Jangxia Tongzhi stepped into the side room and took a look at the murder scene.
Directly across from the door, a corpse was pinned to the wall—one hand still clutching a samurai sword, and a second, longer sword stabbed clean through his chest, nailing him in place.
The room looked like a kendo dojo had been blended with a blender—sword marks everywhere: walls, ceiling, even the floor. Total chaos.
The dead man was the homeowner, Maru Denjiro.
Apparently, some time ago, he suspected his wife was cheating, so he hired Kogoro Mouri to investigate.
Today, Mouri showed up with the results. But just as they started talking, other visitors arrived. Maru Denjiro left Mouri behind and went into the side room to receive them.
He never came back.
When Mouri saw his client again, the man had become a decorative corpse.
The police were called. They showed up… and didn't really do much.
By the time Jangxia arrived, the suspects were already lined up—no more, no less, exactly three.
One was the family doctor (who also happened to be Mrs. Maru Denjiro's lover). The other two were debtors—a sculptor and a kendo instructor.
Jangxia scanned the room, then his eyes settled on the corpse's leg.
—A pai-leg shikigami.
His expression softened. At least this trip wasn't a complete waste.
Might as well grab the shikigami early and head home.
Jangxia turned toward the suspects, looked at the kendo coach, and said, "You're the murderer."
He didn't bother softening the accusation. In the Detective Conan universe, if you call the wrong person a murderer, you don't get sued for slander.
...You mostly just get murdered by the wrongly accused or their friends.
Inspector Megure's heart gave a jolt when he heard that.
A few minutes earlier, Kogoro Mouri had said the exact same thing.
Mouri had figured that with how intense the sword fight looked, only someone like Suwa—the kendo instructor—could match Maru Denjiro in a duel.
But then a certain child pointed out some inconsistencies, and the adults began suspecting the whole scene was a setup. The new theory: Suwa was being framed.
So now Megure looked at Jangxia, then at Mouri, then at the blinding sunlight outside... and, for some reason, began to wonder if "possessed souls can be evaporated by UV rays."
Ran Mouri leaned in and gently reminded Jangxia, "The way the victim held the sword is strange. Usually the dominant hand goes in front, but he had it reversed."
"That's right," Mouri nodded wisely. "And the slashes on the ceiling? What kind of real swordsman aims up there during a fight? Clearly amateur behavior."
Conan gave Mouri the flattest look possible.
That was his deduction. He said that earlier and got smacked for it.
Now Uncle Plagiarism was just reusing his line like it was his own—tch.
Jangxia crouched down next to the corpse, pretending to examine it, but really reaching for the shikigami stuck to Maru Denjiro's leg.
"It's reverse psychology," he said lazily.
The shikigami flinched and tried to curl up tighter around the body, still refusing to come loose.
Jangxia sighed, let go regretfully, and stood up.
He glanced around the wrecked room. "To leave this many sword marks, the killer must've had plenty of time to stage the scene. Even if they weren't a kendo expert, with enough effort, they could fake the correct grip—or deliberately fake the wrong one."
Conan caught the point halfway through and jumped in. "So the killer intentionally staged everything to make it look like an amateur's work, hoping we'd rule out anyone skilled?"
Which would circle right back to Suwa, the kendo coach.
Uncle Mouri actually guessed right from the start?!
Conan blinked in disbelief… then his eyes went full dead-fish mode again.
Never mind. There are only three suspects. Even a cat playing eeny-meeny-miney-mo could get it right one-third of the time.
Inspector Megure exhaled slowly. Brother Jangxia's logic was still functioning.
But…
He rubbed his chin, troubled. "But what if it was a real amateur, who knew Suwa would be here today, and decided to make the scene so exaggeratedly fake that it would loop back around—like, we'd think it was a bad fake made by someone trying to frame a pro, so actually it was an amateur framing an amateur by pretending to be a pro pretending to be an amateur…"
Jangxia: "…"
He stopped trying to follow that logic halfway through.
If this continued, they'd be here until the sun actually killed him.
So Jangxia simply turned away and continued on as if he hadn't heard anything:
"The victim lost a lot of blood. When the killer posed the body, some blood must've gotten on their hands, clothes, or shoes. Check Suwa for traces. If he's clean, try looking for discarded clothes nearby."
"And one more thing…"
Jangxia walked to a tall standing cabinet with lots of drawers.
Compared to the rest of the room, the cabinet was even more wrecked—covered in messy, dense knife marks.
But if you looked closely, you'd see there were two distinct kinds of slashes. Some were deep and oddly broken at the start and end, like someone was carving deliberately. The others matched the general chaos of the room.
That meant someone had rearranged the drawers after the fact.
The victim had carved something—then the killer scrambled the order and added more slashes to hide it.
Jangxia followed the pattern of broken marks with his eyes.
He put on gloves, pulled out a few drawers, and carefully rearranged them.
Soon, the original alignment was restored. The gouges formed two katakana characters: "すわ".
—Pronounced Suwa.
Bingo.
*Goal #1: Top 200 fanfics published within the last 30 days by POWER STONES.
Progress: 6/50(approx) for 10 BONUS CHAPTERS*