Chapter 99: Being Confused Doesn't Hurt Your Brain

While waiting for Cheng Xiaoyu to pick up the gift from nature, the Kudo couple called out Subaru Okiya, who was guarding the killer at the basement door - or rather, Shuichi Akai, who was disguised as Subaru Okiya, and told him the general situation.

The key point was to tell him that what was waiting to be dealt with was a real demon, so that he could prepare himself mentally.

After all, Shuichi Akai is a British man who later worked for the FBI in the United States. Even though he doesn't look like a believer in God, the environment he grew up in there might make him a little sensitive to this aspect.

To be honest, Shuichi Akai felt that the most important thing to pay attention to at the scene was not his religious minefield, but the mental state of this family.

Could it be that the enemy threw some nerve gas in while he was guarding the prisoners in the basement, and his house was robbed?

Conscious and articulate... doesn't it look like it?

How about contacting the FBI to take them to the hospital for examination?

Shuichi Akai lowered his head in thought, but suddenly he saw the shadows under his feet begin to stretch and meander towards the wall beside him like a living thing. The three killers who were supposed to be tied up in the basement were thrown to the ground one by one with their chairs. During the whole process, these iron-willed killers did not say a word.

Conan Edogawa: "These people are unconscious now, so be careful not to leave them dead."

"Don't worry about it. I've killed more people than you've ever seen. How can you not know your limits?"

A pair of scarlet eyes opened in the darkness, and a woman dressed in blue floated out. Behind her, her black hair was curled around five unconscious strangers, and she threw them to the ground casually like throwing slippers.

"I caught some of the mice around here, don't thank me."

Akai Shuichi: "..."

The ghostly woman greeted everyone in the Kudo household one by one. Her inhuman appearance quickly faded, and when she turned to greet Akai Shuichi, her appearance was no different from that of an ordinary human. "Akai Shuichi, you don't look well. Do you want to go wash your face and clear your head? You can also remove your makeup while you're at it. After all, everyone here knows your true identity."

"...No, thank you for your concern."

Shuichi Akai is indeed someone who quickly accepts the idea of ​​rejuvenation... Perhaps it's because he grew up in a religious environment, the fact that "the devil exists and is right in front of him" has far less impact on him than learning that "rejuvenation is real."

In short, after realizing that the facts would not change according to his personal will, Akai Shuichi accepted everything calmly: "If that's the case, then the story that Satomi and Noso are planning a large-scale terrorist attack at Shibuya Station is also false?"

Cheng Xiaoyu: "That's strictly speaking not fake. In other parallel worlds where I didn't intervene and you didn't exist, they did indeed carry out that attack in Shibuya that resulted in countless casualties, and subsequently carried out multiple large-scale death games in multiple cities throughout Neon. At that time, there was a higher-dimensional being protecting them that I couldn't find. The situation was urgent, so I could only rely on you, who were protected by the laws of another higher-dimensional being."

Akai Shuichi breathed a sigh of relief.

If that were the case, that guy definitely wouldn't be furious even if he knew.

During the time when Nozomi and Rime couldn't be found, Toru Amuro, who was known as the captain of Japan, was almost going crazy with anxiety.

"But I still have a question. Why did the scene look like that that day?" Akai Shuichi racked his brains after returning home that day, but he couldn't figure out why the scene of Noso and Satomi's death looked so strange. "I mean, why did you take Noso's brain away?"

Cheng Xiaoyu: "We didn't take Noose's brain away. We took Noose himself away. What you found were just two poor people who were killed by Noose."

“…”

Everyone present had seen the bizarre crime scene. The possibility that had previously been ignored because it was beyond scientific reach surfaced in their minds, and a horrifying truth was revealed before them.

Yukiko: "Could it be that... Nozomi keeps changing his identity, and those missing people are because..."

Cheng Xiaoyu: "Yes, the noose digs open their heads and places its own fanged brain inside. Then they inherit all the abilities and knowledge of their new host. This guy has relied on this trick to survive for thousands of years."

Yusaku Kudo: "A will from thousands of years ago still walks the world, secretly plotting its evil plans... It's chilling to think about it. What exactly is its purpose?"

Cheng Xiaoyu: "That guy is just a prankster. You can think of him as a magical version of an evil inventor. You don't want to know what an unborn beast has done. It's not good for the mental health of minors. You just need to know that what he did was something that even a demon like me found dirty and inhumane. Even the madcap Japanese magic world—even the madcap Japanese magic world of a few hundred years ago—considered it insane and nailed him to the pillar of shame. Even today, everyone despises him."

"Luckily, he's dead." Edogawa Conan said, "But you said Rimei was also an innocent victim of Nozomi's murder. Was she mentally controlled by Nozomi? Or was this a human experiment?"

