Chapter 138 Female Swindler?

Day 11 of the road survival game!

"Anyway, I've run into this guy every time I get involved." Matsuda muttered to himself, then looked at the increasingly dark sky. The cruise ship had begun to list from the rear, caused by the increasing amount of water entering the aft cabin.

Knowing this wasn't the time for idle chatter, he quickly added, "Alright, this side seems fine. Detective Mori shouldn't be unable to subdue an unarmed woman. Let's continue searching for an exit!"

"Yes!" Hagiwara nodded in agreement, and once again led the way to move quickly towards the back of the ship. After leaving the deck and making sure that Detective Mori and the others wouldn't hear their conversation, they left.

He said with a hint of helplessness, "We're knowingly heading into danger. We know that since the rear compartment is starting to sink, going there is the most dangerous place, but we still have to look there, since the exit is most likely over there."

"..." Furuya Rei listened to the conversation, especially when he heard the woman whom Hagiwara called Kaze-chan, who should be Gin's sister, say those words again. His face turned extremely ugly.

The Japan he protects is a Japan that brings happiness to the majority of innocent Japanese people, not the kind of Japan that this Gin sister described as a paradise for criminals and a hell for law enforcement and ordinary citizens. Is the future of Japan really so bad that criminals are so rampant?

Wait a minute! Gin's sister just said 2016. In the last call with Hagiwara, Hagiwara said that Gin's sister comes from the future, 2025. The time interval between 2015 and 2025 is 10 years.

Unless they travel to 25 years into the future, it can't be referring to 16 years from now. If the 16 years she's talking about isn't 16 years from 2015, then she must be talking about 2016, but it's 2015 now.

Neither the intelligence he gathered from his investigation nor the information database of the public security authorities has ever revealed a criminal with the title "Twenty Faces," let alone the fact that as soon as one is arrested, a new "Twenty Faces" will soon appear.

Gin's sister also mentioned that there were twenty faces that appeared and were arrested several years ago, 16 years ago... Could she be deliberately fabricating such a ridiculous future to brainwash Hagiwara and Matsuda?

She wants to instill in them feelings of disappointment, anger, and resentment towards the Japanese government because of these so-called futures, and then, once they have completely abandoned the Japanese government, she will lure them into the organization.

Hiro and Hagiwara spoke of former Prime Minister Niimi today with a tone that was not respectful but rather sarcastic, even though it sounded like former Prime Minister Niimi had done some illegal things during his tenure.

However, his tenure coincided with Japan's economic bubble period. Saving a shipping company could preserve many jobs for Japan. Once Yatsushiro Shipbuilding went bankrupt during a time when the economic bubble was at its peak, the despair and plight of so many unemployed people was unimaginable.

As government officials, they should understand that sometimes, even government officials need to sacrifice a small number of people and engage in illegal activities to protect the well-being of the public. However, now, after noticing some clues, they have developed hostility towards the newly appointed former prime minister...

In the years since Gin saved Hiro and the others, has she been brainwashing them using the methods I just described—deliberately portraying the future of the Japanese government in a negative light—to make them start to develop some unhealthy perceptions of the government?

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As expected, Gin's sister couldn't possibly be innocent and harmless. She even saved the police for her lover. She probably saw their excellent professional abilities and wanted to make them new members of the organization.

Especially since Hagiwara and Matsuda are the ace of the Japanese explosives disposal unit, their ability to assemble and manufacture explosive weapons is naturally among the elite.

Hiro's sniping skills are second only to Gin and Shuichi Akai within the organization. After Shuichi Akai's identity was exposed, the organization's sniping capabilities declined sharply, and they only succeeded when Gin took action...

Thinking of this possibility, especially the organization's heinous criminal activities, Furuya Rei was furious. His like-minded friends all had bright futures ahead of them.

I absolutely cannot let this female con artist deceive and brainwash me, leading me to the dark side. No, I must expose her and prevent Hagiwara and the others from being fooled. However, Hagiwara seems to be infatuated with Gin's sister.

When a man in love encounters someone related to his love interest, his IQ can be considered to drop to zero. Therefore, the only reliable and rational people are Hiro and Matsuda.

So, while the four members of the Japanese Public Security Bureau were focused on finding the exit of the dungeon, this Japanese Public Security Bureau officer deliberately spoke to Matsuda on the other end of the phone with a half-smile in his heavily accented bourbon accent: "It seems that your previous speculation was a little wrong."

I can still hear what Gin's sister, San, said, which you just mentioned. I guess the phone's ability to pick up sound in her current time-space state is better than in a normal real-world phone call.

