Chapter 73, Section 72: Beneath the Gentian Flower: The Unexpected...
If nothing unexpected happens
An accident is about to happen.
Zhuge Tongzhi also thought so.
So after pulling the shoulder strap, she squatted down again and carefully untied and retied her shoelaces, which she hadn't touched for days, until she pulled them so tight that she finally let go.
Over there, Ran Mouri was surrounded by the three kids, who were talking about the Junior Detective League's "great achievements." Conan stood next to the girl, occasionally correcting any details of the evidence that were said incorrectly.
After the phone's signal bars flashed a few times, it finally went out of signal. Morofushi Takaaki tried to make a call, but after a long time without success, he put the phone in his pocket and looked up at Furuya Rei, who was also fiddling with his phone.
"No signal at all." The blond man gave a helpless wry smile, displaying the grayed-out signal bar on his phone screen. "Did Inspector Morofushi bring a walkie-talkie?"
“Cases with fewer participants are usually not equipped with walkie-talkies; telephone communication is sufficient,” Zhu Fugaoming shook his head and said, “This time, I made a mistake.”
"We were only going to stay in the tunnel for a short time. We still need to go out and do some more research," Furuya Rei said, waving his hand to comfort her. Then he naturally placed his hands on Zhuge Tongzhi's shoulders and said, "I was also planning to send this child out."
"The client didn't go into details about the case, and I didn't expect the scene to be like this..." He paused, then smiled and said, "After all, I was asked by a friend to take the child out, and it wouldn't be good if he was so scared that he had nightmares at night."
"Hey, what nonsense are you talking about?" Zhuge Tongzhi, whose shoulders were being held, immediately revealed his crescent-shaped eyes and glanced sideways at Furuya Rei above his head. "You're the one who has nightmares at night."
However, after hearing these few words, she understood that Furuya Rei intended to reveal Morofushi Kagemitsu's recent situation to Morofushi Takaaki, so she cooperated and kept quiet.
Perhaps sensing that its location had remained stationary for a long time, the navigation box in the void automatically refreshed:
Next waypoint: The secrets deep within the fortress (incomplete)
"Your route has been replanned. Please continue along the current route."
"Turn left in 5.6 meters ahead, then turn right."
The blue and white arrow that had been pointing towards Hattori Heiji and his group suddenly turned sharply to the left, onto a dark, unlit side road that stretched to the horizon.
That must be an open area. The black-haired girl squinted and looked at the side road hidden in the darkness with the light of her flashlight, but she didn't see any trace of the barbed wire blocking the way.
"Oh? Is that friend a colleague of Mr. Amuro?" Morofushi Takaaki asked, looking at Furuya Rei who seemed intent on continuing the conversation. "So, this little Zhuge Liang is that friend's child, right?"
"No, no." Zhuge Tongzhi shrugged, shook Furuya Rei's hand off his shoulder, and wagged his finger, saying, "I only met Hikaru-chan a year ago. He's my new guardian and uncle."
She wouldn't mind generously playing the role of a magpie to announce good news.
But this roundabout way of doing things is too troublesome, Zhuge Tongzhi sighed inwardly. Wouldn't it be easier to just pass a note or whisper something in someone's ear?
However, she understood that Furuya Rei didn't have a good excuse, so she decided to let her most reliable and capable "kid sister" help pass on the message.
"Hey, Officer Takaaki." The black-haired girl put on a high-pitched voice and beckoned to Takaaki Morofushi standing next to her in a seemingly innocent manner, gesturing for him to squat down and listen carefully. "I'll tell you a secret about Hikari-chan, okay?"
"Hmm?" Morofushi Takaaki looked at the girl in front of him, whose demeanor was at least nine-tenths similar to Conan's, and then glanced at Furuya Rei, who showed no intention of stopping him, before squatting down with interest.
"Actually, Hikaru-chan..."
"Boom!" Almost as expected, the explosions that came from both sides at the same time interrupted her words.
Conan, who had been so bored that he had squatted down, immediately stood up, grabbed Ran Mouri's wrist, and was then pulled into the girl's arms, half-protecting her along with the three children in front of her.
Furuya Rei supported Zhuge Tongzhi's shoulder, bent down slightly to lower his center of gravity and steady himself, his purplish-gray eyes looking at the dust billowing up in front of and behind him, and covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve.
