Survival Manual of the Science Fiction World

Amuro Tooru's heart tightened. Just because of a guess, he wanted to kill someone to eliminate future troubles? The organization was indeed arrogant. One day, he would—

But he didn't show it. Instead, he grinned mischievously, "Alright, but I won't save you if you get exposed because of this~"

Just as Chu Ming was about to say something, Xiao Lan's exclamation caught his attention. The man named Jiang Yuanshi, his face flushed from drinking, was standing behind Xiao Lan with a lewd grin: "What's wrong with touching her? Little girl, you seem a bit thin. Want to come play with Uncle?"

I'm done for! You're dead! I bet you a bourbon, this death sentence is definitely for you! You've really screwed up, bro. Who gave you the courage?

Chapter 45 Because he likes to drink bourbon

Chu Ming ignored Amuro Tooru behind him and walked straight over. He originally wanted to kick Ehara Tokio away, but fearing that Conan would discover something from his moves, he grabbed his hand and pushed him to the ground with a fighting grappling move.

"Pah, trash. Miss, are you alright?" Chu Ming turned to ask Xiao Lan.

"No, thank you, sir," Xiaolan said gratefully.

Conan also turned off the shoe switch, but his dangerous gaze lingered on Ehara Tokio, as if he was trying to kick something at him.

"Impressive skills." A handsome young man was standing behind. "I wanted to make a move too, but I didn't expect this gentleman to be faster than me. He's quite skilled."

Chu Ming smiled modestly: "Not at all."

Suddenly, Ran stared at the boy behind her and asked, "You wouldn't happen to be Maeda Satoshi-senpai, would you? The Japanese karate champion six years ago? Ah, you're my idol! I started learning karate because I admired you. Hello, I'm Ran Mouri. I also won the city tournament a while ago..."

Looking at the excited Ran, Chu Ming seemed to see a glimmer of hope flashing across Conan's head.

Conan watched with envy as Ran spoke to Maeda Satoshi with a look of longing, and said with a hint of jealousy, "What's so great about him—"

Without trying to make his presence known any further, Chu Ming politely said goodbye to everyone and led Amuro Tooru, who had been standing in the background the whole time, upstairs.

"You just went to rescue that high school girl, was it to infiltrate their ranks or..." Amuro Tooru couldn't quite figure it out and probed again.

"No, it's just because I'm kind-hearted and like to help others," Chu Ming replied casually, smelling the aroma of the food in the restaurant.

Amuro Tooru looked incredulous. Someone from an organization was telling him he was kind-hearted? He wanted to ask something more, but then he noticed that Granburg seemed to have discovered something and quickened his pace.

He was stunned for a moment, then quickly followed. In the blink of an eye, when Amuro Tooru entered the restaurant, he found that Chu Ming had already taken several plates of steak and sushi from the buffet and was ready to start eating.

"You walked so fast just to eat?"

"Yeah, I just finished my last mission and drove all night to Shizuoka. I didn't even have breakfast, I'm starving." Chu Ming devoured the food on the table at lightning speed.

"Then what should I call you when we're out in public? I can't just call you by your code name."

Chu Ming thought for a while, but failed to recall. He took out the ID he had received from the logistics department from his pocket, looked up at Amuro Tooru and said, "Matsutake Yusuke, that's my name. Sorry, I just got it not long ago, so I don't remember it very well."

Amuro Tooru looked at Chu Ming, who openly admitted that it was a pseudonym, and gritted his teeth. Someone who could become a core member of the organization could not possibly be someone who was pretending to be crazy. Rum must still be suspicious of him, so he sent someone to test him. I must keep this in check!

He smiled gently: "It's alright. So, how can I help you?"

Chu Ming wolfed down his food until he was half full, then let out a long sigh of relief before slowly chewing and explaining the mission details to Amuro Tooru.

Do you know 'Duke of the Night'?

"The novel? Or that CD?" As an intelligence agent, Amuro Tooru was also aware of the Dark Duke's virus.

"Of course it's the CD. The organization wants this virus. If they have this virus, then all the data of Japanese companies will be open to the organization. At that time..." Chu Ming revealed a meaningful smile.

Amuro Tooru was terrified, breaking out in a cold sweat. He absolutely couldn't let the organization get their hands on this disc! But was this just Granburg testing him? No, he had to be extremely careful!

Of all the people eating, only Chu Ming was truly satisfied. Seeing Amuro Tooru's somewhat absent-minded and uninterested expression, Chu Ming thought, "It's only because he's on a mission with me that I can see through his disguise. If it were someone else, it might have been a long time coming—or maybe not. Even if someone else hadn't improved their observational skills, they probably wouldn't have realized that this loyal and seemingly organization-oriented person was actually an undercover agent..."

