When he knelt on one knee to help Xia Xiqing untie the rope on his legs, Zhou Ziheng himself didn't know what was going on, why he was bewitched by this man, and why he didn't stand firm and agree to his request.
None of this makes sense.
Maybe it was because he was recording a show, and he had already asked me for it, so it would be bad to refuse. Zhou Ziheng tried to find a way out.
"Thank you." Xia Xiqing's last tone sounded very pleasant, even though his hands were still handcuffed. He stood up from the chair, put his toes on the floor to stretch his ankles, and turned his head to observe the room. Zhou Ziheng took off all the white cloth covering the room and put them in a corner.
The room was not too big, but judging by the furnishings, it was a study room with a nice style. The door, which they were most concerned about, had a combination lock on it, and the door could be opened by entering the correct four-digit code through the touch screen.
In the room, light brown wallpaper with dark patterns covered all four walls, with several paintings hanging on it and an oval mirror with a wooden frame. To the right of the mirror was a mahogany cabinet against the wall, on which was a gramophone with a vinyl record on top.
These were not Xia Xiqing's focus. He carefully looked for the distribution of cameras in the room. After all, it was a reality show, and all the puzzles were arranged, so there must be cameras there to complete the close-up of the decryption process.
After roughly counting the cameras, Xia Xiqing became much clearer. His occupational disease made him look at the paintings hanging on the wall. Zhou Ziheng also followed him, but he wanted to check if there were any clues behind the paintings.
"What do you think of this painting?"
Hearing Xia Xiqing's voice, Zhou Ziheng paused while holding the picture frame. Art has never been his specialty. Although he has been acting since he was a child, there is still a huge gap between the forms of expression of painting art and performing arts.
"I don't know much about this." Zhou Ziheng still told the truth.
Xia Xiqing smiled, "This is a painting by Goya, The Clothed Maja. This painting actually has a very interesting story."
Zhou Ziheng put the painting back and glanced at him. He actually had no interest in the story Xia Xiqing was telling, but he remembered that this was a recording session and it seemed not good to not say anything, so he reluctantly agreed, "What story?"
"Eighteenth-century Spain was shrouded in asceticism for historical reasons. No nude images were allowed in the country's artworks. The only painting, 'Venus in the Mirror', escaped punishment because of the king's protection." Xia Xiqing stretched out his still handcuffed hands and slowly touched the edge of the frame. Zhou Ziheng looked at the woman lying on a dark green velvet couch in the painting with some confusion. She was wearing a hazy white gauze dress, and the wide rose-colored belt around her waist outlined her soft waist.
"She was wearing ..."
Xia Xiqing paused, glanced at Zhou Ziheng, and the tail of her beautiful eyes curled up slightly. "She was naked originally. Legend has it that this woman was a concubine of a Spanish nobleman, and Goya was ordered to paint a full-length portrait of her." Xia Xiqing suddenly chuckled, "Who knew that he was completely fascinated by the beauty and painted a nude portrait. After the matter was exposed, the nobleman was very angry. In order to calm his anger, Goya painted an identical "Clothed Maja". In the end, both paintings were taken away."
Zhou Ziheng frowned slightly, looking at the woman in the painting without saying a word.
Xia Xiqing put down his handcuffed hands and looked at Zhou Ziheng from the side.
“Are you imagining another one?”
After hearing this, Zhou Ziheng frowned and looked at him, like a little tiger with all the hair standing up, "I didn't."
Xia Xiqing smiled and nodded, and replied gently, "Just kidding."
This is no joke.
Looking at the fake smile on his face, Zhou Ziheng became even more displeased.
This guy really has no shame.
Zhou Ziheng left without any regrets, and walked straight to the long table, checking the clues on the table. Xia Xiqing still stood there, staring blankly at the painting on the wall.
Why put this one up
After standing there for about a few minutes, Xia Xiqing turned around and found Zhou Ziheng standing beside the long desk he had been leaning against, looking at the table intently. He also walked over and saw a thick book and a torn note on the table.
