Ke Xue: Xiaolan delivers goods to your door at the beginning

Upon hearing that Ran had arrived, Shinichi Kudo jumped up from his chair and turned to look, just in time to see Lin Xiaofeng walking in through the door with one woman on each side.

The three of them sat down to eat breakfast together. Shinichi Kudo immediately leaned closer to Ran and asked, "Ran, how are things between you and Feng? He must be having trouble handling two girls by himself. Actually, you could have come to me. I've thought it through. I can let bygones be bygones, and we can go back to how things were before."

Ran rolled her eyes at Shinichi Kudo: "What are you talking about, Shinichi? Kaze is so good to me, he's amazing, every time he hits my sweet spot, I'm great now, I don't want to go back to the way things were before." At this point, Ran blushed, her face as radiant as a flower. "Honestly, why am I telling Shinichi all this!"

Upon hearing this, Shinichi Kudo's expression collapsed, and his soul seemed to leave his body: "Ahhh... Ran, are you planning to marry Lin Xiaofeng and have his child?"

"Of course, I want to marry Lin Xiaofeng and have his children. It's truly my dream."

Ran didn't hold back and repeatedly stabbed Shinichi Kudo in the heart with a knife.

Lin Xiaofeng and Sonoko chuckled. Shinichi Kudo was really asking for trouble. He knew that Ran no longer belonged to him, yet he still shamelessly came forward to get slapped in the face.

The group drank sweet potato porridge, which was truly a delicious treat.

"Um, Xiaofeng, what are your plans for today?" Xiaolan asked suddenly, taking a sip of the porridge in her bowl.

"Uh, me?" Lin Xiaofeng was taken aback and suddenly became a little hesitant.

As the saying goes, "You may plant flowers with care, but they may not grow; you may plant willows without care, but they may grow into a shady tree." Xiao Lan originally just wanted to ask around to find out what was going on, but she didn't expect Lin Xiaofeng to react this way, so she couldn't help but become curious.

"What's wrong? Or... are you planning to find me sisters again?" Xiaolan deliberately frowned.

"No, I didn't mean that at all." Lin Xiaofeng did make an appointment with a girl, but it was definitely not to find some friends for Xiaolan. "Actually, I made an appointment with Miss Mizuki today, and I plan to have her take us to some worthwhile attractions near Kitazawa Village."

"Miss Mizuki?" Ran was taken aback, not reacting for a moment. "Who?"

"Oh, it's that bespectacled signboard girl," Sonoko said.

"Huh? Does Sonoko know?" Ran still didn't realize what was happening.

"I know."

With a wave of her hand, Yuan Qunzi pointed towards the hotel bar outside the restaurant, "That's the signboard girl of this hotel, right? One of those five people yesterday, I remember her name is Tono Mizuki."

"Oh, it was her!" Xiaolan exclaimed in surprise.

"But Xiaofeng, why haven't I heard you mention this since last night? Could it be..."

"Oh no, I was just about to tell you!" Lin Xiaofeng laughed it off.

"Really? That's good." Xiaolan's expression instantly brightened.

After breakfast, as agreed, Tono Mizuki led Lin Xiaofeng and the others around Kitazawa Village.

Since they had already met last night, Mizuki Tono's reaction when they met again today didn't seem like a stranger.

But in Lin Xiaofeng's and the others' eyes, Tono Mizuki today was as if he had become a completely different person.

She took off her usual formal work clothes as a hotel mascot and put on a windbreaker that highlighted her youthful energy. She also took off her old-fashioned glasses and replaced them with almost invisible contact lenses. She let down her long hair that was tied up at the back of her head and hung snow protection goggles around her neck.

Tono Mizuki naturally looks young. Although she is already in her thirties and almost forty, she looks like she is only in her twenties to others.

After Ling changed into this storm armor, she looked even more like a female college student who had just graduated from university.

After breakfast, the group followed Tono Mizuki from the inn, leaving Kitazawa Village in a grand procession and stepping onto the pure white, boundless snowfield.

Mizuki Tono took the lead and walked ahead, explaining as she went: "The place we're going to now is called Lake Sawajiri. We can get there by crossing this snowfield. During this season, many swans come to Lake Sawajiri. Because there are hot springs at the bottom of the lake, Lake Sawajiri never freezes."

This explanation is similar to what the staff at the visitor center said at the time.

Lin Xiaofeng thought to himself.

