[R18] I only like your personality [Entertainment Circle] – “I Only Like Your Character [Entertainment Circle]” Chapter 8 [English]

Chapter 8 Mirror and Musical Notes

When he knelt down on one knee to help Xia Xiqing untie the rope from his leg, Zhou Ziheng himself didn’t know what was going on, why he was bewitched by this person, and why he didn’t stand firm and agreed to his request.

None of this makes sense.

Maybe it’s because he is recording a program, and he has already made a request to himself, so it would be bad if he refuses again.Zhou Ziheng found a step for himself.

“Thank you.” Xia Xiqing’s final voice sounded very happy, even though his hands were still cuffed.He stood up from the chair, put his toes on the floor and stretched his ankles, while turning his head and observing the room.Zhou Ziheng took off all the white cloth coverings in the room and placed them in a corner.

This room is not too big, but judging from the furnishings, it is a study room with a good style. What we are most concerned about is that there is a code lock on the door. You can open the door by entering the correct four-digit code through the touch screen.

In the room, light brown wallpaper with dark patterns covers the four walls, with several paintings hanging on it, and an oval mirror with a wooden frame. To the right of the mirror is a mahogany cabinet against the wall, with a phonograph on it and a vinyl record on it.

These are not the focus of Xia Xiqing’s attention. He carefully looked for the distribution of cameras in this room.After all, it is a reality show, and all the puzzles are arranged, so there must be cameras set up to complete the close-up of the decryption process.

After roughly counting the cameras, Xia Xiqing understood a lot.The occupational disease caused him to look at the paintings hanging on the wall, and Zhou Ziheng also walked over, 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’s hand holding the picture frame paused.Art has never been his specialty. Although he has been acting since childhood, there is still a big gap between the art of painting and the art of performing.

“I don’t know much about this.” Zhou Ziheng still told the truth.

Xia Xiqing smiled, “This is Goya’s painting, “The Clothed Maha”. This painting actually has a very interesting story.”

Zhou Ziheng put the painting back and glanced at him. In fact, he was not interested in the story Xia Xiqing told him at all. But he remembered that it was being recorded and it didn’t seem good not to speak, so he reluctantly agreed: “What story.”

“Spain in the 18th century was shrouded in asceticism for historical reasons. No nude images were allowed to appear in the country’s artworks. The only painting, Venus in the Mirror, was protected from punishment by the king.”She was wearing a hazy white gauze dress, and a wide rose-colored belt around her waist outlined her soft waist.

“She is wearing…”

Xia Xiqing’s hand paused, his eyes glanced at Zhou Ziheng, the ends of his beautiful eyes were slightly raised, “She was originally undressed. Legend has it that this woman was a noble concubine in Spain, and Goya was ordered to paint a full-length portrait of her.” As he said that, Xia Xiqing suddenly chuckled, “Who knows…Completely fascinated by the beauty, he painted a nude portrait. After the incident was revealed, the dignitary was very angry. In order to appease his anger, Goya painted an identical painting of “The Clothed Maha”.Both paintings were eventually taken away.”

Zhou Ziheng frowned slightly and looked at the woman in the painting without saying a word.

Xia Xiqing put down his handcuffed hands and looked sideways at Zhou Ziheng.

“Are you imagining another one?”

After hearing this, Zhou Ziheng frowned and looked at he, like a little tiger with its fur standing on end, “I don’t.”

Xia Xiqing smiled, nodded, and replied in a gentle tone, “You’re just kidding.”

No joke at all.

Seeing the fake smile on he’s face, Zhou Ziheng became even more unhappy.

This guy really has no shame.

Zhou Ziheng left without any regrets, walked straight to the long table before, and checked the clues on the table.Xia Xiqing still stood there, staring blankly at the paintings on the wall.

Why would you put this one?

After standing for about a few minutes, Xia Xiqing turned around and found Zhou Ziheng standing next to the long desk where he was leaning against, looking intently at the table. He also walked over. There was a thick book on the table and a torn note.

“It’s so torn into pieces, the prop team is so attentive.” Xia Xiqing looked at the snowflake-like fragments and teased in a gentle tone.

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 and said, “Selected Poems by Kafka.”

Feeling that Xia Xiqing was close to him, Zhou Ziheng felt a little uncomfortable. He put the book aside, picked up one of the small fragments and turned it over to look at it. He frowned and thought for a moment, then without saying anything, he started to piece it together one by one.

The unique ethereal feeling of vinyl records quickly penetrated into this dull confined space with the fast-paced notes. Xia Xiqing leaned against the cabinet and looked at the equally dull young man.

“Have you heard this song?”

Zhou Ziheng did not raise his head and looked at the table intently, “I’m not very good at music.”

He has no interest in art, and he has no good impression of the libertine who engages in art.

Xia Xiqing smiled. Although his hands were handcuffed, he stood in front of the mahogany cabinet and admired it for a while like a professional music connoisseur. Then he slowly said, “This is the first piece of Ravel’s piano suite “Mirror”. It was inspired by moths flying into the fire in the dark.” heHe turned his head, looked at the slowly rotating record, and chuckled, “Although music critics think that these tiny semitones are like fluttering butterfly wings, to me it sounds like a mirror that has been shattered all over the floor.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he regretted a little. It seemed that he shouldn’t have said so much in the show, but Zhou Ziheng, who had been concentrating on piecing together the pieces, suddenly raised his head and looked towards Xia Xiqing.

Perhaps because he felt that the metaphor he was quite appropriate, Zhou Ziheng, who was originally focused on nothing else, was distracted by the ever-flowing music and tried to appreciate the piece.It wasn’t until the broken note was restored accurately that he straightened up.