Cheng Xiaoyu: "Rimei wasn't Noso's victim, Himimi Shiori was. Simply put, Noso pulled Rime, who had been dead for thousands of years, out of hell and stuffed him into the body of that poor little girl. The little girl was already dead the moment she was possessed, and all you see is her remaining flesh. That's why the sorcerer who was in charge of the aftermath tried to keep the two bodies as intact as possible, because they didn't deserve to suffer any more."

Conan Edogawa gritted his teeth and said, "That bastard... How many innocent people have Nozomi and his accomplices killed?"

"It's impossible to count—I can only tell you this," Cheng Xiaoyu said. "I understand your indignation, but let me remind you that Nosuo and his accomplices are now dead—dead as hell, while the winery and the zoo, two murderous organizations, are still alive."

Kudo Yusaku: "Ms. Ghost is right. I'll trouble you with the rest."

Cheng Xiaoyu nodded, and a troll ninja soldier, nearly three meters tall and like a walking load-bearing wall, walked out from the shadows of the surrounding walls. His hands, each finger of which was thicker than an adult's arm, carefully held a crystal-clear rectangular stone and respectfully placed it on the coffee table.

The pale purple crystal was about the size of a 60cm fish tank and was solid.

Yusaku Kudo and Yukiko couldn't help but feel fortunate that they had bought a sturdy solid wood coffee table, otherwise the coffee table in the living room would have been heroically sacrificed today.

"There are too many people today, so it's not good for everyone to directly view all the memories one by one. So, in order to be safe and quick, I have to take other insurance measures." As he said this, Cheng Xiaoyu asked the ghost soldier to place a -

Stainless steel basin.

Kudo Family:?

Akai Shuichi:?

Akai Shuichi: "Why is the safety measure for soul-stealing a stainless steel basin? Is this a low-end version of the Pensieve?"

Cheng Xiaoyu: "It's about the same. It's used to help people meditate anyway. You'll know later."

Then, Cheng Xiaoyu shifted her gaze to one of the men who was tied to a chair on the ground and had lost his shadow and was in a coma. He immediately floated up like the people possessed by evil spirits in those exorcism movies. Cheng Xiaoyu stretched out her hand and pointed, and a blue-purple smoke pierced the man from her fingertips. After a while, it retracted and circled around the crystal in the center of the coffee table. Then, the killer's translucent head appeared in the center of the crystal.

As expected of a member of an organization already associated with magic, the killer immediately understood the situation as soon as he saw his own body lying outside the glass ball. He yelled at Cheng Xiaoyu: "Witch! You deserve to be burned at the stake!! [Beep——] [Beep——]"

The dirty words and vicious curses made Yukiko raise her hands to cover Edogawa Conan's ears, and Kudo Yusaku also frowned.

But Cheng Xiaoyu, the person being scolded, didn't even raise her eyelids. Instead, she asked Akai Shuichi, "I see these guys have broken fingers. Were they also uncooperative when you tortured them before?"

Akai Shuichi: "Yes, but the insults were not so harsh, nor so intense."

"Not a bad start. The fact that this guy is only getting anxious now means he knows he can't handle it, and that he has information that can't be leaked. He's desperate to get himself killed."

The floating head's face turned very ugly when he heard that. Cheng Xiaoyu turned down the volume of the crystal speaker with a wave of her finger as if she was adjusting the TV, and continued to ignore his even louder trash talk. She signaled to Yukiko to let go of Edogawa Conan's ear and said to him.

"Look, this is a classic case of them knowing they can't turn the tables, so they're trying to provoke me into killing them to preserve the intel. Trash-talking them at a time like this is more futile than arguing with a barking dog; it's just a waste of time. But we can't let them waste time and carbon emissions by constantly expelling the wrong-way air through their mouths, so we need to take some action..."

As he spoke, Cheng Xiaoyu picked up the stainless steel basin and banged it three times on the crystal.

Amid the buzzing sound of the stainless steel meditation basin, the originally arrogant head, with dull eyes and pale face, became completely silent, and the entire head vibrated at a small but high frequency at the same frequency as the stainless steel basin, and even a faint afterimage was left.

It looks like a funny character in a cartoon who is stuffed into a big bell and then the bell is rung.

Cheng Xiaoyu put down the stainless steel basin and explained, "Souls placed within a crystal will be affected by the crystal's state. Even simply shaking the crystal will cause their souls to tremble and make them feel severely dizzy. However, souls are not as easily broken as the body, so no matter how uncomfortable they are, they will always remain conscious and unable to commit suicide or escape."

"So if they don't want to recall and provide us with a search engine, we use a stainless steel basin to gently help them recall."

As the saying goes: Stainless steel basins are good, and they don’t hurt your brain.