Conan: Death is Watching Me

Chapter 122 Reencounter with Rum
What's the point?

Gao Mo tapped Conan on the head.

I must say, it feels pretty good.

This guy claims to be restraining himself, but he still easily gets carried away whenever he encounters a mystery or puzzle.

“The previous owner of this place had ties to an organization, which could easily attract their attention. You should consider this carefully.”

"Did Haibara tell you?" Conan scratched his head resentfully. "You guys clearly know a lot of things, but you just won't tell me... Shouldn't we be comrades-in-arms now?"

"There's no benefit in telling you now, and besides, I don't know much about it."

As Gao Mo watched the detectives chatting and laughing from the doorway, he suddenly noticed a large amount of old bloodstains remaining around him.

Dark spots can be seen on door handles, handrails, and walls.

More than 40 years ago, the owner of this place, Karasuma Renya, hired a large number of experts and scholars to decipher the code, but in the end, none of those scholars survived.

"Wow!"

Gao Mo scanned the scene with a faint glint in his eyes, as if he could see the carnage in the Twilight Mansion.

"Why do I feel like you know everything?" Conan asked, his face full of suspicion.

“All I know is that official organizations from various countries are investigating. Your real focus should be on finding a way to contact them—you can’t possibly deal with an organization with just a skateboard and tranquilizer darts, can you?” Gao Mo withdrew his observation.

"Hey, you two, what are you doing standing at the gate?"

Mustache and Lan were talking to the only receptionist in the building—a short-haired maid with freckles.

"Please leave your umbrella by the door, sir," the short-haired maid, who looked rather nervous, belatedly rushed over to close the door. "I'll take you to your room right away. After you've put your luggage away, you can go to the living room to rest with the others..."

"But are you really all alone?" Xiaolan asked worriedly.

"It seems so. The master entrusted everything to me," the maid replied in a low voice. "There was supposed to be a chef, but I don't know why he didn't come..."

"Oh dear, I'm sorry, I'm late!"

Just then, another person burst in from outside, an impatient man who pushed open the door and shook off the rain.

"I completely forgot to bring an umbrella..."

"Mr. Wakita?" Ran recognized the person in surprise.

The striking features include a single eye patch and an exposed front tooth.

He was the chef, Kenjiro Wakita, when the Kido Detective Agency opened.

"Are you the chef for this dinner party?"

“That’s right, haha,” Wakita Kanenori laughed and called out loudly, “It’s been a long time, didn’t Detective Kido come?”

"Kido-san didn't receive an invitation, and it seems like he has other things to do."

Ooue no Kisaki, who had stayed behind to take over the cooking duties, looked astonished and turned to stare directly at Wakita Kanenori, seemingly completely unprepared for a chef to suddenly appear.

He didn't hire any chef at all.

"What the hell is wrong with you...?"

“My surname is Wakita,” Wakita Kanenori greeted with a smile, waving his hand in a friendly gesture. “Please rest assured that you will not be disappointed with tonight’s banquet… We should have all the ingredients, right?”

The short-haired maid had no doubts: "The ingredients for dinner are all prepared. I'll take you there in a bit."

Gao Mo glanced at Wakita, who was deliberately bending over to hide his boss-like demeanor, with a puzzled look.

Rum…

He was just trying to scare Conan.

Why did the organization's second-in-command come here personally?
It can't be a coincidence...

After putting his luggage away in the guest room, Gao Mo followed the man with the mustache to the living room.

Several famous detectives were playing pool or chess, their expressions completely calm, except for Da Shang Zhu Shan, who was biting his thumb and his expression was constantly changing.

Besides Gao Mo and Little Mustache, there were five other famous detectives present this time.

The armchair detective Senma Kazuyo and the adventure detective Mogi Harufumi mentioned by Conan, the old acquaintance Oogami Kisuke, and the female detective Gunta Ikumi who sprays reagents everywhere to check for bloodstains...

Finally, there's Hakuba Saguru, the high school detective and Kaito Kid's nemesis. His father is the Superintendent General of the Metropolitan Police Department, making him an even more powerful playboy detective than Osaka Black Chicken.

Aside from Osaka Zhushan, none of the others are simple; they are all top detectives, either possessing their own special skills like him or being reasoning geniuses.

It seems unlikely that a simple detective job could convince these people to give up and complete the mission.

Even if Da Shang Zhu Shan was put on display on live television last time, she might still feel resentful.

Gao Mo looked thoughtful.

There's no other time when it's possible to gather so many famous detectives.

This is a rare opportunity; let's seize it and deliver a powerful blow.

Fortunately, he currently has the upper hand and possesses more intelligence than others.

If the truth were revealed before the detectives even began their investigation, it would give these guys a shock with its "predictive reasoning"...

"is it?"

Meanwhile, the man with the mustache had already skillfully moved closer to the beautiful detective.

"So you used to be a prosecutor, Ms. Gunda? I used to be a detective in the First Investigation Division too..."

"Dad!" Xiaolan grabbed her father's ear. "This is so embarrassing! Can you please stop doing this every time?"

No wonder he has a mustache; he can hook up with women wherever he goes. The key is his perfectly timed ugliness, which most people can't pull off.

Gao Mo casually glanced at the few famous detectives for a while, then turned and left the living room.

It's not urgent who Kidd is.

First, leverage your strengths and use your observation skills to find all the details and clues to provide strong support for your reasoning.