Morofushi Komei remained in his squatting position, one hand supporting himself on the trembling ground, while the other hand instinctively reached out to help the girl who had just approached him. But when he turned his head, he found that the girl had already stood firmly in a horse stance.
Amidst the earth-shaking tremors, as small pebbles pelted down from above, Zhuge Tongzhi felt a sense of peace and tranquility, even a sense of relief that the sword of Damocles had finally fallen.
Eight eggs, late but they've arrived!
Moreover, how can one easily reveal their identity without experiencing misunderstandings, missed opportunities, fraud, and counter-fraud?
After all, it's not that we won't reveal their identities, but rather that we will reveal them slowly, deliberately, and selectively, in an orderly and rhythmic manner, and even more importantly, we will choose one of the three to reveal them, in a scientific way.
In this way, the process of revealing identities can be initiated by a few people and then by the majority, thus driving further revelations. Of course, each case must be handled on a case-by-case basis.
She wasn't unaware of the rule, but...
Ugh, let me finish what I was saying! It's so frustrating to only get halfway through a sentence!
Faced with the impending development that would jeopardize the second half of the sentence due to an unexpected event, Zhuge Tongzhi shook off Furuya Rei's hand and, amidst the swirling dust, said to Morofushi Takaaki: "Your brother isn't dead. Hurry up and come to the Mihana Poirot Cafe to catch the cat."
Morofushi Komei's phoenix eyes widened for a moment. His originally narrow, fox-like eyes widened, and he looked like Morofushi Kagemitsu with a bit of the surprise of a startled cat.
"Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!" After saying that, she shrank back and used Furuya Rei's figure to shield herself from the dust, then spat out a few mouthfuls of saliva to expel the dust she had swallowed.
From the direction leading into the tunnel from the outside, one could also hear coughing and spitting out ashes.
Unaware of who the newcomer was, the group of people gathered together became serious. Morofushi Takaaki did not have time to ask any further questions. He stood up and walked to the front with Furuya Rei, keeping a close eye on the source of the sound.
Four figures emerged from the gradually settling smoke and dust, all covering their mouths and noses, walking hurriedly and coughing repeatedly as they rushed towards this side.
Of the four people who ran over, there were two men and two women. Among them were two young men and women in police uniforms, a long-haired man with a sickly expression who was coughing repeatedly, and a girl with a bun hairstyle who was dressed as a nurse and looked like a frightened bird.
"Officer Morofushi!" The man with the spiky hair in police uniform was the first to see the situation and shouted, "Someone has planted a bomb at the entrance, and the officers behind are being held back outside."
"Stop shouting here, let's go over there first." The short-haired policewoman standing next to him dusted off her shoulders and strode over. "Officer, we've brought the documents you requested."
"Two members of the public happened to come by with clues, so we brought them over together." The short-haired policewoman said, glancing at the long-haired man and the nurse.
"Someone tried to kill us! Why didn't you say anything?" A few steps away, the nurse with the bun couldn't hold back any longer and cried out in despair, "The killer is right here!"
The long-haired man among the four remained silent, his right hand tightly clutching his waist as he coughed weakly and walked towards them with unsteady steps.
As soon as those words were spoken, the detectives present all sharpened their gazes, their searchlight-like eyes flashing towards the four people with different expressions in front of them.
"Iwata, Anri." Morobushi Takaaki nodded to the two relatively calm young police officers and introduced them to everyone, "The new recruits from the Nagano Police Department are a forensic doctor and a detective, respectively."
The male police officer with the bob haircut and the female police officer with short hair nodded to everyone and then introduced the two people next to them who were obviously not police officers.
Officer Anri put her hand on the shoulder of the nurse with the bun hairstyle and introduced her: "This is Nurse Chieko Ueda from Nagano Hospital. She was the roommate of the deceased Yamanashi. She couldn't come during the last inquiry because she had something to do, so she's here to give a supplementary statement."
After saying that, she patted the nurse on the back to comfort her, then looked at the long-haired man next to her who was gradually stopping his cough, and said, "This is Mr. Kiuchi Toshiaki. He said he has some clues related to the case to provide."
"As for the attack just now, it seems that someone stabbed Mr. Kiuchi with a knife the moment the explosion occurred." The short-haired policewoman's words drew everyone's attention to the long-haired man's hand on his waist, and upon closer inspection, they noticed the faint trace of blood.
Ueda, who shared the same surname as the deceased; the unsuspecting victim from the future; and the assassin in the explosion. Zhuge Tongzhi's gaze swept over the four in turn, finally settling on Kiuchi Toshiaki, who had been stabbed.
