Fog Formula-Warning Book of Fog City Search Chief's Strange Talk

"No, this direction is not right."

Izumi Saori frowned and looked at the scattered papers on the ground, looked at the densely written various handwritings on them, sighed with some headaches, then turned to look at Minamoto who was sorting the papers, half helpless asks:

"Any other directions we haven't noticed?"

"If you're asking about the royal family that hasn't been sorted out..." Yuan Taiyi looked down at the papers, "There are not many Western royal families around the sixteenth century left, and there are..."

"Then start rearranging the data."

Izumi Saori directly interrupted his words, and said to Gentaichi a little impatiently. Anyone can hear the emotion in her words, so that the child's voice in the void can't help but tease:

"Such impatience can't solve the problem."

The voice was condescending with a playful tone.

"Are you sure you don't want to calm down and think again?"

"...I found that this matter seems to be different from what I expected. You seem to hope that we can solve this problem."

But after saying this, Izumi Saori's movements actually slowed down, she turned her head and stared at the void around her, and suddenly said calmly,

"You have been giving us all kinds of cryptic hints from the sidelines, even if you know that you will be tricked by us, you are still communicating with us, even if you know that it is beneficial to us, you are still helping us eliminate some wrong options—why? ? Why do you help us like this? I can't seem to find a reason for you to do this?"

"Ah, it's really a question that directly touches people's hearts." The voice in the void also paused, as if considering how to answer, "If I want to say it, it's probably because I am the one who created the puzzle."

"There is no puzzle in this world that exists to trap the solver to death." The voice said slowly, "From the moment the puzzle is made, it is to find the person who can solve it."

"Many puzzles literally have more than one answer, right?"

The boy continued to speak like this, and Hino could hear him shrugging his shoulders from someone invisible.

"But among the vast number of answers that can be chosen, there is only one correct answer that the person who created the question wanted. Because the purpose of the existence of puzzles is never to test, but to screen. Screen out the people who can understand the logic of the person who created the question. , The person who has the same idea as the question maker and can understand each other with the question maker. That person can resonate with the question maker, and find the same answer as the question maker among the many options for answering.”

"So of course I would expect that resonance."

The boy spoke words that moved Saori Izumi.

"It's better to say that it is precisely to find this kind of empathy that I stood up from many Longtais and came up with questions for you. To be honest, I think my puzzles are very gentle. Before you touch this puzzle At the same time, the other two puzzles have also been touched. The problems they face are much crueler than yours. Or... do you actually prefer the type that doesn't use brains but relies on brute force?"

"Of course. No matter what kind of puzzle it is, it's meaningless if it can't be solved." The boy changed the subject here, "People who can't solve it all have the same end, and they all have the same end after all."

Two other puzzles were also touched?

After hearing this, Izumi Saori and the two boys looked at each other, and they both saw the surprise in each other's eyes. The surprise is not that there are other people spying here at the same time, but the number of surprises. They guessed that the duo of the search bureau would definitely move today, but they didn't expect that there would be other people at the same time.

"Many Longtai?" But Izumi Saori didn't continue to entangle this issue, she grabbed another line in the other party's words and questioned, "What does that mean?"

"You will know when you solve the puzzle." The boy chuckled, "We are all Longtai, but there are differences between Longtai and Longtai. Happiness has no fixed appearance, even everyone in the dream There are different fantasies."

"..."

These words blocked Izumi Saori's thoughts of continuing to ask, she shifted her gaze and looked at Mimi Hino, who was observing the room next to her, hoping that he would find anything else. After sorting out their thoughts, they quickly completed the division of labor. The knowledgeable Izumi Saori was responsible for sorting out the answers, and the insightful Hino Mino was responsible for finding clues, while the more hands-on Gentai was doing some auxiliary work. . This is the most reasonable division of labor, but in the past half an hour it has not brought breakthrough progress to the three of them. Like Izumi Saori, Hino is now scratching his head and scratching his head.

"This carpet..."

However, at this moment, Yuan Taiyi's voice sounded in the arena. When the blond boy spoke, his voice was hesitant and hesitant, with a vague sense of uncertainty.

"It seems to be the style of the Libinius Peninsula?"

