Survival Manual of the Science Fiction World

Having finally found a source of venting his anger, Kogoro Mouri slammed his fist on Conan's head, giving him a big bump.

"Stop talking nonsense, how could I lose to someone in a book! It's all your fault for insisting on joining this tour group."

"Ouch—" Conan hugged his head and shrank to the side, feeling wronged.

"Conan, are you alright?" Ran rushed forward to ask.

"Conan?" A group of people crowded around Conan's side. "Little kid, your name is Conan? That's a really good name."

"Yes, yes, that's a really nice name!"

Conan, ignoring the pain in his head, smiled and looked up, saying, "I especially love my own name!"

Yes, after all, you chose the name yourself, how could you not like it?

"Conan is so lively right now!"

Chu Ming turned his head and saw Ran looking at Conan with a nostalgic expression, sighing, "He's just like Shinichi too. He also really likes Sherlock Holmes, and—"

"And he's passionate about deduction, loves playing soccer, and he only met me briefly before leaving without saying goodbye..." The one who chimed in was Hattori Heiji, who had come from Osaka to try and meet Kudo Shinichi again.

"Oh, you're Hattori? You're a Sherlock Holmes fan too?" Ran recognized the young black man in front of her.

Hattori waved his hand: "No, the reason I signed up for this competition is because I thought I would meet Shinichi Kudo here, and I still prefer Ella Liquin to Conan Doyle..."

Chu Ming wanted to complain, "You don't just like Ella Likun, you clearly like Shinichi Kudo. How could you slander your idol in front of Shinichi Kudo?"

Sure enough, when Hattori said he preferred Ella Liqueur, Conan and a group of Sherlock Holmes fans all looked up at him. Their stern, accusatory gazes made Hattori's scalp tingle. He looked pitiful, weak, and helpless.jpg.

He swallowed hard, forced to bow to the group of thugs, and forced a dry laugh: "Ah, haha...haha, but of course Conan Doyle is still the better one, haha, haha!"

This time, everyone suddenly became kind and benevolent, leaving Chu Ming speechless with amazement. They were all experts in Sichuan opera face-changing.

Seeing that everyone had finished their discussion, Hiroyuki Kanaya clapped his hands to draw everyone's attention to himself and explained the arrangements for the next day. The highlight was that after dinner, there would be an extremely difficult reasoning quiz. Those who answered all the questions correctly would receive a rare first edition copy of Sherlock Holmes's first appearance and Arthur Conan Doyle's famous work, "A Study in Scarlet."

Conan's eyes lit up, and he was practically drooling. He unconsciously tugged at Chu Ming's clothes, excitedly saying, "Brother Chu Ming, did you see that? It's the first edition! A collector's edition! That's a collector's book that every Sherlock Holmes fan dreams of!!!"

Chu Ming interrupted the frenzied detective with a headache, just in time to save his clothes: "Don't get excited, Mr. Kinda still has a request to make, listen to it first."

Seeing all eyes on him, Hiroyuki Kaneda gave a mysterious smile: "To prove you're all true Sherlock Holmes fans, we'll have a short quiz first. Here are 1000 questions on Sherlock Holmes. Submit them to me by tomorrow night. Only those who score 990 or higher will qualify for the quiz after dinner tomorrow night. To ensure no one cheats, please hand over your personal documents and cell phone. Of course, it's okay if you don't; there are security cameras everywhere in the hotel!"

Everyone handed their phones and books to the waitresses. When it was Chu Ming's turn, he hesitated to hand them over, worried that Gin might not be able to reach him. He indicated that he would not participate in the event, and Mr. Jin Gu did not insist.

That night, after Kogoro Mouri and Ran had gone to sleep, Conan squeezed into Chu Ming's room with a grin. Uncle Mouri's snoring was so loud that he couldn't answer the questions properly, so he simply came over and squeezed in with Chu Ming.

Chu Ming lay on the bed. Luckily, he didn't have Gin's almost perverted vigilance. Otherwise, with Conan's habit of muttering to himself while answering questions and occasionally chuckling to himself when he was happy, he probably would have been shot by him long ago.

Haha ...

It was past 5 a.m., and Conan, who hadn't slept all night and had been answering questions, finally finished the last one. Looking at the fully answered test paper, Conan laughed smugly. This test wasn't so difficult after all!

