Fang Juexia froze for a second.
Just a moment ago, he was still brainstorming, calculating the trump cards of the two people in front of him and his chances of winning. However, as soon as he heard Pei Tingsong's words, his high-speed brain malfunctioned.
His brain always malfunctioned because of Pei Tingsong.
"Clap! Clap!" The sound of applause interrupted Fang Juexia's train of thought.
Xia Xiqing, who was standing at the side, put down her hand and sighed. "Are all your boy bands so good at playing?"
Pei Tingsong said bluntly, "Still not as good as you."
His words made Fang Juexia's train of thought work again. That's right, Pei Tingsong was just playing a game. His words were always confusing, and in fact, he was no different from Xia Xiqing.
No, he might even be doing business.
He seemed sincere, but in reality, he couldn't be trusted at all.
"My knight …" Fang Juexia looked away, lowered his head, and picked up the appointment form that he had deliberately thrown on the table. The corners of his mouth curled up. "You make it sound like I'm the killer who needs the protection of the Black Knight."
After he finished speaking, he raised his head and used the most basic and best expression management skills as an idol to hide his momentary panic. He looked at Pei Tingsong with suspicion and judgment. "Like Brother Xiqing, I don't really believe your identity as a knight. Even though I don't dare to believe his words so easily.
"Obviously, you won't be able to come up with anything logical. There's nothing you can do or say that can prove your logic. Unless you announce your faction, nothing else will hold water."
Obviously, Xia Xiqing didn't choose to directly announce his faction.
After hearing his words, Pei Tingsong didn't continue to argue or argue with Fang Juexia like a child. Instead, he was calm in the face of his sudden questioning. "It's okay if you don't believe me. At this point in time, no one knows if anyone is telling the truth or not. However, there's always a first come first serve rule."
Fang Juexia maintained a faint smile on his face and said calmly, "You were the one who initiated it."
Whether it was Xia Xiqing or Pei Tingsong, the two fake knights seemed to be competing with each other. In fact, they were actually beating around the bush with Fang Juexia.
Then, he lowered his head to look at the appointment form. On the second line was Early's name. "It's only been two secret rooms, and there are already two knights. No one can be sure if Killer is really behind this. It seems that all of you want to pull my vote, which makes me afraid to act rashly. "
Fang Juexia made his position clear. Xia Xiqing laughed instead, as if destroying the covenant between them was already a great gain. "You have a point." He put his hands in his pockets and said with a relaxed expression, "Let's figure out the plot first or escape first. There's no need for the three of us to fight like this. There's still some time before the first round of voting. We can talk about it then. "
Pei Tingsong narrowed his eyes slightly. "Then, Brother Xiqing, you should have found clues about the plot in that secret room just now, right?"
At this point, both of them knew that neither of them was easy to deal with. If they kept it a secret, it would only arouse suspicion. Xia Xiqing generously pulled out a small booklet that he had stuffed in the pocket of Xiqing's school uniform pants. "Actually, I wanted to show it to you before." He gave Pei Tingsong a look. "But in order to save you, he put all his attention on solving the puzzle and forgot about it."
He handed over the booklet in his hand. "This is a medical record. The name on it is the same as the name on my chest tag. It's Early. It sounds like a nickname or a fake name."
Fang Juexia took the medical record and flipped it open. It recorded symptoms related to mental illness.
[Name: Early. Gender: Female. Age: 17]
Pei Tingsong was the first to notice the bright spot. "Hey, the gender written here is female."
Xia Xiqing glanced at it. "Really? I didn't notice. Maybe they thought I looked good and wanted me to play the female lead? Maybe it was a bad idea from the screenwriter's family. "
Fang Juexia's attention was on the medical record. He read softly, "The patient was diagnosed with depression on February 10th due to depression, long-term insomnia, anxiety, mental weakness, and fear of social and physical contact. She is currently taking …"
Pei Tingsong just listened to the beginning and pursed his lips. "The character setting is not at all like her."
