Chapter 47 Detectives can discover truths that are unknown to others.
This is a very coincidental situation.
In all confrontations between organizations, between decline and rise, there must be many plates of cake and many people who share the cakes.
But the time when the Longtou family lived was too coincidental.
First of all, the Yokohama government is a piece of crap, and secondly, the other mafias are also crap. Finally, those with special abilities have just emerged and have not yet formed an organization, so they are useless.
So the Longtou family retired bravely, and actually managed to keep most of their wealth, and slipped away under the watchful eyes of the entire Yokohama.
They are all trash. If we throw Mori Ogai over there, Japan might win the superpower war.
Qian Jianmu had collected information about the Longtou family a long time ago, but he found it a little strange and believed that it was due to insufficient information. When he was integrating the intelligence again in the past few months, he spent some effort to investigate, but the information he obtained was shocking.
The people of Longtou family are all dead.
At present, the only main veins left can be counted on one hand at an optimistic level, and the more likely possibility is that there is only one person with special abilities left. The Longtou family did not lead an extravagant life, nor were they reported to be spending money lavishly. They knew how to keep their wealth private, and no one noticed that they had a huge sum of money.
Then they disappeared.
The problem is back again.
You don't still have the money in your hands, do you? Really no money spent? No flowers? Or you just can’t spend it all?
The income of the century-old Yokohama Port is not something to laugh at; it is a fortune that makes one's scalp tingle just thinking about it. Even if the Japanese currency has depreciated in the past decade or so, it is still a huge amount of wealth that a family can never spend in a lifetime. The most pessimistic situation now is that this unspent money has fallen into the hands of the few remaining people in the Longtou family, or even in the hands of one person.
So far, this is just a matter of a child holding gold bricks and lost property, and the problem is not very serious. However, this problem is related to another major problem, that is, when Qian Jianmu investigated the matter, he was not the first person to investigate.
He wasn't even second.
The most frightening thing is that more than one force is eyeing the Longtou family, and he is not the only one who discovered the child holding the gold brick.
The entire Yokohama was driven crazy by the war, and in order to continue fighting, they even dug up things that happened a hundred years ago and prepared to rob tombs to raise military funds. The obscure gaze passed through decades of time and fell on the surviving son of the leading family.
After circulating intelligence from multiple sources, retrieving international bank transactions, and checking a mafia's expenditure intelligence, Qian Jianmu finally discovered that the information about the Longtou family was related to the Rat of the Dead House.
...No wonder so many people found out about this, it turns out it was you who instigated it.
So in the end, this matter became quite complicated due to the accumulation of many factors and components.
Did the Rat of the Dead House just accidentally sell the information, or did he deliberately provoke conflict?
How long can the only remaining person with supernatural powers in the Longtou family hide? When will the bomb explode?
Will the bomb explode silently or with a bang?
What is the purpose of the Rat in the Dead House? What do they want?
I always feel that once foreign forces intervene, things will suddenly become extremely sinister.
Sengenmaku went through the entire investigation process in his mind, and finally picked out a few key words. Edogawa Ranpo understood it all at once, and his expression gradually became serious.
"There is a big problem here. Something big is going to happen in Yokohama," he said.
"Now that things have come to this, let's see if we can do some preliminary preparations. I've just sorted out the information and will give it to Endo later to ask him to investigate. I will also send a copy to your email." Chijianmu sighed.
Edogawa Ranpo looked at him steadily for a while, then burst out laughing.
"Hmm?" Qian Jianmu tilted his head in confusion.
Edogawa Ranpo raised his body slightly and touched his hair.
Chijianmu's hair is snow-white and slightly curly. His hair is naturally fine and curly, and feels strangely similar to a cat's, furry and warm. In short, it feels very comfortable.
"Very good, very good. You are growing up well! Don't worry too much, Ranpo-sama will help you."
"...I can become an adult." Qian Jianmu said softly.