Chu Ming, who was asleep, was awakened by the laughter. Looking at the figure on the bedside who was laughing so hard that he couldn't help but grab the pillow next to him and throw it at him. He had finally had a nice dream, in which he defeated Gin and was about to hear Gin call him big brother. Damn it!

After smashing Conan, Chu Ming collapsed and went back to sleep, wondering if he could continue the dream.

Chapter 62 The Death of the Innkeeper

— 9 PM.

Chu Ming firmly rejected Conan's suggestion to sleep with him tonight, ignoring Conan's resentful gaze.

What's there to complain about? He hasn't even complained yet. Although he managed to fall asleep in the early hours of the morning, the beautiful dream he missed could never be relived. The dream of Gin bowing down to him might only happen once in his life!

After dinner, everyone drank tea and ate snacks in the restaurant while waiting for Boss Jingu to arrive.

After waiting for a long time without seeing anyone appear, Chu Ming slumped back in his chair: "Why hasn't anyone come yet?"

Several people nearby were also dissatisfied: "Could the rumors be true? I heard that Boss Jingu holds this kind of event every year to attract customers to his hotel, but the questions are always very difficult, leaving people frustrated. I think he doesn't really want to hold the event, but just wants to show off his first-generation rare edition books!"

After sitting there for more than three hours, everyone who had been patiently waiting started to get impatient. The hot-tempered Fujisawa slammed his fist on the table and stood up, shouting, "Damn it, I can't take it anymore! I'm going back to my room to sleep!"

Ignoring the waitress's attempts to stop him, he went straight back to his room, and the others beside him followed suit. After all, it was getting late, past midnight, and the older people would probably have already taken a nap by now.

Seeing that someone was going back, Kogoro Mouri, who couldn't sit still at all, quickly got up and went back to sleep.

Ran seemed tempted and asked Conan beside her, "What about you, Conan? Do you want to go back?"

Conan shook his head without hesitation: "Ran-neechan, I'll wait a little longer."

Ran nodded. She was worried about Conan being alone in the hall, and even though she was very sleepy, she didn't want to leave.

Chu Ming had caught up on sleep all day and was still in good spirits. He said to Xiao Lan, "Xiao Lan, why don't you go to sleep first? I'll stay with Conan."

Xiaolan hesitated for a moment, but she couldn't keep her eyes open any longer, so she nodded, said goodnight to each other, and went back to her room.

Time ticked by, and many people gradually left because they couldn't stay up all night. Only six people remained in the hall: the waitress, the college student couple, Ye Yanren and Oki Ayako, who had initially confronted Kogoro Mouri, Hattori Heiji, who was secretly annoyed because Shinichi Kudo hadn't arrived, Conan, and Chu Ming, who was idly folding paper frogs and hopping around the table for amusement.

Heiji Hattori rubbed his eyes, which were starting to droop: "No, no, I'm so sleepy, I can't stay awake any longer, I'm going to sleep too."

Ayako Oki was also a little tired. She said to her boyfriend, "Kento, I don't think we can just keep waiting like this. Why don't we go back to our room and go to sleep?"

But her boyfriend clearly had a different opinion. He shook his head and said, "Ayako, wait a minute. The first person to leave at this point will lose. Maybe if we wait a little longer—what's that? The hotel owner looks like he's driving."

He glanced out the window and saw a car slowly driving away.

"It really is the boss! Looks like the mystery quiz is finally about to begin!"

Conan and Hattori quickly squeezed to the window, but Chu Ming was stunned. Why were there so many magnetic fields on the train that were glowing?

"Wait, there's a cliff ahead! Why isn't he stopping?"

Hattori yanked open the window, and just as Conan and he were about to jump out, Chu Ming, who was behind them, braced himself against the window frame and leaped over Conan's head, quickly running towards the car.

—So many magnetic fields! You're going to get rich! Take your time, I'm coming!

Watching the figure rush away, Conan couldn't help but sigh that Brother Chu Ming was still so kind-hearted, and he ran after him.

Chu Ming ran alongside the speeding car, shattering the window with an elbow strike. The energy was absorbed instantly upon contact with the magnetic field. He reached out to pull Boss Jin Gu out as well, but the car jolted and suddenly accelerated, hurtling towards the cliff.

At this moment, Conan and Hattori also ran over, desperately calling out to the hotel owner, trying to wake him up, but to no avail. The car drove straight towards the cliff and plunged off.