Xia Xiqing laughed. "I'm especially suited for this kind of miserable character setting."
"The booking date is March 2nd, which means that Early might be looking for …" Fang Juexia glanced at Pei Tingsong and said tacitly, "Dr. Tian."
"Yes, she's looking for Dr. Tian for a follow-up consultation or some other kind of psychological treatment." Fang Juexia looked at Xia Xiqing again. "Brother Xiqing, can we go to your room to take a look?"
"Of course. This room might be able to provide clues to Early's plot. " Xia Xiqing turned around and led them over. "At first, I thought it was quite strange. There are very few decorations in this room. It's quite different from the first season. It looks like they cut corners."
Indeed, as Xia Xiqing said, the room was surprisingly simple. The only furnishings were a sofa and a small coffee table. On the coffee table, there was a landline phone and a manual on mental health. There was also an oil painting that had been taken down and placed on the sofa.
Seeing Fang Juexia looking down at the painting, Xia Xiqing casually explained, "This is Van Gogh's' The Garden '. I took it down to solve the mystery."
"Van Gogh …" Pei Tingsong sat down on the sofa and glanced at the wallpaper. It was different from the blue wallpaper outside. It was pink.
Fang Juexia carefully observed the room and felt that something was wrong. "At first, I thought it would be the same as the first season, where every room is a replica of the player's character setting and is their own room. But it doesn't seem to be the case now. "
Hearing what he said, Xia Xiqing picked up a backpack from the sofa and shook out the contents onto the coffee table. "If you want to see the player's setting, this should be the prop prepared by the program team."
On the coffee table were a few paintbrushes, a box of newly bought paints that had not been opened yet, a high school textbook, and a brochure from an art training institution. Fang Juexia squatted by the coffee table and began to organize the props. He placed them neatly and then checked them one by one.
Pei Tingsong looked through them and guessed, "So this character is a 17-year-old high school girl who is studying art. She suffers from depression and comes to Dr. Tian's clinic for treatment."
"Not only that, look at this." Xia Xiqing opened the textbook. There was a torn up suicide note that had been glued back together.
Fang Juexia glanced at it. It was indeed a girl's handwriting. It was delicate and clean, but it had been torn to pieces.
Xia Xiqing picked up the suicide note and read it aloud. "When you see this suicide note, I may have left this world forever. I tried to love this world in the past, but this world did not give me any warmth. I knew that those who had hurt me in the past would not change because of my departure. They would still hurt more children. They will tear our bodies apart with violence and crush our childhood with authority. But at least at this last moment, I have to stand up and expose … "
His voice stopped abruptly. Pei Tingsong, who was still flipping through the art training brochure, looked up. "What's the matter?"
"It's gone." Xia Xiqing put down the suicide note. "She didn't continue writing until here. When I saw it, it was already a pile of fragments. When I pieced it together, it was a complete piece of paper, but the suicide note was incomplete."
Pei Tingsong confirmed that it was indeed not finished. "Could that be the case? This girl wanted to commit suicide before, so she wrote a suicide note in advance. But later, she had other thoughts and regretted it, so she tore up the suicide note. "
"This logic makes sense." Xia Xiqing put down the suicide note. "I'm thinking that her suicide note mentioned 'those who hurt her', 'tear her body apart', and 'crush her childhood'. These words are probably hinting that she was hurt when she was a child. Then among these players, could there be someone who played the role of the character who hurt her? "
Xia Xiqing's train of thought also reminded Fang Juexia. In the past "Escape", the killer often corresponded to the murderer or the perpetrator in the plot. If they followed this line of thought, they might be able to find the real killer.
If they found the tool that hinted at the character's identity, then what about this secret room? Was there some kind of metaphor?
Fang Juexia looked around and realized that there was not even a bed in this room.
"Brother Xiqing …"
Pei Tingsong sat on the side and heard Fang Juexia call Xia Xiqing by her name. He even called her brother affectionately, which was completely different from the cold attitude he had when he was with him. He felt a little upset. These things could have been discussed with him, but Fang Juexia skipped over him.
