Conan: I've been linked to the tech tree system.

"That 'master' must know, but it's hard to say about the people living here now."

Tohya Tono pushed open the heavy wall and went inside.

The hidden door, disguised as a wall, turned around, blocking the last ray of sunlight from entering the secret passage.

......

There were no lights in the secret passage, but the system space was filled with props that could be used in various situations.

Tohru Tono casually pulled out a spherical lamp and turned it on.

Even a simple electric light bulb, invented by hand, is quite different from anything else.

The powerful light illuminated the dark passageway as if it were daytime, yet it was not glaring.

Shiho Miyano glanced curiously at the disco ball in his hand. "You carry something like this with you all the time?"

Moving the gaze downwards, Toru Tono's trouser pockets were empty, hardly the kind of pockets that could hold such an invention.

"A four-dimensional pocket." Tohru Tono patted his pocket and spoke the truth as a joke.

Shiho Miyano ignored him, staring thoughtfully at the steps beneath her feet.

The secret passage was much larger than I had imagined, and there were suspended staircases going down and up at the corners, I had no idea where they led.

"It seems this entire castle is a hidden paradise."

Tohru Tono began to admire the house's designer.

This is much more difficult than hiding a water curtain cave behind a waterfall.

"Which way to go?"

"Let's go down and take a look first." Tohru Tohru calmly put on the [Tracking Glasses] and looked at the red dot on them.

Mutsumi Nishikawa was lying in ambush under the stairs at that moment.

It's likely they wanted to wait until their attention was drawn to the remains of the real first wife before launching a sneak attack.

Tohru Tono pretended not to know anything and led Shiho Miyano down the stone suspension stairs.

Not long after, they saw a corpse whose muscles had completely dissolved, leaving only bones.

Shiho Miyano showed no expression upon seeing the corpse; instead, she approached and examined it with great interest.

'No wonder he has a PhD in pharmacology and biochemistry... he must have dealt with cadavers quite a bit.'

As Tohru Tohru was thinking this, a cold wind suddenly swept up behind his head.

......

Conan was engrossed in deciphering the chessboard arrangement downstairs when he came to his senses and realized that Toru Tono and Ai Haibara, who had been standing next to him just moments before, had vanished.

Are you going to check on the rooms for tonight?

He wasn't worried about anything; the probability of two adults disappearing together was extremely low.

"Please! What are you two doing?! We're going to fall!"

Ayumi's piercing scream startled Conan, who immediately ran over to check on the situation.

Looking out the window into the next room, he saw Mitsuhiko displaying his immense strength, grabbing Genta, whose entire body had fallen out of the window, and pulling him back up.

"What an idiot!"

Conan was also startled; this was the third floor, no joke.

He quickly ran to the next room at the speed of a former member of the Teitan High School soccer club.

Before he could help, Yuan Tai had already been pulled up.

The two stood there, panting heavily, still shaken.

"What are you two doing?!" Conan was exasperated with these brats. "Seriously."

Conan was so angry he leaned against the wall.

But his sharp mind suddenly sensed that something was wrong.

"That's right!" Conan thought of the long distance he had covered when he ran from the other room.

"The windows here are right next to the wall, and so are the ones in the next room... So where did the space in between go?"

Conan felt he had discovered something incredible.

Could this be the key to unlocking the secrets of chess?

He perked up, overjoyed at the thought that Tohru Toru was likely to go to the room.

Am I finally going to beat him once again?

His hands moved unconsciously, taking advantage of the moment to tap on the wall.

Sure enough, directly below a clock, I heard a sound that was different from the sound of striking a solid wall; it was clearly hollow inside.

"It's a secret passage!"

Conan looked up and saw the clock hanging above him, a knowing smile appearing on his face.

'I see... Using a wall clock as a mechanism to open the secret passage is too simplistic.'

Because the clock was too high, Conan had to look around for a while, find a chair, and then move two stacks of books onto the chair cushion before he could barely reach the clock by standing on it.

