Traveling back thirty years to Conan, intercepting Princess Eri

"Onii-chan," Reiko cried out in fright, shrinking tightly against Hideichi's leg, her little hands gripping his trousers. "Aren't there wild animals in the mountains?"

"Don't be afraid, your brother is here," Lin Xiuyi patted his sister's head, secretly relieved—it seemed this trick had worked.

For the rest of the day, Lin Xiuyi subtly led the three girls back to Shancuncao's village via a detour, while feigning extreme anxiety and fumbling around. She would occasionally squat down to examine the footprints on the ground or look up to determine the direction of the sun, muttering to herself.
"Logically, we should go this way... How come there's no path?"

Yukiko gradually put away her previous willful attitude and followed Hayashi Shuichi to check the surrounding environment: "Shuichi, look over there, there seem to be footprints. Could they have been left by Kogoro and the others?"

Eri Kisaki then used her calm and meticulous nature, taking out her notebook and pen from her backpack and drawing a simple map based on the orientation of the trees and the direction of the river.

Although she made frequent mistakes due to Lin Xiuyi's deliberate misleading, it also made her temporarily forget about her argument with Yukiko.

Lingzi followed behind the three like a little tail, holding a twig in her hand and occasionally patting the roadside weeds while humming an off-key nursery rhyme. Her fear from earlier had long since vanished.

At noon, the sun was high overhead, and the forest became sultry.

Lin Xiuyi "coincidentally" found a flat grassy area under a big tree and suggested, "Let's rest here for a while, eat something to replenish our energy, and maybe we'll be able to find our way later."

“Okay, okay!” Yukiko immediately agreed; her legs were already sore from walking.

Eri nodded in agreement: "That's fine. I brought some rice balls with me, so we can share them."

Upon hearing this, Yukiko quickly pulled out a sandwich from her backpack: "I have sandwiches and chocolate here!"

Lingzi then proudly presented several fruits: "Aunt Zhufu gave me apples and oranges before she left!"

The four people sat around under the shade of a tree, sharing the food they had brought.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves, bathing them in warmth.

Yukiko accidentally dropped breadcrumbs on her clothes, and Eri instinctively reached out to brush them off for her. When they realized what had happened, they both froze for a moment, then awkwardly looked away.

Lin Xiuyi couldn't help but smile slightly as he watched this scene.

……

In the afternoon, Lin Xiuyi "finally" found the mark that Yamamura Misao had made on a tree.

It was a knot made of red cloth strips, which he had noticed long ago.

"Look! It's a mark made by Xiao Cao!" he exclaimed, feigning surprise. "If we follow this direction, we'll definitely find the way!"

"Great!" Yukiko cheered immediately.

Eri Kisaki also let out a long sigh of relief, her tense shoulders finally relaxing.

Reiko jumped up and hugged Hayashi Hideichi's arm, exclaiming, "Onii-chan is amazing! We can finally go back!"

……

Following the red ribbon markings left by Yamamura Misao on the tree trunks, Hayashi Shuichi led Eri Kisaki, Yukiko, and Reiko through the dense forest. "Shuichi, look ahead! That looks like a structure built by people, doesn't it?" Yukiko suddenly pointed and shouted in the distance.

Lin Xiu looked up and saw the secret base that Yamamura Misao and Morofushi Kagemitsu had built in front of him.

Before he could speak, Kogoro Mouri's loud voice rang out from the woods: "You've finally caught up! We've been waiting for ages."

Lin Xiuyi and his three companions walked forward and found several clean canvases spread out on the grass in front of the secret base, with several paper bags filled with snacks piled up next to them.

Kogoro Mouri and his friends were sitting on a canvas, playing cards out of boredom.

"Shuichi, why are you guys so slow?"

Kogoro Mouri threw down his cards, stood up, dusted off his pants, and complained, "We've been waiting here for hours. We thought you guys were lost in the mountains."

"Hey, you're cheating again!" Fukuda Hidekazu looked speechlessly at the playing cards that Kogoro Mori had thrown down. "I was sure I'd win this round!"

"Shuichi and the others have caught up with us, what's the point of playing cards?" Kogoro Mouri coughed and quickly changed the subject. "Tell me, where have you been all this time? You couldn't have gotten lost, could you?"

“We really did get lost.” Eri touched her forehead, her hair damp with sweat. “We took a lot of wrong turns, and it was only after Shuichi found the marker that we found this place.”

Kogoro Mouri looked surprised and was about to say, "The roads in these mountains are easy to recognize," but Hayashi Shuichi beat him to it.

"We ran into a bit of an accident on the way," Lin Xiuyi said with a smile, patting his good friend on the shoulder and pushing him aside. "We saw a stream over there, and Lingzi insisted on going to play in the water, which made us a little late. By the way, where did we get the playing cards?"

Kogoro Mouri paused for a moment, then realized what he meant and followed up with, "It was Misao who put it in the secret base. We were getting bored waiting for you, so we had to find something to do."

The two of them worked together to successfully steer the conversation toward playing cards.

Yukiko, completely oblivious to what was happening, ran over to Hiromi Yabuuchi and sat down next to her best friend. Grabbing her hand, she began to complain, "Hiromi, you have no idea how terrible we were just now! We were wandering around in the woods, and we couldn't even see the sun. Reiko even said she saw wolf tracks, it scared me to death!"

"Really?" Hiromi Yabuuchi's eyes widened in surprise. "Then how did you find us?"

“It’s all thanks to Shuichi,” Yukiko said, glancing furtively at Shuichi Hayashi, who was talking to Kogoro Mouri, and couldn’t help but smile. “He squatted on the ground for a long time and said that there were footprints pointing this way, and sure enough, they found the red ribbon.”

Lingzi was exhausted. She yawned widely, crawled into her secret hideout, lay down on the blanket, and mumbled, "I'm going to sleep for a while. Wake me up when it's time to eat..."

A few seconds later, the sound of even breathing could be heard.

Eri Kisaki, however, is not as careless as Yukiko.

She watched as Lin Xiuyi and Mouri Kogoro huddled together, whispering and laughing, occasionally exchanging knowing glances, and a sense of unease arose in her heart.

When Lin Xiuyi got lost in the mountains, he pretended to be anxious, but he always managed to find seemingly useful clues at crucial moments. Now that he thinks about it, those clues were too "coincidental".

She walked discreetly to Liuli's side, pretending to talk to her friend, but her eyes were constantly watching Lin Xiuyi's movements: "How long did it take you to get here?" (End of this chapter)