"It's torn into pieces! The props team is really attentive." Xia Xiqing teased in a gentle tone as he looked at the snowflake-like fragments.
Zhou Ziheng silently flipped through the book, and a bookmark fell out with a line of words written on it.
[Whatever I touch breaks. — Kafka]
Xia Xiqing came over, "Selected Poems of Kafka."
Feeling Xia Xiqing approaching him, Zhou Ziheng felt a little uncomfortable. He put the book aside, picked up one of the small pieces, turned it over and looked at it. He frowned and thought for a while, then said nothing and started to piece the pieces together one by one. Xia Xiqing didn't like doing this kind of piecemeal work. He walked to the phonograph, gently brushed his fingers over the tonearm of the phonograph, and gently placed the needle on the record.
The unique ethereal feeling of the vinyl record quickly permeated into this dull and enclosed space along with the rapidly rhythmic notes. Xia Xiqing leaned against the closet, looking at the equally dull young man.
“Have you ever heard this piece of music?”
Zhou Ziheng didn't look up, staring at the table intently, "I'm not very good at music."
He had no interest in art, and had no liking for those who engaged in art.
Xia Xiqing smiled. Although his hands were handcuffed, he stood in front of the mahogany cabinet and admired the music for a while like a professional music connoisseur. He then spoke slowly, "This is the first piece of Ravel's piano suite Mirror, which was inspired by moths flying into fire in the dark." He turned his head and looked at the slowly spinning record, chuckling, "Although music critics think that this kind of fine semitone sounds like the fluttering wings of a butterfly, it sounds more like broken mirrors all over the floor to me."
As soon as he finished speaking, he felt a little regretful. He seemed not to have said so much on the show. However, Zhou Ziheng, who had been concentrating on piecing together the fragments, suddenly raised his head and looked towards Xia Xiqing.
Perhaps because he felt that his analogy was quite apt, Zhou Ziheng, who had been concentrating on the music, also focused on the music and tried to appreciate it. He didn't stand up until the broken note was restored accurately.
"Finished it? You're amazing."
Xia Xiqing was a little surprised. The notes were all broken letters. There were so many broken pieces that it gave him a headache. As he spoke, he walked to the desk, where Zhou Ziheng was using the transparent tape on the desk to stick the broken pieces together into a complete piece of paper.
He took a look and found that the letters on the note were all visible and restored, but they were a series of disordered letters.
pgoeudeaenhnrd
It was obviously a code. Xia Xiqing frowned slightly. He was now more curious about how Zhou Ziheng had put the pieces together so quickly.
"That's fast, how did you do it?"
Zhou Ziheng turned the paper over and saw a complete sentence written on the back in beautiful handwriting.
[See you at Sophia Restaurant at 10 o'clock tonight.]
“The information on the back is much easier to restore than the information on the front.”
Xia Xiqing nodded. Even if he could tell that there was a complete sentence behind it, it would take some time to distinguish the front and back.
Wait, front and back.
Xia Xiqing reached out and picked up the note and touched it. Sure enough, the paper had been specially treated. It looked no different, but the feel was different. The front was very smooth, while the back was much rougher.
"You are really careful." Xia Xiqing put the paper back on the table with his handcuffed hands, and smiled at Zhou Ziheng from the side, "You are worthy of being Ziheng."
Zhou Ziheng couldn't believe such admiring words. He responded a little stiffly, "This special paper is very common in the secret room. If you weren't distracted by the music, you would have found it."
"There's nothing I can do. Art is life." Xia Xiqing's hands felt a little sore. He moved his shoulders and lowered his head to look at the paper. For some reason, the originally ethereal and clear music in the phonograph suddenly became unsmooth, and there was a strange freeze, which was unpleasant.
