Conan: When Shinjiu and Maolilan swap bodies

He raised his head and laughed wildly at the towering flames that devoured everything!

"Hahaha, what beautiful fireworks!"

"Destroy! Die! Go to hell!"

His laughter was hoarse and broken, filled with an almost manic pleasure and release!

He opened his arms as if to embrace the raging flames that were destroying everything, or as if to welcome the death that would follow and completely engulf him.

The firelight danced wildly in his dark pupils, illuminating the twisted expression on his face, a mixture of extreme hatred and utter relief.

The blast wave violently threw him away, the world spinning and turning upside down before his eyes, the scorching air burning his lungs.

Just before he lost consciousness, a familiar boot landed in front of him, accompanied by a familiar yet unpleasant sound.

"Tsk, it looks awful."

The silver-haired man's black trench coat fluttered in the hot wind. Looking at the unconscious man whose life was uncertain, he irritably picked him up and threw him into the back seat of the Porsche.

Qingze spent two months in the hospital.

There were no annoying people, no frustrating tasks, and no buzzing noises. The ward was quiet and incredibly peaceful.

His mental state immediately improved a lot.

After his injuries had fully healed, he took a month off.

The organization also understood the principle that too much of a good thing can be bad, and knew that his mental state was very poor, so it did not interfere in any way.

He wasn't even held accountable for blowing up the research institute.

He wandered around Japan, going to various places to relax, trying to regulate his emotions and find some external "life value" and "meaning of living" to support his walking corpse.

By chance, he saw a Chinese tourism advertisement.

Without any hesitation, he bought a plane ticket, got a visa, and came to China.

He stayed in China for half a month, met that middle-aged man whose identity he didn't know, and got a lighter from him.

A meaning that is insufficient to be called "the meaning of life".

Holidays are short, and some responsibilities cannot be ignored.

It means to pursue slowly, gradually, and over the long term.

The boy became completely obedient.

He crafted his own persona, portraying himself as utterly loyal and devoted to the organization, willing to sacrifice his life for it.

The shadow cast by the massacre at the organization's base was so great that few people remembered what the boy was like before.

It became an indispensable task machine in making up for the institute's losses.

He gradually amplified the commotion surrounding the mission that required secrecy.

It was discovered by chance at first.

Later on, the commotion grew louder and louder.

He hid his face in the shadows, testing the organization's limits little by little.

He knew his value to the organization; the organization wouldn't let him die, nor would it want him to.

He went to the disciplinary room as frequently as he ate and drank. When he went to the solitary confinement cell, he went from being irritable at first to being able to sleep standing up in it later.

Humans are incredibly adaptable.

Until that day...

Sherry and Fiano, two top researchers, conducted a collaborative pharmacological study, and Sherry proposed a bold idea to combine a theoretical enzyme inhibitor with the existing E-drug framework.

15-year-old Shirley made a brief note at the end of the seminar:

"The risk is extremely high, but if the theory is successful, the harm of drug E to the body can be reduced to a safe and controllable range."

The only suitable test subject, Qingze, arrived at the new research institute.

More and more complex tubing and probes were inserted into his body.

The medication was slowly injected.

At first, it was extremely cold, as if the blood was freezing.

Immediately, all senses were blocked by a thick layer of frosted glass; sound became muffled, light distorted, and even the flow of time lost its real sense of reality.

The curve on the heart rate monitor began to become irregular, sometimes soaring to dangerous peaks, and sometimes becoming so weak as to be almost a straight line.

It was as if a systemic collapse had occurred, and various indicators of organ function plummeted like an avalanche.

The rescue operation lasted for three whole days.

For those seventy-two hours, he hovered between the narrow gap between life and death.

Consciousness sometimes sinks into boundless darkness, and sometimes is briefly and vaguely pulled back to a ray of light.

Between life and death, the mental constraints imposed on him by his organization, which were like ironclad laws etched deep into his consciousness, seemed to crack as his physical functions deteriorated to the extreme.

Then, like the first crack in the ice, Qingze's own strong will found a way to break free from its shackles.

Three days later, thanks to the organization's tireless medical investment, he finally regained consciousness.

He was unusually calm after waking up.

The calm was unsettling to the monitors.

Then, on a night when a monitoring instrument routinely emitted a soft "beep," he unplugged all the tubes and probes from his body.

He walked into the still brightly lit corridor of the research institute, his steps initially unsteady, but quickly becoming steady.

Everyone they encountered along the way became a fallen corpse, without exception.

When 15-year-old Shirley heard footsteps and turned around, she saw a figure approaching, dressed in a hospital gown, pale as a ghost, with a ferocious expression amidst madness.

Before she could even react or scream, a cold hand gripped her neck tightly and pressed her against a metal cabinet full of hard drives containing data.

Sherry's eyes widened, a suffocating pain and shock surging within her at the same time. She stared intently at the scarlet eyes so close to her, and saw madness, saw undisguised murderous intent.

