Fanservice Paradox
Chapter 43 – Dinner Party Recap
You really were his knight.
After the program recording ended, the production team specially arranged to also film the dinner meeting, in order to create a highlight reel from that footage. After filming for several continuous hours, everyone was hungry, and had been since a long time ago. Originally, the players had planned to have dinner together at a private restaurant after work, but it just so happened that the program group had already arranged it for everyone, so they all partook in a happy meal together.
“Let’s eat hot pot!” As soon as Shang Sirui sat down, he started vibrating happily and asked, “How miserable is the camera Da Ge ah, have you guys eaten yet? Oh, you’ve eaten ah, then I won’t feel sorry for you anymore.”
Xia Xiqing sat down to his right. “If you’re going to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for yourself ba, silly Sansan.”
Zhou Ziheng sat down next to Xia Xiqing, and seeming very much like a dog running to its master, kneaded his shoulders for a long time. Pei Tingsong sat down on Shang Sirui’s left side, and Fang Juexia also sat down beside him. Zhai Ying, who came in last, went to Zhou Ziheng’s side and sat. Once everyone was seated, they started ordering dishes.
“Xiao Pei grew up abroad, so can you not really eat spicy food?” Xia Xiqing asked.
Pei Tingsong was pouring water. “I’m alright, I can eat it.” After saying that, he suddenly thought of something, and continued, “But Fang Juexia really can’t, so if it’s possible, order half spicy red oil and half tomato soup ba.”
Fang Juexia had originally been setting the tableware in front of him, but upon being cued suddenly, he raised his head and looked at Pei Tingsong.
Pei Tingsong felt that he was being particularly funny, and as he held back the corner of his mouth from curving into a smile, he teased, “Do you want to eat spicy? Pretty boy.”
Fang Juexia immediately shook his head and told everyone, “I can’t eat any peppers at all. I used to think that I could eat spicy food, but then Ling Yi took me to eat Sichuan food, and it was only then that I discovered that Guangdong spicy food and Sichuan spicy food are not at the same level at all.”
The rest of the people started laughing unceremoniously.
“Alright, then half tomato and half spicy red oil.”
“Order some alcohol bei. Everyone was so nervous up until now, so let’s all have a drink to relax.”
Pei Tingsong immediately interrupted, “Fang Juexia can’t drink alcohol.”
Xia Xiqing laughed. “How do you know everything?”
“It’s okay. I can drink it.” Fang Juexia looked over and said, “Xiqing Ge, order it ba.”
“Whether or not you can drink, don’t you still know yourself ah?” Pei Tingsong sighed, “Anyway, in a bit, you’re not allowed to drink, otherwise you can’t even head back.”
“Then order some juice for Juexia.”
The six people gabbled away as they finished ordering dishes and while waiting for the dishes to be served, chatted with each other. Xia Xiqing knocked on the edge of the table with his chopsticks. “Really, the crew for ‘Escape For Your Life’ is the most intelligent and meticulous crew I’ve ever seen, it’s too hard for me!”
Zhou Ziheng nodded heavily twice.
Zhai Ying, in a rare occurrence, followed that up with, “I had known that it would be very difficult when I got on this program. I felt that I had psychologically prepared myself enough for it, but I still didn’t imagine it to be so difficult.”
“It was mainly the plot.” Pei Tingsong said, “When I was uncovering the plot while collecting clues, I constantly kept sighing internally.”
Fang Juexia also agreed. He had deviated from the right track several times, nearly turning the entire plot into another story. Fortunately, he was pulled back by the clues they kept finding.
“Speaking of the plot,” Shang Sirui sighed heavily and continued, “Chenchen, Chen Ge, Writer Xu, let us go ba. If it goes on like this, my brain will end up only being used to make hot pot.”
Everyone started laughing.
“I will vent my anger while he is away.” Shang Sirui raised his drink. “I really want to lock our cute Writer Xu in an escape room. Oh, no, even his family member who provided him with all kinds of puzzles has to be locked up. The two of them can be locked up separately in two different escape rooms, and then I will watch them on the monitor. I’ll watch…”
“Hello, here are the fried tofu skin sticks you ordered.” A waiter came up and set the plate right in front of Shang Sirui.
“Thank you, thank you.” Shang Sirui didn’t even raise his head before continuing to speak, “What did I just say, oh right, lock them up…”
Who knew that instead of leaving, the waiter would actually ask, “Who are you going to lock up?”
“Our screenwriter,” Shang Sirui blurted this out, and then realized that something wasn’t right. As soon as he looked up, he saw the waiter take off his hat and smile at him.
“Chenchen?”
Zhou Ziheng laughed. “As soon as he pushed open the door, I realized who it was. You were the only one naively talking to yourself over there.”
“Eh, just you by yourself?” Xia Xiqing looked at the door and inquired, “Where’s my crooked and underhanded nephew?”
Xu Qichen replied, “Ah, he is working overtime. A new version of the game will be launched tomorrow, and he thinks it might take all night to finish.”
This was the first time Fang Juexia had met Writer Xu in-person, and he looked more elegant and smaller than when he had seen him on TV before. He gave off a bookish air and looked like a college student who had not yet left the ivory tower.
Just as he was thinking that, a pair of chopsticks, waving about in the air, suddenly appeared in front of him. Fang Juexia turned his head and saw Pei Tingsong, who was a real college student. Pei Tingsong pulled back his chopsticks and asked, “What are you looking at?”
Fang Juexia shook his head.
“Let’s welcome Xu Qichen, the screenwriter for Escape 2, to the highlights dinner party,” the director standing behind them all said. “Everyone can eat while recapping things, we’ll edit this footage for a special program and put it on the VIP channel.”
“The director is so good.” Xu Qichen said hello to everyone, took off the waiter’s jacket, and sat next to Zhai Ying. “Let me tell you something, I was the narrator for this season.” After saying that, he smiled. “The voice changer is too fun.”
Shang Sirui’s eyes widened. “Ah! Like I said, at the start, the narration had a really jokey tone, and its style was completely different from the previous season’s narration!”
“So it was like this…” Fang Juexia belatedly realized. “I even kept thinking, we had previously agreed to the show being revised, so how could the rules be the same as the last season? Later, after that joke, I didn’t feel so nervous.”
Pei Tingsong had just tossed in a piece of tripe into the hot pot, and before he got the time to swirl it around, he had caught sight of how Fang Juexia kept staring at Writer Xu. Unconsciously, he started staring at Fang Juexia.
“Xiao Pei, your tripe is getting cooked too tough.” Shang Sirui helped him by taking out the tripe and putting it into his own mouth.
Xu Qichen said with a smile, “I asked Yin Jie to let me participate in the filming of the program. I wanted to watch it ma.”
“Let me first make it clear to the audience that the amount of information that each player started out with in this episode was the same. In other words, everyone only knew whether they were ordinary players, the knight, or the killer. No one had the script or any kind of summary regarding the plot. They had to restore the entire plot gradually through the process of solving the puzzles.”
“Next, I’d like to generally talk about the plot line of this episode. In fact, the core clue was the only one that reflected reality, which was that article in the old newspaper. There was only one protagonist of the whole storyline, named Tan Ji. When he was a child, he was sexually assaulted by his neighbor, which caused him great trauma and made him suffer from delusions. At the same time, he also developed a multiple-personality disorder. He imagined himself to be the best psychologist in the city, Dr. Tian, rather than the patient who was being treated, Tan Ji. At the same time, he split his most painful childhood memories to create the character Zaozao.”
“In the same way, all the players were secondary personalities of his. But this particular personality, Zaozao, suffered too much, and was always on the verge of collapsing. She was completely oppressed and controlled by the master personality, that is, the doctor, so she gradually turned to the other personalities for help. There was a telephone recording that recorded her entire plea for help, which was in the recording pen that Juexia found. However, the master personality figured out that she was resisting, so he hypnotized Zaozao into choosing to commit suicide. The hypnosis script was actually an acrostic, suggesting that the doctor had killed Zao. But before Zaozao could finish writing her suicide note, she was already killed by the doctor personality.”
“So it turns out that this is the real story,” Shang Sirui sighed. “Really, by just missing a link, the plot becomes completely different. But why was it Tan Ji?”
Xiao Pei said, “Actually, when the appointment form was first found, and I saw the names Teacher Yan, Zaozao, and Xiao Xi, I thought of putting the words together. The character Tan is obviously a surname, and since there is a surname, there definitely has to be a given name. I then checked every room with the purpose of finding this name, which was basically like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.”
“Obviously, Zoe and the detective don’t have Chinese names, so the puzzle pieces must not refer to their names, but instead to something related to them. Zoe’s band is called “Together”, and the book inside the safe in the detective’s room only had one word on its cover, North, so that’s ‘北’. Take that north, add on the Tian from Dr. Tian, then add in the character for ‘together’, and you get Ji.”
