Shirou Sneaks into the Village Chief's House / Village Chief Akechi's Plot...

Nene's face twitched slightly. She lowered her gaze and said, "I already talked about those two yesterday. I've said too much already."

"Madam, you must be feeling uncomfortable keeping these things to yourself. We are just guests; what we hear will be like the wind blowing away, and it won't cause you any inconvenience," Holmes said.

Shirou fell silent, waiting for Nene's reply. She looked confused and fidgety, and after a long while, she finally spoke, "Actually..."

To put it bluntly, her tone was like that of a thief caught stealing and confessing; to exaggerate further, it was like she had mustered all her courage to finally be honest with a friend.

"I... saw it by accident..."

Chapter 1161 Shirou Infiltrates the Village Chief's House

"What do you see?"

"About a month ago, before it was even part of the cave entrance area, one night a strong wind woke me up, and I couldn't fall back asleep for a while, so I thought I'd run into that mountain..."

"Why would you go to a place like that by yourself, especially in the middle of the night?"

"The wind was very strong that day. Trees often fall down in the mountains. Branches get broken by the wind, and those things can be used as carving materials for my husband..." She seemed a little embarrassed and lowered her head slightly.

"You went into the mountains to collect those pieces of wood?"

Compared to Kinoshita, Nene seemed much clearer-headed and smarter, and she also seemed to dislike her carefree, self-proclaimed artist husband. Even so, she still wanted to be an asset to her husband and searched everywhere for carving materials. Thinking of this, Shirou couldn't help but feel a surge of warmth in his heart.

"I just happened to stumble upon them... I saw Akechi and Hatano arguing."

"In the middle of the night?"

"I heard voices a little past the cave entrance wall, and I thought I'd go check it out. I could only vaguely see figures... I'd never seen two people talking before, and it gave me a huge fright, especially since it was deep in the mountains. It was really terrifying..." Nene recalled the scene, frowning and shrinking her neck.

What did they say?

"I couldn't hear clearly, but it seemed like Hatano said something that made Akechi very angry."

Shirou rubbed his eyes, trying to imagine the situation. Two men were arguing, and they had been enemies for over thirty years. Although they had spoken to each other, Shirou didn't think they would end the conversation peacefully with a few words.

And what about you?

"I fled the scene immediately because it was absolutely terrifying."

"You mean, like one party harboring murderous intent towards the other?"

"Mr. Shirou, do you know something?"

"I don't know," Shirou admitted. He didn't know what had happened, but the fact that Akechi had thrown away the lunchbox kept nagging at him.

With a whoosh, the paper sliding door to the side was roughly pulled open, and Kinoshita appeared. "Oh, you're here again." His face fell when he saw Shirou.

"Actually, I came here to ask you for a favor," Shirou said bluntly.

"Help?"

"Mr. Shirou, what are you planning to do?" Nene asked. "Do you have any leads regarding Akechi and the other man?"

After hearing Nene's words, Shirou felt a strange, dark intuition rise in his mind—perhaps Akechi was planning to lock up and kill Hatano...

"Could you please ask Mr. Kinoshita to come out for a moment?" Shirou asked Nene with a serious expression.

Shirou asked Kinoshita to help him get Akechi out of the house. "Just get him out for an hour this afternoon, I want to search his house."

It was only natural, Kinoshita was quite surprised.

Shirou explained, "Because the Akechi family might have information about that Kameda."

"Even so, you shouldn't do something that resembles stealing."

Shirou rephrased it another way. "But what if it turns out to be a matter of life and death?"

If Akechi really locked Hatano in the cave and didn't give him any food, it would be no different from murder.

But Kinoshita still hesitated to nod, at which point Holmes interjected.

"If you'd be willing to help us, I'll introduce your work to someone in the art world. Please, Teacher Kinoshita."

The killer move worked immediately.

"Oh, is that so? Alright then! After all, I'm a teacher, and I was asked to do this, so there's nothing I can do." Kinoshita smiled with obvious satisfaction, raising her voice, "Okay, okay, I'll call Akechi out and tell him I want to discuss with him whether my work can be made a local specialty."

Nene, standing to the side, maintained an expression of utter disbelief.

After that, Teacher Kinoshita went out, saying that he didn't know anything, but he would just bring Akechi out of the house and keep him from leaving. He told Shirou and the others to take care of any important matters as soon as possible.

Inside the room, Holmes took a pendant from his inner pocket and hung it around Shirou's neck. It was a diamond in the shape of one piece missing, Power Gemstone formed from the Divine Power of the White God.

"Then I'll leave it to you."

