Conan: I've been linked to the tech tree system.

"Oh, I remember it was around noon, right, Ma Hua?" he called out very intimately.

"Yes, as soon as Sakuko returned to the cabin, she went to her room."

"Later, we made an appointment to have dinner together at the cabin's restaurant around 1 p.m., but she was the only one who never showed up."

Yamamura Misao diligently took notes.

“We knocked on her door but there was no response, so we asked the cabin staff to open the door for us... only to find that she wasn’t inside at all.”

"Then the three of us split up and searched for her all over the cabin... Just when we didn't know what to do, we ran into them in the restaurant."

Kiyama Kaji pointed at Professor Agasa.

"Ah, yes." Professor Agasa then recounted what happened next.

"Finally, when we went out to search, Toru found Ms. Sakuko's body on the cliff."

"Hmm..." Yamamura Misao nodded, then turned to look at the three university students again, "Anything else? What were you three doing during the time between separating from her and discovering she wasn't there?"

"Ah, I've always stayed in my room," Kiyama Kaji was the first to answer.

“I’m in my room too.” Next up is Onoe Maya.

"I'm building a snowman behind the cabin." The rest is the miserable Banqiao Yiba.

"Build a snowman?" Murakami Misao didn't understand.

"Yes, I'm working on a prototype for our graduation exhibition project, which is a collaboration between the four of us."

"I see." Yamamura Misao flipped through a page in his notebook. "By the way, it seems Ms. Sakuko rented snowboards and boots. Do you have any?"

“Oh, I also rent snowboards,” Itabashi Kazuya replied.

"I did rent ski equipment, but..." Kiyama Kaji hesitated.

"but what?"

“Kiyama didn’t go skiing at all,” Maka Onoe answered for him, “because he was worried that I would be sad since I was injured last year and could no longer ski.”

"But even if you can't ski, you can still push someone off the slope, right?"

Yamamura Misao's words suddenly became sharp.

"Yeah, if any of you three were to secretly call her to that cliff after you parted ways with Sakuko, and give her a little push from behind..."

"Then we could push her into the pool! It's possible, isn't it?"

It's no wonder he idolizes Kogoro Mouri; he's very bold in making judgments.

Of course, to put it nicely, it's about being willing to make judgments; in reality, it's just labeling people indiscriminately.

There might be some culprits with poor mental fortitude who are frightened into revealing their weaknesses, but most of the time it's just wild guessing without any evidence.

“But that’s impossible,” Kiyama Kaji retorted. “I could understand standing on a skateboard and crashing off a cliff, but pushing someone directly off the cliff…”

He looked up at the angle of the cliff, which was almost ninety degrees.

"You'd fall down to this spot at most," he pointed to the ground. "You're still at least five meters away from the pond."

Yamamura Misao glanced at it and said, "That's true. The chances of it being pushed down directly are slim."

"But if you can ski, wouldn't it be possible to carry a helpless victim down the slope?"

“That’s still not right. What you’re saying is unlikely.” This time it was Itabashi Kazuya who refuted. “Even if you did manage to slide down smoothly, it would be impossible to climb up that slope in such a short time in such wind and snow. Even if you used a rope, it would be impossible.”

Kiyama Kaji was speechless: "If you find it suspicious, you can check the lockers in the cabin for the ski equipment and ski boots I borrowed. If they were really used, they should be wet, right?"

"So the three of you are sharing one locker?"

“Yes.” Maka Onoue nodded.

"So, you're saying any of you can take the victim's ski equipment if you want?"

"Hey, what do you mean by that?"

"It means that as long as you secure her to the skis and then slide down the cliff..." Yamamura Misao spread her arms wide, "she'll fall into the pond with a 'bang'!"

Yamamura Misao finally offered a possible conclusion.

Chapter 181 The Strange Snowman

"Huh? Are you still thinking straight, detective?"

As a result, Yamamura Misao's conclusion was refuted by Kiyama Kazuji in less than a second.

“This slope is very bumpy,” he said, pointing to the uneven parts of the cliff face.

"If you do that, she might slip and fall halfway through, right?"

"Regarding this question..." Yamamura Misao held up the nib of his pen and pointed to Itabashi Kazuya, who had been silent until now, "If it were Mr. Itabashi, who also knows how to ski, he would be able to choose the kind of slope that isn't uneven, right?"

"...Where is the rope that secured Ms. Sakuko to the skateboard?"