After finishing his meal, Chu Ming stood on the balcony, letting the breeze help him digest. He said to Amuro Tooru, who was following behind him, "Find an opportunity to sneak into that guy named Ehara Tokio's room and see if there's any relevant information. He should be that infamous hacker..."

"Ah—" A small figure fell from the building.

Holy crap, it's magnetic field creation—oops, it's Conan!

Chu Ming flipped over the railing, grabbed the fifth-floor floorboards with one hand, and wrapped the other around Conan's waist. Originally, Chu Ming wanted to grab Conan's hand, but he was afraid that the gravity would dislocate Conan's hand, so he wrapped his arms around Conan's waist instead. From a distance, the two of them looked like a sausage hanging on the building, swaying in the wind.

Because the weight of the two of them was almost entirely supported by Chu Ming's fingers, his fingers gradually turned white due to their weight. Chu Ming looked up at Amuro Tooru, who was shocked and probably wanted to take the opportunity to kill him, and then looked at the tragic situation where, after his panicked intervention, the landing point was no longer the swimming pool but the concrete ground next to it.

He couldn't help but shout at Amuro Tooru, who seemed to be watching the show, "Bourbon! What are you standing there for! Pull me up!"

Amuro Tooru finally snapped out of his shock and quickly reached out to grab Chu Ming's wrist and pull him up.

The speed at which people fall is extremely fast. He could sense that Granburg's actions were completely subconscious. That is, the moment he saw someone falling from the building, he jumped out to save the person without thinking. Is this really a member of an organization?

Conan froze when he heard Chu Ming call him Bourbon. Using alcohol as a code name, and looking at the black suits worn by Chu Ming and Amuro Tooru, Conan quickly tried to sound innocent and ask, "Thank you, Uncle, for saving me. And thank you, Uncle Bourbon. It's so strange, why did you use alcohol as your name? Is it because you like to drink bourbon?"

Chu Ming chuckled and knelt down to straighten Conan's clothes: "Yeah, that uncle likes to drink bourbon all the time, so over time everyone in our company has come to call him Bourbon~ Kid, be careful next time, falling off a building isn't fun."

"Okay, thank you, Uncle." Conan's little hand tugged at Chu Ming's sleeve, then quickly let go. "Goodbye, Uncle, I'm off now!"

Chu Ming felt the slightly rough texture of the hem of the clothes. Heh, as expected, this little detective likes to plant listening devices everywhere.

Chapter 46 The Price of an Undercover Agent

After Conan left, Amuro Tooru's face was full of complicated emotions: "Matsutake-kun, you..."

Chu Ming was taken aback. What Songzhu-kun? Oh—that's his pseudonym.

Chu Ming remained expressionless, showing no intention of answering Amuro Tooru's question: "Let's go. Go take care of what we just talked about. When you're done, come find me in my room."

Back in his room, Chu Ming placed the bugging device next to the television, turned on a melodramatic soap opera, and turned up the volume.

Conan, who had hidden outside and pulled out his earphones to eavesdrop, finally heard the conversation after the door closed, but...

What is this all about?! Someone suspected to be from the Black Organization actually likes watching melodramatic romance dramas?!

Conan, his face darkening, took off his headphones. "Forget it, I'll stop listening for now. I need to find out what this so-called 'Dark Duke' really is."

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

That night, in order to prevent Conan from hearing the news, Chu Ming chose to go to Amuro Tooru's room to listen to his investigation. As soon as he entered, Chu Ming was stunned by Amuro Tooru's arrangement.

Gin checks for eavesdropping and cameras wherever he goes, while Amuro Tooru...

With his keen senses, Chu Ming roughly scanned the room and found twenty or thirty listening devices. "Is this the difference between intelligence personnel and operatives? I've learned something new."

As soon as Chu Ming entered, he followed Gin's example and found and dismantled all the wiretapping and surveillance cameras. He looked at Amuro Tooru with a cold gaze and said, "I don't care what kind of mission your intelligence team has, but here, don't put up any wiretapping devices unless you have to. It's unpleasant."

Amuro Tooru gave a provocative smile: "What, are you afraid I'll do something to you?"

"You think beautifully."

"...?" Amuro Tooru was a little confused by Chu Ming's unconventional answer.

"Tell me, what did you find out?"

Getting down to business, Amuro Tooru stopped wasting time: "I sneaked into his room and checked it. There was no trace of a hard drive, but there was an encrypted hidden file on his computer. I copied it out, but I can't decrypt it."

Chu Ming went back to his room, grabbed his computer, copied the files into it, and tried to decrypt them.