“This sensitivity of yours, towards words, is really powerful.” Xia Xiqing wasn’t stingy with his praise.
“Just as Xiqing is naturally sensitive to paintings, so is Xiao Pei to writing,” Xu Qichen reminded them, “Didn’t you guys notice that all the clues Xiao Pei collected came from word games.”
Fang Juexia had noticed that; Pei Tingsong had found almost all the word puzzles in this episode, whether it was the hypnotic acrostic at the beginning, or the later puzzle involving the given name, or the most important news article puzzle.
Even his seemingly gag-like nonsense during the program, was a word game he used to hint and pun at things.
Shang Sirui suddenly slapped the table. “I just remembered, when I was chatting with Xiao Pei in that dark room, he kept reading that book the whole time. Later, he placed the book upside down on the table, making sure the cover was especially on display. You did that on purpose ba.”
Pei Tingsong nodded. “Yes, I wanted to show it to Juexia Ge, but later, I thought that since I had almost collected all of the puzzle pieces, it would be better to give him the answer directly, after collecting them all.”
After saying that, Pei Tingsong saw Fang Juexia accidentally eat some spicy beef, and being anxious to drink some water, he grabbed onto his wine cup. Pei Tingsong hurriedly grasped Fang Juexia’s hand and whispered, “This is my cup.”
“I saw wrong.” Fang Juexia pulled his hand away and poured himself a cup of Sprite.
Xu Qichen continued, “There are still many details in the middle, so let’s chat about it all slowly. Everyone’s performance today was so wonderful; actually, the script is just a skeleton, and what really enriches the entire program is each guest’s individual performance. Different players will play with different styles.”
Xia Xiqing had ordered some alcohol and poured it for himself as he spoke, “Really, this episode was one of the best ones I’ve ever played. Although I didn’t win in the end, winning or losing is really not important at this level.”
“Hahahaha, is it that you didn’t expect that one day, that act of fancily revealing your role would throw you into a pit?!” Shang Sirui swished a large piece of tripe through the hot pot as he said, “But seriously, low-end players just see the results, while high-end players look at the process. This time, even me, a low-end player, felt pretty cool.”
“I’ll give myself this penalty cup for my empiricism.” Zhou Ziheng also specially touched Xia Xiqing’s cup to his own before drinking, and then drank all the cup’s contents in one gulp. “But I’m very curious, Xiao Pei, when did you find out that Juexia was the knight?”
Pei Tingsong recalled, “It’s a long story, but when we started off together in the clinic at that time, weren’t we all wearing hoods? As soon as I reached out and touched some metal blocks, I actually found a piece of paper under one of them. I subconsciously felt that there was some problem with that, so I secretly pulled out that piece of paper and hid it on my body. Only then did I go and solve the puzzle of the metal blocks to break open Juexia Ge’s hood.”
Fang Juexia, who had originally been eating vermicelli, heard these words, and his eyes grew bright. He slurped up the vermicelli into his mouth and murmured, “So it was at that time that you got my medical record!”
“You’re pretty good at guessing,” Pei Tingsong said with a smile. “After the hood was undone, I immediately looked at that piece of paper. It was indeed the teacher’s medical record, and manic depressive disorder, also known as bipolar disorder, was written there. I realized at that moment that Fang Juexia should be the double-faced knight arranged by the program group for this game. I knew that he might choose to be the black knight, so I hid his medical records at that time, because if it were to be seen by Xiqing Ge, Juexia’s knighthood wouldn’t be able to stay concealed any longer.”
Xia Xiqing clicked his tongue and said, “Expended much thought ah, Xiao Pei.”
Unexpectedly, Shang Sirui suddenly exclaimed, “So manic depression is bipolar disorder ah!”
Fang Juexia took a bite of the frozen tofu in the tomato hot pot, and it was so hot it burned his tongue. “I guessed that Senior Brother didn’t know this, so I finally directly handed Teacher Yan’s medical records to him.”
“Ah! Juexia, you!”
“Even if you knew, it’d be too late.” Xia Xiqing interposed into their conversation and asked Fang Juexia, “In fact, at that time, you had already sorted through all the evidence and had understood the whole plot, hadn’t you?”
“En.” Fang Juexia looked at Pei Tingsong as he said, “Xiao Pei found the core clue, but he hid it.”
Zhou Ziheng was a little puzzled. “I was there when he went ah. How could I…” Halfway through saying those words, he suddenly remembered, exclaiming, “I know, when you played the guitar!”
Xu Qichen started laughing first. “I was laughing to death back when I was watching it happen on the monitor. In fact, Ziheng put forth several key questions.”
Zhou Ziheng found it inexplicable. “Really?” But as soon as this question came out, he thought about it again and slapped himself on the forehead with great chagrin. “Ah, I’m so stupid. I even asked you what that guitar was.”
Pei Tingsong laughed and carried a slightly childlike air as he explained, “Yes ah, when you asked me, I specifically told you that it was a hollow-body guitar. If you had reached in, you could have felt the newspaper pasted to its inner walls.”
“The article was about the real protagonist Tan, and said that he was suffering from delusions and had multiple-personality disorder. He had been wearing a white coat when he had committed the murder, so it was very obvious that he had deluded himself into thinking that he was a psychologist, that his surname was Tian, and that he was the best psychologist in the city. The other players formed all of his secondary personalities.”
“Was the detective also his secondary personality?” Shang Sirui was a little confused.
“Yes.” Zhou Ziheng said, “I sorted it out later, after I was sent backstage. The detective personality was likely a newly split personality. In fact, that letter Zaozao sent her implied that she was already on the verge of collapse, and there was no way to rescue her. Her desperation to be saved made the new personality of a detective appear. That letter that spoke about searching for a fugitive actually reflected Tan Ji’s reality. He himself was the fugitive who had killed people. Is that right, Qichen?”
Xu Qichen gave him a thumbs up. “Very good. In fact, among the various multiple personalities, there are those who know each other, but also some who do not. In this plot, Tan Ji fantasizes that he is Dr. Tian. Thus, as the master personality, his means to control other personalities was through psychological counseling, therefore, all of the other personalities were his patients, and they received treatment from him, even hypnotic treatment. But the detective personality was a new birth, who could be regarded to be the Zaozao personality’s protector, a scenario which also reflected reality to the greatest extent.”
“Now, considering the news article, in almost each and every personality, a trace of reality can be found. The lead singer of the band may represent some of Tan Ji’s childhood dreams, because Zaozao represented his childhood, and she liked Zoe very much…” Zhai Ying was a little surprised. “Too strong, there was even something hidden in the guitar… No wonder the program group specifically found a hollow body guitar, they’re too meticulous.”
Xu Qichen asked, “Did Xiao Pei find the newspaper when he was playing the guitar? When I was watching the monitor, I heard you specifically say that the sound wasn’t bad.”
Pei Tingsong nodded. “As soon as I played it, I discovered that the guitar’s sound wasn’t right. After all, after having played the guitar for so many years, I do understand it. I guessed then that there was something inside, and when Ziheng Ge went past me, I reached in and took out the clue. “
Shang Sirui sighed. “Not knowing how to play an instrument then is really… Who would stick their hand into a guitar? The props group is too strong.”
Fang Juexia couldn’t help opening his mouth to say, “There were also many other unreasonable details present, and it seems that the program group included them all intentionally. The appointment time for Teacher Yan to visit the doctor is 5:52, but how can anyone go see a doctor this early in the morning? This implies that all of these things are fake—that the doctor is fake, and that the patients are also fake. There was also a small hint given by the stylist group, I don’t know if anyone noticed it. Although we all played different roles, we are all wearing the same shirt.”
Shang Sirui looked down at his flowered shirt, then looked up at the others and admired, “Amazing. So in fact, we are all the same person.”
“The program group is really strong.” Xia Xiqing recapped the hints they had gathered through the props, “If you think about it, every room, except the doctor’s clinic, actually represents something. For example, the guitar in Shang Sirui’s room corresponds to the ukulele in the consultation room, the textbook in Ziheng’s school bag corresponds to the astronomy books in the consultation room’s bookshelf, the art tools and paintings in Zaozao’s room corresponds with the paintings in the consultation room.”
“And there’s also the magnifying glass, representing the detective,” Pei Tingsong added.
“Including this was ‘The Death of Marat’, which, in fact, was also a core clue. Chenchen had even opened up a back door for me, but I was eager to prove my point of view at that time, and thus ignored the secondary deep meaning hidden in the painting, which was— reversal. The painting was reversed, and so the characters who were assassinated within the painting should also be reversed. Similarly, the diary in the painting also has to be read in a reversed order.”
