Conan Rick's Investigator

He grabbed the rope and climbed up hard. Halfway down, he looked down and saw the river valley at the edge of the forest.

After climbing back to the cliff, Qin Zhibo looked at the cliff opposite and vaguely saw a human-like outline among the dim trees.

Above the silhouetted head, small characters of identity information floated.

[Name: Shimabukuro Keikazu]

【Sex: Male】

[Age: 43 years old]

-

Before Qin Zhibo could finish reading all the information, the shadow on the other side of the cliff turned around and disappeared into the darkness.

Qin Zhibo stared at the cliff opposite for a long time, thinking about something in his heart.

Suddenly, some crystal clear sequins at his feet attracted Qin Zhibo's attention.

He picked it up from the ground and examined it in the moonlight. It turned out to be...

Fish scales.

……

At the foot of the mountain, Conan and his friends had just finished their visit to the longevity lady and came out of Shimabukuro Kimie's house, preparing to stay in a nearby hotel first.

Originally, Conan and Hattori Heiji thought they could get some key information from the longevity lady, but it turned out to be all useless.

For example, the numbers for the "Dugong's Arrow" lottery are chosen completely randomly, and sometimes they are even the numbers drawn in the current horse race.

This made Conan and Hattori Heiji think of the fact that Qin Zhibo had congratulated He Ye in advance before the winning numbers were announced.

Could it be that Qin Zhibo also has the habit of paying attention to horse racing?

Just when Conan wanted to continue asking Choju Po about her opinion on the disappearance of Monkyo Saori and the murder of Ebina Sumi, Shimabukuro Kimie shouted from an invisible place, interrupting Conan's thoughts.

The longevity lady left on the pretext that she wanted to take a bath and go to bed. Before leaving, she warned Yuanshan and Ye not to lose the arrow, otherwise they would suffer retribution.

"It seems that Changshou Po doesn't have any useful clues here..." Conan frowned as he walked, "I wonder how Qin Zhibo is doing with his investigation."

"What important clues could that uncle have found in the mountains? We must be ahead~"

Hattori Heiji had a good attitude and was not discouraged by his previous failure. He patiently explained that his next plan was to go to tomorrow's vigil site to see if there were any clues.

The group returned to the hotel in a hurry. They were standing at the entrance and had just changed into slippers when Qin Zhibo came back from outside.

"You, what a coincidence, you are back too."

Qin Zhibo greeted them casually, as if the murder had never happened and he just went to the tavern to have a drink.

However, Conan and Hattori Heiji still believe that Qin Zhibo would not be so heartless. He must have gone to investigate the case.

Right now, both of them are very curious about the progress of Qin Zhibo's investigation.

In order to solve the case faster, the two high school detectives looked at each other and decided to exchange information.

"Uncle, we found a brand new swimming ring at the mouth of the river at the foot of the mountain. It's very likely that someone placed Miss Shoumei's body on it and let it drift with the current."

After hearing this new situation, Qin Zhibo was somewhat interested. Maybe there would be an investigation point there.

"Where's the swimming ring?"

Hattori Heiji shook his head. "Of course it's not with us. It's kept at the village office. We'll wait for the police to come tomorrow to conduct tests and extract fingerprints..."

"Oh……"

Qin Zhibo nodded thoughtfully, then changed his shoes, stretched and went back to his room.

Looking at Qin Zhibo's leaving back, Conan and Hattori Heiji were both stunned.

Didn’t we agree to exchange information?

Where's the intelligence!

After paying for the information they found, Conan and Heiji Hattori didn't get any corresponding information in return. At this moment, they felt like the Baker Street team running errands for Sherlock Holmes.

The key point is that the Baker Street team has to pay fees for running errands for the great detective, but I am working for nothing!

At this moment, Hattori Heiji, who was feeling a little angry, retracted his previous friendly comments about Qin Zhibo.

This uncle has a very bad conscience!

……

The next day, Conan and his friends had to run around looking for Monkyo Saori, and also asked around to see if Sumi Ebihara had made any enemies.

Qin Zhibo once again separated from the main group and headed straight for the village office. It was still the middle-aged man who received the Death Tour Group who answered Qin Zhibo's questions.

"You are talking about Shimabukuro Keikazu. He is indeed Shimabukuro Kimie's father, but he died five years ago."

"Jun Hui has a miserable life. Her parents died at sea five years ago, and her grandparents also perished long ago. Now she's left with only her great-grandmother to depend on..."

"Is there anything else you would like to ask?"

Qin Zhibo shook his head. "Thank you. I've asked all the questions I wanted to ask."

Thinking of Shimabukuro Keihe whom he met in the Mermaid Forest last night, Qin Zhibo felt a little unbelievable.

Has he been faking his death all these years?

Chapter 455 Conan: Hattori, are you panicking now?

The person who died in a shipwreck five years ago is still alive and well.

This made Qin Zhibo doubt the specific circumstances of the shipwreck five years ago.

"Who were the victims of the shipwreck five years ago?"

The middle-aged civil servant of the village office was somewhat surprised by the question raised by the tourist Qin Zhibo, but with the help of his [social skills (speech skills)], he still told Qin Zhibo the situation.

"There are Shimabukuro Kimie's parents, Fukuyama Rokuro's mother, and Saori's mother. They are all missing at sea."

"What a twist of fate..."

The middle-aged civil servant sighed and continued to work on other tasks.

Qin Zhibo frowned, feeling a little strange about the combination of people who died five years ago.

A man went out to sea with three women...