"Hey, old man!" While Furuya Rei was also observing the four of them, the black-haired girl slipped over to the long-haired man's side and looked at his waist, which he was clutching, with feigned concern. "Are you hurt? I have some band-aids here."
No, being stabbed isn't something that can be fixed with just a band-aid. The juvenile detectives, who had learned a lot about first aid from the case, immediately pulled out the strips of cloth they had used to cover their eyes and swarmed around the wound.
“Uncle, you can use this to bandage your wound. These strips of cloth are all clean.” Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya gathered the cloth together and then began to tie them together in pairs. “This will be long enough.”
Zhuge Liang wasn't there to bandage things up; you've got the wrong idea, you silly kids.
Standing next to Ran Mouri, Conan twitched his lips, looked at the Junior Detective League who had already started working, rubbed his forehead, and said in a high-pitched voice, "Huh? Uncle, did you really get stabbed? It doesn't look like you're bleeding much!"
“Oh right.” The three little ones were stunned when they heard this, and belatedly realized that the bloodstains on the side of the person in front of them had only spread slightly beyond the palm of their hand, and the amount of bleeding did not look like that of a deep wound.
"Ah, it's just a scratch." The long-haired man smiled gently at the children beside him and moved his hand away from his waist. "I think maybe Miss Ueda is mistaken. No one stabbed me."
"The stone walls are rough. I was startled by the explosion when I came in. I must have accidentally bumped into a protruding rock."
It was a lie. Zhuge Tongzhi, who was closest to the man, was naturally watching his movements closely. Just now, the man had carefully gathered something in his palm and stuffed it into his pocket.
Moreover, although the marks left on the clothes had been deliberately torn to look like they had been scratched by stones, there were clearly marks from being stabbed by a sharp blade.
Conan watched the man refuse to have the medicine applied and thought to himself: He probably doesn't want his wounds to be seen, which means someone must have attacked him during the explosion.
Moreover, it was someone he knew, not necessarily someone he was close to, but someone special enough that he could recognize the person amidst the chaos. Zhu Fu Gaoming glanced at the man's slightly bulging pockets, his narrow, upturned phoenix eyes taking in everything.
But why should he cover for the other party? Furuya Rei was introducing himself to the two newly joined unfamiliar police officers, glancing at Kiuchi Toshiaki with a distracted mind, thinking that if the person who did the trick was outside, they would have time to escape, and he would not need to lie to the police.
So... is it among the three people in front of us?
Amidst the mystery, the four shared a moment of resonance before their thoughts were interrupted by shouts coming from the other end of the tunnel.
"Hey! Conan! Ran! How are you all doing over there?" A loud Osaka accent came through the collapsed earthen wall on the other side. "I heard two explosions! Can you hear them—"
"Gao Ming! Gao Ming, are you alright over there?" Yamato Kansuke and Uehara Yui's voices also came from the other end, mixed with Mouri Kogoro's broken voice shouting "Ran".
"Dad! Hattori—we're alright! But both ends of this place have been destroyed!" Ran Mouri shouted back immediately, walking quickly to the earthen wall where rocks were still rolling down, trying to make her voice as loud as possible through the gaps. "Are you alright over there?"
The incident happened suddenly, but no matter what the mystery is, we still need to make arrangements for the detectives and police officers who are now divided into two factions.
There was no escaping it anyway. Zhuge Tongzhi glanced at Kiuchi Shunmei's pocket, swallowed the question he was about to ask, and walked towards the earthen wall with the others.
"I'm fine, don't worry." Morofushi Takaaki raised his voice through the wall, reporting the situation to Yamato Kansuke and Uehara Yui on the other side, "Iwata and Anri have arrived with the documents and people related to the case, but we can't get out of here. We have to wait for someone to clear the roadblocks."
"Well, our guide here said there's an exit if you go further in." Yamato Kansuke glanced at the guide beside him, who was terrified by the explosion. His anxious and fierce expression made the guide gasp in fright. "The signal is bad here, so we can't contact the outside. You guys wait over there."
"They must have already cleared the road. There are no signs in the unopened areas here, so don't wander around," he said gruffly to the wall.
On the other side of the wall, Morofushi Takamichi chuckled softly and calmly replied, "Of course."
"Conan, Amuro-kun, are you both alright?" Shuichi Akai's voice, altered by a voice changer, came from the other end.