Xu Qichen said, “You finally realized that something wasn’t right, and I was surprised by the extent to which you reacted to that piece. In just half a minute, you overturned all your views for the plot that you had set up before and pulled back to the correct plotline. You’re very strong.”
He set aside his chopsticks. “This time, I can also count as having incorporated Xiqing’s usual play style. I knew that even if Xiqing had a normal role, he would definitely reveal himself as the knight, so I purposefully designated the identity of an ordinary player to him and let him muddle the waters. If Xiqing was the real knight, its effect on the program might not have been so good.”
After that, he looked at Pei Tingsong and said, “Reality proves that that was true. If it had really been Xiqing who was the knight, while Xiao Pei was the killer, then—one person just reveals himself explosively, while the other just stabs himself…”
Everyone laughed at this, but Pei Tingsong leaned back on his chair and said with a smile, “No, I only chose to commit suicide after I confirmed that the black knight’s role must be Fang Juexia’s.”
Fang Juexia’s chopsticks paused.
What did this sentence imply?
The other people had begun to coax him, led by Xia Xiqing. “Aiya, so you made all your preparations and handed over all the relics, and only then went unflinchingly to your death?”
What relics?
“Then how did you know that Juexia was definitely a black knight? Even if you had his medical record, he could have been a white knight?” Shang Sirui asked.
Pei Tingsong said with a laugh, “That was impossible. Xiqing Ge jumped out to state that he was a knight and pretended to take on Juexia’s identity. My jumping out at him at the same time contained two purposes: on one hand, it was to make Senior suspect Xiqing Ge, thereby not allowing him to rest easy in the position of the knight. On the other hand, I was also trying to bluff out Juexia Ge’s camp.
“If you guys think about it, with two fake knights jumping out at each other and also fighting each other before the vote, if the real knight belonged to the light side, it would be absolutely impossible for him to let others claim his knighthood so easily. For the victory of the good camp, he would have to stand up and reveal himself.” His expression was completely confident as he stated, “Especially if that knight was Fang Juexia.”
“Yes oh, or the white knight would have to carry the blame for this round.”
Fang Juexia lowered his head a little and listened to Pei Tingsong’s words, but what he thought about was the scene from not long ago, where the other party had stuffed the note into the front of his shirt.
“I’m very curious, Juexia.” Xu Qichen asked, “I didn’t see when you finished the handover in the monitors. How did you know he had hidden a clue in the ukulele?”
Fang Juexia raised his head. “When Pei Tingsong was teasing me by the display wall and kept play-fighting with me, I didn’t take it seriously, since he usually likes to play tricks on me and play-fight like this with me. However, he then left abruptly, but before that, he patted my pocket. At that time, I heard a sound from the pocket at the front of my coat, and it was the sound of paper. So I figured out what was going on, but I kept pretending that I didn’t know and searched for a more appropriate time to look at it.”
“So that’s how it is…” Xu Qichen nodded. “You know, Juexia was actually a bit beyond my imagination. At the beginning, I just thought that he was a person suited to playing as the false prophet and hiding his true identity, so I gave him the role. But in fact, his strongest points were not just math and his skill to remain calm at all times, but also his ability to find opportunities.”
Xia Xiqing also grasped this point. “Yes, yes, I just wanted to say that this Little Serious is too good at distracting people. When I think back, I understand that I really underestimated my opponent. In the beginning, he deliberately accommodated me, and in the end, didn’t Ziheng get ousted through voting? At that time, I thought I had nearly won, and then, Juexia deliberately directed my attention towards the code on the handkerchief in the cabinet and asked me to solve it.”
Juexia was a bit embarrassed and nodded. “At that stage, I really needed time to go find the ukulele, but Xiqing Ge is too smart, and if I directly left the hall, he would definitely find a flaw. So I could only use the chessboard code on the door’s display lock to divert his attention.”
“And the reason you provided was also very strong.” Xu Qichen said with a smile, “You said you were going to find your medical record. In fact, if you hadn’t said it, it would have only made Xiqing suspicious.”
Xia Xiqing nodded. “Yes, because you were the only patient without a medical record until then. This was a problem I had been struggling with the entire time. Although you spoke in a sunny way and had made no small moves, that missing medical record kind of remained stuck in my heart the whole time.
“As long as you were a character belonging to the dark camp, you would naturally want to hide your medical records. Yet, in the end, you just stood up and said it, and even added that you were going to go find it yourself. My suspicions on this matter disappeared just like that, so I then concentrated on solving the chessboard code.”
Zhai Ying shook her head. “Maybe it’s because Juexia Ge looks too kind-hearted, and really doesn’t make people feel suspicious about him. When I got that scratch paper, my first reaction was to go find Juexia Ge.” She looked at Fang Juexia and asked, “In fact, at that time, you had already discovered the problem, hadn’t you?”
“No,” Fang Juexia said with a smile and shaking his head. “I was also controlled by my habitual thinking at that time, so I just solved the double integral straightforwardly. In fact, in addition to being a mathematical problem, that set also implied something else.”
Xia Xiqing nodded heavily and regretted his mistakes. “Ah, I was so completely focused on battling it out with Zhou Ziheng at that time. When everyone gathered up the clues, I also just checked the answer for the double integral problem and didn’t notice the set beside it. Then, I went back to the sofa after I had typed the final answer wrong and saw that scratch paper. It was only then that I finally discovered the root of the problem, using this set.”
Zhai Ying curiously asked, “What was wrong with the set?”
Fang Juexia explained, “Set theory states that there can be no repeating elements in a set. But each set on that piece of paper had a repeating element in it. In the extension of set theory, there is a concept called multisets, in which the number of repetitions of an element in a multiset is called multiplicity or repetition, and for all the multisets on the scratch paper, the multiplicity was 6.”
Shang Sirui was surprised. “God, even the set of numbers on a piece of scratch paper implied that there were six personalities.”
“Xiqing was really only a little bit late.” Xu Qichen spoke with a smile, “Because Xiqing is a person who can defend his own views very well, and can also find various clues to act as proof for his views, so he does end up falling into the strange circles of the plot.”
Xia Xiqing recognized this. “So that’s why I say I didn’t lose out anything by losing this time; everyone played really well this round. When I finally sat on the sofa, and my mind filled with all the details I couldn’t reconcile together before, that was a really cool feeling, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t say anymore.” Zhou Ziheng was laughing so hard he was nearly dying of breathlessness. “You guys don’t know, but I died, right? After I died, I ran to look at the monitor and met Xiao Pei there. I complained to him at that time, saying that it was over, it was over, Xiqing’s moves were successful again. He played the killer’s role like this, and even then, there were still people voting with him.”
Pei Tingsong leaned back with a smile, and Fang Juexia felt a little worried while watching him. He was afraid that this person would fall back, and his hands subconsciously wanted to protect the back of his chair.
“Can you guys imagine how hilarious that was?” Zhou Ziheng was still laughing to death. “I said, ‘I’m so angry, Xiqing even plays the killer in a manner as dirty as this, I was just about to carry this round’. Then Xiao Pei patted me on the shoulder,” He imitated Xiao Pei’s movements as he narrated what had happened, “‘Senior, I’m actually the killer.’ You know, I almost dropped dead right there.”
“Hahahahahaha!”
Now Zhou Ziheng was sighing as he continued, “I play Werewolf ah, and this strategy of killing yourself is pretty common in that game. But Escape isn’t the same as Werewolf, because once a werewolf dies, there are still other werewolves left behind to kill people. However, here, once the killer is dead, he’s dead, and his only chance to kill someone was used up on himself. That’s really something few people would dare to do. What’s more, he’s even a newcomer. He’s too tiger-like.”
Pei Tingsong had laughed enough and let out a long breath. “I also count as being a loyal audience member of the previous season, and I’m also very clear on the playing methods of both Senior and Xiqing Ge. As soon as I saw that I had gotten the killer card, and that the program group wouldn’t be providing extra clues this time, I knew that would have to plan ahead of time.”
“When I bluffed out the fact that Juexia was a black knight, it became very clear that the only way I could win was to make Senior and Xiqing Ge oppose each other.”
Then he looked at Zhou Ziheng. “So I had to jump out as the knight, and also had to commit suicide, all so that Senior would grow more suspicious of Xiqing Ge. Only when they were standing on diametrically opposite sides, could Juexia get some room to survive.”
Xia Xiqing couldn’t help clapping for him. “True love. I now count as understanding what it means to say, ‘As long as our alliance has not been dissolved, I am your knight.’ Program group, director, remember this sentence, and you have to cut it into the trailer, okay? This is the biggest spoiler.”
