Conan, I'm an actor

"Wouldn't this voice feel more familiar to you?" Shinjo released Akemi, his voice now sounding like Jiang Xiaobai's.

"dad?"

“I’m not your father, I’m just your guardian. Call me Uncle.” Shinjo’s face fell instantly when he heard Mingmei address him that way.

“Okay, Uncle Jiang, but why… weren’t you already dead in New York? And what’s wrong with your face?” Miyano Akemi stood up with some difficulty. “I’ve confirmed with Ah Da that it was you who appeared in New York that time.”

"That time in New York was a fake death. If I hadn't faked it, I'd be really dead by now. As for the FBI, if I can't even fool them, how can I fool those old foxes in the organization? As for my face? I was unlucky; I was in a plane crash and was disfigured." Shinjo rolled his eyes. "Consider it something I owe the Miyano family. Do you have a way to contact Shuichi Akai? You know, your 'Big Brother.' You need his help to leave the organization."

"No, I only have his email address, but you can wait for him to contact you. I receive a confirmation email every Monday; just click the specific link..."

Shinjo entered the email address directly into his phone and asked Karen to investigate the email owner. Karen naturally complained, but did as she was told, and soon a text message was sent to Shinjo's phone.

Xincheng dialed the number without hesitation, and the call was answered after only two rings.

“Rye Whiskey, a month from now, at Yusaku Kudo’s residence in Japan. I’ll be waiting for you there.” Shinjo said, then hung up the phone without waiting for a reply.

"Uncle Jiang, you just hit someone..."

“It’s his phone number. As long as I have his email address, I can find his number through my hacker friend.” Shinjo tossed the phone to Akemi. “There’s a one-in-five chance, do you think he’ll come to rescue you?”

Mingmei bit her lip, remaining silent, unsure of what to do. She didn't even know if the man had simply used her or if he had developed feelings for her; ultimately, it was very likely just unrequited love on her part.

Looking at the expression on Miyano Akemi's face, Shinjo guessed what she was thinking and then asked, "Are you going to pass out on your own, or should I knock you out? Your arrival here should have already been reported to Gin, and Gin is probably already suspicious."

"Then I'll have to trouble you, Uncle Jiang." Before Mingmei could finish speaking, Xincheng knocked her unconscious with a chop to the neck, then threw her into the car and closed the door.

After doing all this, Shinjo sent Gin a text message, telling him that Miyano Akemi had fainted there and asking him to send someone to pick her up. Now that Miyano Akemi was practically worth 20 billion yen, Gin wouldn't dare do anything to her.

After doing all this, Shinjo lifted his clothes and removed several completely deformed bullets from different parts of his body.

"That was ruthless. If I had known you were this good, I wouldn't have saved you. You might have been able to take down Gin." Shinjo looked at Miyano Akemi in the car and sighed. "Goodnight, get some sleep."

After leaving the grove, Shinjo glanced at the time on his phone and headed straight for the Golden Villa.

As the host of this detective competition, he had to go and check it out. Most of the decorations inside the Golden Villa had been completed by Senma Kazuyo and Oogami Kisuke, but the most important NPCs were still not finished.

According to their original plan, the owner of the villa was to issue the mission using a recording, and Shinjo originally intended to do the same, but now there was a better option.

The cassette tape is ultimately inanimate, and the detectives are top-notch; with careful thought, they would quickly find clues about the mansion's owner. However, an absent, real-time calculating artificial intelligence can fill all the gaps. It's time for these old-fashioned relic of the past to experience the allure of high technology.

Chapter 68 The Gatekeeper of the Twilight Villa

Around dinner time, the car finally ran out of gas, so Shinjo drove to a gas station to rest for a bit. Shinjo then dialed Professor Agasa's number, and the call was answered shortly afterward.

“I’m not here to urge the deployment work at the supercomputing center. I wanted to ask if Dr. Agasa would be interested in making a small device,” Shinjo said with a smile. “A device that receives wireless signals and outputs sound, similar to a cell phone with a speakerphone. It would need to have a camera and a transmitter. I urgently need this. Ideally, it should be completed within three days and then shipped to me. I’m willing to pay $10 for it.”