Knowing the answer to a riddle is one thing; the reasoning process is another.

Without concrete reasoning, it's impossible to convince even the most renowned detectives.

"Ok?"

Gao Mo first noticed the surveillance cameras scattered throughout the corners. This old castle villa had undergone numerous renovations.

It was likely all the work of Da Shang Zhu Shan and his associates.

If he wasn't mistaken, that old woman from Senma was an accomplice of Ogami. As for whether there were other accomplices...

The information available so far is enough to confirm Oojin's ambition to monopolize the treasure, and for him, the fewer obstacles the better—Rum's appearance was completely unexpected by Oojin.

"I'll go help in the kitchen."

Ooshima no Shuzen could no longer sit still. He glanced at Senjō, then followed Gao Mo out of the living room. After glancing at Gao Mo out of the corner of his eye, he hurried toward the kitchen.

It was extremely malicious, as if they were up to some wicked scheme.

But it doesn’t matter.

Gao Mo didn't plan to have dinner; with his current abilities, he could avoid most dangers.

"Wow!"

With Eagle Eye's extraordinary visual abilities activated, even the smallest traces of blood in the villa became clearly visible.

Soon Gao Mo arrived at a piano room.

The huge room contained only a black piano placed in the center.

Under his extraordinary vision, the paper sandwiched between the piano keys was the first thing to come into Gao Mo's view.

Then there were blurry bloodstains left on the side of the piano.

Thinking of the complete information Ai had sent him, Gao Mo's fingers paused slightly.

The paper contained a code for the treasure, and the bloodstains resembled a message written in blood; apart from these, there were no other special clues.

I don't know the contents of the blood letter, but I feel it's related to the piece of paper that was left behind.

What is the key clue to deciphering the code?
Gao Mo put away the coded paper, decisively turned around and went back to the living room to borrow luminol reagent from female detective Gunda Ikumi—a chemical agent that can identify bloodstains and make invisible bloodstains emit blue fluorescence.

"What's wrong?" Ikumi Gunda asked curiously, "Did Detective Kindaichi discover something?"

"I really dislike bloodstains, so I wanted to go back to my room to try it out."

Gao Mo rubbed his eyes.

After a long and tiring journey, coupled with continuous use of the extraordinary visual technology, I was feeling quite overwhelmed.

"No one likes staying in a hotel room covered in blood."

"There's blood in the guest room too?" Xiaolan felt uneasy and grabbed her father, who was drinking beside her. "Dad, can we check it later too?"

"Why are you checking that thing?" The man with the mustache, savoring the fine red wine, asked. "Can't we just leave?"

"I don't care. I'm used to blood and stuff," said Harufumi Mogi, who had lost a game of billiards to Saguru Hakuba, with a wry smile. "Mr. Kindaichi, how can a detective care about these things?"

“Yes,” Hakuba Saguru chuckled, “I would say this environment has actually awakened my increasingly weary spirit.”

“Mr. Kindaichi is just an assistant after all, so please don’t say anything more,” said Mrs. Senma, who stepped in to help. “How about playing a couple of games of Go with me sometime?”

"No one can beat you, Granny Senma."

Mogi Harufumi began to observe Gao Mo again.

"I heard you're that mustachioed Watson... How could a bodyguard be afraid of blood?"

“Fear and dislike are not the same thing.”

Gao Mo sensed that these people had misunderstood something, which would save him some trouble.

However, when he left the living room, there was still a little tagalong following him.

"whee."

Conan put on an innocent face, looking like he was telling me not to try to fool him.

"You must have discovered something, right?"

"clatter!"

Gao Mo suddenly stopped in his tracks, glancing at the surveillance camera again out of the corner of his eye, a strong sense of crisis welling up in his heart.

It's like being targeted by a predatory beast—

It's likely that Rum wasn't the only member of the organization to have come to this Twilight Mansion.

Unlucky.

This place was originally just a treasure hunting ground for Da Shang Zhu Shan, but with the appearance of Rum, it seems to have turned into another dangerous predicament.

The Black Organization is much more troublesome than the Big Boss.

"what happened?"

"Stop imitating adults!"

Gao Mo punched Conan on the head.

Instead of going to the piano room, he went to the guest room and frantically sprayed luminol reagent in Conan's bewildered gaze.

After confirming that there were no surveillance cameras or listening devices in the guest room, Gao Mo turned to Conan and said, "Don't forget what I said: never reveal anything about yourself that makes you different from a child."

"Because of those surveillance cameras?" Conan wasn't stupid. He looked up and stared at Gao Mo's back. "Who exactly is this Wakita Kanenori?"

“Organization members,” Gao Mo continued spraying the luminol reagent, “this Twilight Mansion is already under the organization’s surveillance, possibly for the treasure here, or perhaps for other reasons…”

"Treasure?"

"You'll find out soon enough. Just protect your little Lan sister, I'll handle the rest."

Gao Mo used up the entire bottle of reagents in no time.

It's possible that Ikumi Gunda has a backup plan, but for the time being, she hasn't been able to find the blood-written words in the piano room that are suspected to be the key clue.

This can buy him enough time.

Anyway, don't let the treasure be discovered yet, and then call the police.

Given Rum's cautious nature, he would usually prioritize retreat unless absolutely necessary—and this operation may not even have been authorized by the boss.

(End of this chapter)