It was only at his reminder that Fang Juexia belatedly came to realize the meaning of this sentence. For a period of time following this, he was a little distracted. It turned out that every sentence he thought of as either being for fanservice or being a joke was actually a hint from Pei Tingsong.
“I also want to say that Xiao Pei kept muddying the waters with me the entire way,” said Shang Sirui as he grabbed some fat beef with his chopsticks and put it in his own oil dish. “Moreover, he was the first one to die, so he is definitely going to get laughed at by the fans. You guys don’t know, but Xiao Pei is famous for being a game black hole from way before.”
The director couldn’t help interrupting, “Other people were muddying the water for clues, but you were just muddying the waters for real.”
“Don’t be like that ah, director. I may just be paddling along, but I’m very high-leveled at paddling along, okay?”
“Indeed.” Zhai Ying analyzed, “If you hadn’t put Ziheng Ge and Xiqing Ge in opposition with each other, it would have become very difficult to win this game. These two immortals represent two completely different ways of playing; it’s hard to trust each other, but it’s easy to kill each other.”
“Once the two logic big bosses were at loggerheads, the rest of us could only passively choose to follow the reasoning laid out by one of them. We never even imagined that there was a third set of logic hidden underneath all of it. At that time, I really thought I had already locked the role of the killer onto one of these two people.”
Xu Qichen said with a smile, “Juexia is actually really kind-hearted. When he saw Ziheng and Xiqing tearing into each other, he also reminded all of you that the reasoning you guys had put forth was all quite right, but that you also shouldn’t forget that the identity of the killer was linked with the plot, and wanted you guys to stop fighting to uncover the whole plot first.”
After that, he couldn’t help praising, “Ziheng’s speech was really the best there. All of his logical reasoning was closely linked, and there really was no flaw at all. If it wasn’t for Xiqing being there, Ziheng would definitely have been able to uncover Juexia’s identity.”
Zhou Ziheng sighed. “Who would have thought that the youngest player on the field would take advantage of both Xiqing’s uncertainty and my logical thinking to create a feint and sow dissension among the ranks.”
The corners of Pei Tingsong’s mouth quirked up. “It was precisely because Senior and Xiqing Ge were strong enough that I was sure that my move of committing suicide would work. They were indispensable to this plan, and if my opponent hadn’t been strong enough, I wouldn’t have used this kind of a wild path of burning all my bridges.”
Saying that, he looked at Fang Juexia and said, “Of course, there was also my knight. If anyone else were my knight in this episode, I probably wouldn’t have killed myself. Because my knight would have to avoid all attention, collect clues secretly, connect with me smoothly, manipulate the voting pattern perfectly each time we voted, and finally seize the opportunity to decrypt all the clues and escape. Only Fang Juexia could do all this.”
Fang Juexia couldn’t deceive himself. They had been trapped in the escape room for several hours, and although they hadn’t stayed together all the time, it seemed that there was an invisible thread that had been binding them together. Hidden under all this deception and intrigue was Pei Tingsong’s unconditional trust in him.
He looked up and gave Pei Tingsong a smile.
Fang Juexia then opened his mouth, “In fact, winning this round had a lot to do with luck. At first, I was hesitating between Xiao Pei and Xiqing Ge. Even though Xiao Pei kept hinting at me, I was still wondering whether Xiqing Ge was my companion or not. So when I found the recording, I invited Xiqing Ge over. But he turned me down, which allowed me to give up on the idea that he was the killer.”
Zhai Ying asked again, “But you can’t control the voting ah? If in the first round, Xiqing Ge or Xiao Pei had left, it would have been a mess after that.”
“I can’t control the voting, but I can calculate it.” Fang Juexia said while smiling at her, “During the first round of voting, I still wasn’t sure who the killer was, so neither of the two could leave. At that time, you and Senior Brother doubted Xiqing Ge’s motives, but Senior Brother was more experienced. He knew that he could not use conventional logic when facing Xiqing Ge, and so was always cautious when voting. Therefore, there was an 80% chance he’d abandon his vote.”
“Zhai Ying, when you talked, it seemed as if you wanted to vote for Xiqing Ge, so when I was encouraging everyone to vote, I believed that you would vote for Xiqing Ge. Ziheng’s logic was very stable; he only believed in himself, and didn’t believe that the knight was definitely from among one of them, so it was likely that he would vote for others. Xiqing Ge and Xiao Pei would vote for each other. Then, at that time, calculating all this, there were two votes to oust Xiqing Ge and one vote to oust Xiao Pei, so I voted for Xiao Pei.”
Shang Sirui marveled at this set of assumptions. “I did give up voting at that time. You’re too strong, who would have thought that the black knight would vote for the killer in the first round?”
Fang Juexia looked at Zhou Ziheng and asked, “The person you voted for during the first round was me, right?”
Zhou Ziheng admitted it readily, “You guessed right. The first round, I locked onto you, but you just hid too well. If Xiao Pei hadn’t died later, my attention wouldn’t have entirely been diverted towards Xiqing.”
“Yes, Xiao Pei protected me and caused havoc between you two.” Fang Juexia nodded with a smile. “In the second round of voting, I just wanted to get Ziheng kicked out, so I stood with Xiqing. On the one hand, Xiqing now had a little trust in me, and on the other hand, Ziheng was the person who had discovered the chessboard password with me. It’s hard to distract someone’s attention from something they know is there.”
Xu Qichen couldn’t help praising, “In the beginning, when I watched your guys’ interview, I especially liked both of your attitudes and speaking styles, so I asked Yin Jie to invite you onto the program. However, you guys have really exceeded my expectations, that silent tacit understanding you have going with each other is really powerful.”
Everyone ate and chatted, and began to discuss their predictions for the next episode, continuing all the way until the director said from behind the camera, “Everyone’s almost done eating, so I’ll say a few words.”
“We will be donating all the proceeds from this episode to the child protection association, and we are very grateful to the companies and the brand names who have supported us. We very much hope that through this episode, we can stimulate everyone into protecting and caring for the youth, and into paying attention to the issue of preventing children’s sexual abuse, because protecting our children is what protects our future.”
“Great!”
“Well then, everyone has worked hard today. ‘Escape For Your Life’ season 2, episode 1, has officially completed its filming today!”
Everyone ate and drank well, then added each other on WeChat. Xia Xiqing created a group chat and changed the group chat’s name to— [Today I am again fighting a battle of wits and courage against the program group], and then everyone gathered up their things and prepared to go home.
When Zhai Ying’s agent came to pick her up in person, he ended up coming face to face with Fang Juexia at the back door of the restaurant, and recognized him.
“……Juexia?” The middle-aged man showed a trace of embarrassment as he asked, “You’ve been good recently ba?”
Fang Juexia nodded somewhat emotionlessly and replied, “Very good.”
Zhai Ying looked at the two people, then pulled her family’s agent away, rolled down the window after getting into the car, and said goodbye to Fang Juexia with a smile.
Fang Juexia waved at her and watched Zhai Ying’s car drive away. His mood right now was somewhat complicated, but he didn’t even have the time to put his hand down before someone hugged him from the back, with two long arms hooking around his neck. “I’m so dizzy ah, Juexia Ge.”
Even after everything, Fang Juexia had still not gotten used to Pei Tingsong calling him Gege, but he did seem to enjoy it a little bit right now.
“You stopped me from drinking, but you drank so much yourself.” Fang Juexia pulled his hands away, and right then, Xiao Wen drove his car over and flashed his headlights at them.
Supporting Pei Tingsong over to the car, Xiao Wen was also very excited, exclaiming, “I watched this entire episode on the monitors, too strong, it will definitely explode, and our spot on the Hot Search list is reserved!”
Fang Juexia was as calm as ever and didn’t say too much. Up until now, his mind was still constantly recalling all the things that had happened in the escape room.
Pei Tingsong seemed to have really drunk a lot; his neck had turned red, and his speech had become slower, but he still looked to be quite sober. His drinking tolerance and drunk behavior were much better than his own.
“Right,” Xiao Wen suddenly thought of something and said, “I forgot to tell you guys that today you may have to stay outside. Strong Ge asked me to take you to a hotel.”
“Why?” Fang Juexia didn’t understand and inquired, “What’s wrong with the dormitory?”
“Well, the dormitory’s electronic lock was suddenly attacked today. Fortunately, none of you were there. The company suspects that because you guys are popular now, there may have been some stalker fans or something who did it. It’s still getting fixed right now, and we’re going to replace the lock for you guys. For the sake of this matter, Strong Ge even quarreled with the property management, saying that someone bribed the people on the property. Anyway, it’s urgently getting dealt with right now, so we won’t go back tonight. We’ll find a hotel close to the company, and just use that for tonight.”
There was also no other way to deal with this.
Fang Juexia was about to answer, but Pei Tingsong snatched the initiative and stated, “I’m not going to stay in a hotel.”