Professor Agasa, who was opposite him, breathed a sigh of relief when he heard that Shinjo hadn't come to urge the construction of the supercomputing center. When he heard Shinjo's next words, his expression relaxed even more. As an inventor, he could easily disassemble and reassemble the existing products he had on hand to meet Shinjo's needs.

When Professor Agasa heard that there was a reward of $100,000 for this little gadget, he couldn't sit still any longer. "Two days, no, one day! Give me one day, and I can make this thing. I'll personally deliver it to you."

This isn't complicated; the technology is mature, and even an engineering student still in college could build it within a month. If they don't hurry, the $10 reward might just slip away.

Shin-chō directly named a gas station, which was the closest gas station to the annex.

He didn't want Professor Agasa to deliver the items to the annex. After all, Professor Agasa was too close to Conan. If Professor Agasa let slip the secret, the great detective's intelligence might allow him to skip the intermediate reasoning steps, identify him as the mastermind, and then work backward to find the truth.

After dinner, we set off again, and at 10 p.m., we finally saw the sign for Twilight Villa in Xincheng.

"This place is so eerie, it would be a great location for a horror movie." Shinjo looked at the trees lining both sides of the road, a slight smile playing on his lips. "If an old lady were to appear, it would be perfect..."

Just then, the road ahead turned a corner, and as soon as they rounded the bend, Shinjo saw a hunched figure. His prosthetic eye processed the footage immediately, and Shinjo recognized the old woman—Chima Shoyo.

The accelerator suddenly roared, and in Chima Shota's eyes, the car accelerated and rushed towards her. Just as she was preparing to be hit, the car stopped less than 10cm in front of her. Then, she smelled the burning smell of brake pads.

"It's so late at night, I thought I'd run into a ghost." Xincheng slowly got out of the car. "Grandma, don't stand in the middle of the road if you don't have to. What if you get hit? This is the middle of nowhere, no one will come to help you. At most, they'll just throw you half-dead off the cliff over there."

Senma Shota looked at the man in front of her, her lips twitching slightly. Her legs were still trembling; the scene she had just witnessed was still too much of a shock for this woman in her sixties.

Moreover, the man's expression and his smile both told the same story—he did it on purpose, and this guy was an extremely wicked person.

Seeing Shinjo's nonchalant smile, Senma Shota's expression gradually turned cold.

This road has only one end: Twilight Villa, which is also the former residence of Karasuma Renya. There are still several days until the detective competition. This guy should be the new owner of Twilight Villa.

Two years ago, the famous food detective Ogami Shuzen found her and asked her to look up the information left by her father about this villa.

Shota Senma naturally disagreed. She didn't want the tragedy that befell her father's generation to repeat itself, and besides, she had already tried, but she simply couldn't decipher the code left by her father.

After being relentlessly pestered by that guy, and finally buying the villa with a loan, Senma Shota had no choice but to let Oogami Ichizen look at the belongings left by his father. However, this guy also lacked the ability to decipher the codes.

To crack the code, Oogami Ichizen plans to gather all of Japan's most famous detectives to help him unravel the secrets of the Twilight Villa. She is one of the participants, and Oogami Ichizen promises to give her half of the treasure.

The old lady naturally didn't believe it. She thought that the detective, blinded by the treasure, had probably already made arrangements to kill everyone who knew the secret, including Senma Shota, after obtaining the treasure.

Senma Kouta, of course, would not sit idly by and wait to die. She had already devised a plan to retaliate. Once the detectives arrived, she would strike first and kill Oogami.

The reason she stayed at the villa to plot with Oosugi instead of running away was simply because she wanted to see what kind of treasure had killed her father and so many scholars.

What they didn't expect was that Da Shang Zhu Shan's company ran into financial problems, and the bank couldn't find any non-performing assets, so they had no choice but to give up Huanghun Bieguan.

Da Shang Zhushan left, but she didn't. She hid in a room inside the villa, just to meet the person who bought the villa.