Just as Qin Zhibo was thinking, the woman waiting to process her documents suddenly said, "It's not fate at all."

"They were simply cursed by the mermaids, so they had to sacrifice themselves to the sea!"

The middle-aged civil servant looked at the old lady helplessly, sighed and shook his head, as if he was used to her.

The Mermaid's Curse...

Another new term related to mermaids, Qin Zhibo quickly inquired, "Excuse me, what exactly is the 'merman's curse'?"

Seeing Qin Zhibo's interest in her topic, the old lady opened up her chatterbox. She quickly called Qin Zhibo aside and said mysteriously, "Actually, just before those four people went out to sea, except for Shimabukuro Kimie's mother, everyone else said they had a stroke and had been bedridden for a month without leaving the house."

"But within less than two weeks, Fukuyama Rokuro's father abandoned his wife and fled by boat overnight in a frenzy."

"So when Fukuyama Rokuro tells everyone that his father also died in that shipwreck, he's actually insulting his father."

"And Saori's father, he also became addicted to alcohol around that time. Before that, he was one of the strongest men on the island."

"And then, on the morning they sailed out to sea, I saw it with my own eyes..."

As she was speaking, the aunt's eyes suddenly widened, as if she recalled some terrible scene.

"That day, I saw with my own eyes that they were wrapped up tightly in clothes and walked in a row towards the dock."

"I thought their strokes had healed, so I went up to say hello. But guess what I saw?"

The aunt created an atmosphere like a ghost story session, and Qin Zhibo shook his head in confusion.

"I saw that they looked like they weren't human!"

"They wrapped their heads in thick turbans, their eyeballs bulged out like frogs, and it felt like their eyelids weren't enough for them to use..."

"My forehead is much narrower, my nose is almost flat, and my skin is much rougher, almost scaly..."

"They walked past me with a stench of dead fish that nearly stunk up my breakfast."

Qin Zhibo was not quite sure about the appearance described by the old lady, but he was very familiar with the disgusting smell of dead fish.

That smell was exactly the smell emanating from Keikazu Shimabukuro.

The aunt continued, "Looking at them is like looking at three fish that have cultivated into spirits standing there..."

Qin Zhibo caught the key point and quickly asked, "Why are there only three people?"

"Because only Kimie's mother, Naoko, still looks normal."

The aunt replied.

……

Walking out of the village office, Qin Zhibo sorted out the information he had just collected from the aunt.

In the shipwreck five years ago, four people actually died, and three of them had suffered a stroke before.

During the stroke treatment, one woman's husband ran away overnight, and the other woman's husband became an alcoholic.

This must be due to a great psychological blow.

A month later, the four men went to the dock together. The three who had suffered a "stroke" had strange looks on their faces and eventually encountered a shipwreck.

If what the aunt said is true, it at least means that these three people have contracted a strange disease, which caused the husbands of two of them to abandon their wives and children and change their personalities drastically, while only Shimabukuro Kimie's mother has always stayed with her.

So, are these people taking the initiative to go out to sea to commit suicide or to seek overseas elixirs?

Qin Zhibo didn't know, but judging from the results, one of the three, Shimabukuro Keikazu, did not die, which meant that the other two might not be dead either.

Last night I saw Keikazu Shimabukuro burning incense at the mermaid's grave, which shows two things.

The person buried in the mermaid's tomb should have some direct relationship with Shimabukuro Keikazu. Combined with this story, the person he should be most grateful to should be his wife who never abandoned him.

However, Shimabukuro Kimie said that the so-called mermaid tomb was buried with tourists who were burned to death in the shrine warehouse fire three years ago. Since no one claimed the tourists' bodies, the shrine helped to dispose of them.

If this person is actually Shimabukuro Kimie's mother...

Suddenly, Qin Zhibotong Kong frowned and thought of a possibility in his mind.

In order to verify this possibility, Qin Zhibo needs to visit around first, and then confront Shimabukuro Kimie at the vigil ceremony for Ebina Sumi in the evening.

After confirming the next itinerary, Qin Zhibo left the village office with big strides.

At this moment, Conan and Hattori Heiji were asking around in the village about Sumi Ebina's interpersonal relationships, and they also saw Qin Zhibo who had just come out of the village office.

"hey-hey……"

Hattori Heiji had a smirk on his face. "I think that old man went to the village office to check on the lifebuoy we found. I don't think he found any other clues himself."

Hattori Heiji's "also" indicates that the progress of his and Conan's investigation for the whole morning has been going in circles and there has been no progress.

Conan: "..."

Looking at Qin Zhibo's decisive and unperturbed back, Conan's thoughts were deeper than Hattori Heiji's.

This time, Qin Zhibo has been taking a completely different route during the off-site investigation, and it has been like this from last night until now.

At first, Conan thought this was pretty good.

He and Qin Zhibo chose different routes to solve the case. Whoever can find the only truth in the end will be the real winner.

But as the investigation progressed, Conan felt a little panicked.

This is like a mediocre student and a top student discussing answers outside the examination room. At first, the mediocre student is excited about the difference in his or her approach to solving the problem compared to the top student.

After all, if two people have the same approach to solving a problem and the answer is unique, it will be impossible to tell the winner.

However, after comparing the answers, the average student discovered that his approach to solving the problem was completely different from that of the top student.

Considering his past performance, the average student couldn't help but suspect that his approach to solving problems was wrong.

Conan is now in this state of self-doubt, so he quickly tells his concerns to his good friend next to him.

"Hattori..."

"Are you panicking now?"