Xia furrowed his brow. “What specifically is this hand?”

“Specifically, it’s a ‘Straight Flush’, but with the highest card being an ‘Ace’.” Qiao Jiajin said. “From ‘Ten’ to ‘Ace’, a total of five cards, and all of the same suit. This kind of straight flush is the biggest among all straight flushes, which is why it’s called a ‘Royal Flush’.”

Qi Xia looked at Earth Monkey shuffling cards across the table and thought about this in combination with Qiao Jiajin’s words.

Could a straight flush exist in this game?

This game used traditional festivals and the twenty-four solar terms, and quite cleverly, four seasons also appeared. In other words, if following the “Straight Flush” rules, to form the biggest hand in this game, you would need five numbers, and all five numbers would need to come from the same season.

At this moment, all the cards surfaced once again in Qi Xia’s mind.

From “Start of Spring” to “Grain Rain” was one season.

From “Start of Summer” to “Great Heat” was one season.

From “Start of Autumn” to “Frost Descent” was one season.

From “Start of Winter” to “Great Cold” was one season.

This step of calculation was somewhat complex and took a bit of time. Qi Xia converted all the cards in his mind into numbers one by one, then added the twelve “festival” cards.

“Wait… twelve festival cards?”

Qi Xia slightly furrowed his brow, feeling that the traditional festivals in his memory seemed to be more than twelve. But why were some missing?

He listed all the traditional festivals he could think of one by one.

Spring Festival, Lantern Festival.

Pure Brightness Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Double Seventh Festival, Ghost Festival.

Mid-Autumn Festival, Double Ninth Festival, Lower Yuan Festival.

Finally, there were Laba and New Year’s Eve.

Not counting the traditional festivals of various ethnic minorities, just the widely known festivals numbered at least fourteen.

But why were there only twelve festivals in this deck?

Had two festivals been excluded for some reason?

Qi Xia quickly locked onto “Pure Brightness Festival”.

This festival was quite interesting. In this “Lunar Month” game, “Pure Brightness Festival” would only be written as “Pure Brightness”, just like “Double Seventh Festival”.

However, besides being a festival, “Pure Brightness” was also one of the twenty-four solar terms. Therefore, there would only be one card with “Pure Brightness” written on it. It could be removed from the category of traditional festivals, not viewed as one of the festivals, but viewed as a solar term.

This way, the festivals only had one extra card. But among the remaining festivals, which one was completely different from the other festivals?

“Cold Food Festival…” Qi Xia slowly opened his eyes. In his memory, only the Cold Food Festival was completely different from the other festivals.

All festivals had a clearly specified date on the lunar calendar, but the Cold Food Festival specifically did not.

Its date was one hundred and five or one hundred and six days after the Winter Solstice, or one or two days before the Pure Brightness Festival each year.

For a game that used precise numbers to compare sizes, the existence of such a special festival like “Cold Food Festival” wouldn’t allow the game to proceed smoothly, so it could only be abandoned.

This way, the remaining festivals numbered twelve. Adding all the solar terms, there were thirty-six cards in total. Now all the card faces were clear. It should be possible to roughly deduce Earth Monkey’s “hole cards” through everyone’s “face-up cards” and the “community cards” in the center of the table. The probability of victory had increased somewhat.

After listing all the solar terms and festivals in his mind, Qi Xia transformed them into groups of numbers in his mind.

The calculation volume of this step was quite complex and took him considerable time.

Before long, only numerous numbers remained in Qi Xia’s mind. All the numbers were divided into four rows by season—spring, summer, autumn, and winter, each as one group.

However, after accounting for all the card faces, the situation was still somewhat strange.

Combined with the “Royal Flush” that Qiao Jiajin had mentioned at the beginning, although theoretically one could view a certain season as a suit and form a “Straight Flush” for that season, after Qi Xia surveyed all the dates of the four seasons, he actually discovered a peculiar problem.

The date numbers of no season could form a straight flush.

Because the first half of the year had “six on the twenty-first”, the dates contained numerous “six”, “two”, and “one”. The second half of the year had “eight on the twenty-third”, which would produce numerous “eight”, “two”, and “three”.

The relatively monotonous numbers greatly reduced the possibilities for combinations.

Qi Xia found the current situation somewhat interesting. Although the ancients would never have anticipated that someday in the future someone would use the dates of the twenty-four solar terms to gamble according to Texas Hold’em rules, they seemed to have deliberately avoided the possibility of a “Straight Flush”.

Spring lacked “five”, summer lacked “three”, autumn lacked “six”, winter lacked “four”.

No matter what, it would be impossible for five numbers to appear arranged from small to large together in the same season, even when adding traditional festivals.

This interesting situation actually made Qi Xia feel somewhat wonderful, as if he had made contact across time and space with the generations who compiled the calendar thousands of years ago.

“Fist…” Qi Xia came back to his senses and asked Qiao Jiajin, “Besides the ‘Royal Flush’, what’s the remaining ranking from big to small?”

Qiao Jiajin imitated Qi Xia’s gesture by reaching out to touch his chin, then disdainfully moved his hand away and came back to his senses, saying: “Below the Royal Flush is the regular Straight Flush.”

After hearing this, Qi Xia nodded. The situation of straight flushes could already be ruled out.

“Below ‘Straight Flush’ is ‘Four of a Kind’.” Qiao Jiajin explained. “Four of a Kind’ means having four identical numbers, which is the form you just won with.”

“Understood.”

“Below ‘Four of a Kind’ is ‘Full House’, also called ‘Boat’.” Qiao Jiajin extended both his hands, holding up three fingers on his left hand and two fingers on his right hand. “Simply put, it’s three plus two—one number has three cards, another number has a pair.”

“Good.”

“Further down is ‘Flush’, meaning five numbers all from the same suit. Below ‘Flush’ is ‘Straight’, meaning you don’t need to pay attention to suits, as long as the numbers can connect in sequence for five cards. Next, ranking from big to small, it’s regular ‘Three of a Kind’, ‘Two Pair’, ‘One Pair’.”

After listening, Qi Xia quickly thought about the possibilities of forming various hands, and soon furrowed his brow: “It seems the so-called ‘Texas Hold’em’ rules can’t be applied in this game.”

“What…?”

“Some combinations that are very difficult to form in poker can be easily achieved in ‘Lunar Month’, such as ‘Flush’.” Qi Xia explained. “If you can draw a ‘Winter Solstice’ card, then the four numbers ‘one, one, two, three’ all come from ‘winter’, with a very high probability of forming a ‘Flush’, so the weight of a flush shouldn’t be very high.”

“If that’s the case…” Qiao Jiajin also narrowed his eyes. “Indeed, there are some Texas Hold’em variants that adjust the size ranking rules due to different quantities of cards.”

“So what we need to do next is form various hand types to make Earth Monkey tell us the sizes of the hands.”