Isn't it very scientific to use the Death Note to kill people?

"But we cannot rule out the possibility that the murderer is deliberately creating a diversion, and perhaps the target is someone else."

"..."

A brief silence fell over the scene.

Although they realized that the murderer's method of killing was intentionally designed to resemble the Fuurin Kazan arc, there was indeed little evidence at the scene. After waiting for the police to arrive and collect Ayaka Ryūo's body, the group had no choice but to return home.

The murderer, hidden in the crowd, couldn't help but glance at Lin Jiashu.

This detective from Tokyo is definitely got some skills...

This is much more troublesome than other detectives, so should we get rid of it?

The fact that he was able to kill three people in a row without leaving any trace is enough to prove that the murderer is indeed a relatively meticulous guy... He didn't want to go through all that trouble to finally achieve his goal, only to have an uninvited detective discover his flaws and identify him.

Lin Jiashu seemed to sense something and calmly looked up.

But the murderer turned his head away as if nothing had happened.

The group quickly returned to the village.

The Ryūo family and the Torada family went their separate ways, while Hayashi Yoshiki and his group gathered in the Torada family's living room.

“Actually, there are two other phrases besides Wind, Forest, Fire, and Mountain, but they are not as well-known as Wind, Forest, Fire, and Mountain. They are ‘Moving like thunder’ and ‘Unknowable like the shadows.’” Lin Jiashu chuckled. “The phrase ‘Unknowable like the shadows’ means that when hiding, one should be as difficult to detect as a shadow. If the murderer adheres to military strategy to this extent… perhaps he also hid the method of killing as ‘moving like thunder’ to cover his tracks.”

"So that means the killer's target might not just be Mr. Jing or Mr. Fanci, but both of them could be the culprit?"

"It's hard to say for sure right now."

Lady Torada, the wife of the Torada family, prepared tea for everyone and served it on the tea table.

However, Lin Jiashu did not drink. Instead, he got up, walked to the shoji gate, and slid it open to look at the courtyard in front of him.

Chapter 24: A Man Searching for Supplies

Just as Hattori Heiji, Mori Kogoro, and others were discussing in the living room how to protect Ryūo Kei and Torada Shigeji, who might lose their lives, Hayashi Yoshiki left the living room.

He went to the stables.

"Excuse me, Ms. Rongda, could you please get me a horse?"

"Ah...are you going out on horseback now?"

Torada Eita, who had just come out of the stable, looked at him with some surprise.

Lin Jiashu had a serious expression on his face.

"Yes, I just thought back, and there is very important information about the murderer in the forest where Miss Ryūki Ayaka died. I want to go and confirm it again."

"Is that so?"

Torada Eita's expression froze for a moment, then she quickly nodded, a little anxious. "Then should I help inform everyone to go back into the mountains to take another look?"

"I'll go into the mountains and forests first and take a look. Maybe I'll have the answer when I come back."

"...As expected of a famous detective from Tokyo."

The woman sighed sincerely.

She quickly led a brown horse out of the stable—the same one that Lin Jiashu and Xiaolan had ridden yesterday.

The Torada family kept two horses in their stables. The other horse was black and much larger than the first one. It seemed to have been competing for the Ryūkaburō horse before this.

After mounting his horse, Lin Jiashu pulled on the reins and galloped quickly into the mountains.

Last night's heavy rain left the village roads still muddy. The hooves of horses galloping quickly outdoors made a clear thud as they struck the ground, splashing up wet mud.

The forest where Ryūki Ayaka was hanged was relatively secluded.

As a non-local, Lin Jiashu had to put in a lot of effort to find his way back, and he finally located the site by following the footprints left by the group earlier.

Riding on horseback, Lin Jiashu's gaze fell on the tree where Ryūki Ayaka had hanged herself.

However, he did not approach, but waited in place for a moment before choosing to dismount.

He stood on the damp earth.

The sound of horses' hooves approached from behind.

When Lin Jiashu turned his head to look in this direction, he immediately spotted Hutian Rongda, who was also riding a horse.

