Ms. Moriarty wants to save Beika Town today too.

……

After leaving the secret passage, Ai immediately discovered that this exit was near the place where Professor Agasa disappeared.

"It's really strange that this door can't be opened again." Mitsuhiko pushed hard on the wall where the secret passage was hidden, but it was like a stone sinking into the sea, with no response at all.

"But Sister Winnet and Yuanta are still in there!"

Ayumi was very worried.

"Don't worry, Winnet is here, nothing will happen."

Xiao Ai consoled him, then turned around and said, "There's no other way. It looks like we can only go in from the original entrance and then meet up with them."

They quickly returned to the room on the second floor, but——

"Strange, this door looks like it's locked."

Seeing that Mitsuhiko couldn't open the door, Ayumi asked in confusion, "How could that be? Wasn't it openable just now?"

"This means that someone was following us just now."

"He locked it to prevent us from returning through the original passage and escaping outside from here."

At this point, Xiao Ai turned around and looked back at the two of them: "But he didn't expect that we happened to escape from the door just now."

Ayumi thought for a moment, clenched her left hand, and said nervously: "So, Winette and Genta..."

"I think they should have met the people following us by now."

"So they have already..."

Ai smiled: "That's not necessarily true. Winnet Moriarty is an extremely strong woman. If that person wanted to attack her, the possibility of being controlled by her would be higher. If everything went well, she might have rescued Conan and the doctor by now."

"But……"

Mitsuhiko was a little hesitant about what Xiao Ai said. His eyes flickered slightly, and he clenched his hands in front of him: "Isn't it that Sister Winette can't see clearly? Is it really okay in such a dark environment?"

"probably."

Now that they were separated, there was no way to be 100% sure of the situation, but she didn't believe that Winnet would be controlled. She was a woman who was still elegant and graceful in the hail of bullets: "Now, we can only look for other entrances, and we have to prepare for the worst. We have to hurry up and take advantage of the possibility that Edogawa and the doctor are still alive."

Ai's calm attitude infected the panicked Ayumi and Mitsuhiko. They looked at each other, nodded, calmed down, and followed Ai to explore the rooms in the castle.

The closest room was where the noble gentleman who had reprimanded them for their mischief during the day was.

"Uncle Guiren said that he uses this place as a studio because here he can concentrate on painting."

The three of them explored the room. To avoid being discovered, they did not turn on the lights and tried to keep their voices low when communicating.

"So many newspapers!" Ayumi found piles of newspapers in the corner of the room.

"That's used to wrap paintings or wipe brushes."

The conversation between Mitsuhiko and Ayumi caught Ai's attention. She came to the stack of newspapers, took out one, and looked at the pages of the other newspapers. They were all very old, and the contents on them were surprisingly consistent, all of which were reports about the fire four years ago.

"Fifteen people died in the fire. The fire was so fierce that it burned their bones to ashes. The identification of the bodies can only be determined by the relics they were wearing. Among them, only one person is missing..."

Seeing this, Xiao Ai also completely understood the purpose of the carvings on the stone steps, and thought to herself: "He must have used this fire to switch himself with someone else."

Her thoughts were interrupted by Ayumi: "Hey, Mitsuhiko suddenly disappeared."

Ai followed Ayumi out of the room, and there was no movement in the corridor. They carefully looked around, and the corridors on both sides of the room were straight and connected, with no place for people to hide.

Ayumi looked towards the nearest exit, which was the passage connecting the castle and the tower. She said tremblingly, "Could Mitsuhiko have gone through that door?"

"That's weird."

Ai looked through the door and saw the gray-black tower in front of her. There was a path in the middle, and it was connected to the forest. There was no reason for Mitsuhiko to leave them and take risks alone, and she remembered that tower.

"That's the entrance to the tower that caught fire. It's obviously been sealed off."

Despite the facts, this was still the most likely move for Mitsuhiko. She thought, maybe this was the same reason why Dr. Agasa was attacked, and the criminals had used some method to lure Mitsuhiko out and took him into the tower.

"Mitsuhiko!" Ayumi couldn't wait to call his name.

Ai stretched out her arm to block Ayumi who was about to go to the tower.