"Eh?! I haven't even seen it, you must be lying." Ranpo's eyes widened.
"Because it's a coincidence that I've never seen Ranpo before." Chijianmaku cleaned up the table and didn't comb his hair, but he instinctively shook his head, trying to shake down the raised part, but failed miserably.
"That's too much. Have you seen it all?" Although he said that, there was no anger on Ranpo's face, only pure curiosity.
"Do you want to take a look?" asked Qian Jianmu.
"Look!" Edogawa Ranpo responded to save face.
Zero adjusted the values correctly, and Qian Jianmu briefly returned to his 22-year-old body.
The young man with long white hair was sitting there. The table originally given to him seemed a little low. He looked at Edogawa Ranpo and gave a steady smile.
A 22-year-old young man is right at the junction of maturity and immaturity. With years of good education, the frivolous and steady temperament that he naturally develops is daunting. And when he smiled, that sense of cold distance seemed to be weakened silently. People no longer felt kept at a distance, but instead felt a strong sense of affinity and goodwill. When Edogawa Ranpo saw his appearance as an adult, he was stunned for a moment and then gave a very pure smile.
"So, this is who you really are."
The next second, Qian Jianmu's expression paused slightly.
He heard a broadcast with a slightly electric sound, and a large red word appeared on the virtual screen in front of him. It was placed in a text box, surrounded by some fragmentary sentences, surrounding the title of the book, with a strong sense of design.
Unloved
"I don't need love, I need to protect myself."
[Passive (controllable): Individuals who are hostile to you will receive double the pain feedback (can be fatal) when they cause damage to you. 】
"…The supernatural power pain and love are obtained."
"Now? Has the publication date changed?"
Hmm…that’s a good question.
The date for the supernatural power to arrive is the day when the final article is published, usually at 12 o'clock. So the two of them were killing time leisurely, and had no idea that it would be published in advance.
Just like they couldn't have guessed that someone would rob a magazine truck...
No, you are crazy. Why are you fighting over this? !
Who could have imagined that? !
In short, because the final chapter was released to the public ahead of time, the completion time was brought forward at once.
"…Is the fever starting to set in?" Ranpo's eyes lit up.
“…Shouldn’t it be possible?”
The last time he had a fever was because of Zero’s upgrade. Zero is not an independent ability, but an enhancement based on his brain power. Therefore, the so-called upgrade of zero will inevitably affect him. This time it is an assignment rather than an upgrade, so it shouldn't cause a fever.
But he wasn't sure what would happen exactly. But since it has already arrived, it is better to distribute it earlier.
"Allocation successful"
Qian Jianmu was suddenly stunned.
etc--!
**
Ayatsuji Yukito, holding a cup of coffee, just walked to the door. He was in a calm mood. Although he felt that the cat was a bit annoying, he actually felt pretty good.
As soon as I opened the door, I saw a white-haired young man in the room trying to cover his eyes.
Amid a strange sound of flesh squeezing against flesh, the young man bent down slightly, but this did not stop what was happening. After just a moment, his left eyeball actually fell out of its socket.
Ayatsuji Yukito and Edogawa Ranpo froze in place, watching the red eyeball fall from its socket and hit the ground with a dull sound like a stone hitting the ground.
Dong...Dong...
The eyeballs rolled in the opposite direction.
The young man who covered his left eye raised his head blankly.
In the empty eye sockets, pink and red flesh is slowly wriggling, and new eyeballs are slowly growing. Dark blood slid down from the eye sockets, along the strangely pale profile and jaw, and fell to the ground.
Snap.
Click.
The forelock covered the golden right eye, and the empty left eye really turned into a dark blood hole this time. The white-haired young man was in a very strange state. He stood there stiffly, not moving, but it made people feel sad for some reason.
The blood was still dripping.
Click.
Some memories reappeared in the blood, along with the suffocation that I hadn't felt for a long time...
…
…
【
Even if you interfere, people will die.
One after another, one after another.