He couldn't describe this feeling, but he felt a little irritated.
Fang Juexia continued to ask Xia Xiqing, "Many of the rooms we escaped from before were bedrooms or study rooms. What do you think this room looks like?"
Xia Xiqing sensed something from his tone. He looked carefully and then looked at the door that connected to the consultation room. Suddenly, he thought of something. "Are you saying that this is the waiting room?"
"Yes." Fang Juexia nodded. "It's just a guess." He held the appointment form in his hand and pointed at Pei Tingsong. "Xiao Pei is a psychiatrist, Dr. Tian. You're Early Morning, a patient who has given up on suicidal thoughts. As for why you're in the waiting room …"
Pei Tingsong continued, "Because you're the one who's in the consultation room." He read out the first name on the appointment form. "Teacher Yan."
Fang Juexia nodded. This was why when they clicked on the screen on the door, the notification tone said, "Your consultation time has not ended. Please do not leave."
"I got it." Xia Xiqing smiled. "So, the remaining players should be on this list." He read out the names one by one. "Teacher Yan, Early Morning, Xiaoxi, Zoe. This means that there are a total of five players. One psychiatrist and four patients. Teacher Yan and the psychiatrist are trapped in the consultation room together. The remaining three are in different waiting rooms. "
"That should be the case." Fang Juexia stood up.
Pei Tingsong leaned his head against the couch. "But we're trapped here now. Even if we figure out these things, it's useless. Let's think about how to get out first."
"Xiao Pei, why don't you rest on the couch for a while?" Xia Xiqing winked at Fang Juexia. "Xiao Zhen and I will go and figure out how to unlock the door."
Pei Tingsong sat up straight like a puppy. "That won't do. What if you lock me inside when you get out?"
Xia Xiqing smiled. "Why would we do such a thing?"
"Forget it, Brother Xiqing." Pei Tingsong pursed his lips. "You did that in the first season. You even did it to Senior."
Fang Juexia didn't pay attention to their bickering. He was thinking about what Xia Xiqing had just said. He muttered to himself in a low voice. Every time he was thinking seriously, he would do this. "There's no lock on that door. And just now, it said that my consultation time hasn't ended. I can't go out …"
Wait a minute.
His consultation time hadn't ended. The patient was still waiting next door.
He suddenly thought of something. He wanted to stand up, but his legs were numb from squatting. He couldn't control himself and leaned towards the couch. He almost fell onto Pei Tingsong. Pei Tingsong hurriedly helped him up and pulled him to sit beside him. He didn't spare him. "Your legs go soft too easily."
Xia Xiqing laughed out loud and unexpectedly agreed with Pei Tingsong. "Yeah, my legs go soft before I even do anything."
Pei Tingsong changed the topic. "By the way, why did you suddenly stand up just now?"
Fang Juexia didn't notice anything wrong. His legs were so numb that he couldn't think straight. On the other hand, Pei Tingsong immediately let go of Fang Juexia's hand and moved to the other side.
Fang Juexia rubbed his legs. He turned sideways and asked, "Brother Xiqing, you said that your secret room was relatively simple. Could the scriptwriter have done this on purpose?"
Xia Xiqing narrowed her eyes and thought for a few seconds. She suddenly understood what Fang Juexia was trying to say. "You're trying to say that by giving me a simple secret room, you want me to enter your room as soon as possible."
Pei Tingsong also understood. "Normally, the difficulty of the secret room would be assigned according to the player's ability. Giving an expert like you a simple secret room and trapping us two beginners is to ensure that you can enter this room before we leave."
At this point, the three of them stood up at the same time. Pei Tingsong instinctively helped Fang Juexia up. Fang Juexia raised his head and whispered, "My legs are not soft anymore." Then he walked faster than anyone else.
His legs are not soft anymore. That's amazing.
I think Fang Juexia is the toughest person in the world. His legs are hard, and so is his heart.
