Shang Sirui was so frightened by his words that he withdrew his hand, "Then, then shall we open it?"
Xia Xiqing walked over with a smile and took the key from his hand, "Open it. You took so much effort to find the key." As he spoke, he opened the door, and Shang Sirui consciously stood behind him.
All three people's cell phones rang, and at the same time, the same sound came from the new room.
was the announcement after they cracked the room.
"Wow..." Shang Sirui tilted his head and looked past Xia Xiqing in front of him, "This room is so big..." He saw two girls standing at the other door of the room, one of them looked familiar just from the side, "Hey, Sister Cen Cen..."
The girl whose name was called was wearing a long white dress and a rose-colored belt. Her long straight black hair fell to her waist. Her makeup was simple and elegant, and her deep red lip makeup was particularly eye-catching. Her facial features were not stunning, but she had a natural sense of alienation. She also saw Shang Sirui, so she raised her hand and smiled slightly, "Sirui."
Xia Xiqing seldom listens to Chinese songs, but he knows the name Cen Cen. He used to be the lead singer of a band, but later left the band due to illness. After his comeback, he went straight to solo. He was liked by many female fans because of his cool temperament.
"Sister Cen Cen," Shang Sirui saw that it was an acquaintance, so he walked over boldly, "Are you in this room?"
Cen Cen shook his head and said, "I just came out of the original room."
Xia Xiqing glanced at his phone and found that the delivery time of several messages was almost the same. The room they were in now was more like a living room than a room.
He finally figured out the structure of the house. It was actually like a closed four-bedroom, one-living room. His and Zhou Ziheng's original rooms were in a row with Shang Sirui's original room, and the two girls' original rooms were in the opposite row. However, only Shang Sirui and Cen Cen's rooms could lead to the living room, while his and the other girl's room could only lead to other people's rooms and then come to the living room.
Why is it arranged like this? Xia Xiqing thought about it.
He finally noticed the girl standing next to Cen Cen. She had slightly curly medium-length hair tied up in a bun, was wearing a black knitted skirt suit, had delicate makeup, and had a pair of beautiful eyes.
He suddenly remembered what Xiaojie said before the recording of the show, that besides himself, there was another amateur who was a member of Mensa.
That should be this girl.
So she was the first one to come out of her room
Xia Xiqing understood that the program team arranged the difficulty of breaking out of the room according to the abilities of the guests, to ensure that everyone could arrive at the living room, the gathering place, at about the same time. Otherwise, if the guests escaped before they met, the show would be boring.
But why put him and Zhou Ziheng together? Is it just for topicality? Xia Xiqing thought so at first, but after going through two rooms, he changed his mind about the program team, or the screenwriter behind the scenes. He always felt that every arrangement he made had a purpose.
So why exactly
Zhou Ziheng remained silent, probably because there was a natural barrier between the actor and singer circles, and both he and Cen Cen were taciturn people, so they couldn't chat much.
"Hello everyone, my name is Ruan Xiao." The sweet-looking girl took the initiative to greet everyone. Xia Xiqing felt that she looked familiar, but was not sure, so she smiled at her when they looked at each other.
Everyone introduced themselves to each other casually and walked around the spacious living room. The living room was large, including a semi-open dining room, a large oval dining table, and a row of sofas. Although there were a lot of things, there were few things that looked unreasonable, and no one found any useful clues.
There is a double door in the living room, which also has a combination lock on it, but there are two password input fields. The upper one has four spaces and nine digits to choose from next to it, while the lower one has only three spaces.
Xia Xiqing tried to touch the three-box input field below with his finger. At the moment of clicking, an input keyboard appeared on the electronic screen next to it, with the twenty-six English letters on it.
So you need to fill in the words
"Why don't we give it a try?" Shang Sirui suggested from the side.
Ruan Xiao objected, "Choose three permutations of 26 letters, 26 cubed, 17,576 possibilities."
Hearing Ruan Xiao say this, Shang Sirui smiled with a complicated expression, "Just pretend I didn't say that, haha."
Xia Xiqing was surprised. The Mensa Club was indeed different. Their mental arithmetic speed was too fast. But Ruan Xiao was right. In this game, exhaustive enumeration was the least likely method. There should be clues to guide the way. He walked around and found a perfect circle drawn on the floor next to the sofa, just enough for one person to stand.
"The eliminated seat?" Shang Sirui, who followed Xia Xiqing, squatted on the ground and read the words written next to the circle.
Xia Xiqing hummed softly, "It's probably where the person being executed stood during the voting for execution."
Shang Sirui was just standing up and raising his foot to step on the round floor, when Xia Xiqing added, "The method of execution is probably to drop it with a whoosh."
"Ah?" Shang Sirui quickly retracted his foot in mid-air and smiled bitterly, "Don't scare me."
"Just a blind guess." Xia Xiqing smiled and turned around. He raised his eyes and saw Zhou Ziheng standing by the dining table. The other party also saw him, but quickly turned his face away.
Am I that scary? Xia Xiqing smiled helplessly.
He walked to another door in the living room and asked Ruan Xiao and Cen Cen who were checking the refrigerator, "You two shouldn't be trapped in the same room, right?"