It is the third year since the advent of the Judgment AI. In this world where everyone is guilty, no one can protect themselves.
The lonely soul guarding what's left of his friend, the increasingly silent white-haired young man is like a white knight on a chessboard, leaning against the metal window to look out at the lush evil.
He stretched out his hand, but the sentencing strip symbolizing his guilt did not float above his body this time. The black blood floated in his veins and disappeared. He stared at the black liquid in a daze, and sensed a void deep in his bone marrow in the deep unfamiliarity.
Not sad, not lonely, just a little confused, what's left is complete emptiness and hollowness.
The door was pushed open, and Lilith saw his palm stretched out of the window, his expression did not change.
"Is that so... Luo Lan is gone too?"
"……Um."
Chips can change people's bodies. The end point of every artificial god is that their corpses that have been overused are the best materials for becoming AI or new chips. Luo Lan, who controls the judgment of truth and falsehood and has absolute sensitivity to evil, and whose divine authority is judgment, joins the Judgment AI Project. The final step of the plan is to ensure the uninterrupted and unlimited operation of the AI, delete Luo Lan's consciousness, and transform the remaining wealth in his body and brain into machines for permanent use.
After a long resistance, Luo Lan's remaining consciousness finally disappeared completely, filled with disgust and hatred for the world, and he was declared dead.
Theocracy was transferred, and the gift Luo Lan gave him arrived with bloodstains. After several years of silent struggle and resistance, it finally solidified into the absolute definition of "innocence", completely excluding him from this causal world.
There would be no machine to arrest him and put him in jail. The judging god used his power and declared him 'not guilty'.
There will no longer be a young man in this room who thinks the world is noisy because he can read minds and who complains about everyone's mental activities with a sour face all day long.
There is no sadness, just nothingness.
Everyone's destiny keeps moving forward, and there is no way to persuade a madman who is risking everything on one throw. Everyone's choice had already been decided. Since he had taken the initiative to open the gate that kept the beasts locked up, the bad news that kept coming was destined to be his own fault.
Although from a normal person's psychological point of view, he should blame himself and be sad. But Qian Jianmu seemed to be doing a math problem and could not fit himself into the content of the book no matter what. There was no feeling whatsoever other than calm and peace.
"Xiaomu, it's time for you to go."
Lilith suddenly said:
"This place is empty, Luo Lan is dead, so it's time for you to leave, right?"
"Where...?"
This world is empty and he has no place to go.
"Xiao Mu always wants to find the right answer. This world obviously has no logic, but Xiao Mu is serious about finding an answer."
Lilith sat next to him. Perhaps because of the liberation of theocracy, her emotions became increasingly calm, far less neurotic and crazy than before.
"Life is a ridiculous joke. There is no need to delve into where you live and where you die. But if Xiaomu wants to find the right place, then your place cannot exist here."
"..."
"I'm leaving, Xiaomu, let's say goodbye here." Having said this, she paused and showed a beautiful smile that was exactly the same as before.
"Oh, by the way, let's exchange eyes."
She said:
"I really want to see it. I really want to see the world through Xiaomu's eyes."
Qian Jianmu knew that the assassin Lilith and the god of war Mo Yun were both melee gods. In other words, they both used physical attacks and could not be granted divine power through the air like other people, so they had to merge part of each other's flesh and blood.
Lilith said her last goodbye to him before dying.
I don't know when it started, but leaving something for him became a consensus among everyone. It seemed that everyone was saying goodbye to him in this way. Even though they were thousands of miles apart, he could realize the death of his friend at the first moment.
He stumbled forward alone, covered with the corpses of his friends that were pieced together here and there. He knew clearly that they didn't really care whether he kept these parts or not, but he just couldn't give them up. I thought it wouldn't matter if I died, but at the same time I felt it would be better to live. The smiles of the past were peeled off piece by piece like the lime on the wall, leaving only the tattered and bumpy gray wall.