“Then what do you want to do ah, young master?”
“If there’s really a stalker around, then the hotel is even less safe.” Pei Tingsong looked at the night view outside the window. “Go to the apartment I used to live in ba.”
Fang Juexia turned his head and looked at him.
Pei Tingsong, who was half-drunk, grinned and bumped his forehead against Fang Juexia’s. “What, are you afraid ah?”
Fang Juexia covered his forehead, which had been suddenly bumped into, and stared at Pei Tingsong with wide eyes. The colorful neon lights outside the glass window projected onto that handsome face. He was still smiling, leaning against the window on the other side, with Fang Juexia’s face being reflected in his deep pupils.
“I even killed myself for you, black knight.”
Chapter 43: CH 43
You really were his knight.
After the program recording ended, the production team specially arranged to also film the dinner meeting, in order to create a highlight reel from that footage. After filming for several continuous hours, everyone was hungry, and had been since a long time ago. Originally, the players had planned to have dinner together at a private restaurant after work, but it just so happened that the program group had already arranged it for everyone, so they all partook in a happy meal together.
“Let’s eat hot pot!” As soon as Shang Sirui sat down, he started vibrating happily and asked, “How miserable is the camera Da Ge ah, have you guys eaten yet? Oh, you’ve eaten ah, then I won’t feel sorry for you anymore.”
Xia Xiqing sat down to his right. “If you’re going to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for yourself ba, silly Sansan.”
Zhou Ziheng sat down next to Xia Xiqing, and seeming very much like a dog running to its master, kneaded his shoulders for a long time. Pei Tingsong sat down on Shang Sirui’s left side, and Fang Juexia also sat down beside him. Zhai Ying, who came in last, went to Zhou Ziheng’s side and sat. Once everyone was seated, they started ordering dishes.
“Xiao Pei grew up abroad, so can you not really eat spicy food?” Xia Xiqing asked.
Pei Tingsong was pouring water. “I’m alright, I can eat it.” After saying that, he suddenly thought of something, and continued, “But Fang Juexia really can’t, so if it’s possible, order half spicy red oil and half tomato soup ba.”
Fang Juexia had originally been setting the tableware in front of him, but upon being cued suddenly, he raised his head and looked at Pei Tingsong.
Pei Tingsong felt that he was being particularly funny, and as he held back the corner of his mouth from curving into a smile, he teased, “Do you want to eat spicy? Pretty boy.”
Fang Juexia immediately shook his head and told everyone, “I can’t eat any peppers at all. I used to think that I could eat spicy food, but then Ling Yi took me to eat Sichuan food, and it was only then that I discovered that Guangdong spicy food and Sichuan spicy food are not at the same level at all.”
The rest of the people started laughing unceremoniously.
“Alright, then half tomato and half spicy red oil.”
“Order some alcohol bei. Everyone was so nervous up until now, so let’s all have a drink to relax.”
Pei Tingsong immediately interrupted, “Fang Juexia can’t drink alcohol.”
Xia Xiqing laughed. “How do you know everything?”
“It’s okay. I can drink it.” Fang Juexia looked over and said, “Xiqing Ge, order it ba.”
“Whether or not you can drink, don’t you still know yourself ah?” Pei Tingsong sighed, “Anyway, in a bit, you’re not allowed to drink, otherwise you can’t even head back.”
“Then order some juice for Juexia.”
The six people gabbled away as they finished ordering dishes and while waiting for the dishes to be served, chatted with each other. Xia Xiqing knocked on the edge of the table with his chopsticks. “Really, the crew for ‘Escape For Your Life’ is the most intelligent and meticulous crew I’ve ever seen, it’s too hard for me!”
Zhai Ying, in a rare occurrence, followed that up with, “I had known that it would be very difficult when I got on this program. I felt that I had psychologically prepared myself enough for it, but I still didn’t imagine it to be so difficult.”
“It was mainly the plot.” Pei Tingsong said, “When I was uncovering the plot while collecting clues, I constantly kept sighing internally.”
Fang Juexia also agreed. He had deviated from the right track several times, nearly turning the entire plot into another story. Fortunately, he was pulled back by the clues they kept finding.
“Speaking of the plot,” Shang Sirui sighed heavily and continued, “Chenchen, Chen Ge, Writer Xu, let us go ba. If it goes on like this, my brain will end up only being used to make hot pot.”
Everyone started laughing.
“I will vent my anger while he is away.” Shang Sirui raised his drink. “I really want to lock our cute Writer Xu in an escape room. Oh, no, even his family member who provided him with all kinds of puzzles has to be locked up. The two of them can be locked up separately in two different escape rooms, and then I will watch them on the monitor. I’ll watch…”
“Hello, here are the fried tofu skin sticks you ordered.” A waiter came up and set the plate right in front of Shang Sirui.
“Thank you, thank you.” Shang Sirui didn’t even raise his head before continuing to speak, “What did I just say, oh right, lock them up…”
Who knew that instead of leaving, the waiter would actually ask, “Who are you going to lock up?”
“Our screenwriter,” Shang Sirui blurted this out, and then realized that something wasn’t right. As soon as he looked up, he saw the waiter take off his hat and smile at him.
“Chenchen?”
Zhou Ziheng laughed. “As soon as he pushed open the door, I realized who it was. You were the only one naively talking to yourself over there.”
“Eh, just you by yourself?” Xia Xiqing looked at the door and inquired, “Where’s my crooked and underhanded nephew?”
Xu Qichen replied, “Ah, he is working overtime. A new version of the game will be launched tomorrow, and he thinks it might take all night to finish.”
This was the first time Fang Juexia had met Writer Xu in-person, and he looked more elegant and smaller than when he had seen him on TV before. He gave off a bookish air and looked like a college student who had not yet left the ivory tower.
Just as he was thinking that, a pair of chopsticks, waving about in the air, suddenly appeared in front of him. Fang Juexia turned his head and saw Pei Tingsong, who was a real college student. Pei Tingsong pulled back his chopsticks and asked, “What are you looking at?”
Fang Juexia shook his head.
“Let’s welcome Xu Qichen, the screenwriter for Escape 2, to the highlights dinner party,” the director standing behind them all said. “Everyone can eat while recapping things, we’ll edit this footage for a special program and put it on the VIP channel.”
Shang Sirui’s eyes widened. “Ah! Like I said, at the start, the narration had a really jokey tone, and its style was completely different from the previous season’s narration!”
“So it was like this…” Fang Juexia belatedly realized. “I even kept thinking, we had previously agreed to the show being revised, so how could the rules be the same as the last season? Later, after that joke, I didn’t feel so nervous.”
Pei Tingsong had just tossed in a piece of tripe into the hot pot, and before he got the time to swirl it around, he had caught sight of how Fang Juexia kept staring at Writer Xu. Unconsciously, he started staring at Fang Juexia.
“Xiao Pei, your tripe is getting cooked too tough.” Shang Sirui helped him by taking out the tripe and putting it into his own mouth.
Xu Qichen said with a smile, “I asked Yin Jie to let me participate in the filming of the program. I wanted to watch it ma.”
“Let me first make it clear to the audience that the amount of information that each player started out with in this episode was the same. In other words, everyone only knew whether they were ordinary players, the knight, or the killer. No one had the script or any kind of summary regarding the plot. They had to restore the entire plot gradually through the process of solving the puzzles.”
“Next, I’d like to generally talk about the plot line of this episode. In fact, the core clue was the only one that reflected reality, which was that article in the old newspaper. There was only one protagonist of the whole storyline, named Tan Ji. When he was a child, he was sexually assaulted by his neighbor, which caused him great trauma and made him suffer from delusions. At the same time, he also developed a multiple-personality disorder. He imagined himself to be the best psychologist in the city, Dr. Tian, rather than the patient who was being treated, Tan Ji. At the same time, he split his most painful childhood memories to create the character Zaozao.”
“In the same way, all the players were secondary personalities of his. But this particular personality, Zaozao, suffered too much, and was always on the verge of collapsing. She was completely oppressed and controlled by the master personality, that is, the doctor, so she gradually turned to the other personalities for help. There was a telephone recording that recorded her entire plea for help, which was in the recording pen that Juexia found. However, the master personality figured out that she was resisting, so he hypnotized Zaozao into choosing to commit suicide. The hypnosis script was actually an acrostic, suggesting that the doctor had killed Zao. But before Zaozao could finish writing her suicide note, she was already killed by the doctor personality.”
“So it turns out that this is the real story,” Shang Sirui sighed. “Really, by just missing a link, the plot becomes completely different. But why was it Tan Ji?”