However… I've never heard of the 2016 Twenty-Faced Murder Case she mentioned. Not to mention she said the Twenty-Faced Murder Case started appearing a few years before 2016—was she referring to 2016 itself, or 16 years from now?

"...No way?" Matsuda was stunned when he heard this. He almost immediately realized that it was already the third year of the 2015 cycle they had entered, and he thought that 2016 would follow after this year.

However, the fact that Furuya was unaware of the murder case that occurred several years before 2016 means that it is very likely that in reality, before entering 2016, the cycle of 2015 had been repeating for who knows how many years.

The cycle of 2015 had repeated three times, and the murderer Furuya had just mentioned still hadn't appeared. Even Matsuda felt a chill run down his spine when he realized this, and the thought of trying to find the last 2015 made things very difficult.

Rei Furuya was unaware that Matsuda's strong emotional reaction was due to the time loop issue in 2015. He mistakenly believed that Matsuda was incredulous because he had exposed Gin's sister as a female fraudster who was brainwashing them with a non-existent, dark future of the Japanese government.

"Great, as expected of Matsuda, much more reliable and easier to persuade than that love-struck guy Hagiwara whose IQ has dropped to zero." He was pleased with himself and immediately added fuel to the fire: "If you don't believe me, you can search for Japanese news on your phone!"

In any case, there is no information about the Twenty-Faced Murder Case in the public security database, the Japanese social media, or the organization's intelligence database. At least I can guarantee that such a case did not exist in Japan before today.

"Tsk! That's not what I meant." Matsuda realized that Furuya had misunderstood him and quickly explained, "I've realized that the information you provided is a super troublesome problem for us."

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"Jinpei, what kind of troublesome information did Furuya give you?" Hagiwara, who was walking in front, heard Matsuda talking on the phone with Furuya behind him. He had originally wanted to focus on finding the exit of the dungeon, but he couldn't help but become curious after hearing this.

Morofushi, too, subconsciously worried about Furuya Rei: "What did Zero tell you? What kind of trouble is he in?"

"It wasn't him, it was us." Seeing that not only Furuya's side had misunderstood, but Hagi and the others on his side had also misunderstood, Matsuda simply turned on his phone's speakerphone and explained to both sides: "Furuya just told me he heard Kaze-chan..."

Therefore, I speculate that the case of the Twenty-Faced Man likely occurred sometime in 2015, and then Feng Sang saw the report about the Twenty-Faced Man in 2016, if this reasoning is correct.

This means that 2015 isn't the end; who knows how many more 2015s await us! Tsk... finding the last 2015 before Feng-chan's accident is going to be a real headache.

"Huh???" Rei Furuya, who thought Gin's sister was deceiving her friend with a non-existent future, was completely stunned when he heard Matsuda's words. Even the well-trained police officer was stunned.

How could it be that three 2015s have already passed in reality? If such a strange time issue existed, people in the real world would have already made a huge fuss about it. Could it be that Gin's sister is using this kind of rhetoric to brainwash them?

He was paranoid in the car, while Feng Xingshou was even more distraught, practically on the verge of tears: "No way! I didn't notice anything at all before? I even thought that time had passed quite quickly since 2012, and that a year would pass by in no time while I was busy."

We didn't even realize that 2015 had cycled through us, let alone that it seemed to have been cycling for many years. What should we do? Since 2015 seems to have cycled through us for many years, is it possible that the time my brother had his accident was just one of those 2015s, and not the last 2015 we were speculating about?

“That possibility is indeed possible.” Zhu Fu thought of the information he had obtained from his conversations with the others and immediately analyzed it for them: “Think about it, since there is a high probability that the US and Japan authorities attacked Gin before or after they seized the Silver Bullet data.”

So, their hasty sale of the finished silver bullets after only one year is excessively fast by both official and civilian standards in the US and Japan. Normally, even if they had obtained the data, it would be considered too fast.

They will definitely research it for 2 or 3 years, and only after they have produced a 'silver bullet' that is more effective and superior than the one sold to the public will they release the 'silver bullet' that they consider inferior.

Therefore, if they seized it in any year within the 2015 cycle, and then went through countless more 15-year cycles until 2016 when they developed a better product, then selling the 'inferior silver bullet' would be more in line with the official practices of both countries.

"Heh... This is indeed very troublesome. No wonder Jinpei is starting to complain." Hagiwara felt that what Morofushi said made a lot of sense, but the more sense it made, the more trouble it would be for them to save Fu-chan. This is truly... a real-life version of the Chinese proverb "twists and turns"!