He dug out his own eyes and inserted Lilith's eyeballs in their place. My sense of pain has been gone for a long time. I can only feel my nerves and flesh growing and decaying. It's a little itchy, but bearable. The rejection reaction occurred again and again, and the eyeball was forced to connect again and again. It twisted and turned, and finally settled in his eye socket.
Lilith didn't have such a physique. She looked at the bloody golden eyeball, smiled, and held it in her palm.
"I like you very much, Xiaomu, from the first time I saw you and it's still the same now," she said.
Their first meeting was not harmonious. Lilith picked up Qian Jianmu like a cat and forced him to be her bloody playmate.
Lilith remembered that Qianjianmu's memory was incomplete at that time, as blank as a real kitten, and he had no sense of danger and no feeling of pain from being hurt. He just stared at her blankly for a while, then smiled with his cat-like golden eyes narrowed.
"You are so beautiful, can you tell me your name?"
At that time, Lilith thought, it was too much, but she liked it so much, should she become an accomplice and deceive other people?
Lilith watched Qian Jianmu grow up, from a white-haired kitten to a well-known great man. She always wanted to be with Qian Jianmu forever, but when it came to the moment of killing him, she always couldn't do it.
She thought that if Xiaomu wanted to be right, he must learn to feel pain, and she planned to make up for the pain he lacked. After all, inflicting pain on others is as common to her as falling in love with others.
She wondered, what would Xiaomu's future be like?
"We will meet in the future." There was one empty bloody eye, but her red eyes were filled with a lustrous luster filled with love.
“…I will.”
…
—but not our future.
There is no future in our world, our life, and our destiny.
One day, a long time later, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my eyeballs. The pain that had disappeared for a long time began to return, and the deep fatigue and emptiness brought about by long-term neglect surged up from the bottom of my heart, accompanied by layer upon layer of more mottled and darker rust marks of nothingness.
Qian Jianmu, who was wandering in an unknown city, stood on the top of a high-rise building, leaned against the corner of the rooftop, and slowly closed his tired eyes.
He couldn't sleep too long, he had to move forward.
The red eye lost the decoration of love, withered like a fallen leaf in autumn, and finally became an empty blood hole, watching with him the remaining ruined life belonging to Qianjianmu.
Although I don’t know where I can go, it’s probably somewhere very far away.
Where can he find a place to stay?
…
】
As if he had had a nightmare, the young man's face became paler and paler, and his only remaining eyes stared blankly at a certain point in the air, as if he had passed through the barrier of space and was looking in some distant direction.
"--screen!"
As if suddenly awakened, the white-haired young man staggered after a long silence and knelt on the soft surface of the tatami. The blood kept flowing down his cheek, soon staining a large area of the cloth.
After a brief pause, the red eyeball began to melt gradually. Qian Jianmu reached out and held it in his palm.
His fingertips trembled, and he wanted to clench his fists, but he couldn't do it no matter what. His nerve endings twitched, and he carefully protected the blood-red ball in his palms.
However, under the gazes of Edogawa Ranpo and Ayatsuji Yukito, the eyeball melted in the palm of his hand and turned into a large pool of blood, wrapping up his wrist and half of his palm.
The palms clenched tightly, but became empty.
After a moment of stunned silence, Qian Jianmu sat up. Emotions were forced back into place by reason, and thoughts that had been stagnant due to memories began to fly again.
He thought morbidly calmly that the dimension of divine power was indeed higher than supernatural powers.
There are three kinds of abilities in his body: divine power, zero, and supernatural power. It is currently known that Zero can decompose supernatural powers, and divine power can also cover and devour supernatural powers. It can be known that his power is higher than the power of this world, but it is not necessarily greater than or equal to the power of the origin of the world.
He rationally judges and analyzes his body, like a machine checking its integrity.
As he expected, the remnants of the gods acquired the energy of the new world and became an independent new individual with special abilities.