"What did you say?" Izumi Saori turned her head almost instantly, looking at him eagerly, "Say it again?"

"I..." Yuan Taiyi, who was sitting on the ground sorting out the documents, was stunned by the girl's excited reaction, and replied hesitantly after a long while, "I'm not sure, I just vaguely heard someone talk about using hemp rope Weaving carpets is a custom in the Libinius Peninsula, and there is no custom of using carpets in the local area, and if they are used, it is this traditional rope-woven carpet.”

"Libinius Peninsula, Libinius Peninsula..."

Izumi Saori stood up from the chair abruptly, and paced back and forth in the room. Then he suddenly looked up at the furnishings in the room, looking at the layout of the entire room. Then he shifted his gaze to the roof suddenly, staring at the lights above his head and couldn't help but be lost in silence.

"How do you..."

Hino Mino looked at her in bewilderment, just about to speak out in doubt. But halfway through the words, he saw the other party tremble suddenly and shouted loudly.

"I see, it's "Palace Man"!"

The girl holding the book blinked her eyes, looking around the room, looking at the mirrors, drawing boards and picture frames with surprise in her eyes.

"The arrangement in this scene...is the arrangement in "Palace Man"!"

"Palace man? That world-famous painting?" Hino Mino gradually came to his senses, turned his head to look at the furnishings in the room, and immediately understood what the girl was referring to.

"Yes, our thinking has gone into a misunderstanding. There was no photography technology in ancient times, and the pictures that can be passed down from that era to modern times, in fact, we should first think about those famous paintings? In an era when history is whitewashed, only utensils and paintings are still alive. It retains its original appearance and has been handed down to this day.”

The girl's eyes were burning.

"But even so, "Palace Man" is not an easy target, because it is just like the name that later generations renamed it. This painting is a portrait with the characters as the core. Compared with the background, it is more eye-catching It should be the maids, dwarves, little princesses and the painter himself who appeared in the paintings. But now these people have been erased even with the oil paintings on the wall, because other people have 'replaced' them in."

"It's us?" Hino understood. "So the solution to the problem is to let us imitate the positions of the characters in the painting? To reproduce the scene in the picture? But there is actually no way to do it? There are only three of us , but I remember that there are at least seven or eight people in the painting, including the painter himself, the princess, and the court ladies."

"No, since it has already been said that it is "Palace Man". Then it must not be the person on the screen." The girl shook her head and looked at the mirror in the room. "Isn't the reason why this painting is a world-famous painting because it has a unique design, and the content on the screen is the perspective of the 'portraited person'?"

She obviously knew a lot about the famous painting, and trotted all the way to the huge drawing board in the room, poked her head out from behind the drawing board, and looked towards the empty area across the room.

"Look, the position behind this drawing board is the opposite side where the painter himself is standing on the right side of the picture. He is painting portraits of the people standing opposite him, and the people opposite him are the king and queen. But in the painting "Palace Man" I drew him himself, and also painted little princesses, dwarves, and maids. Because the content of the picture is not from the perspective of the painter. It is from..."

As she spoke, she came out from behind the easel and strode to the model's position. Looking back from that position, she could see the entire room. The girl gestured at the furnishings in the room, as if she could see the scenes in the painting replaying in front of her eyes.

"Look, on the left is the painter himself, in the middle is the little princess, surrounded by maids, and on the right is the dwarf. In the distance is the guard. The king himself does not appear in the painting, but the painter has cleverly added A mirror was arranged on the wall so that the mirror could project the shadows of the king and queen in the picture..."

Every time she said something, her gaze followed, moving from the left side of the room to the right side. But when she talked about the mirror, she suddenly froze. Seeing her own shadow appearing on the side of the mirror, she suddenly understood something.

"Come here." Then she directly reached out and grabbed his forearm forcefully, pulling Hino Mino over, and dragging him to the front of the mirror.

"Hey hey! Wait a minute, me! It's not..."

The young man was pulled over by her with a blank face, and the shadows of the two entered the range of the mirror at the same time. At this moment, there was applause in the space, with the sound of fireworks like a video game clearance.