Xiao Pei said, “Actually, when the appointment form was first found, and I saw the names Teacher Yan, Zaozao, and Xiao Xi, I thought of putting the words together. The character Tan is obviously a surname, and since there is a surname, there definitely has to be a given name. I then checked every room with the purpose of finding this name, which was basically like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.”
“Obviously, Zoe and the detective don’t have Chinese names, so the puzzle pieces must not refer to their names, but instead to something related to them. Zoe’s band is called “Together”, and the book inside the safe in the detective’s room only had one word on its cover, North, so that’s ‘北’. Take that north, add on the Tian from Dr. Tian, then add in the character for ‘together’, and you get Ji.”
“This sensitivity of yours, towards words, is really powerful.” Xia Xiqing wasn’t stingy with his praise.
“Just as Xiqing is naturally sensitive to paintings, so is Xiao Pei to writing,” Xu Qichen reminded them, “Didn’t you guys notice that all the clues Xiao Pei collected came from word games.”
Fang Juexia had noticed that; Pei Tingsong had found almost all the word puzzles in this episode, whether it was the hypnotic acrostic at the beginning, or the later puzzle involving the given name, or the most important news article puzzle.
Even his seemingly gag-like nonsense during the program, was a word game he used to hint and pun at things.
Shang Sirui suddenly slapped the table. “I just remembered, when I was chatting with Xiao Pei in that dark room, he kept reading that book the whole time. Later, he placed the book upside down on the table, making sure the cover was especially on display. You did that on purpose ba.”
Pei Tingsong nodded. “Yes, I wanted to show it to Juexia Ge, but later, I thought that since I had almost collected all of the puzzle pieces, it would be better to give him the answer directly, after collecting them all.”
After saying that, Pei Tingsong saw Fang Juexia accidentally eat some spicy beef, and being anxious to drink some water, he grabbed onto his wine cup. Pei Tingsong hurriedly grasped Fang Juexia’s hand and whispered, “This is my cup.”
“I saw wrong.” Fang Juexia pulled his hand away and poured himself a cup of Sprite.
Xia Xiqing had ordered some alcohol and poured it for himself as he spoke, “Really, this episode was one of the best ones I’ve ever played. Although I didn’t win in the end, winning or losing is really not important at this level.”
“Hahahaha, is it that you didn’t expect that one day, that act of fancily revealing your role would throw you into a pit?!” Shang Sirui swished a large piece of tripe through the hot pot as he said, “But seriously, low-end players just see the results, while high-end players look at the process. This time, even me, a low-end player, felt pretty cool.”
“I’ll give myself this penalty cup for my empiricism.” Zhou Ziheng also specially touched Xia Xiqing’s cup to his own before drinking, and then drank all the cup’s contents in one gulp. “But I’m very curious, Xiao Pei, when did you find out that Juexia was the knight?”
Pei Tingsong recalled, “It’s a long story, but when we started off together in the clinic at that time, weren’t we all wearing hoods? As soon as I reached out and touched some metal blocks, I actually found a piece of paper under one of them. I subconsciously felt that there was some problem with that, so I secretly pulled out that piece of paper and hid it on my body. Only then did I go and solve the puzzle of the metal blocks to break open Juexia Ge’s hood.”
Fang Juexia, who had originally been eating vermicelli, heard these words, and his eyes grew bright. He slurped up the vermicelli into his mouth and murmured, “So it was at that time that you got my medical record!”
“You’re pretty good at guessing,” Pei Tingsong said with a smile. “After the hood was undone, I immediately looked at that piece of paper. It was indeed the teacher’s medical record, and manic depressive disorder, also known as bipolar disorder, was written there. I realized at that moment that Fang Juexia should be the double-faced knight arranged by the program group for this game. I knew that he might choose to be the black knight, so I hid his medical records at that time, because if it were to be seen by Xiqing Ge, Juexia’s knighthood wouldn’t be able to stay concealed any longer.”
Xia Xiqing clicked his tongue and said, “Expended much thought ah, Xiao Pei.”
Unexpectedly, Shang Sirui suddenly exclaimed, “So manic depression is bipolar disorder ah!”
Fang Juexia took a bite of the frozen tofu in the tomato hot pot, and it was so hot it burned his tongue. “I guessed that Senior Brother didn’t know this, so I finally directly handed Teacher Yan’s medical records to him.”
“Ah! Juexia, you!”
“Even if you knew, it’d be too late.” Xia Xiqing interposed into their conversation and asked Fang Juexia, “In fact, at that time, you had already sorted through all the evidence and had understood the whole plot, hadn’t you?”
“En.” Fang Juexia looked at Pei Tingsong as he said, “Xiao Pei found the core clue, but he hid it.”
Zhou Ziheng was a little puzzled. “I was there when he went ah. How could I…” Halfway through saying those words, he suddenly remembered, exclaiming, “I know, when you played the guitar!”
Xu Qichen started laughing first. “I was laughing to death back when I was watching it happen on the monitor. In fact, Ziheng put forth several key questions.”
Zhou Ziheng found it inexplicable. “Really?” But as soon as this question came out, he thought about it again and slapped himself on the forehead with great chagrin. “Ah, I’m so stupid. I even asked you what that guitar was.”
Pei Tingsong laughed and carried a slightly childlike air as he explained, “Yes ah, when you asked me, I specifically told you that it was a hollow-body guitar. If you had reached in, you could have felt the newspaper pasted to its inner walls.”
“The article was about the real protagonist Tan, and said that he was suffering from delusions and had multiple-personality disorder. He had been wearing a white coat when he had committed the murder, so it was very obvious that he had deluded himself into thinking that he was a psychologist, that his surname was Tian, and that he was the best psychologist in the city. The other players formed all of his secondary personalities.”
“Was the detective also his secondary personality?” Shang Sirui was a little confused.
Xu Qichen gave him a thumbs up. “Very good. In fact, among the various multiple personalities, there are those who know each other, but also some who do not. In this plot, Tan Ji fantasizes that he is Dr. Tian. Thus, as the master personality, his means to control other personalities was through psychological counseling, therefore, all of the other personalities were his patients, and they received treatment from him, even hypnotic treatment. But the detective personality was a new birth, who could be regarded to be the Zaozao personality’s protector, a scenario which also reflected reality to the greatest extent.”
“Now, considering the news article, in almost each and every personality, a trace of reality can be found. The lead singer of the band may represent some of Tan Ji’s childhood dreams, because Zaozao represented his childhood, and she liked Zoe very much…” Zhai Ying was a little surprised. “Too strong, there was even something hidden in the guitar… No wonder the program group specifically found a hollow body guitar, they’re too meticulous.”
Xu Qichen asked, “Did Xiao Pei find the newspaper when he was playing the guitar? When I was watching the monitor, I heard you specifically say that the sound wasn’t bad.”
Pei Tingsong nodded. “As soon as I played it, I discovered that the guitar’s sound wasn’t right. After all, after having played the guitar for so many years, I do understand it. I guessed then that there was something inside, and when Ziheng Ge went past me, I reached in and took out the clue. “
Shang Sirui sighed. “Not knowing how to play an instrument then is really… Who would stick their hand into a guitar? The props group is too strong.”
Fang Juexia couldn’t help opening his mouth to say, “There were also many other unreasonable details present, and it seems that the program group included them all intentionally. The appointment time for Teacher Yan to visit the doctor is 5:52, but how can anyone go see a doctor this early in the morning? This implies that all of these things are fake—that the doctor is fake, and that the patients are also fake. There was also a small hint given by the stylist group, I don’t know if anyone noticed it. Although we all played different roles, we are all wearing the same shirt.”
Shang Sirui looked down at his flowered shirt, then looked up at the others and admired, “Amazing. So in fact, we are all the same person.”
“The program group is really strong.” Xia Xiqing recapped the hints they had gathered through the props, “If you think about it, every room, except the doctor’s clinic, actually represents something. For example, the guitar in Shang Sirui’s room corresponds to the ukulele in the consultation room, the textbook in Ziheng’s school bag corresponds to the astronomy books in the consultation room’s bookshelf, the art tools and paintings in Zaozao’s room corresponds with the paintings in the consultation room.”
“And there’s also the magnifying glass, representing the detective,” Pei Tingsong added.
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“Yes,” Xia Xiqing nodded. “In fact, all this hints that these rooms are just a representation of one of the protagonist’s personalities, and only the consultation room is representative of the master personality, which contains items from all the personalities. It was just that I didn’t notice in the beginning, because I held the preconception that Zaozao was the master personality.”“Including this was ‘The Death of Marat’, which, in fact, was also a core clue. Chenchen had even opened up a back door for me, but I was eager to prove my point of view at that time, and thus ignored the secondary deep meaning hidden in the painting, which was— reversal. The painting was reversed, and so the characters who were assassinated within the painting should also be reversed. Similarly, the diary in the painting also has to be read in a reversed order.”
