- Goal
- Understand Xigong’s performance: his age and the location of his “explosion.”
- You are
- A backstage worker watching from behind the curtain.
- Clue
- Every line spoken on stage, and the song he plays.
Open mic
A tuxedoed gentleman bounces onstage with a can of Ice Cola.
Xigong: Hello, I am Xigong, a musician. Actually, I am a senior researcher at an institute.
The audience guesses 100, 35, 18, and 40. Exactly one guess has the correct tens digit and one has the correct ones digit, but nobody is completely correct. He is under forty, and the 18-year-old guess is too low.
The answer is 38. The oldest cat in history also lived to 38. His code name is One White Tiger—a very large cat.
Xigong asks the audience to listen to a piece of music and identify what it describes. A low tuning tone fills the room. The performance gradually reveals a story about a time bomb, a city, and an explosion that is both literal and conceptual.
【The clues are in the words and in the music.】 〖Keep listening.〗
He finishes, bows, and leaves an awkward silence behind. The backstage observer understands that “explosion” points to a hidden event in the song, not merely a stage effect.
Case file 08 “Explosion” complete. Return to case files →