In response, Rei Furuya crossed his arms and gave a cold chuckle to indicate that he had read it. Conan, on the other hand, quickly climbed onto the wall following the sound and shouted back, "We're fine, don't worry. Has Mr. Okiya found anything?"
"We just went down to the bottom of the pit to check on Ms. Yamanashi's condition, and the explosion happened before we came up." As he was speaking, Kogoro Mouri's wailing voice calling for Ran Mouri came from afar, indicating that not everyone in the pit had come up yet.
"It can be basically determined that the deceased fell to his death while running in a hurry. At the same time, we found a dagger at the bottom of the pit, which should be the one that killed Dr. Ueda." Shuichi Akai calmly stated all the findings. "It is uncertain whether there are fingerprints on it."
“We found bloodstains on the victim’s sleeve, suggesting that the murderer may have tried to grab the victim who had lost his footing.” Yamato Kansuke’s deep voice came through the wall. “We’re not sure if the murderer let go or failed to grab him. If it was the former, it might mean that the victim saw the murderer’s face.”
If it's the latter, then the killer is either a woman who is generally less physically strong. Zhuge Tongzhi looked at the nurse with the bun hairstyle, who was clearly the least trained of the three, and then glanced at the short-haired policewoman with a serious expression.
Or perhaps he was a weak man, suffering from a prolonged illness or recovering from a serious one. She glanced at Toshiaki Kiuchi behind her, but the long-haired man seemed somewhat lost in thought amidst the slightly tense atmosphere.
Despite having just been attacked, he showed little fear or panic, his hand instinctively reaching into his pocket for something. This scene was quickly noticed by the idle Junior Detective Club.
Children's questions are often straightforward and rarely consider privacy. Ayumi Yoshida pointed curiously at Toshiaki Kiuchi's hand in his pocket and asked, "Mr. Kiuchi, did you bring a charm with you this time?"
"Huh?" The man, suddenly pulled back to his senses, was taken aback and looked at the three children beside him who were showing him talismans, crosses, and Buddhist prayer beads.
"Do children this age already have such strong and diverse beliefs?" Looking at the display of diverse beliefs, Toshiaki Kiuchi hesitated for a moment before saying, "No, but in a sense, it's also a kind of talisman for me."
"Eh—? I'm so curious!" Zhuge Tongzhi drew out his voice, took out his small peach wood sword, and waved it as he approached. "It's called a talisman because it just helped Mr. Kinouchi protect his waist, right?"
Kiuchi Shunmei's expression changed slightly. The black-haired girl who was casually waving the peach wood sword in front of her looked up, pointed the peach wood sword at what he was holding, and said crisply, "How strange. If it was just a scratch, why would it penetrate the amulet?"
"Please take a look." Rei Furuya, who had no intention of communicating with Shuichi Akai, walked over. His voice was gentle but carried an inexplicable and irresistible air. He looked at the long-haired man with the backlight and said, "Mr. Kiuchi, in the latest clues, we have obtained a death warning that points to you as the culprit."
“But you came ahead of time, and you don’t seem to know anything about it.”
A shadow fell over the blond man's face, his purplish-gray eyes fixed on the man in front of him. He took a step back into the light and gently advised, "For your own safety, please cooperate with the investigation."
Wow, the police are intimidating the masses! Zhuge Tongzhi looked at the blatant coercion before him and muttered to himself in a drawn-out tone: I'm going to report this to the central government! I'm going to report this to the central government!
Leaving the shadow of Rei Furuya behind, Toshiaki Kiuchi, his forehead beaded with cold sweat, let out a breath and finally unfolded what he was holding, showing it to the crowd who had all turned to look at him.
"This is it. Because it's very old, it's easy for the stone wall to cut through it."
It was a pale purple flower woven from yellowish, translucent plastic rope, with five petals and shaped like a wine glass.
The gentian flower, which still looks quite delicate, must have been carefully preserved. Apart from the marks of being cut, there is no wear and tear on the surface of the flower.
However, it's now completely scattered and in disarray.
-----------------------
Author's note: Yes, the eight eggs arrived right on time!
It's not that we won't detonate, but rather that we detonate in an orderly and rhythmic manner, with the earlier detonations setting the stage for the later ones.
…
When the explosion occurred
Zhuge: You're so quick to speak!
Therefore:
Brother Gaoming, come to Beika Town to catch a cat right now!
…
Mwah!
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