"Ms. Rongda."

"Have you found the truth, Mr. Lin?"

Torada Eita, who arrived at the scene on horseback, couldn't help but take a look at the surrounding environment.

The forest smelled of grass and earth after the rain.

Her gaze couldn't help but fall unconsciously onto the tree where Ryūki Ayaka had hanged herself—the body had long been taken away by the police, but the marks left by the rough rope hanging on the branches were very conspicuous. The leaves at the end of the thick branches swayed in the wind, floating silently in the breeze, outlining a suffocating silence.

Lin Jiashu raised his head.

The sunlight filtering through the leaves blurred his features but clearly outlined the curve of his lips.

It wasn't the sharpness or anger that detectives often show when facing a murderer, but rather a gentle, pleasant smile... that gaze, as if observing a moving specimen.

“Ms. Rongda,” his voice was not loud, as calm as a still lake, “thank you for making this trip.”

Torada Eita's heart sank.

Lin Jiashu's words seemed to imply that he already knew he would follow him here... that his actions were within Lin Jiashu's expectations?

She instinctively reined in her horse and took a small step back, observing her surroundings but noticing signs of other people or police hiding.

"what happened?"

She forced herself to keep her voice steady, her right hand already quietly sliding towards the side of the black horse beneath her, her fingertips touching the cold metallic outline—she had brought a hunting rifle with her to deal with this most troublesome detective.

Lin Jiashu did not answer.

However, he made a move that seemed out of place with the atmosphere—he slowly and deliberately took a notebook out of his pocket.

The notebook was entirely black, with no words or patterns on the cover, yet it seemed to devour the already thin light around it, leaving only a heavy, ominous feel.

It lay quietly between his slender fingers.

Hayashi Yoshiki's hand gently brushed across the notebook's cover—it was just an ordinary notebook. However, in Torada Eita's eyes, his casual flipping of the pages was like an invisible key, as if unlocking some kind of suffocating cage.

“Ms. Rongda,” he looked up, his gentle smile deepening, “I’ve always been curious about something.” His voice echoed through the forest, each word as clear as an icicle falling to the ground.

Is gambling... really that fun?

Torada Eita's body froze instantly, as if an invisible bucket of ice water had been poured over his head. His blood seemed to freeze, and a chill ran from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head.

He knew it after all!

But how could he possibly know about Kai Genjin's matter? That matter has been buried under the dust for so many years!

"Wha...what gambling?" She tried to play dumb, but her voice was as dry as sandpaper. "Mr. Lin, I don't understand what you're talking about! Didn't you say you found crucial information about the murderer?"

Her hand gripped the shotgun tightly on the side of the horse's body, but she dared not take it out—because she didn't know if there were any police lying in ambush nearby.

"not understand?"

Lin Jiashu chuckled softly, the sound particularly eerie in the deathly silence of the mountain forest. He took a step forward, the footsteps almost silent, yet they seemed to tread on Torata Eida's taut nerves.

"You must have felt quite smug when Kai Genjin fell off the cliff and heard the sound of his bones shattering, right?"

Lin Jiashu's calm voice slowly enveloped him like a suffocating breeze, "Watching him fall like a bird with broken wings, plummeting to the bottom of the cliff as you all hoped, suffering in agony until he starved to death..."

not right...

This detective is really acting strange!

His tone contained no indignation or anger toward the murderer, only a mockery that terrified Torada Eita.

"Oh, right, there's also Torada Yoshiro, Ryūo Kōji... and the recently deceased Ryūo Ayaka."

"Gambling, in the end, only harms both oneself and others."

"To cover up the truth of an old gamble, new stakes and new lives must be constantly thrown in... until you lose yourself completely as well."

Lin Jiashu's calm voice struck Torada Eita's heart like a heavy hammer. The fear of being exposed was like a cold vine, instantly tightening around her heart, making it almost impossible for her to breathe.

He even found out this...

This is something that could not possibly be investigated in just twenty minutes from the village to the mountain, meaning that he already knew the whole truth before he set off!

But why didn't he choose to expose him and instead led himself here?