Xu Qichen said, “You finally realized that something wasn’t right, and I was surprised by the extent to which you reacted to that piece. In just half a minute, you overturned all your views for the plot that you had set up before and pulled back to the correct plotline. You’re very strong.”
He set aside his chopsticks. “This time, I can also count as having incorporated Xiqing’s usual play style. I knew that even if Xiqing had a normal role, he would definitely reveal himself as the knight, so I purposefully designated the identity of an ordinary player to him and let him muddle the waters. If Xiqing was the real knight, its effect on the program might not have been so good.”
After that, he looked at Pei Tingsong and said, “Reality proves that that was true. If it had really been Xiqing who was the knight, while Xiao Pei was the killer, then—one person just reveals himself explosively, while the other just stabs himself…”
Everyone laughed at this, but Pei Tingsong leaned back on his chair and said with a smile, “No, I only chose to commit suicide after I confirmed that the black knight’s role must be Fang Juexia’s.”
Fang Juexia’s chopsticks paused.
What did this sentence imply?
The other people had begun to coax him, led by Xia Xiqing. “Aiya, so you made all your preparations and handed over all the relics, and only then went unflinchingly to your death?”
What relics?
Pei Tingsong said with a laugh, “That was impossible. Xiqing Ge jumped out to state that he was a knight and pretended to take on Juexia’s identity. My jumping out at him at the same time contained two purposes: on one hand, it was to make Senior suspect Xiqing Ge, thereby not allowing him to rest easy in the position of the knight. On the other hand, I was also trying to bluff out Juexia Ge’s camp.
“If you guys think about it, with two fake knights jumping out at each other and also fighting each other before the vote, if the real knight belonged to the light side, it would be absolutely impossible for him to let others claim his knighthood so easily. For the victory of the good camp, he would have to stand up and reveal himself.” His expression was completely confident as he stated, “Especially if that knight was Fang Juexia.”
“Yes oh, or the white knight would have to carry the blame for this round.”
Fang Juexia lowered his head a little and listened to Pei Tingsong’s words, but what he thought about was the scene from not long ago, where the other party had stuffed the note into the front of his shirt.
“I’m very curious, Juexia.” Xu Qichen asked, “I didn’t see when you finished the handover in the monitors. How did you know he had hidden a clue in the ukulele?”
Fang Juexia raised his head. “When Pei Tingsong was teasing me by the display wall and kept play-fighting with me, I didn’t take it seriously, since he usually likes to play tricks on me and play-fight like this with me. However, he then left abruptly, but before that, he patted my pocket. At that time, I heard a sound from the pocket at the front of my coat, and it was the sound of paper. So I figured out what was going on, but I kept pretending that I didn’t know and searched for a more appropriate time to look at it.”
“So that’s how it is…” Xu Qichen nodded. “You know, Juexia was actually a bit beyond my imagination. At the beginning, I just thought that he was a person suited to playing as the false prophet and hiding his true identity, so I gave him the role. But in fact, his strongest points were not just math and his skill to remain calm at all times, but also his ability to find opportunities.”
Xia Xiqing also grasped this point. “Yes, yes, I just wanted to say that this Little Serious is too good at distracting people. When I think back, I understand that I really underestimated my opponent. In the beginning, he deliberately accommodated me, and in the end, didn’t Ziheng get ousted through voting? At that time, I thought I had nearly won, and then, Juexia deliberately directed my attention towards the code on the handkerchief in the cabinet and asked me to solve it.”
Juexia was a bit embarrassed and nodded. “At that stage, I really needed time to go find the ukulele, but Xiqing Ge is too smart, and if I directly left the hall, he would definitely find a flaw. So I could only use the chessboard code on the door’s display lock to divert his attention.”
“And the reason you provided was also very strong.” Xu Qichen said with a smile, “You said you were going to find your medical record. In fact, if you hadn’t said it, it would have only made Xiqing suspicious.”
Xia Xiqing nodded. “Yes, because you were the only patient without a medical record until then. This was a problem I had been struggling with the entire time. Although you spoke in a sunny way and had made no small moves, that missing medical record kind of remained stuck in my heart the whole time.
“As long as you were a character belonging to the dark camp, you would naturally want to hide your medical records. Yet, in the end, you just stood up and said it, and even added that you were going to go find it yourself. My suspicions on this matter disappeared just like that, so I then concentrated on solving the chessboard code.”
Zhai Ying shook her head. “Maybe it’s because Juexia Ge looks too kind-hearted, and really doesn’t make people feel suspicious about him. When I got that scratch paper, my first reaction was to go find Juexia Ge.” She looked at Fang Juexia and asked, “In fact, at that time, you had already discovered the problem, hadn’t you?”
“No,” Fang Juexia said with a smile and shaking his head. “I was also controlled by my habitual thinking at that time, so I just solved the double integral straightforwardly. In fact, in addition to being a mathematical problem, that set also implied something else.”
Xia Xiqing nodded heavily and regretted his mistakes. “Ah, I was so completely focused on battling it out with Zhou Ziheng at that time. When everyone gathered up the clues, I also just checked the answer for the double integral problem and didn’t notice the set beside it. Then, I went back to the sofa after I had typed the final answer wrong and saw that scratch paper. It was only then that I finally discovered the root of the problem, using this set.”
Zhai Ying curiously asked, “What was wrong with the set?”
Fang Juexia explained, “Set theory states that there can be no repeating elements in a set. But each set on that piece of paper had a repeating element in it. In the extension of set theory, there is a concept called multisets, in which the number of repetitions of an element in a multiset is called multiplicity or repetition, and for all the multisets on the scratch paper, the multiplicity was 6.”
Shang Sirui was surprised. “God, even the set of numbers on a piece of scratch paper implied that there were six personalities.”
Xia Xiqing recognized this. “So that’s why I say I didn’t lose out anything by losing this time; everyone played really well this round. When I finally sat on the sofa, and my mind filled with all the details I couldn’t reconcile together before, that was a really cool feeling, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t say anymore.” Zhou Ziheng was laughing so hard he was nearly dying of breathlessness. “You guys don’t know, but I died, right? After I died, I ran to look at the monitor and met Xiao Pei there. I complained to him at that time, saying that it was over, it was over, Xiqing’s moves were successful again. He played the killer’s role like this, and even then, there were still people voting with him.”
Pei Tingsong leaned back with a smile, and Fang Juexia felt a little worried while watching him. He was afraid that this person would fall back, and his hands subconsciously wanted to protect the back of his chair.
“Can you guys imagine how hilarious that was?” Zhou Ziheng was still laughing to death. “I said, ‘I’m so angry, Xiqing even plays the killer in a manner as dirty as this, I was just about to carry this round’. Then Xiao Pei patted me on the shoulder,” He imitated Xiao Pei’s movements as he narrated what had happened, “‘Senior, I’m actually the killer.’ You know, I almost dropped dead right there.”
“Hahahahahaha!”
Now Zhou Ziheng was sighing as he continued, “I play Werewolf ah, and this strategy of killing yourself is pretty common in that game. But Escape isn’t the same as Werewolf, because once a werewolf dies, there are still other werewolves left behind to kill people. However, here, once the killer is dead, he’s dead, and his only chance to kill someone was used up on himself. That’s really something few people would dare to do. What’s more, he’s even a newcomer. He’s too tiger-like.”
Pei Tingsong had laughed enough and let out a long breath. “I also count as being a loyal audience member of the previous season, and I’m also very clear on the playing methods of both Senior and Xiqing Ge. As soon as I saw that I had gotten the killer card, and that the program group wouldn’t be providing extra clues this time, I knew that would have to plan ahead of time.”
“When I bluffed out the fact that Juexia was a black knight, it became very clear that the only way I could win was to make Senior and Xiqing Ge oppose each other.”
Then he looked at Zhou Ziheng. “So I had to jump out as the knight, and also had to commit suicide, all so that Senior would grow more suspicious of Xiqing Ge. Only when they were standing on diametrically opposite sides, could Juexia get some room to survive.”
Xia Xiqing couldn’t help clapping for him. “True love. I now count as understanding what it means to say, ‘As long as our alliance has not been dissolved, I am your knight.’ Program group, director, remember this sentence, and you have to cut it into the trailer, okay? This is the biggest spoiler.”
It was only at his reminder that Fang Juexia belatedly came to realize the meaning of this sentence. For a period of time following this, he was a little distracted. It turned out that every sentence he thought of as either being for fanservice or being a joke was actually a hint from Pei Tingsong.
“I also want to say that Xiao Pei kept muddying the waters with me the entire way,” said Shang Sirui as he grabbed some fat beef with his chopsticks and put it in his own oil dish. “Moreover, he was the first one to die, so he is definitely going to get laughed at by the fans. You guys don’t know, but Xiao Pei is famous for being a game black hole from way before.”