While Da Shang was overwhelmed by the banks and debt collectors, she wasn't. She investigated the program teams and agencies that Da Shang had worked with and finally concluded that Da Shang Zhu Shan's financial crisis was man-made, and the person behind it was forcing Da Shang to hand over the Twilight Villa.

Having gone to great lengths to force Oogami Shuzen to hand over the Twilight Villa, and then spending a fortune to buy it, this person must know the secrets within. Senma Shota deduced that this person, like himself, must have ancestors who survived that catastrophe, and that his ancestors must have brought something from the villa, such as the answer to the mystery of the treasure.

But a week ago, when her assistant called her, she brought news that utterly disappointed her: that person had chosen to do the same thing as Daikami Yoshiki, summoning famous Japanese detectives to unravel the secrets of the annex.

He and Da Shang Zhu Shan are the same kind of beings, the only difference being that he is richer than Da Shang Zhu Shan.

Upon seeing the man before him, Senma Shota was certain of this: this guy lacked any of the aura unique to detectives. Just like his self-proclaimed identity, this guy was more like Moriarty.

"If I'm not mistaken, you are Moriarty, aren't you?" Senma Shota chose to get straight to the point.

“Very clever, as expected of Senma Kyosuke’s daughter.” Shinjo said with a smile, “You must have seen the car lights inside the villa. You’ve been hiding inside the villa, so you probably didn’t see my invitation.”

"An invitation? I have no interest in that." Upon hearing the name Kyosuke Senma, Shota Senma's calm expression vanished. "What exactly do you know?"

"The secret of this villa, and its treasures." Shinjo stretched. "I only know a brute-force solution. The real solution, I'm afraid, can only be found when those famous detectives arrive."

"Tell me, what exactly is this thing, and what is the solution!" Senma Kouta grabbed Shinjo by the collar and demanded.

"Old lady, aren't you being a bit too arrogant?" Shinjo slapped Chizuru's hand away and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. "Since you didn't see my invitation before, I'm now inviting you to be my assistant. The cicada that thought it was the oriole has left, but a new prey will soon enter the scene. Until then, could you please continue playing the mantis? If you're unwilling, I can find someone to replace you. The farce has already begun, and even if the actors are changed, we have to stick it out until the curtain falls, right?"

Senma Shota's face showed a hint of fear. This guy knows everything!

If she is the praying mantis, then the cicada, who sees itself as the oriole, has already left, which should refer to the Great Sage Blessing.

This guy was planning to kill everyone and take all the treasure after finding it. However, he didn't know that his intentions had already been seen through, and he was preparing to strike first and kill him. This is exactly like the mantis stalking the cicada.

As for the new prey, it likely refers to the invited master detectives. And those who saw through Ooga no Kisuke's plan, understood her ulterior motives, and prepared to be the masterminds behind it all are naturally the so-called "wild card."

The new owner of the Twilight Villa, just how arrogant is this man who calls himself Moriarty? Is he planning to fool the elite of the entire Japanese detective world?

Chapter 69 The Pawns Take the Stage

“No killing is allowed, that’s my request.” Senma Shota sighed. “Enough people have died because of the treasure.”

"Oh? If I remember correctly, in your original plan, you were going to kill that guy, Daisho. What's wrong? Now you're going to become a living saint?" Shinjo's smile was tinged with sarcasm. "Just follow Daisho's plan. Just put your poison away."

"you……"

"A truly intelligent detective will not kill each other, at least not before he knows the truth about the treasure."

Shinjo had initially intended to say that the detectives wouldn't kill each other, but considering the amount of gold involved, he became somewhat unsure.

"You seem to know what the treasure is?"

"If I didn't know, why would I buy a villa?" Shinjo stretched. "I'm quite looking forward to seeing what kind of expression Karasuma Renya would have when his treasure is taken over."

After getting on the bus, Shinjo and Mrs. Chien didn't exchange any words.

Only when they arrived at the entrance of the villa did Senma slowly speak, "This is Karasuma Renya's former residence. There are already over a hundred souls who died inside."