Just as her vision began to blur, the grip on her throat suddenly disappeared.

Just as he had failed to kill Fiano several times before, he released his grip as if his body were out of control just before Sherry was about to suffocate.

Since then, his mental state has been described in the organization's assessment report as "rapidly deteriorating and extremely dangerous."

He was 20 years old at the time.

After ten years, he has finally found some breathing room.

Qingze looked at his 20-year-old self standing on the deserted shore and burst into laughter.

The tide surged and the sea breeze howled.

He laughed and laughed, then tears streamed down his face as he lay back on the damp sand.

Ten years...ten years...

Ten years...

Chapter 542 He is an extremely capable person

The car drove along the highway at night, with the deep darkness outside the window and the blurry horizon in the distance.

The halo of the streetlights swept rapidly backward, occasionally illuminating a small section of empty beach and the dark sea.

Ran Mouri sat in the passenger seat, her gaze somewhat unfocused as she looked out the window at the vast coastline swallowed by the night.

Some somber memories flooded back.

The wind was salty and cold, carrying an endless wail.

The sand and gravel underfoot were rough and damp, as if they could absorb all the warmth.

The starless and moonless night sky hung low, like a thick, wet velvet cloth pressing down on my head and chest.

The image of that slender boy seemed to appear before my eyes, sitting or standing alone on this empty, deserted beach, motionless, staying there for an entire night.

It's not about appreciating the scenery, nor about relieving sorrow, but about exiling oneself.

Let the sea breeze penetrate your clothes and take away your body heat; let the darkness envelop you and swallow your outline; let the monotonous sound of the tide cover up all the noise in your heart, or deathly silence.

It was a kind of self-destructive, cold loneliness.

There was no desire to cry for help, no urge to shed tears, only a frozen nothingness that merged with the boundless night and the icy seawater.

A dull pain, as if soaked by icy seawater, came from my chest.

It wasn't physical pain, but rather a resonance and sorrow that arose when the soul sensed the bitter cold that another soul had long been immersed in.

Bai Yu, who was driving, turned his head and saw the tears sliding down Ran Mouri's cheek.

She paused for a moment, stepped on the brake, and handed over the tissue.

"what happened?"

Ran Mouri took the tissue, wiped away her tears, and shook her head.

"It's nothing, I just suddenly remembered some sad things."

Bai Yu keenly sensed the silent sorrow spreading around her.

The air was heavy, like mist permeated with seawater, and her heart couldn't help but be filled with a few wisps of damp, cold sorrow.

Her gaze fell on Ran Mouri's profile, illuminated by the flickering lamplight outside the window. After a moment's hesitation, she spoke softly:

"If... if you're feeling down, maybe you can talk about it? I've heard... that sharing sad things can lighten the burden."

They were tracking Fryward's location, and the target's seaside villa was getting closer.

The pause in the conversation was like a brief and fragile calm before a battle.

Upon hearing this, Ran Mouri's lips twitched slightly, revealing a gentle smile.

She did not respond immediately, her gaze remaining fixed on the deep, boundless dark sea outside the car window.

In the distance, the outline of the waves appeared and disappeared in the deeper night, carrying an eternal and low sob.

After a long silence, she spoke in a very soft voice, as if afraid of disturbing the lonely shadow in her memory, or afraid that the sound of the wind outside the window would carry her voice away:

"You know... Aze really likes to come to the beach alone late at night."

Her voice was ethereal, as if it came from a very distant place.

"It's not about taking a walk or sightseeing... I just find a place, sit alone on the beach, and sit there all night long."

"The seawater was cold, the sand was damp, and the sea breeze was like a knife... but he seemed not to feel it."

Bai Yu held her breath and listened quietly.

"Several times..." Ran Mouri's voice trembled almost inaudibly, and her fingertips curled unconsciously.

"He couldn't help but walk into the depths of the sea... deeper and deeper... the seawater reached his thighs, submerged his chest, until it swallowed his breath."

The car was so quiet that only the low hum of the engine could be heard inside.

The white jade has a momentary blankness.

Ran Mouri continued speaking, her voice heavy.

He was very ill.

"The pressures of his environment molded him into the person he hated; moral condemnation and the torment of his conscience gnawed at his heart..."

"He was constantly struggling between wanting to live and wanting to die..."

Her narration paused, as if she too was suffocating under the weight of that immense pain.

When he spoke again, his voice was filled with undisguised grief:

"Every time I think about these things... every time I think about him standing so alone in the cold sea, with endless darkness behind him and a deeper, colder death ahead..."

"My heart feels like it's been soaked by the sea—cold, aching, and I can't breathe..."

Bai Yu was completely stunned.

After leaving the research institute, she was spotted by Rum. Before becoming a "tool" that satisfied Rum, she was in closed training and had extremely limited knowledge of what was happening in the organization.

She didn't know anything about Qingze's past experiences.