Amuro Tooru's eyes were somewhat deep. He was exceptionally skilled and had excellent investigative abilities. He was able to find all the listening devices he had set up within just three minutes of entering. Now he was also a computer expert. No wonder Rum valued him so much.

Soon, Chu Ming decrypted the program, which contained a series of files, all of which were confidential documents that Jiang Yuan Shi'an had stolen from various companies. Chu Ming quickly downloaded them and sent them to the organization's information department. If these files were used properly, they could be enough to take the organization's economy to the next level.

Amuro Tooru hadn't expected Chu Ming to decrypt these files so quickly. He had sent the encrypted files to Kazama at noon, asking him to find someone to decrypt them, but they still hadn't finished. And what about Granburg? In just a few minutes, the files had already been sent to the Black Organization! What's going on with those Public Security personnel?!

Damn it, if only this kind of talent could be used by the country!

However, through these events, Amuro Tooru discovered that Granburg and Gin were completely opposite people. Perhaps it was because he was so soft-hearted that even though he was very capable, he was not given much responsibility, while Gin became the leader of the organization's action group.

"Maybe I can find an opportunity to bring him back to the right path..." Amuro Tooru thought to himself.

"It seems the Dark Duke isn't with Jiang Yuan Shi's place either. Could it be that programmer who's always glued to his computer?" Chu Ming glanced at Amuro Tooru, who seemed lost in thought, and decided to give him something to do, like having him check out the programmer's room again, while he...

"It's ten o'clock already. How about I go grab a late-night snack?" Chu Ming suggested cheerfully. He opened the window and called out to Amuro, "Smell it! The aroma of barbecue is blowing in on the wind!"

Amuro Tooru looked at the room where things were flying everywhere after the wind blew by, and reached out to pull Chu Ming in to close the window. Suddenly, he heard some movement on the balcony of 1901 upstairs. The two looked up and saw Akiko Sayama of 1901 throwing a person dressed as a dark duke down. Chu Ming subconsciously took out his phone and snapped a picture.

Seeing that the evidence had been captured on camera, Akiko Sayama was clearly stunned for a moment. The next second, she gritted her teeth. Since she had been discovered, she could not let this scum go! She pushed hard, and the unconscious person fell down with the wind. With a thud, he was pierced through by the statue holding a gun and died on the spot.

She glanced at the two somewhat dazed people downstairs, smiled sadly, and went back to her room.

Amuro Tooru stared blankly at the crowd that was gradually gathering downstairs, and subconsciously asked Chu Ming, "Why didn't you save this person?"

Chu Ming looked back innocently: "Why would I save him? He's just a scumbag. Besides, it would be safer if he died and sent those documents to the organization. Remember to delete that file on his computer later, so the police don't find it."

Amuro Tooru nodded stiffly, thankfully he hadn't acted impulsively. This man had no sense of good or evil; whether he saved someone or not depended entirely on his mood.

He didn't ask any more questions, turned around and left. He needed to go to Jiang Yuanshi's room to delete the files before the police arrived.

It feels so good to have someone help me and only have to say a few words. Chu Ming watched Amuro Tooru's departing figure with great joy and made a decision. He would definitely protect such a useful tool before Amuro Tooru's true colors were completely exposed.

The police quickly summoned all the suspects downstairs. Before Chu Ming could hand over any evidence, Akiko Sayama stepped forward and confessed. Conan, who was running downstairs, blinked. Hmm? Solved?

After Akiko Sayama confessed her motives for killing Tokio Ehara and that the so-called Dark Duke was just a cover, she was taken away by the police.

Chu Ming stretched. The tenth mission was over, leaving 16. If he gave some more to Amuro Tooru, he wouldn't have any missions left. Anyway, Amuro Tooru would have to work even if he didn't have any missions, so he might as well work for himself!

Amuro Tooru looked at the list of 16 tasks in his email, then at Chu Ming's encouraging eyes, and swallowed his bitterness. This was probably the price of being an undercover agent.

Chapter 47 Objective: To Scare Conan to Death

Chu Ming looked through the mission report sent by Amuro Tooru and nodded in satisfaction.

As expected of the "King of Hired Managers," he completed this task exceptionally well.

After returning from Izu, Chu Ming deeply explored his potential as a capitalist. He felt that Amuro Tooru must be enjoying it, since he could obtain valuable information about the organization by completing missions!

—Although it was just a relatively simple extortion, and the distance involved was quite large.

Meanwhile, after traversing the diagonal of Japan three times, Amuro Tooru, having finally completed all his missions, stared blankly as he mechanically and wearily typed out his mission report.

Isn't this Granburg's revenge on him?

Chu Ming forwarded all the mission reports to Gin: "Big brother! I've finished all the missions! Aren't I awesome!"