"Wait," she said, "this might be a trap." If both of them died here, the police and Winnet would have no way of knowing what was going on here. She took a step forward, turned back and said to Ayumi, "I'm going to go inside and take a look at the situation first, and you hide in the bushes over there first."

"But……"

As Ayumi spoke, Ai turned her head to the side, lowered her head, and her eyes left no room for doubt.

"If you count to three hundred and I haven't come out yet, then you should run away quickly. As long as you escape to the driveway in the woods, you should be safe."

"Haihara-san!"

Guessing that Winette would not be harmed by this little thief who appeared out of nowhere, Xiao Ai smiled at Ayumi, trying to make her feel more at ease: "Then you have to be more motivated. You should still want to give these breads to Edogawa, right? Just wait until dawn and we will come to find you."

Faced with Ai's unquestionable expression, Ayumi could only nod slightly.

"Ah."

Then he watched her enter the tower.

"Next, we have to find the secret passage and reunite with Winnet." Ai made a decision and explored the suspicious places.

Now it was very likely that the criminal had fallen into Winnet's hands. This possibility made her relax a little and focus her attention. Of course, she also thought of the bad possibility. After all, Winnet knew nothing about the structure of the secret passage, and maybe the other party ran away - just like they accidentally came out of that door. If so, Winnet would find them and Ayumi sooner or later.

However, it is hard to say what condition it will be in when it is found.

Based on the information in the newspaper, she has deduced that there must be a connecting passage between the tower and the castle, so this passage must not be a castle in the air - there must be an entrance on the ground floor.

She didn't have much time left, so she needed to reduce the scope of her search as much as possible, while keeping an eye out for anyone following her. She turned off her flashlight, and the moonlight shone through the window, allowing her to vaguely see the object.

She felt the walls, checking for suspicious areas.

With the experience of turning the clock, she also tried to touch some suspected mechanisms: stair railings, fixed shelves, and burnt cabinets. Unfortunately, her luck was not very good. After almost the time agreed with Ayumi, she still found nothing. Until she entered a small room, the toilet that occupied most of the space told her that this was the toilet, and there was a double-headed candlestick diagonally above the toilet.

"Candlestick..." she thought to herself, "There is also a candlestick next to the secret door where the doctor disappeared."

Xiao Ai stepped on the toilet, touched the candlestick, and with a little force, she found that it could rotate.

He rotated the candlestick 180 degrees and turned it upside down. With a sound like grinning teeth, a secret door appeared beside him.

"It looks like there's more than one secret door here."

Xiao Ai covered her chest and breathed a sigh of relief. If she had run into the murderer, she would have been unable to escape.

She had just entered the secret passage and turned on the flashlight when she heard Ayumi calling her. She didn't care about the tunnel she had found and hurried back. Her warning didn't work in the end.

She was just about to pick up Ayumi when she heard a loud bang on the door.

who is it?

It took her only a second to think about it and she ruled out the possibility that it was Winnet.

This seems to be the worst outcome.

Xiao Ai immediately came out from the secret passage, covered Ayumi's mouth, and whispered softly:

"Don't make a sound."

Ayumi was about to struggle in panic, but when she heard Ai's voice, her crying thoughts calmed down for a while. Ai's calmness and decision-making ability throughout the exploration infected Ayumi and made her regard her as a reliable person.

She held back her tears, and followed Xiao Ai quietly, turning into the secret passage. With previous experience, Xiao Ai gently pushed the door, and the secret passage closed.

"Keep quiet. When the door opens, don't make any noise. Do you understand?"

Ai maintained a robber-like posture and covered Ayumi's lips. The latter nodded vigorously like a chicken pecking at rice. The next moment, the sound of the door being broken was heard as Ai had expected. In just three seconds, the door of the secret passage was also opened.

They hid behind the door, in a blind spot where there was no sight.

The other party did not carry any lighting equipment and was shaking his head like a pet attracted by a toy.

This situation is not optimistic.

He must know that Ayumi is here.

Xiao Ai took advantage of his psychology. She put her hands in her pockets and threw the balled newspaper into the depths of the secret passage. The murderer, who heard the noise, immediately had a target and explored the depths of the secret passage.

Ai pulled Ayumi to stand in the gap between the revolving door and the wall.