It’s like putting a precious gift in a packaging bag, so you don’t have to worry about losing it or accidentally damaging it. They are no longer the same distorted person, no longer a monster that was forcibly merged from two different individuals. They can finally face each other again, even though their relationship is no longer the same as before, even though only fragments of one of them are left.
He thought calmly that he won again and he was still right this time.
It was as if something was filled, and the long-lasting loneliness seemed to be relieved.
But just like that, the inexplicable emptiness in his chest was like ants gnawing at him. It didn't hurt, but the feeling of loss became deeper and deeper.
**
"Mr. Mu, you..."
Edogawa took a few steps forward, trying to calm himself down and try to help the man up, but he saw that the man kneeling on the ground had a faint smile on his lips.
He suddenly stopped talking.
It was a very faint smile, like a silent port watching the ships set sail one by one, or like a weathered old tree watching the young birds grow up one after another and fly south.
From Edogawa's perspective, he instantly understood the meaning of the smile.
He is gaining, but he is also losing.
Gained memory, lost the past.
Loss and gain mixed into one, turning into a thick confusion and relief that even I couldn't quite understand. Finally, it turned into a faint laugh, as if mocking oneself, or simply lamenting the fate that played tricks on people. No sadness, no blame, no pity, no soberness. It was just a sigh, falling like leaves, even the wind was so light that it was barely audible.
Qian Jianmu followed the voice and turned towards him. His originally sunken eyes had gradually recovered. In just these few minutes of silence, with the blessing of zero's energy, he had actually completed a new life.
Edogawa Ranpo saw the young man open his eyes.
A thin, pale gold, mixed with dots of unclear white. Pingping looked over and for no reason felt a sense of scrutiny as if this person should be enshrined on the altar. All he needed to do was to casually glance at him on a daily basis, and he would offer everything he had so that he could enjoy all the worship and respect. He doesn't need to do anything. Just existing is the ultimate blessing.
But the young man looked at him and gave him a unique smile.
Anyone would be flattered by such a gentle smile.
However, a kind of odorless sadness and fatigue spread in this calmness. And he himself seemed unaware of it.
"Ranpo, did you see that?" he asked, his expression calm and unsteady.
He felt that there was nothing wrong with this. Anyway, he didn't quite understand the inexplicable confusion and couldn't digest it for the time being. Then just do it as usual, as if skipping the error in the program, he instinctively chose the conservative and safe option.
Edogawa Ranpo opened his mouth, and after a brief silence, he narrowed his eyes and smiled in a unique way:
“I see.”
Sengenmaku changed his body shape back to that of a child, wiped the blood off half of his face, and regained his normal expression as if nothing had happened, and greeted Ayatsuji Yukito who was at the door.
"Are you scared? Is there anything you want to ask?"
If you didn't look at the scattered blood, the boy's smile would give people the illusion that nothing had happened.
Pain and nightmares, separation and loneliness, those complex and heavy emotions seemed to disappear from his body in an instant. Just like encountering difficult questions in an exam, I simply skipped large sections of the plot. I became again the kid in the shrine who always lazily leaned against the window to enjoy the breeze and occasionally told some jokes that were not funny.
Ayatsuji Yukito said nothing. He had long since recovered from the shock of witnessing the bloody scene, sorted himself out, and slowly picked up his pipe.
He didn't respond when asked. She just looked at him coldly without asking what happened. She picked up a dark towel from the cabinet that had been placed there at some point and covered Chihiro's head with it.
"Go to bed."
He exerted a little force, using a force that didn't look very gentlemanly but was actually not rough, to press Chigenmaku into Edogawa Ranpo's arms:
"Go to sleep when you're tired. You have to wake up from nightmares, idiot."
No matter how sad the situation is, a good night's sleep can solve it.
Just because something is incomprehensible doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Even if it doesn't hurt, you have to bandage the wound, otherwise it will fester sooner or later.
You can fool others by pretending nothing happened, but you idiot actually tried to fool the two detectives who watched the whole process.
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