Ruan Xiao shook her head and said, "We are separate." Then she led the others to another door in the living room, which was where Cen Cen and Ruan Xiao were standing at the beginning.
"Behind this door is Sister Cen Cen's room." She pushed the door open. The space inside was not big. A scent of roses hit her face. Xia Xiqing frowned slightly. The fragrance was too strong.
The furnishings in this room are very different from those in other rooms. There are many framed paintings hanging on the off-white walls. On the other side of the bed stands a drawing board with a blank piece of paper on it. The style of the whole room looks more like the studio that Xia Xiqing is very familiar with.
Ruan Xiao took them to a huge wardrobe on the far left of the studio. She opened the wardrobe, which contained a lot of clothes. She moved the clothes aside with her hands, revealing a door leading to another room.
“This is my original room.”
Everyone passed through the "wardrobe door" one by one. Xia Xiqing, who was 1.83 meters tall, had some difficulty passing through. He thought of Zhou Ziheng, so he looked back and found that he had not caught up. He didn't know where he was going. He stood there waiting for a while, and sure enough, he saw him hunched over with great difficulty, and he couldn't help laughing.
"gXiqing, what are you laughing at?" Shang Sirui looked at him in confusion.
Xia Xiqing shook his head, a smile forming on the corner of his mouth.
"nothing."
"Then let's go." Shang Sirui tugged at his sleeve, but found nothing, because Xia Xiqing had already turned around and stood at the back door of the closet, pulling the door open a little to allow Zhou Ziheng to come out.
Zhou Ziheng had just stepped out of the closet and looked up to see Xia Xiqing's beautiful smiling face. For some reason, he felt that there was a hint of mockery in that smile, which made him even more unhappy. However, due to the cameras arranged around him, he could only cover it up with a smile and said thank you against his will.
"You're welcome."
Is this a playboy's habit? The ending tone of every sentence of this man seems to be deliberately teasing, Zhou Ziheng thought.
Ruan Xiao, Cen Cen and Shang Sirui walked in front, Xia Xiqing and Zhou Ziheng walked to the back. This room looked like a woman's room. There was an exquisite dressing table in it, on which were all kinds of cosmetics and perfumes. There were also various expensive suits and dresses in the wardrobe. There was a portrait hanging on the European white wooden bed. It was a woman dressed in black with a beautiful face.
"Is this also a famous painting?" Zhou Ziheng unexpectedly spoke first. Xia Xiqing smiled and nodded, "Kramskoi's 'Unknown Woman', a very famous female portrait."
Shang Sirui, who was walking in front, heard Xia Xiqing's words and couldn't help but turn his head and said with admiration, "I feel like Xiqing is a walking encyclopedia of art. It's amazing."
Zhou Ziheng thought to himself, if you want to hear various physical formulas and laws, I can tell you one by one, and also introduce you to the big names in the physics academic world.
But the next second, he was shocked by the childish thoughts in his mind.
Maybe he hated Xia Xiqing so much that he didn't want to hear anyone praising such a cunning and hypocritical person.
Xia Xiqing and Shang Sirui were laughing and talking for a while. After a few words, Shang Sirui, who was thinking quickly, focused his attention on Ruan Xiao. "So you escaped from this room and entered Sister Cen Cen's room? You did it all by yourself. You are amazing."
Ruan Xiao smiled and waved her hands, "Maybe my room is simpler." She smiled sweetly, and with a tenacity that was different from other girls.
"What's the puzzle?" Zhou Ziheng rarely spoke.
"Hmm... a digital Huarong Road." Ruan Xiao walked to the jewelry box on the bedside table and opened it. Inside was the Huarong Road layout she had cracked. "I first discovered that this makeup box had a lock, and I thought there should be a clue inside, so I looked for the key, and after I opened the Huarong Road, a red laser appeared."
She tried pressing a button inside, and sure enough, a red laser appeared, shooting straight at the opposite corner of the wall. "My door is very strange, there is no password and no keyhole. At first, I was stuck and couldn't find a way to escape. Later, I tried to move the makeup box and found that by using the reflection of the makeup mirror opposite, I could let the red laser shine on the metal handle of the door, and it would automatically unlock."
"Oh my God... I might never be able to get out in my lifetime." Shang Sirui was full of admiration.
"Didn't you come out too?" Cen Cen said with a smile.
"I was able to get out thanks to these two big guys." Shang Sirui grinned and automatically stuck to Xia Xiqing.
Xia Xiqing didn't push him away. He suddenly thought of the information he found in other rooms that had nothing to do with escaping the room, so he asked Ruan Xiao, "Did you find any other information in your room... I mean the kind that is not very useful."
Ruan Xiao's eyebrows moved slightly, but only for a moment, and she smiled, "No, I don't think there is much information about my room."
She is lying.
Xia Xiqing felt strange, but also felt that it was reasonable. Ruan Xiao was also a smart person, and smart people were always on guard, especially against another smart person. Now that all the players were present, she would definitely not casually reveal the clues she had.
I can only find it myself, Xia Xiqing thought.