The director couldn’t help interrupting, “Other people were muddying the water for clues, but you were just muddying the waters for real.”
“Don’t be like that ah, director. I may just be paddling along, but I’m very high-leveled at paddling along, okay?”
“Indeed.” Zhai Ying analyzed, “If you hadn’t put Ziheng Ge and Xiqing Ge in opposition with each other, it would have become very difficult to win this game. These two immortals represent two completely different ways of playing; it’s hard to trust each other, but it’s easy to kill each other.”
“Once the two logic big bosses were at loggerheads, the rest of us could only passively choose to follow the reasoning laid out by one of them. We never even imagined that there was a third set of logic hidden underneath all of it. At that time, I really thought I had already locked the role of the killer onto one of these two people.”
Xu Qichen said with a smile, “Juexia is actually really kind-hearted. When he saw Ziheng and Xiqing tearing into each other, he also reminded all of you that the reasoning you guys had put forth was all quite right, but that you also shouldn’t forget that the identity of the killer was linked with the plot, and wanted you guys to stop fighting to uncover the whole plot first.”
After that, he couldn’t help praising, “Ziheng’s speech was really the best there. All of his logical reasoning was closely linked, and there really was no flaw at all. If it wasn’t for Xiqing being there, Ziheng would definitely have been able to uncover Juexia’s identity.”
Zhou Ziheng sighed. “Who would have thought that the youngest player on the field would take advantage of both Xiqing’s uncertainty and my logical thinking to create a feint and sow dissension among the ranks.”
Saying that, he looked at Fang Juexia and said, “Of course, there was also my knight. If anyone else were my knight in this episode, I probably wouldn’t have killed myself. Because my knight would have to avoid all attention, collect clues secretly, connect with me smoothly, manipulate the voting pattern perfectly each time we voted, and finally seize the opportunity to decrypt all the clues and escape. Only Fang Juexia could do all this.”
Fang Juexia couldn’t deceive himself. They had been trapped in the escape room for several hours, and although they hadn’t stayed together all the time, it seemed that there was an invisible thread that had been binding them together. Hidden under all this deception and intrigue was Pei Tingsong’s unconditional trust in him.
He looked up and gave Pei Tingsong a smile.
Fang Juexia then opened his mouth, “In fact, winning this round had a lot to do with luck. At first, I was hesitating between Xiao Pei and Xiqing Ge. Even though Xiao Pei kept hinting at me, I was still wondering whether Xiqing Ge was my companion or not. So when I found the recording, I invited Xiqing Ge over. But he turned me down, which allowed me to give up on the idea that he was the killer.”
Zhai Ying asked again, “But you can’t control the voting ah? If in the first round, Xiqing Ge or Xiao Pei had left, it would have been a mess after that.”
“I can’t control the voting, but I can calculate it.” Fang Juexia said while smiling at her, “During the first round of voting, I still wasn’t sure who the killer was, so neither of the two could leave. At that time, you and Senior Brother doubted Xiqing Ge’s motives, but Senior Brother was more experienced. He knew that he could not use conventional logic when facing Xiqing Ge, and so was always cautious when voting. Therefore, there was an 80% chance he’d abandon his vote.”
“Zhai Ying, when you talked, it seemed as if you wanted to vote for Xiqing Ge, so when I was encouraging everyone to vote, I believed that you would vote for Xiqing Ge. Ziheng’s logic was very stable; he only believed in himself, and didn’t believe that the knight was definitely from among one of them, so it was likely that he would vote for others. Xiqing Ge and Xiao Pei would vote for each other. Then, at that time, calculating all this, there were two votes to oust Xiqing Ge and one vote to oust Xiao Pei, so I voted for Xiao Pei.”
Shang Sirui marveled at this set of assumptions. “I did give up voting at that time. You’re too strong, who would have thought that the black knight would vote for the killer in the first round?”
Fang Juexia looked at Zhou Ziheng and asked, “The person you voted for during the first round was me, right?”
Zhou Ziheng admitted it readily, “You guessed right. The first round, I locked onto you, but you just hid too well. If Xiao Pei hadn’t died later, my attention wouldn’t have entirely been diverted towards Xiqing.”
“Yes, Xiao Pei protected me and caused havoc between you two.” Fang Juexia nodded with a smile. “In the second round of voting, I just wanted to get Ziheng kicked out, so I stood with Xiqing. On the one hand, Xiqing now had a little trust in me, and on the other hand, Ziheng was the person who had discovered the chessboard password with me. It’s hard to distract someone’s attention from something they know is there.”
Xu Qichen couldn’t help praising, “In the beginning, when I watched your guys’ interview, I especially liked both of your attitudes and speaking styles, so I asked Yin Jie to invite you onto the program. However, you guys have really exceeded my expectations, that silent tacit understanding you have going with each other is really powerful.”
Everyone ate and chatted, and began to discuss their predictions for the next episode, continuing all the way until the director said from behind the camera, “Everyone’s almost done eating, so I’ll say a few words.”
“We will be donating all the proceeds from this episode to the child protection association, and we are very grateful to the companies and the brand names who have supported us. We very much hope that through this episode, we can stimulate everyone into protecting and caring for the youth, and into paying attention to the issue of preventing children’s sexual abuse, because protecting our children is what protects our future.”
“Great!”
“Well then, everyone has worked hard today. ‘Escape For Your Life’ season 2, episode 1, has officially completed its filming today!”
Everyone ate and drank well, then added each other on WeChat. Xia Xiqing created a group chat and changed the group chat’s name to— [Today I am again fighting a battle of wits and courage against the program group], and then everyone gathered up their things and prepared to go home.
When Zhai Ying’s agent came to pick her up in person, he ended up coming face to face with Fang Juexia at the back door of the restaurant, and recognized him.
Fang Juexia nodded somewhat emotionlessly and replied, “Very good.”
Zhai Ying looked at the two people, then pulled her family’s agent away, rolled down the window after getting into the car, and said goodbye to Fang Juexia with a smile.
Fang Juexia waved at her and watched Zhai Ying’s car drive away. His mood right now was somewhat complicated, but he didn’t even have the time to put his hand down before someone hugged him from the back, with two long arms hooking around his neck. “I’m so dizzy ah, Juexia Ge.”
Even after everything, Fang Juexia had still not gotten used to Pei Tingsong calling him Gege, but he did seem to enjoy it a little bit right now.
“You stopped me from drinking, but you drank so much yourself.” Fang Juexia pulled his hands away, and right then, Xiao Wen drove his car over and flashed his headlights at them.
Supporting Pei Tingsong over to the car, Xiao Wen was also very excited, exclaiming, “I watched this entire episode on the monitors, too strong, it will definitely explode, and our spot on the Hot Search list is reserved!”
Fang Juexia was as calm as ever and didn’t say too much. Up until now, his mind was still constantly recalling all the things that had happened in the escape room.
Pei Tingsong seemed to have really drunk a lot; his neck had turned red, and his speech had become slower, but he still looked to be quite sober. His drinking tolerance and drunk behavior were much better than his own.
“Right,” Xiao Wen suddenly thought of something and said, “I forgot to tell you guys that today you may have to stay outside. Strong Ge asked me to take you to a hotel.”
“Why?” Fang Juexia didn’t understand and inquired, “What’s wrong with the dormitory?”
“Well, the dormitory’s electronic lock was suddenly attacked today. Fortunately, none of you were there. The company suspects that because you guys are popular now, there may have been some stalker fans or something who did it. It’s still getting fixed right now, and we’re going to replace the lock for you guys. For the sake of this matter, Strong Ge even quarreled with the property management, saying that someone bribed the people on the property. Anyway, it’s urgently getting dealt with right now, so we won’t go back tonight. We’ll find a hotel close to the company, and just use that for tonight.”
There was also no other way to deal with this.
Fang Juexia was about to answer, but Pei Tingsong snatched the initiative and stated, “I’m not going to stay in a hotel.”
“Then what do you want to do ah, young master?”
“If there’s really a stalker around, then the hotel is even less safe.” Pei Tingsong looked at the night view outside the window. “Go to the apartment I used to live in ba.”
Fang Juexia turned his head and looked at him.
Pei Tingsong, who was half-drunk, grinned and bumped his forehead against Fang Juexia’s. “What, are you afraid ah?”
Fang Juexia covered his forehead, which had been suddenly bumped into, and stared at Pei Tingsong with wide eyes. The colorful neon lights outside the glass window projected onto that handsome face. He was still smiling, leaning against the window on the other side, with Fang Juexia’s face being reflected in his deep pupils.
“I even killed myself for you, black knight.”
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