"Your 'art' looks a bit old." Zhou Ziheng rarely used a sarcastic tone. The lagging music made it difficult for him to concentrate, so he prepared to walk over and turn off the music.
At this time, Xia Xiqing stood there motionless, his eyes looking somewhere unknown, as if he was in a daze.
"Wait a minute." Just as Zhou Ziheng put his hand on the tonearm, Xia Xiqing called for a stop, "Don't turn it off yet."
"What's wrong?" Zhou Ziheng looked at him with some dissatisfaction, and found that Xia Xiqing found a pen on the table and wrote something on the previous piece of paper.
Did he discover something? Zhou Ziheng slowly withdrew his hand and began to listen carefully to this strange, discontinuous piece of music.
At first glance, the stuttering in the music seems to have no regular pattern, sometimes it is short, sometimes it lasts longer. But if you listen carefully, you will find that at the end of every two bars, the stuttering will stop for a few seconds and then appear again, and even the duration of the stuttering is the same.
It's like some kind of cycle...
Zhou Ziheng quickly realized that the beginning of each cycle was to repeat the password again.
Long freeze - short freeze - short freeze - short freeze - short freeze - music
Short-term freeze-long-term freeze-short-term freeze-music
Short Card - Music
Long-Short-Music
long-short-long-music
…
The intersection of long and short letters is Morse code.
He stood in front of the phonograph and listened to a few bars. Xia Xiqing, who had been leaning over the desk just now, had straightened up, looked over the draft he had just calculated again and again, and finally walked to Zhou Ziheng's side.
"Solved it?" He was a little surprised. After all, as far as he knew, Xia Xiqing's major was art, so how could he solve the Morse code so quickly
Xia Xiqing nodded, his brows slightly furrowed, and walked to the mirror he had seen before, staring at it carefully for a while, then said to Zhou Ziheng: "Stand further away first."
Zhou Ziheng was puzzled, but he still stood away. He saw Xia Xiqing take away the tonearm, and the music stopped abruptly. He was about to ask Xia Xiqing what information he got after decoding, but he was a step too late. Xia Xiqing took a step back with his right foot, clenched his handcuffed hands and placed them in front of his chest, and with extremely skilled posture and movements, raised his leg and kicked sideways.
With a bang, the oval mirror suddenly shattered. He gently pulled his legs back, and the fragments reflecting the light fell on the wooden cabinet and the floor, making a crisp sound. At the moment of falling, the original appearance of the carved mirror frame finally appeared.
A silver key is pasted on the gray base of the mirror frame.
"Please help me untie this." Xia Xiqing turned his head to look at Zhou Ziheng and stretched out his bound hands towards him.
To be honest, Xia Xiqing's intelligence was beyond Zhou Ziheng's imagination.
During this second of thinking, he even considered whether he should take the key for himself when Xia Xiqing let his guard down, so as to use it as a bargaining chip to threaten Xia Xiqing in the future. After all, this was an extremely cunning person, and there was a great possibility that he was a killer.
But he finally gave up the idea. Zhou Ziheng took a look at the red wrists rubbed by the handcuffs and felt that his idea was really despicable.
If he plotted against me later, I would just have to consider myself unlucky. Zhou Ziheng stepped forward and took down the key. The props team was really attentive. The key was glued very firmly, and it took him a lot of effort to take it off.
Xia Xiqing obediently stretched out his hands in front of Zhou Ziheng and watched him bend down to uncuff him. This scene gave him great aesthetic enjoyment.
Zhou Ziheng's straight nose and exquisitely angled eyes look even more exquisite when viewed from this angle. It is a sculpture full of male hormones. The beautiful lines of the brow bone and the root of the nose are like a silent mountain range toppled by the wind. His lowered head and his eyebrows and eyes that are focused and focused make Xia Xiqing think of Paul in Rodin's sculpture "The Kiss".
If they weren't recording a reality show, Xia Xiqing would definitely lean over to his ear and say something.
[Your face is really suitable for kissing.]