Shiho Miyano couldn't help but speak up again.

Toru Tono actually admires Misao Yamamura quite a bit. He managed to force Shiho Miyano, who is usually not very talkative, to speak up and argue back, which shows he has some ability.

"Yeah, even if the body slides down the skateboard intact, shouldn't it still be fixed to the skateboard?" Conan added, unable to contain his frustration.

"And if Sakuko wasn't wearing gloves, it's possible that the snow was too heavy and she didn't know where she was, so she wanted to call us, right?"

Maka Onoe then proposed another hypothesis.

Therefore, hypothetical reasoning that does not start from clues at the scene is basically meaningless.

Tono sighed.

This kind of impulsive reasoning will only lead to more seemingly plausible but easily dismissed arguments upon on-site investigation.

In other words, it's all just empty talk.

"But when you make a phone call, do you take both gloves off completely?"

“Maybe she doesn’t want to make a phone call, but wants to send an email?” Itabashi Kazuya suddenly interjected. “When she sends an email, she always uses both hands to press the keys at the same time.”

"EMAIL?"

"Yes, whenever Sakuko wants to call someone, she sends an email asking 'Is now a convenient time?' to check if the other person has time to answer the phone."

"I guess her gloves were blown away by the wind while she was sending an email."

Maka Onoe and Kazuji Kiyama added their own comments.

"I got on my skateboard to catch up with the gloves... and that's how I fell down."

Although it sounds far-fetched, such a thing could actually happen in reality.

"Was that snowstorm really that heavy?" Yamamura Misao exclaimed in shock.

"Ah, it is indeed quite large." Professor Agasa nodded. "You can hardly see anything beyond 3 meters."

"Ah, so it was an accident after all?" Yamamura Misao mused.

Tohru Tohru was speechless. He turned around and walked up the mountain, leaving behind a single sentence.

"Officer Yamamura, let's wait until we've finished investigating the scene at the mountaintop before drawing any conclusions."

“Oh, right.” Yamamura Misao suddenly realized, “Then we should go to the cliff where the dead man fell and take a look. Maybe we can find some clues.”

Tohru Tono led the way without looking back.

Conan snapped out of his reverie, caught up with him, and tugged at his sleeve.

"Hey, this incident wasn't just a simple accident, was it?"

Conan's glasses are all reflecting light.

Tohno Toru glanced at him.

Isn't that obvious? In the cases you've been involved in, have any of them been accidents or suicides?

In his memory, the only case that happened was when Yoko Okino's ex-boyfriend committed suicide and then staged it as a murder in an attempt to frame her.

Apart from these, most of them were homicides disguised as suicides or accidental deaths.

Conan's self-awareness is still not clear enough, to ask such a question.

"Ah, it's basically certain that he killed him." Tohno Toru thought to himself, but still nodded. "The culprit is definitely one of those three people."

Toru Tono still hasn't figured out who the culprit is, and he has no recollection of the case.

"That's right. Logically speaking, if someone has a dinner appointment with someone in an hour, they wouldn't go skiing alone with their skis, especially when the weather is obviously getting worse."

Conan nodded knowingly, as if he had heard the answer key.

"But the problem is, who threw Miss Sakuko, who was originally in the cabin, into this pond, and how...?"

As Conan spoke, he fell into deep thought again.

Looking at him, Tohru Tono suddenly remembered the snowman that Itabashi Kazuya and the Junior Detective League had built before.

Assuming that unfortunate snowman-building expert is the murderer, according to the murder patterns in the Conan world...

He suddenly understood something.

-----------------

"This is where Miss Sakuko fell down."

Yamamura Misao stood with his hands behind his back in front of the sign that read "Danger" next to the cliff.

The biting mountain wind whipped up snow and lashed it against everyone's faces. Forensic officers squatted beside a warning sign on the edge of the cliff, their fingertips lightly tracing the cracks in the icy rocks.

"But the fence is broken, and all that's left is this sign standing here. This is really a bit..."

"I heard it broke down last week, and it was supposed to be repaired this week."

The forensic officers were clearly genuine locals, far more knowledgeable than the fake one, Shan Cun Cao.

"Well, at first glance, it seems like there's no trace of a skateboard at all."

"Could it have been buried by the snow?"

Yamamura looked around but didn't find anything unusual.

Turning my head, I saw a strange-looking snowman.