“Did you fight? You are so awesome.”

Xia Xiqing was a little surprised. The notes were filled with broken letters. The fragments were so many and broken that it gave He, who was not very patient, a headache after reading them.As he said this, he walked to the desk. Zhou Ziheng was using the transparent tape on the desk to paste the fragments into a complete piece of paper.

He took a look, and all the letters on the note appeared and were restored, but it was a sequence of disordered letters.

PGOEUDEAENNHRD

It’s obviously a password.Xia Xiqing frowned slightly, he is now more curious about how Zhou Ziheng put the pieces together so quickly.

“You move so fast, how did you do it?”

Zhou Ziheng turned the piece of paper over, and there was a complete sentence written on the back, in beautiful handwriting.

[Meet you at Sophia’s restaurant tonight at ten o’clock.]

“The information on the back is much easier to restore than the information on the front.”

Xia Xiqing nodded.Even if you can see that there is a complete sentence behind it, it will take some time just to distinguish the pros and cons.

Wait, heads and tails.

Xia Xiqing reached out and picked up the note and touched it. Sure enough, the paper was specially treated. It looked the same, but it felt different. The front side was very smooth to the touch, while the back side was much rougher.

“You are so attentive.” Xia Xiqing put the piece of paper back on the table with his handcuffed hands and smiled sideways at Zhou Ziheng, “As expected of Ziheng.”

Zhou Ziheng couldn’t believe that he admired it so much. He responded slightly stiffly, “This kind of special paper is very common in secret rooms. If you weren’t distracted by the music, you would have discovered it.”

“There is no way, art is life.” Xia Xiqing’s hands were 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 gramophone suddenly became unsmooth, and there was a strange lag, which was unpleasant.

“Your ‘art’ looks a bit old.” Zhou Ziheng rarely used a sarcastic tone. The lagging music made his brain unable to concentrate, so he was about to walk over and turn off the music.

At this time, Xia Xiqing stood motionless, his eyes looking where he didn’t know where to look, as if he was in a daze.

“Wait a minute.” The moment Zhou Ziheng put his hand on the tone arm, Xia Xiqing called out, “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 down on the previous piece of paper.

Did he find anything?Zhou Ziheng slowly withdrew his hand and began to listen carefully to this strange discontinuous piece of music.

The jams in the music sound almost irregular at first glance. Sometimes there are brief jams, and sometimes they last longer.But if you listen carefully, you will find that at the end of every two measures, the lag will stop for a few seconds and then reappear. Even the lag time is the same.

Like some kind of cycle…

Zhou Ziheng quickly realized that the password was repeated at the beginning of each cycle.

Long time lag – short time lag – short time lag – short time lag – music

Short-term lag – long-term lag – short-term lag – music

Short card – music

long – short – music

long – short – long – music

…

The long and short handover is Morse code.

he stood in front of the gramophone and listened to a few bars. Xia Xiqing, who was leaning over the desk just now, straightened up, read and reread the draft he had just calculated, and finally walked to Zhou Ziheng’s side.

“Did you solve it?” He was a little surprised. After all, according to his understanding, Xia Xiqing’s major was art. How could he solve the Morse code so quickly.

Xia Xiqing nodded, frowning slightly, walked to the mirror he saw before, stared at it carefully for a while, and then said to Zhou Ziheng, “Stand away first.”

Zhou Ziheng was puzzled, but he still stood a little further away. When he saw Xia Xiqing take away the tone arm, the music stopped suddenly.He was about to ask Xia Xiqing what kind of information he got after decoding, but he was a step too late. Xia Xiqing took a step back with his right foot, put his handcuffed hands into fists in front of his chest, and using extremely skilled postures and movements, he raised his leg and kicked it sideways.

With a bang, the oval mirror suddenly shattered. He pulled his legs back slightly, and the fragments reflecting the light fell on the wooden cabinet and the floor, making a cracking sound.The moment it fell, the original appearance of the carved frame was finally revealed.

There is a silver key stuck on the gray chassis of the mirror frame.

“Please help me untie this.” Xia Xiqing turned his head and glanced at Zhou Ziheng, then stretched out his bound hands towards him.

To be honest, Xia Xiqing is smarter than Zhou Ziheng imagined.

In this second of thinking, he even considered whether to take the key to himself while he was letting down his guard, so as to use it as a weight to blackmail Xia Xiqing in the future. After all, this is an extremely cunning person, and he is very likely to be a killer.

But he finally gave up this plan.Zhou Ziheng glanced at his wrists, which were a little red from the handcuffs, and felt that his thoughts were really disgusting.

If you are plotted by he later, you will have no choice but to consider yourself unlucky.Zhou Ziheng stepped forward and took off the key. The prop team was really attentive. The key was glued on so firmly that it took a lot of effort for him to take it off smoothly.

Xia Xiqing obediently stretched out his hands in front of Zhou Ziheng and watched him lower his head to unlock the handcuffs for himself. This scene made him enjoy the aesthetics greatly.

Zhou Zihengying’s straight nose bridge and delicately angled eye corners appear even more delicate when viewed from such a low angle. They are a kind of delicate sculpture full of male hormones. The beautiful lines that connect the brow bone and the mountain roots and rise like a silent mountain range toppled by a strong wind.he The lowered head and the focused brows made Xia Xiqing involuntarily think of Paul in Rodin’s sculpture “The Kiss”.

If he wasn’t recording a reality show, Xia Xiqing would definitely lean into his ear and say something.

[Your face is really suitable for kissing.]