"Okay, I'll be right back!"

When Shirou arrived in this world, the Power Gemstone had already been formed. It was fought over by villains like Moriarty and was shattered into pieces, which flew to all corners of the world. Shirou decided to collect them all, determined not to let others use them for evil.

However, Holmes suggested that since it was for this legitimate purpose, Shirou himself shouldn't use the Power Gemstone casually, as that would make it difficult to convince others, let alone get them to give him the fragments. Even if Shirou was the original owner of this power, there would still be people who were dissatisfied.

Therefore, Shirou entrusted Power Gemstone he collected to Holmes for safekeeping. Shirou would only use the power when he encountered Magecraft with magical abilities and was certain that the other party was likely a villain.

This time, Shirou easily entered the house. The guardian statues above did not react at all because Shirou had used his Creative Power to simulate Akechi's Akechi energy. The entire house's barrier treated him as Akechi himself.

Shirou looked around the house, being careful not to make a sound. At the end of the corridor was a spacious Japanese-style hall, decorated with furniture, wood carvings, and beautiful paper screens with a strong sense of nostalgia. The ticking of a clock came from somewhere.

Shirou looked around the spacious inner room again. The entire Japanese-style room was very clean and luxurious, but it felt lifeless and cold. He walked to the next room, where there was a niche and a Buddhist altar in the corner. Several black and white photos were placed on the altar, one of which was particularly new. It looked like a Polaroid photo of a young woman, probably Akechi's deceased wife.

Against the east wall of the room stood a sturdy black bookshelf, its vast collection of books causing Shirou's eyes to widen in surprise. Upon closer inspection, he realized that these were not magical books; they were mostly difficult-to-understand texts and research on village self-governance, as well as many books about politicians and history.

Next to the bookshelf was a low desk. Shirou sat down on a Japanese-style chair and carefully searched the desk. He only saw ordinary stationery and notepads. A book he was reading was lying to the side. Next to the table clock was a small calendar. Shirou picked it up and looked at it. There were no marks on it.

The entire room was meticulously tidy, even somewhat unsightly. Shirou deeply sensed Akechi's obsessive-compulsive disorder and neuroticism, and he couldn't help but wonder what Akechi was thinking about, alone in such an unsightly room in this small village.

He got up and opened the closet. In his experience, Magecraft usually hid secret passages inside closets.

As expected!

Chapter 1162 The Village Chief's Akechi Conspiracy

The mechanism was right there, an old-fashioned turntable. Shirou reached his hand towards the turntable, infused it with magic, and the Creative Power directly simulated the magical structure of the Akechi family.

As he spun the dial, he listened intently, his mind focused on his fingers, but the Nobunaga Incident swirled in his head—the mysterious death of the male sacrificer.

For some reason, Shirou always felt that it was Akechi who did it.

Upon receiving the magic, the turntable reacted, vibrating to his fingers. Shirou stopped as soon as he noticed the subtle change in touch and turned the turntable in the opposite direction.

The door to the secret passage opened! A screen on one side rotated 180 degrees, revealing a tunnel underneath.

Shirou hunched over and walked down the stairs, descending forty or fifty steps before reaching the bottom. Inside was Akechi's Magecraft workshop. It was Japanese in style and quite old-fashioned; even the basic tools and crucibles seemed to be from a hundred years ago. The bookshelves held books and parchment, which were the books related to Magecraft.

Shirou carefully examined the Magecraft props here. They were covered in dust, showing that their owner was no longer as enthusiastic about practicing Magecraft.

Shirou then focused the light on the safe deep inside the secret room, unlocking it directly with magic. Inside were two bankbooks, both in the name of Akechi, along with several notebooks and a cloth bag.

Shirou first took out the notebook that was kept deep inside the safe. It was a vertically written notebook, like a traditional Japanese book, written vertically from right to left. It was very old, and the cover was blank.

Upon opening it, I found it filled with handwritten text. The first few pages contained key points from academic books, while the middle section contained dates, numbers, and records resembling accounts.

As he flipped through the pages, a name caught his eye, and Shirou stopped turning the page. This page contained several tables that resembled schedules, recording dates and numbers, with several numbers that looked like monetary amounts standing out in particular.

This is a huge sum of money that an ordinary person could hardly earn in a lifetime. Who are these people, and what is their purpose in paying Akechi such a large sum of money?

Shirou saw the name Kameda, who had come to the village a week earlier and paid Akechi a rather large sum of money. Surprised and somewhat troubled, he obediently turned back to the first page of his notebook to review it again.