"Very good, very good." The boy reappeared in the emptiness, wearing a black dress, slowly floating out from the wall. At the same time, the surrounding space is also fluctuating like ripples, with a broken feeling like waking up from a dream.

"Excellent reasoning, you are indeed very knowledgeable."

"I guessed it right." Quan Shazhi smiled while holding the book, and said loudly to the boy who came over, "After confirming that it is "Palace Man", things will not be so difficult to guess. After all, this painting The reason why it is famous in history is precisely because of its space utilization, and the puzzles with this theme must also make a fuss in this place."

"So, is this puzzle solved now?" Izumi Saori looked at the oscillating space around him, and could see that it was gradually disintegrating, "You said that after solving the puzzle, you can see part of the truth, now Can you tell us?"

"Do you really want to find out the secret behind this so much?" The boy who called himself Longtai smiled at them, "To be honest, it's still too late to retreat at this point."

"Why do people persuade me to stop here every step I take?" But the girl didn't back down, and asked directly, "What kind of secret are you hiding? Are you so invisible?"

"Okay then." So the young man nodded regretfully, you could hear the regret in that voice, and you could also hear the voice drifting away.

"Then look at the answer you want."

The surrounding scenes changed, the original scene disappeared and turned into a white mist. When the fog dissipated, the faces of the three people changed at the same time. They actually stood among the bones, with white bones piled up like a mountain under their feet, and there were countless skinny figures staggering around them, falling into the pile of bones and melting. Make one of them.

"The king in the painting "The Man of the Palace" was full of military virtues, wise and powerful throughout his life. He made various reforms during his reign, resisted foreign enemies, and fought south and north. He is well-known in history, as a prosperous literary and artistic king. The king of the past three hundred years, in the field of art, he also has romantic anecdotes like "Palace Man."

Suddenly a voice came out from the pile of bones, and it was clearly the boy from before. But now his voice suddenly became old. Looking over, you can see an unkempt, middle-aged man lying among the bones. His eyes are cloudy, his face is thin, and he is dressed in a flaxen tattered robe, which almost blends with the surrounding bones.

"Who are you?"

The three of them could hardly recognize each other, it was actually the person who gave them the question just now. The boy just now was high-spirited, funny and mysterious, but in the end he was just a poor and hungry man covered in oil and dirt. Hino Mino subconsciously wanted to approach him, but was stopped by Gentaichi next to him, Genta shook his head silently at him, preventing him from approaching.

"However, when he was in power, he also imposed excessive taxes and imposed dozens of additional taxes. Status was everything to the nobles in that era. Most people had no chance to touch the bottom of the nobles in their lives. If they could obtain noble status, it would be a great opportunity Just like the author who drew the painting "Palace Man", obtained the status of nobility by virtue of this painting. It is a pity that there are only a few people who have this kind of opportunity in an era, and the vast majority of people let alone advance. There is no hope of moving forward."

The skinny middle-aged man continued to mutter to himself.

"Isn't this the current Xue Jianze? There is no way out, no way forward, no hope. You were dissatisfied with this city before, and you could still think about escaping, but now you have lost even the chance to escape..."

"Death is not the end of a person's life, it won't take that long. The end of a person's life is the moment when you lose hope, and today's Xue Jianze, many people have no hope since birth."

"..."

The three of them were speechless, only those skinny skeletons kept falling in the white mist, the number of bones on the ground kept increasing, and the mountain of bones piled up was getting higher and higher.

"I used to have a name named Ryunosuke Inoue, a down-and-out painter."

The man who previously claimed to be Longtai finally said his former name.

"But that's all in the past tense. My current name is Longtai. The people of this resort have left the part of themselves that is most desperate and wants to go back to the past. We gather around it and together form the A man named Longtai."

"...I guessed this possibility."

Hino Minoru was silent for a moment before speaking out slowly, but the man lying in the bone mountain no longer paid attention to him. He lay emaciated in the mountain of bones, but his consciousness was like drinking fine wine at a grand banquet.

"...Go, go, follow the path between the bones."

It was a long time before he began to hum a nursery rhyme-like hum.

"If you're going to destroy it, go, go."

"Let dreams fall, and birds break their wings."

"Anyway, we never flew."