Pei Tingsong rolled his eyes behind him, but he still followed Fang Juexia. After passing through the door that connected the two secret rooms, they arrived at the psychiatrist's consultation room. They stood in front of the black door.
"I hope we're not wrong." Fang Juexia clicked on the dark screen. There was no sign of Greek letters on it, and there was no prompt that indicated that the consultation time had not ended.
But again, there were no new Greek letters or puzzles, as the three of them had imagined.
Just as Fang Juexia was puzzled, a new prompt sounded.
"Hello, your consultation time has ended. Please follow the instructions to find the correct exit and leave the consultation room."
Sure enough, it was not that simple.
Pei Tingsong was the only one who instinctively grasped the words. "The correct exit …"
Suddenly, the sound system in the room sounded. It was the voice-over announcement.
"Please note that two players have left the initialization room and arrived at the public area."
This kind of announcement would undoubtedly increase the psychological burden of the other players. However, Fang Juexia did not feel too much about it. Generally speaking, the public area and the storyline were the most difficult.
Xia Xiqing teased, "This room is indeed difficult. There are many levels and trivial. You guys are quite unlucky. It's almost the same as my Hell Instance in the second episode of the first season."
Fang Juexia knew that this room was a psychiatrist's consultation room, so it was natural that it was difficult. As idols, they had appeared on many variety shows as decoration. Now it seemed that the production team of "Escape" liked to do the opposite. They had given them a difficult instance to initialize. If they could solve it, the audience would be surprised. If they couldn't, Xia Xiqing would come in to help.
Thinking of this, he saw Xia Xiqing's eyes were attracted by the painting by the door.
"Based on past experience, there's something wrong with the painting." Xia Xiqing tried to take down the painting on the wall, but found that it was fixed tightly. "The props team worked really hard."
Fang Juexia did not pay much attention to the content of the painting. Instead, it was Pei Tingsong who said, "I just wanted to say that the painting technique is a bit special. There's no outline of anything. It's all made up of grids." He asked Xia Xiqing for advice. "Brother Xiqing, I'll have to trouble you to explain it to us."
Xia Xiqing laughed. "You're the first person on this show who took the initiative to ask me to explain about painting."
Pei Tingsong shrugged. "Philosophy and literature can be considered to be of the same origin."
"You're quite good at talking." Xia Xiqing looked at the painting. "This is actually a world-famous painting, 'The Composition of Red, Blue, and Yellow' by Peter Mondrian. The whole painting is made up of grids. The outline of things that you mentioned just now is from the classical school, which means that nature is the source of inspiration. Painters know that nature is beautiful, so they paint natural figures to show the beauty. Mondrian's grids are another innovation. It's from the abstract school. He tried to explore whether beauty still exists after discarding all external forms. "
Fang Juexia looked at the painting in front of him. Countless black horizontal and vertical lines formed grids of various sizes, and the grids were filled with color. He didn't know if it was because he was born to like precision and clarity, but such a rigorous and artistic grid painting was indeed beautiful in his eyes.
Pei Tingsong nodded. "In other words, his grids are actually deconstructing the world, and the horizontal and vertical lines are the essence of the world."
"You can understand it that way." Xia Xiqing was a little surprised. She didn't expect this 20-year-old boy to have such a high understanding of art. "This is a kind of artistic pursuit of the origin of the world."
Strangely enough, these words touched Fang Juexia and Pei Tingsong at the same time. In the secular world, philosophy and mathematics were both disciplines that explored the origin of the world. Although they often couldn't intersect, at this moment, the purpose of this pursuit was actually intersecting in the form of artistic expression. It was really interesting.
"You're quite good at choosing paintings. This painting was created by Mondrian to seek inner peace, and it also fits the setting of a psychiatrist's office."
Fang Juexia couldn't help but say, "Although I don't know much about painting, when I see this, it reminds me of Pythagoras."
Xia Xiqing laughed. "That's true. Maybe they're both geometric freaks, but Pythagoras might prefer triangles. If you draw a diagonal line diagonally, it's more like …" As he spoke, he stretched out his finger to draw diagonal lines on the painting. Suddenly, he seemed to have discovered something. "Hmm?"