Perhaps because of his natural curiosity and admiration for smart people, Shang Sirui had been talking to Ruan Xiao about how to crack the door lock of this room. Ruan Xiao and Cen Cen's rooms were connected, and the two of them already had a relationship of revolutionary comrades. The three of them naturally came together, from this room to the connected room, and from that room to the living room.
Xia Xiqing did not follow them. Instead, he walked slowly step by step along the close-up shots arranged in the hostess's room, observing every detail, until he came to the closet. For some reason, his attention was suddenly attracted by a small wastebasket. While the other people were not in the room for the time being, he quietly walked to the closet, but found that Zhou Ziheng had also come over, and the two of them were in sync again.
He was also following the camera, but from the opposite direction.
The two people finally met in front of this wardrobe.
"You also feel something is wrong?" Xia Xiqing squatted down and emptied the wastebasket, and scraps of paper scattered all over the floor.
Zhou Ziheng nodded, "This game taught me two things. First, every fragment is not accidental."
Xia Xiqing shrugged helplessly, "What else?"
Zhou Ziheng picked up a piece of debris and looked up at Xia Xiqing's eyes. "When doing multiple tasks at the same time, you must learn to grasp the key points."
Everyone was so focused on decryption and escape that they forgot a more important point.
"This game is not just an escape room. If you don't find the killer, you will lose in the end."
He was absolutely right. The biggest difficulty of this show is not who can escape first, but whether the ordinary players can find the killer and kill him. Otherwise, once the killer becomes the final winner, everyone's efforts will be in vain.
Xia Xiqing wondered what he would do at this moment if he were a killer.
First of all, you have to conceal your identity as much as possible and cover up all the clues that may expose you. But for the killer, exposing your identity is inevitable, after all, they have to kill someone anyway. Secondly...
While thinking, Zhou Ziheng spoke again, "Now that everyone is here, the first round of voting will be soon. Someone will be eliminated soon."
"It's too rushed." Xia Xiqing scratched the hair hanging on his forehead, frowned, and looked up at Zhou Ziheng. "If you were the killer, what would you do before the first round of voting?"
The two looked at each other, exchanging dangerous signals in their eyes.
"Kill the person who is most likely to guess the killer's identity."
Xia Xiqing chuckled and licked his lips, "Tsk, this is so exciting."
He is not a killer. Seeing how devoted Zhou Ziheng is in searching for the killer, he is definitely not one, unless his acting skills are so good that he can completely disguise himself as an ordinary player.
With his acting skills, he could indeed do it, but Xia Xiqing actually preferred to believe that he was not a killer. If he was a killer, he would have died countless times.
Regardless, he knew that he was the most dangerous one right now. As an ordinary player, he had found too many clues from the beginning, and the only person who could be considered an ally was hostile to him.
"I'm very curious. If you don't believe me, then how much do you believe what Ruan Xiao said just now?" Xia Xiqing asked.
Zhou Ziheng didn't look up, but whispered, "The decryption idea is true, and the lack of clues is false." After that, he pointed to the fragments on the ground.
Very pertinent.
As expected, this person only had prejudices against him. For some reason, Xia Xiqing actually felt quite happy.
Obviously, the scraps of paper on the ground were once a complete document. The two people half-knelt on the ground and pieced it together. Zhou Ziheng didn't say anything. His mind was still thinking over and over again about the fragmented clues. He was afraid that he had missed something and that he would misjudge Xia Xiqing because of his first impression of him.
In the quiet atmosphere, Xia Xiqing suddenly spoke, "Do you believe now that I am not a killer?"
Zhou Ziheng looked up at him, his deep eyes staring at him for a few seconds, as if to penetrate him. Xia Xiqing did not dodge at all.
He wanted to know what Zhou Ziheng was trying to see in his eyes.
But if he knew what Zhou Ziheng wanted, he would give it to him.
They only looked at each other for a few seconds, but time seemed to slow down at this moment. The last frame was Zhou Ziheng's eyelids lowered first and thick eyelashes trembling slightly as if he had admitted defeat. He said nothing, lowered his head and continued to piece together the fragmented pieces of paper, as if he had not heard Xia Xiqing's question before.
Xia Xiqing expected that he would not get a definite answer from him. No answer was already an answer. He did not care much. He just smiled and asked again, "Who do you suspect?" He added, "I mean, besides me, are there any other suspects?"
Zhou Ziheng didn't look up, nor did he even think too much, but his subconscious urge to confront Xia Xiqing made him blurt out what he said.
"You will always be a suspect in my heart."
Such an ambiguous statement made even Xia Xiqing, a veteran in the love field, stunned.
It was about three seconds later that Zhou Ziheng realized that something was wrong. He looked up suddenly with a hint of surprise in his eyes. His thinking as a science student made it impossible for him to distinguish the difference between "You are always a suspect in my heart" and "You are always a suspect in my heart" in the short time he had to speak, which caused such a big trouble.
The same subject, predicate and object, but the changes in minor details can create so much ambiguity out of thin air. Words and texts, which are full of uncertainty, are really cunning.
"Is that so..." Xia Xiqing's voice softened, "It's really my honor."