"I see, it truly lives up to its name as a haunted house. If it weren't for those things, this place would be perfect as a horror-themed amusement park." Xincheng closed the car door. "Alright, take me..."

Before he could finish speaking, his phone rang. Looking at the number, Xincheng sighed, "Why is he still the same as before, with no patience at all?"

"Looks like you've got quite a few troubles." Senma Kyouta strolled leisurely toward the annex. "Then I'll go in first."

"We can talk as we go, I'm afraid you old hag might just kill me." Xincheng answered the phone, "Hey, Shirley, what's up?"

"What did you do to my sister? Why did Gin find my sister? Why is she in the hospital?" Shiho Miyano on the other end of the phone was clearly furious. "I told you to find a way to save my sister, not to..."

“Right now, she’s safest under Gin’s protection,” Shinjo said with a smile. “Don’t worry, with 20 billion yen and the chance to kill the organization’s traitor, Rye Whiskey, as leverage, Gin won’t let anything happen to her.”

Sherry paused for a moment, then said, "When are you going to make your move?"

“I arranged to meet Shuichi Akai a week from now, and that’s when I’ll make my move. You might not know who Shuichi Akai is. He’s an FBI agent and a traitor to the organization. He once used your sister to infiltrate the organization under the guise of her boyfriend. Back then, if I remember correctly, his name was…” Shinjo paused deliberately.

"Moroboshi Dai." Shiho Miyano's voice was so cold it seemed to freeze.

"You know that's fine. By the way, since I've done so much, could you give me a deposit?" Xincheng said slowly.

"what would you like?"

"As for the antidote to APTX-4869, I know you probably haven't developed a real antidote yet, but you should have something to temporarily stop the shrinking of experimental subjects, right?" Shinjo said slowly.

The sound of a test tube breaking came from the other end of the line, indicating that Haibara had now developed the incomplete antidote.

However, this is not surprising. After all, Ai Haibara was able to develop an antidote even when all the data was destroyed. Now that she is still in the organization, the drug's data is still available, and she has more resources at her disposal. There is no reason why she cannot develop one.

After a moment, Shiho Miyano slowly said, "Address. I will send you the medicine and its effects together."

Shinjo sent over the address of the Koshimizu Detective Agency directly. Only after doing all this did he step into the villa. Even after decades, the luxurious atmosphere was still overwhelming. It was indeed Karasuma Renya's mansion.

"Is this Karasuma Renya's former residence? I don't see anything particularly special about it." Shinjo looked at Senma Kouta beside him. "So, can you show me your furnishings? Like the pistol hidden under the pillow, or the poison needle on the doorknob."

"You really do know everything!" Senma Kouta took a deep breath. "These are all the mechanisms Karasuma Renya used to kill scholars. I'm just reusing them."

“You don’t need to explain yourself, and I don’t mean to blame you. After all, I’m not a policeman.” Xincheng stretched. “Hurry up, I still need to think about how to write the script.”

He did a lot of bad things during this period, but the system never accelerated his progress, which meant he was working for nothing.

As for the reason, he speculated that Moriarty's script had a problem with the criteria for judgment. It required that the person involved in the crime be a mastermind behind the scenes, or that the mastermind's power completely outweighed that of the criminal.

The Twilight Villa was a stage he had specially prepared; the act of fooling the detective from behind the scenes would surely bring him many rewards.

“We’ve already arrived at the annex, and everything has been checked. Can you tell me what this so-called method is?” Senma Kōta, hunched over, turned to look at Shinjō. “Were your ancestors among the scholars killed by Karasuma Renya?”

“Let me think about it. The method is to set it on fire and let the flames burn down the entire villa. What’s left is the treasure,” Shinjo said with a smile. “As for my ancestors, they died of old age. If there’s any connection, it’s that I have some connection with Karasuma Renya.”

“Impossible. Karasuma Renya passed away more than forty years ago. You look like you’re only a teenager at most.” Senma shook his head and said, “You couldn’t possibly have any connection with him! If it were true, you should be an old man by now.”