"But even so, it is too difficult to select eight Chinese characters from these hundreds of Chinese characters to form a sentence."
Gao Yuan thought deeply and said, "Professor Ooka, may I ask, when you found this machine box, did you find anything else?"
"other things?"
When Ooka Kiyoshi heard Gao Yuan ask this, he immediately thought of something, "By the way, there are two pieces of calligraphy. I thought the brushwork was vigorous and seemed to be written by a famous artist, so I hung them in the study."
Hearing this, Gao Yuan couldn't help but smile: "Two pieces of calligraphy, two traps. If my prediction is correct, there should be tips for unlocking this trap in the content of this calligraphy."
Ayukawa Tatsuya agreed with this, so Ooka Kiyoshi asked the woman to fetch the two calligraphy works.
"Sure enough, Detective Akechi has a quick mind and immediately saw the key to this mechanism box. I heard that you risked your life to save my great-niece yesterday."
Ooka Kiyoshi nodded slightly and said to Gao Yuan.
"Professor Ooka is too polite. This is what I should do."
Gao Yuan said.
"I heard that you came to me because you wanted to ask me something, right? Don't worry, as long as I, the old man, know something, I will definitely give you an answer."
Ooka Kiyosaku said.
At this time, the woman had also taken two calligraphy hanging scrolls, placed them on the table, and then left the Japanese room respectfully.
In response, Ooka Kiyoshi suspended his conversation with Takato and unfolded the two calligraphy paintings in the direction of Ayukawa Tatsuya.
"Professor Ayukawa, I will ask you to help me take a look next."
"You should obey your orders."
As Tatsuya Ayukawa spoke, he adjusted his glasses, walked up to the two pieces of calligraphy, and observed them carefully.
I saw only two pieces of calligraphy written in Chinese characters. One of them had two sentences written in wild cursive: The traces of people disappear on the snow path, and the birds fly high into the sky.
The other one has sixteen words written in small regular letters in a neat four-by-four grid:
The bed is full of light and cold
Black Bones Crying in the Sky
The frosty moon does not drum up
Mingzhong raised his voice
Looking at these two pieces of calligraphy, Ayukawa Tatsuya couldn't help but marveled: "These are really good calligraphy!"
Then, he began to read the contents of these two pieces of calligraphy aloud in accented Chinese, seemingly with deep affection, which made Gao Yuan feel a little numb while listening to it, while Ooka Kiyoshi and Ooka Momiji spoke about Ayukawa.
Tatsuya was slightly impressed by his performance.
"These two pieces of calligraphy should be secretly adapted from ancient poems. I think the answer should also be found in ancient poems. For example, the sentence 'The traces of people disappear in the snow' should be adapted from the famous line from "Jiang Xue", 'The traces of people disappear in thousands of paths'
'; And in the text in the second picture, you can see the shadow of "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night" and "Quiet Night Thoughts". So I think..."
"Um, Professor Ayukawa, interrupt me."
While Ayukawa Tatsuya was slowly speaking, Gao Yuan suddenly said, "Although I may be a little sorry to say this, but ah, I have solved the puzzle of these two characters."
"What did you say!"
Ayukawa Tatsuya looked at Takato with an unbelievable tone and said, while Ooka Momiji and Ooka Kiyosaku on the side also looked at Takato in surprise.
"I mean, I have solved the puzzle of these two words."
This time, Gao Yuan spoke to Ayukawa Tatsuya again in pure Chinese.
"you……"
Hearing Takato's words, everyone present was surprised, especially Ayukawa Tatsuya.
Gao Yuan continued: "Professor Ayukawa, you just said that the text in the second picture has shadows of "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" and "Quiet Night Thoughts", but that is not true. Because these sixteen words actually imply a sentence
A complete ancient poem."
Then, Gao Yuan said in Chinese again: "The frost is heavy and the drums are cold and the sound cannot be heard. It comes from "The Journey of the Governor of Yanmen" by Li He, a poet of the Tang Dynasty."
Then, I switched back to Japanese.
"As for the two poems you mentioned, although some words appear in these sixteen words, they are missing a certain word, and it is impossible to find a complete verse from them."
"So, Detective Akechi, are you saying that the answer to this mechanism is this ancient poem?"
Ooka Kiyoshi asked.
"impossible!"
Ayukawa Tatsuya seemed a little unwilling to lose face, "There are only seven characters in the ancient poem, but you said before that you need to find eight characters to form a sentence. How do you explain this!"
"So, it depends on the content of the first text."
Gao Yuan said calmly, but he also felt a little helpless in his heart - after all, this kind of Chinese word puzzle, for me, really just hit the target.
"The traces of people disappear on the snow path, and the birds fly high into the sky."
After reciting it in Chinese, Gao Yuan continued to explain in Japanese, "This is actually also an ancient poem. 'The snow path disappears,' which means a snow-white road. 'The bird flies into the sky,' which means the bird flies into the sky. So this sentence
Poetry is——”
"A line of egrets ascending to the sky."
I read the poem in Chinese, and then explained it in Japanese: "The Chinese character 'Heron' here is actually split into the two characters 'road' and 'bird', that is, 'a line of white road', 'bird ascending the blue sky'"
'Two sentences, when combined they become a seven-character poem."
With that said, Gao Yuan took the mechanism box over and started playing with the small grids on it.
"So the answer is obvious. A seven-character poem with eight characters means that one word in it must be split into two to answer, and there happens to be one word in the previous sentence that can be split in this way. So the answers are-"
While talking, Gao Yuan quickly moved the upper grid, and from the hundreds of Chinese characters, he moved the required Chinese characters one by one to the middle grid, which took a lot of time.
"'The rain is heavy and the sound is cold,' and 'A line of birds on a white road ascends to the blue sky.'"
It took some time for Gao Yuan to move the words on both sides, and then he heard a sound from inside the box - the mechanism box was opened!
Seeing this, Ooka Kiyoshi immediately got up excitedly and took the box from Gao Yuan's hand. Inside was an ancient book bound with thread. Although it was a little worn, it was very well preserved.
When I opened the book, what I saw at the beginning was the words "Heaven and Earth are dark and yellow, the universe is vast and wild", and it was written twice in block letters and cursive script.
Coming closer, Ayukawa Tatsuya looked surprised when he saw this scene: "This...could it be..."
"One of the eight hundred copies of "The Thousand-Character Essay on True Grass" written by the Sui Dynasty monk, Monk Zhiyong, is one of the originals?"
Gao Yuan also said with a slight change in his expression - over the course of a thousand years, there were 800 original copies of "The True Grass Thousand-Character Monument". Currently, only the ink version and the engraving version have been handed down. The only ink version is said to be in Japan. Whose private collection it is.
If this book is also authentic, it would be priceless!
Ooka Kiyosaku looked excited after briefly reading through it. Then he quickly put it back in the box and put it away. He looked at Gao Yuan and said sternly: "Mr. Akechi, you don't know what you are asking about. I
You must tell me everything you know!”
Seeing this, Gao Yuan stopped talking nonsense:
"Twenty years ago, your student, Mr. Taro Asami, do you know where he is now?"