Conan: Science Cartoonist Kudo Yuji

"This is!"

After rotating all the statues to the correct positions, Conan and Washi Komiya Touko heard a clicking sound at the mountain gate and the harsh noise of metal gears and chains stirring.

The two people standing next to the Mitarashi looked at each other after hearing the sound, nodded, and slowly walked to the torii gate of the mountain gate and looked down, only to see that the three steps leading down from the stone road had collapsed.

The steps were lowered as a whole, but there were no breaks. There were rusty iron chains hanging on both sides of the steps. If you think carefully, you can tell that it was these chains that had held the steps before.

"The steps and the sides below are interlocking, so it's no wonder people don't notice it when they climb the mountain."

Conan removed the bandage and hung it on the tree beside the cave entrance, tied the other end to himself, and jumped down holding the stone slab. When he landed, he found that although the cave entrance was not deep from above, it was dark inside because the passage slanted downward from the inside.

"Come down."

After reminding Orange to jump down, he casually drew a bow mark on the wall with a stone, then turned on the photoelectric function of his watch and pointed it inside, finally illuminating the passage clearly.

It turned out that the bottom was about fifty meters deep. The flashlight just happened to shine on the innermost position. Although it was not clear, Conan and Orange still found a wooden door with iron edges.

Walking along the passage, Conan looked at the brown torii gates that appeared every ten meters. He reached out and touched the pillar, then put it in front of his eyes and observed it carefully, confirming that these torii gates should have been red originally, but had changed color over time.

"That door looks like it's been there for decades."

Conan did not walk to the wooden door immediately. Instead, he glanced at Orange and was relieved to see that she was even more surprised than he was.

"You really don't know this place." He looked at Orange speechlessly.

"I told you, my family only told me the secret of the shrine and the secret statues, but I don't know anything else after that."

Orange walked to the torii gate closest to him and knocked on the pillar, his mouth slightly open: "This material is much better than the one we have above."

She then walked to the wooden door, noticed the old lock on the door and the dehydrated willow stick inserted on the bolt, pulled out the stick and inserted it into the lock, and opened it in no time.

"You are quite skilled at this."

Conan always felt a sense of familiarity, but he still focused on complaining. This girl was younger than him, so the words of an elementary school student were somewhat didactic.

"What's the point of learning this kind of thing? You should study hard at your age..."

"Didn't that annoying guy just say that I was recommended to high school? Besides, Hakodate Viola Girls' High School is a famous school for young ladies in Hakodate, so it's very convenient for me to get into higher education."

Orange bent down and squinted his eyes, tapped Conan on the forehead and cheek, glanced at his belt and shoes with some fear, then turned around and pushed open the wooden door.

Until now, even she couldn't muster up the urge to stop others and wanted to figure out what was going on in this underground space.

Along with the sound of the old wooden door, the two looked inside through the crack in the door. From here on, there were fewer traces of artificial excavation, and both the road and the downhill were dirt roads.

The space behind the door extends downward and is not very high, only about fifteen meters, so Conan's watch can shine through the ground. Combined with the two people's mobile phones, the space behind the door is clearly illuminated.

This seems to be a natural cave, but it has been artificially repaired. Walking down the bend of the earth slope, the two saw the last torii gate here. The torii stood alone on the ground, with only a small wooden shrine behind it, which looked extremely strange.

Walking downstairs, in addition to the torii and the shrine, Orange also found several locations with steel bases for mirrors. The mirrors were clamped on a turntable and could be rotated up and down, left and right without blind spots.

"That shrine." Conan stood in front of the torii gate and was about to go to see what the shrine looked like, but he stepped on something and the torii gate behind him actually swung out a long hard whip and hit him, making Conan feel a burning pain.

Seeing that Orange was about to come in, he hurriedly tried to remind him, but he saw the torii moved again. Just as he was thinking that he was too late, he saw that Orange just kicked the ground and actually avoided the attack.

"This thing is useless. The torii is set up here alone. If we use the mechanism from both sides, it will be useless."

Worried that there might be some messy mechanisms behind, Conan decided to walk to the right. But as soon as he approached the right wall, he smelled a strange fragrance and his head felt dizzy. Before he knew it, he found himself standing in front of the Torii again.

"what happened to you?"

Orange frowned: "Why have you been standing in front of the torii gate and staring at the shrine since you came down just now?"

"Ha!" Conan was stunned for a moment, and touched the part of his body that had just been hit, and found no trace at all.

"Am I... hallucinating?"

There were such unscientific things in the world, which aroused Conan's curiosity. He was alert to the place where he had just stepped. After walking two steps past the torii, the sound of the mechanism appeared again. This time it was not a hard whip, but a strange needle blown out of a bamboo tube, which pierced Conan's butt directly.

It felt numb and itchy, but he was too embarrassed to put his hand into his pants to scratch it in front of Orange. Just as he was getting annoyed, he saw out of the corner of his eye that Orange had avoided the trap like last time.

"I won't go back and go to the right this time. I'll just go straight in like this."

Conan took two steps away from the Torii gate, and the next second a bamboo pole bounced up from the ground and almost hit him in the face. But before he could be thankful that it missed, the great detective discovered another problem.

The bamboo pole was about as tall as Yuuji, and tied to it was a traditional Japanese doll with pale skin, overly long hair, and a pair of movable eyeballs with red pupils and yellow whites. It fell due to gravity and happened to meet Conan's eyes.

No matter how much he didn't believe in the supernatural, this straightforward method of scaring people still made Conan's hair stand on end. He sighed helplessly, then screamed loudly to adjust his mentality.

"Stop barking!"

Orange beside him suddenly pushed him, and Conan broke out in a cold sweat. He looked up and found that there was a torii in front of him, and Orange was looking at him impatiently.

"What are you thinking about, staring at that shrine so intently?"

"..."

[Okay, okay, this is the third time, right?]

Conan turned around with gritted teeth and ran in the direction he came from. The next second, he smelled the familiar fragrance again. He looked up and saw that it was the Torii again.

"you……"

"I'm staring at the shrine, you're weird."

He interrupted Orange, took out his cell phone, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that nearly half an hour had passed since the two of them came down.

[Sure enough, the time is right, there is no supernatural event at all, is it just a trap? ]

Then he had to crack it. I don't know who set up such a disgusting trap. It's really unethical. (End of this chapter)