He placed both of his palms on the painting and touched the entire painting.
Pei Tingsong asked, "What's wrong? Is there something wrong? "
Xia Xiqing didn't look back. She just asked them, "Is the fifth Greek letter e?"
Fang Juexia nodded. "Yes."
"The last clue is hidden in this grid painting." Xia Xiqing grabbed Fang Juexia's hand and put it on the painting. "Touch it. Some of the horizontal and vertical lines on the painting are raised, and the raised part is in the shape of e."
Sure enough.
"It's true. This is so hard to find." Fang Juexia looked surprised. He turned back to look at Pei Tingsong, but the latter's expression didn't look so good.
What's wrong?
Xia Xiqing tried to push the raised line with her finger. Unexpectedly, the line in the shape of a Greek letter was twisted by her.
Suddenly, the screen on the door on their right lit up again, and a small e appeared on it. At the same time, the painting in front of them suddenly moved!
Xia Xiqing and Fang Juexia let go of their hands and took a step back. He watched as the painting split from the middle, as if it had been cut into two halves. One of the halves moved up, and the other moved down, running in different directions. It wasn't until the upper half exceeded the height of the door on the right and the lower half touched the ground that the sliding stopped.
"There's a slide rail hidden in this wall." Pei Tingsong couldn't believe it, even though he had seen the props team's props before.
The slide rail was hidden under the wallpaper, and the distance and width were exactly the same as the width of the painting. It seemed like it was waiting for them to discover the problem with the painting and activate the corresponding mechanism.
The sliding picture frame and the slide rail cut through the blue wallpaper. The torn wallpaper shook and fell, revealing the white part inside. They thought it was a wall, but when Xia Xiqing tore the wallpaper covering the slide rail, a brand new white door appeared in front of them.
In the position where the painting was hung, there was a screen similar to the one on the door on the right.
Who would have thought that there would be two doors in this secret room!
Pei Tingsong understood. "So this is what the correct exit means."
The two screens lit up at the same time, and a new prompt sounded at the same time. "Hello, patient. Your consultation time has ended. You may leave now."
The AI lock on the white door spoke in a digitalized human voice. "We are the AI locks of these two doors. Under a special program setting, the words of one of us will always be true, and the other will always be false."
The black door continued, "If we ask you to make a choice directly, the success rate is only 50%. Therefore, you have the right to ask a question. Only one, and we can only answer yes or no. Please think carefully. If you make a wrong choice, we will lock the door from the inside, and you can try again after an hour. "
There were two doors, and only one question could be asked. One was an eternal lock, and the other was an eternal false lock. They could only answer yes or no.
This was a logic question.
Fang Juexia tried to simplify and formalize the question. He quickly deduced in his mind, but he was one step too late.
"I'll do it?"
"So fast?" Xia Xiqing glanced at him. "If you're wrong, you'll have to wait for an hour."
Hearing Pei Tingsong's voice, Fang Juexia turned to look at him. Seeing Pei Tingsong's confident face, Fang Juexia believed that he already had an answer. That's right, Pei Tingsong had truly studied systematic logic.
Fang Juexia nodded and chose to believe him.
He saw Pei Tingsong with his arms crossed and was about to speak. He wanted to listen to his question carefully, but he didn't expect this guy to ask him. "Brother, which door do you like? The white one or the black one? "
Fang Juexia was taken aback by the sudden question. He didn't know if his brain short-circuited because of this "brother", or because of his inexplicable question.
"Hmm …" Fang Juexia pointed casually. "The white one, the new door."
Xia Xiqing's eyes jumped back and forth between the two of them. She found it very interesting. Sure enough, compared to this kind of roundabout and cold logic question, he preferred to observe people's hearts.
"Okay." Pei Tingsong stood in front of the white door and asked this precious question.
"Excuse me, will the other AI say that this door is the real exit?"