263 Looking around, it seemed that they were the only group that had traveled such a long distance to sightsee on the vast snowfield.

"It really is! There are so many swans!"

Suddenly, Xiao Lan's joyful cheers came from ahead.

All the people in the mausoleum dreamed of following the six sounds and looked to the other side. They saw two more birds (about 180 meters away from where they were) in a place where a huge lake was shimmering in the sunlight, and flocks of white swans were rising and falling on the lake.

"So beautiful!" Sonoko's eyes lit up.

Sonoko turned around, only to see that Lin Xiaofeng wasn't looking in the direction of Lake Sawajiri at all, but instead tilting his head to look further into the snowfield.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"there……"

Lin Xiaofeng pointed to the direction he was looking in.

"There seems to be someone sitting over there."

"what?"

Upon hearing this, everyone turned to look.

Indeed, on the vast white snowfield, a figure, almost the size of a black dot, sat alone in the distance.

"That jacket looks like... Hikawa-kun?" Tono Mizuki said uncertainly.

She waved her arms and shouted, "Hey—Hip-Hip-kun, we're here! What are you doing over there!"

Tono Mizuki's voice echoed over the snowfield until it gradually faded away, but there was no response.

Sensing something was amiss, Lin Xiaofeng squinted and examined the area closely before frowning.

"That person seems to be dead."

418. Life is truly unpredictable.

"You mean..."

"died?!"

Upon hearing Lin Xiaofeng's words, Shinichi Kudo immediately became wary.

"Don't come any closer, I'll go check it out. If something really has happened, we can do our best to protect the scene!"

Shinichi Kudo waved his hand to stop the crowd behind him who wanted to follow and see what was going on, and then walked alone toward the figure sitting in the snow in the distance.

The location of Hikawa Shogo was quite a distance from Lin Xiaofeng and the others. Kudo Shinichi struggled for a while, walking on the snow that was a foot deep, before finally arriving.

He went closer and saw that it really was him.

Familiar hairstyle, familiar glasses, familiar coat.

Hikawa Shogo knelt in the snow, his head slightly lowered, as if he had been there for quite some time. The hood of his coat was full of snow, his face was stiff and blank, and his gaze was desolate as he stared at the snow beneath his knees.

"Glacier! Glacier! What's wrong, Glacier!"

Shinichi Kudo approached and shouted a few times, but seeing that Shogo Hikawa was still kneeling in the same spot without any reaction, he reached out to touch him.

Lin Xiaofeng's voice rang out from behind him at just the right moment.

"Even if you drag him by the legs and lift him up three times, it's no use throwing a discus into the lake. You can't wake up someone who's pretending to be asleep, much less someone who's dead."

"What!?"

Ignoring Shinichi Kudo's astonished gaze, Lin Xiaofeng took his hand out of his pocket, put two fingers together under Hikawa Shogo's nostrils, paused for two seconds, and then pinched the side of his neck.

"Dead. He wasn't breathing, he didn't even have a pulse. He was completely cold." He withdrew his hand and said calmly.

"how come……"

Shinichi Kudo, refusing to believe it, reached out to touch it again. But the moment he touched it, it was as if Hikawa Shogo had confirmed Lin Xiaofeng's prediction; his entire body instantly slumped to the side, collapsing onto the snow without any resistance.

"See?" Lin Xiaofeng shrugged. "I told you it was completely cold, but you wouldn't believe me and even knocked the body over. I don't think I took any pictures."

"Hmm...you're right."

Suddenly, Shinichi Kudo noticed a long trail of footprints on the snow near the corpse, which stretched out in a direction completely different from where they had come from, leading all the way to the shore of Lake Sawajiri in the distance.

It looks like it was left by Hikawa Shogo himself, including the size of the footprints and the pattern on the sole of the shoe.

"This is……!"

Shinichi Kudo's eyes widened instantly, as if he had discovered a new continent.

"Shinichi, have you found anything?"

"Of course!"

As if emboldened, Shinichi Kudo's voice boomed. He stood up, waved to the crowd behind him, and called out loudly, "You can come over now! I completely understand what's going on!"

After everyone had gathered around, Shinichi Kudo coughed lightly and said seriously.

"First of all, Ms. Mizuki, there is some bad news. Hikawa is indeed dead, but based on my observation and deduction, he probably died here on his own."

"That's it."