"There have always been secret passages like this; all you have to do is set the hands to a certain time..."

Move the clock hand with your index finger, using exhaustive search to skip over each moment.

Finally, with a "click," the wall slowly opened.

'Alright! The secret passage is successfully unlocked. I'm here to unlock the castle's secrets!'

The direction seems a bit off; it's heading this way...

"Whoa!" Conan was knocked over by the immense force of the machine and landed face down on the ground along with the chair and the tall stack of books.

Who designs a secret passage door that opens in the opposite direction?!

After mentally berating the designer, Conan rubbed his forehead, which had been in close contact with the ground, and looked up angrily.

As a result, he found two familiar-looking people walking out of the secret passage and standing in front of him.

"Conan?"

Tohno Toru bent down to look at him, his right hand seemingly still clutching an unconscious old man.

"I knew it!" Conan stood up angrily. His little wish, which he had finally managed to realize, had been ruined again!

Why is it so hard to deduce faster than Toru Tohno even once?

Also, why is he carrying an old man who can't even lift a chicken?

Upon closer inspection, they were shocked to discover that the old man was none other than the castle's first wife, Masaki Masuyo, whom they had met before.

?

What's happening here?

Because so many steps were skipped, Conan was completely unable to understand the current situation.

He hesitated for a moment: "Elderly abuse?"

"Hey, is this how you see me?"

"So, she was attacked by thugs, and you went to rescue her?"

"That's not right either, let's guess again."

"...It can't be that this old woman is a criminal herself!" Conan exclaimed in shock.

"Bingo, you got it right! Go call the police!" Tohno said with a smile.

"..."

Chapter 101 Guests from Osaka

As is customary, after the police are called, Inspector Megure will arrive at the scene within ten minutes.

When the police arrived, he would have to repeat the reason for knocking out the "old woman" again, but to avoid trouble, he decided not to explain it to the people in the castle yet.

So Tohru Tono simply grabbed Mutsumi Nishikawa and led her into the living room.

"Hey, where are you going?" Conan hadn't fully grasped the situation when he saw Tohno walking out nonchalantly, so he quickly ran over and tugged at his sleeve.

"Go see the treasure she was willing to risk arson, murder, and plastic surgery to look like an old woman to get her hands on."

"Ok?"

......

After the serious incident, the Junior Detective League, who had been observing the whole thing, lost interest in playing around and decided to follow Tohru Tono to the lobby. The group then made their way downstairs.

They also encountered Professor Agasa, who was checking out the room, along the way.

"Huh?" Professor Agasa scratched his bald spot, confused.

Conan pulled him aside and explained the whole story.

"I see... Does that mean we can't stay here anymore?" Dr. Agasa pondered.

Upon hearing this, everyone couldn't help but turn their heads.

That's very insightful.

Tohno Toru continued downstairs, heading towards the three oil paintings in the center of the hall. Along the way, he kindly explained things to Conan, who kept asking him all sorts of questions and whose curiosity was overflowing.

"The chessboard on that lawn is actually a coordinate system composed of Arabic numerals 1-8 and English letters AH. If you read the white pieces on it in order, it is 'EGG HEAD', which means 'an intellectual who only talks nonsense'."

At this point, Toru Tono noticed that the person he was carrying twitched a few times. It seemed that he hadn't been too rough, and Mutsumi Nishikawa had already woken up.

He simply threw Nishikawa Mutsumi on the ground and let her walk away on her own.

"You once said that the master's daughter often referred to him as 'an intellectual who only spouts fallacies,' so the secret of the treasure..."

"Right behind that portrait of the lord."

"!!!" Upon hearing this, Mutsumi Nishikawa no longer cared whether her identity had been exposed. After all she had sacrificed for, her long-cherished wish of 20 years was within reach. Unable to contain herself, she rushed to the portrait painting, which was larger than a person. Her hunched figure moved as swiftly as the wind.