While the murderer closed the secret passage and prepared to search, they took advantage of the door's characteristics and returned to the bathroom.

After a moment of silence, Ai reopened the secret door and Ayumi poked her head out: "He seems to be gone."

"I'm talking to you, how could you be so obedient? Didn't I tell you to escape?" Xiao Ai said in a slightly stern tone, "This time I happened to hide in this secret door and saved you. Otherwise, you would have been killed by now." With such serious consequences, she had to scold him.

"But……"

Ayumi started crying, her eyes became watery:

"But how could I escape alone knowing that everyone was in danger?"

"Okay, I really lost to you."

After hearing such a kind and righteous answer, Xiao Ai couldn't bear to reprimand her, so she could only warn her:

"Okay, hurry up and dry your tears. We're going to go find everyone."

Just now, Xiao Ai threw the paper ball in another direction. It would be dangerous to stay in the tower, so she pulled Ayumi to the underground passage.

……

384 Miss Winette is sad

Mutsumi Nishikawa was very angry.

She thought these outsiders might be able to solve the puzzle and find the treasure in the castle, but she didn't expect that a little ghost would find the remains of the real eldest wife.

After years of hard work and seeing hope of success, it almost all went to waste.

In desperation, she had to use the same old trick she had used on the servant who had discovered the secret passage. She imprisoned these outsiders and then threw them into the forest to starve to death.

Because there were too many people, she was a little flustered this time, but the process was generally smooth until she met a foreign woman who looked like she would appear in the film and television industry.

She had a slim waist, long legs, and a face that was not fashionable or gorgeous, but gentle and lively, with the beauty depicted in picture books. Her long, shiny silver hair was tied up behind her head, giving her a morbid beauty, and her lack of focus in her eyes showed that she had nothing to do with health.

Nishikawa Mutsumi believed that this was a sickly beauty who could be easily taken care of in a few moves, but the result was -

Not only was she almost controlled by the other party, but her right hand, which was hit, was also trembling with pain and unable to exert force, so when she switched to her left hand to hold the iron pipe, the force was not smooth.

"A woman who is no different from a blind person is locked up in an underground passage. Sooner or later she will become like that old woman, hahaha!"

Thinking of this, her twisted psychology finally balanced.

No matter how beautiful she is, she will still become a pile of dry bones in a grave, starving to death in a secret passage. Her afterlife will not be any better than that old woman!

She spent money and energy, sacrificed her appearance, and even had plastic surgery to turn herself into an ugly old woman. She had paid so much for the treasure in the castle, and she must not let it go to waste.

"Where did the two little girls go? Did they go to the upper floors of the tower? Haha, they are courting death anyway. There is no way to escape from up there."

Mutsumi Nishikawa clenched the iron pipe in his left hand and was about to go up the stairs when he suddenly heard the sound of the secret door of the toilet on the first floor closing.

"Damn it! I was fooled by these two brats!"

She hurried back.

After arriving at the entrance of the secret passage, I immediately remembered that there was no sound of the door turning just now, which means that the entrance to the secret passage closed by itself - due to the mechanism's own protection mechanism.

This also means that the two little girls are still in the secret passage.

Mutsumi Nishikawa was busy focusing her attention on the tunnel, thinking that the girl with brown hair must be no fool since she had such a little idea, and she must be planning to use the underground passage to return to the castle.

She had to speed up.

She had to control them all before daybreak, otherwise once the news leaked out and the police came to investigate, all her efforts would be in vain.

"hehe."

After a brief moment of anxiety and worry, Nishikawa Mutsumi smiled confidently:

"There's no way they can escape anyway."

After more than ten years, she had already figured out all the secret passages and mechanisms in the castle. Although she had to wait for the opportunity, it was easy to catch up with the two girls.

Just as she was about to dive into the tunnel——

Crack!

As she thought about it, the door behind her opened. The harsh sound and air flow made her back cold. She slowly turned around and looked up to see a head of white hair like the one on an old man's corpse.

The brain recognized a human figure, but what came into view was like a female ghost in a movie taking one's life.

This immediately reminded her of the old woman's bones and the people she had harmed over the years. She was so frightened that her legs trembled and she almost fell to the ground.