Tono Mizuki lowered her head, a fleeting look of grief crossing her face behind her protective goggles.

"Actually, Bingchuan-jun has had a weak heart since he was a child..."

"But that doesn't make sense."

The sound came from the side, and the camera panned to show Shinichi Kudo squatting next to the corpse, looking through the coat.

He pointed to the shoulder of the already deceased Hikawa Shogo.

“Look, his hood is full of snow, but there isn’t a trace of snow on his shoulders, and even his footprints are very clear.”

"So what exactly are you trying to say?" Lin Xiaofeng reacted a beat too late and asked irritably.

“It’s a very simple logic. If he arrived here after the snow stopped, then unless he deliberately stuffed a large clump of snow into his hat before setting off, which is something a normal person might not do,” Shinichi Kudo said, groping the pockets of the clothes while looking at the corpse.

"In other words, he was killed here a long time ago. After the snow stopped, the murderer brushed the snow off his shoulders but didn't notice the snow inside his hat. Then, wearing the same boots as the deceased, he backed away step by step back to the lake and fled."

"As for the evidence that it was murder, there are two. The first is what I just mentioned, and the second is that the body had no obvious external injuries, but the stun gun was missing."

"A stun gun?" Lin Xiaofeng was taken aback.

Sonoko and Ran, who were walking up from behind, heard this and exclaimed in surprise.

"Come to think of it, when we were at the visitor center before..."

After taking photos to document the crime scene and calling the police, the group returned directly to the village hotel to await the arrival of the police.

Police officers from the Niigata Prefectural Police Department arrived at Kitazawa Village not long after. After all, it was a tourist area, and they couldn't afford to be careless about such a serious case involving lives.

The police split into two groups: one went to Lake Sawajiri to collect the bodies, while the other went to the hotel to take statements.

According to Mizuki Tono, since there were many people present when she arranged to take Lin Xiaofeng and others for a walk around Kitazawa Village last night, theoretically anyone who heard about this last night could use it as a pretext to commit the crime.

Besides Hikawa Shogo, who has already died, there are Tono Mizuki, Yamao Keisuke (Ryo-oh), Tachihara Fuyumi, and Muto Takehiko.

As the first person to discover the crime scene, Shinichi Kudo certainly couldn't leave. So, while the police were taking his statement, he was also there, occasionally adding something, and unceremoniously taking credit for deducing that the case was a murder.

Lin Xiaofeng, who was sitting to the side listening, made no comment.

Ran couldn't just go out and have fun on her own, especially since she had witnessed the crime scene firsthand; all her fun was ruined. Sonoko, of course, stayed by her best friend's side.

"How could something like this happen while traveling..."

Xiao Lan murmured with some worry.

But Sonoko, who was standing next to him, overheard it.

"It's alright, Lan, don't worry."

Sonoko patted her best friend on the shoulder and gave her a warm smile.

419. Shinichi Kudo Returns to the Scene

Shinichi Kudo said to himself, "Do you remember how they behaved last night? I remember it very clearly. It was Hikawa Shogo who took an old newspaper out of his pocket, and then Yamao Keisuke's face changed and became very ugly."

"Hmm, I think so. I remember it was a report about Yamao Keisuke's car accident," Lin Xiaofeng said casually.

"Do you remember a small detail from back then?" Shinichi Kudo asked earnestly.

"When Hikawa Shogo took out the newspaper, the side with the report was folded outwards. Normally, if a page contains important information, people would fold the side with the important information inwards."

"In other words, on the other side of that newspaper, there might be something more important to Hikawa Shogo, and that's what really made Yamao Keisuke's expression change."

"Ah."

Lin Xiaofeng nodded slightly in agreement, then shrugged.

Kudo Shinichi, unusually, licked his face and said, "I've already looked at the corpse, there's nothing there, so I guess that piece of paper should still be in Hikawa Shogo's room, with some clothes."

He didn't finish his sentence, which was 263—but now that Hikawa Shogo's room has been sealed off by the police, he can't get in at all.

"Have you considered another issue?" Lin Xiaofeng asked.

"what?"

"Assuming the culprit is Keisuke Yamao, and assuming that the paper is the motive for Keisuke Yamao to kill Shogo Hikawa, then perhaps Shogo Hikawa originally had the paper with him, but Keisuke Yamao took the paper after killing him. So the paper is not in Shogo Hikawa's room now, but more likely it has been destroyed by Keisuke Yamao."