B R E A K——break

"break the mirror." Before William Carter could finish explaining the next two words, James Turner had already given the answer.

"That's right." William Carter laughed, and this laugh seemed a bit different from before, carrying a sense of cheerfulness.

Maybe it was just an illusion, James Turner thought.

"Why are you so familiar with Morse code?" James Turner walked over to turn off the music, picked up the vinyl record he hadn't examined closely before, and narrowed his eyes slightly.

"My math Olympiad teacher talked about it in middle school. I thought it was interesting, and I even used it to pass answers during exams. After I switched to the liberal arts class in high school, I never used it again. Just now, it took me a moment to recall." The tip of William Carter's leather shoe tapped lightly on the floor. "But isn't the program team making things a bit too hard? If you don't happen to know this kind of knowledge, there's no way to solve it."

"Actually, they thought it through very well." James Turner handed the vinyl record to William Carter. The name of the suite, Mirror, was written on it. "When I was piecing together the sticky notes just now, you played this piano piece. For someone like you who's familiar with classical music, you could immediately recognize it's the Mirror Suite, and then associate it with the mirror next to the phonograph. If you don't know, you can also find it by looking at the vinyl record, so thinking of the mirror is inevitable."

"If you want to think of breaking the mirror..." William Carter thought of the bookmark in that book earlier. "Whatever I touch, shatters."

James Turner nodded. "I guess the fragments of the sticky note are also one of the clues. So the program team set up several lines of thought, and you chose the most direct one."

"But it's the one with the highest intellectual cost." William Carter shrugged slightly. "But compared to the efficiency of associative thinking, math is much more precise and quick."

James Turner was puzzled—how could someone studying art be so good at math? At this moment, William Carter had already focused his attention on the sticky note they had pieced together earlier. "That garbled text should also be a code, but maybe it's another solution." He walked over and picked up the paper. "Maybe the password to our room is hidden here."

This idea coincided with James Turner's own thoughts, but besides this sticky note, he always felt there was a lot of other information in the room. He just couldn't find a good way to distinguish which was valid and which was a distraction.

The two of them once again faced the sticky note that had been shattered and then pieced back together.

William Carter flipped the sticky note to the side with writing, examined it carefully, then took out the bookmark from the book and suddenly said something that didn't seem very useful at the moment.

"Don't you think the handwriting on these two pieces of paper looks different?"

James Turner had noticed this too. The handwriting on the bookmark looked more bold, like a man's handwriting, while the sticky note's was much more delicate. Although not drastically different, judging by the strokes, they were indeed written by different people.

He pointed at the bookmark. "I think this is the handwriting of the study's owner."

In fact, William Carter agreed with this view, but for the sake of the show's effect and audience acceptance, he still very conscientiously countered, "But what if this book was borrowed by the room's owner? The bookmark inside might not be his."

James Turner shook his head and pointed to a row of bookshelves nearby. "Third row from the left, the first six books are all from the same series as this novel. This one is the final volume. Besides this series, there are many other series on the shelf. I don't think someone with a collector's habit would borrow books to read, especially the final volume."

William Carter put on an exaggerated fan expression. "Wow, our Johnny is really wasted not acting in detective dramas."

Our Johnny??? Although James Turner was used to this kind of phrasing from fans on Weibo, hearing it from this person's mouth, his usually excellent control over his expression almost slipped.

Seeing the genuine admiration on William Carter's face, James Turner couldn't help but retort in his heart.

[You're really wasted not acting yourself.]

After all, they were on a show, so he couldn't be too cold to this "fan" in front of him. James Turner coughed and muttered, "Not necessarily not acting."

For some reason, at this moment, William Carter actually found James Turner a little bit cute.

He shook his head inwardly. He must be out of his mind.

Seeing William Carter's foot about to step on the shards of the vase he had broken at the start, James Turner couldn't help but reach out and tug his arm. "Careful."

William Carter also realized, looked down, and said, "Ha, so the vase was broken from the start. I almost forgot. The theme of our room is probably [fragments]."

He said it casually, but William Carter faintly felt something was off. If James Turner's earlier theory about "shattering" was really a pre-designed clue by the program team, then shouldn't the vase, also a fragile item, provide a clue after being broken?

James Turner seemed to be inspired by William Carter's words as well. The two of them squatted down almost at the same time, perfectly in sync.