"Stop shouting, he's dead. I just touched his body, it's already a bit stiff." Chu Ming stood on the edge of the cliff, watching the car explode violently after it crashed down, and said calmly.

"Dead?" The waitress who rushed over was shocked.

Feeling refreshed after absorbing the magnetic field, Chu Ming turned to the waiter and said, "Please call everyone in the hotel over here. There has been a murder. Have them all gather in the lobby."

"Okay, I'll go right away."

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

"What? The boss is dead?"

"That's right, it just happened right in front of me, the car and the person fell into the sea."

Kogoro Mouri yawned repeatedly, rubbing his eyes and looking speechless: "He must have committed suicide. I think he just didn't want you guys to get that collector's edition of Sherlock Holmes."

Chu Ming nodded and said to Conan and Hattori behind him, "Alright, Uncle has ruled out suicide for us. It seems this is indeed a homicide."

"...?" Hattori Heiji was completely confused.

Chu Ming once again countered Hattori's theory of "playing dumb to fool others": "Do you know that even though this uncle looks so nonsensical, he can still be called a famous detective?"

Hattori Heiji rolled his eyes inwardly. What else could he rely on but Kudo Shinichi, who was hiding behind him!

When Conan saw Chu Ming start promoting Uncle Mao's elimination method again, he broke out in a cold sweat and went to look for clues on his own.

Chu Ming noticed Hattori's disdain and continued to explain, "Because the uncle's reasoning is based on first suppressing then elevating, giving the murderer hope first, and then finally plunging him into the abyss!"

Hattori became interested: "How so?"

"If you don't believe me, you can look at Uncle's reasoning today, including all his previous reasoning. He always starts by using various seemingly reasonable but easily refuted arguments to point to suspects other than the murderer, making the murderer think he has escaped. Then, taking advantage of the murderer's lowered guard, he swiftly and decisively identifies the murderer and presents conclusive evidence! So before Uncle finally identifies the murderer, all the murderers he has identified before are 100% innocent. I call this Mao's elimination method! The strongest murderer elimination method!"

Hattori Heiji was completely taken aback by Chu Ming's words, blinking his eyes: "Really...?"

He was skeptical, but thinking that solving the case was the priority, he put his doubts aside and went to observe the tire tracks carefully.

"Why are you looking at the tire tracks?" Ran asked, puzzled, as she looked at Conan and Hattori lying on the ground.

"I'm looking for something, oh—" With a tilt of his head, Conan and Hattori bumped into each other again.

Heiji Hattori looked at Conan, who had bumped into him again, and was about to say something, but he paused for a moment, looked at Conan with a strange expression, and remained silent for a long time.

"What are you looking for?" Chu Ming couldn't help but ask when he saw that the others hadn't reacted for a while.

"I was checking for any water droplets from the air conditioning, since that would be helpful in the case. I didn't expect this kid to suddenly come over too..."

Chu Ming asked in surprise, "Air conditioning? What air conditioning? There's no air conditioning in the car?"

Chapter 63 (?＞?＜?)

Not only Conan and Hattori looked up in surprise, but the others who were discussing nearby also gathered around: "This guy said that when he was chasing the car, he heard a whooshing sound inside in addition to the engine sound. We were guessing whether the air conditioning was on. How do you know it wasn't the air conditioning?"

Chu Ming blinked: "I broke the car window to rescue the boss. When I reached in to pull him out, I felt the wind blowing on my hand was warm, so the heater must have been on."

"...Brother Chu Ming, why didn't you say so sooner!" Conan jumped up from the ground. Such an important clue!

Ignoring the little detective who was jumping up and down and barely reached his knees, Chu Ming turned to look at the crowd that had gathered around him: "Didn't you say you were going to get the phone you had put away to call the police? Why aren't you going?"

"Oh, right, right, let's go get our phones and call the police."

However, when everyone arrived at Boss Jin Gu's room, they discovered that the cell phones they had handed in, as well as the cell phones in the room, had been smashed.

"Oh no! That treasured book is gone too!" The waitress exclaimed in horror.

"I can't take it anymore, I'm leaving! Is there another car in the garage?" Mr. Fujisawa roared, he had had enough of this awful place and wanted to leave now.

"It's no use. The car in the garage has a huge hole in its gas tank, and the battery is gone. In short, the car is now just a pile of scrap metal and can't be moved at all."