What exactly is his purpose?

"Shut up! You...you're talking nonsense!" Torada Eita screamed uncontrollably, her voice distorted by extreme fear. She abruptly pulled a long-barreled shotgun from the side of her horse, its dark muzzle pointing straight at Hayashi Yoshiki, and screamed, her voice trembling with barely suppressed rage, "Who are you?!"

"I?"

Lin Jiashu looked at her face, which was contorted and ashen with fear, and the curve of his lips became more pronounced. He completely ignored the long-barreled shotgun in her hand and laughed: "I'm just someone who's looking for supplies."

—All the events that happened in this village actually originated from a gambling game.

This rural sacrificial ceremony is not only held in this village.

Instead, it was a gathering of people from several surrounding villages to hold this sacrificial ceremony—and the most important part of the ceremony, the performance of the "flowing arrow horse" (流鈝马), involved selecting the most skilled horse riders and archers from each village.

Several villages compete with each other.

Six years ago, Kai Genjin was so outstanding that he hit all ten targets in his performance for six consecutive years. As a result, the underground gambling dens in several villages could no longer continue, and a group of gamblers who could no longer tolerate him decided to take action against Kai Genjin.

Back when Kai Genjin was practicing, it was Torada Eita who fired a shot at his horse's hind leg, causing him to fall off the cliff.

Due to a series of coincidences, Yoshiro Torada and others, who were engrossed in treasure hunting at the time, mistakenly believed that Kai Genjin fell off a cliff because of them... Eita Torada decided to keep this secret, but when Yoshiro Torada suddenly said six years later that he wanted to turn himself in, the real culprit, Eita Torada, could no longer tolerate it.

But before she could even make a move, Yoshiro Torada died in a tornado.

Torada Eita then killed Ryūo Kōji, followed by Ryūo Ayaka—partly to completely bury the truth of what happened back then, and partly to kill Ryūo Kage, the Ryūkaburō champion who succeeded Kai Genjin and had hit the bullseye ten times in five consecutive years.

"...Consumables?"

"Yes, there are too many things I want to do. Each consumable can only be used once and then cannot be used again... No matter how many criminals there are, it won't be enough, especially since it takes a lot of time to find these kinds of people each time."

Lin Jiashu didn't look at Torada Eida; his gaze returned to the black notebook in his hand.

The blank pages lay open, like a giant mouth waiting to devour something. Lin Jiashu's fingertips hovered above the pages without touching them, and then he took out a pen from his pocket.

"Put down your gun."

He began, his voice as calm as a closing statement in court, "It's not time for you to fire yet. Write down the names of your comrades, every single one of them."

Torata Eita was jolted violently, as if he had been pierced by an invisible electric current.

The next second, she stopped struggling and walked directly to Lin Jiashu to take the pen from his hand.

...It's not exactly a fountain pen either.

She took a pen and wrote her name on a blank sheet of paper.

However, I cannot write words.

After writing one name, she would turn to the next page, and after writing another name, she would turn to the next page...

Torada Eita's body seemed to have turned into a machine that only knew how to execute orders. The pen in her hand moved stiffly and strangely across the blank pages.

Lin Jiashu lowered his gaze silently, watching the unseen words crawl laboriously across the pages of the Death Note. His deep eyes held no emotion, only silence and a hint of satisfaction. Sunlight filtering through the leaves fell on his sharply defined profile, half in focus, half hidden in deep shadow.

He continued writing until Torada Eita stopped.

"very good."

Lin Jiashu's voice broke the silence as he closed the notebook.

He has already tested it.

It is possible for someone else to write their name in a death note with invisible ink, and then, after burning it to reveal the traces, for the person to add the time and details of their death.

In the world of Detective Conan, criminals are constantly being recruited, but constantly searching for consumables is also a hassle... Of course, you should stock up on more if you have the chance.

"Go pick up the gun."

It's going to rain soon.

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.

The rain in the mountains and forests came suddenly.

The sky was overcast, and the rain soaked the already muddy ground, making the roadside even more difficult to walk on.