The cloth bag at the very back of the safe looked like a large, well-worn drawstring sack. Besides that, there was an empty space in the safe, probably where the game box used for the musical chairs was placed, but it wasn't there now.

Shirou pulled open the thin string at the top of the bag, poured it out, and several fist-sized wooden blocks rolled out with a thud. The blocks were beautiful cubes, each faced with small holes, and traces of paint were still visible on the holes, though most of it had worn off. These were dice, presumably the ones used each time a sacrifice was chosen.

The final position of the large rosary beads determines the victim, and the time it takes for the rosary beads to be passed is determined by the number of songs sung, which in turn is determined by the number of dice rolled by the village chief.

Without hesitation, Shirou grabbed the dice and threw them onto the tatami mat, rolling a three.

Is that all? Is that all it takes to decide a sacrifice? He sighed; deciding a person's mission so hastily was far too simplistic. Just as he was about to tie the bag back up, he suddenly decided to try throwing it again, and the number three appeared once more.

Huh? Shirou sat up straight and deliberately threw the dice randomly this time, and it was another three. Shirou took out the other dice and rolled them several times one by one.

"I see," Shirou muttered to himself.

With the exception of one die, the rest are all intricately carved wooden dice, identical in appearance. However, no matter how many times they are rolled, they will only produce a fixed number. One die will only roll the number one, another will only roll the number five, and so on. Each die will roll a different number, but each will only roll a fixed number. In this sense, they are all the same type of die.

By simply using these dice, one can freely decide who will be the sacrificer. This level of trickery is not hard for Shirou to guess. Although he does not know the specific steps of the entire selection ceremony, Akechi probably picks out the required dice after seeing the position of each villager in the circle.

Since the singing speed or the villagers' seating positions are unpredictable, the results may differ from expectations. Even so, it should be possible to manipulate the situation to some extent, making specific people the sacrifices.

These dice are quite old, Shirou thought. They might be props that have been used since the very beginning of the sacrificial ceremony. No wonder they are so heavy. These are the fake dice that have been passed down from generation to generation and used when women were offered to the bandits.

Nene had said that Hatano was often chosen as a sacrifice. By using these dice, it wouldn't be difficult to frame Hatano. Shirou put the dice back into his bag, closed his notebook, and there was no longer any need to continue the search.

I need to go to the rock wall immediately; the Akechi intended to kill Hatano is about to be revealed. He also has a business relationship with Kameda, so I have to find him. Shirou quickly put everything back into the safe.

Just as he was about to put the notebook back, Shirou suddenly stopped, because he noticed a photograph tucked inside.

Shirou's intuition told him that the photo was not simple, so he tilted his head and looked at it for a while, feeling a bad premonition, as if he had just finished assembling a puzzle block and found that there was an extra block that hadn't been put in.

Shirou opened the notebook he was halfway through tidying up again. This time, he carefully read from the first page to the last, and then opened the bankbook that he had been keeping aside.

"In that case..." Shirou thought, there are two possibilities.

Shirou walked along the path and left the village. As soon as he returned to the parking spot, he jumped into the car and drove up the mountain. He found it funny to do this back and forth.

The car proceeded along a gentle uphill road, which gradually narrowed until it entered a gravel road. After a short drive into the mountains, it reached the end of the road, the same parking spot where it had stopped yesterday.

When closing the car door, Shirou was worried that the dirt and sand on the roadside might collapse and cause the car to tilt to one side, but of course, he wasn't that unlucky.

Shirou pricked up his ears, thinking he heard footsteps. He turned around abruptly but saw no one. He stood there quietly for a while, observing his surroundings.

He then walked straight toward the rock face, the thin branches snapping under his feet making cracking sounds, the surrounding trees swaying in the wind, the bare branches rustling against each other.

Upon reaching the rock face, its immense size became even more apparent, requiring one to look up to discern its general outline. The towering cliff face displayed multiple layers of color, much like geological strata. Shirou tilted his head back to try and see its entirety, but nearly lost his balance and fell backward.

Shirou wondered where the cave called the cave was, but he found it soon enough, because a large rock stood out in the shadows on the left. That must be the rock that was moved to block the entrance.

In that instant, Shirou rubbed his eyes, and the scene before him suddenly turned dark, followed by a vision that transcended time and space appearing before Shirou eyes.

Chapter 1163 Shirou and the Black Shadow in the Cave

Shirou stopped and looked closely. There were figures in front of the cave, but there couldn't possibly be anyone there in reality. Was it an illusion? Yet, he felt as if he could hear their voices and feel their presence on his skin. Shirou blinked, but the figures hadn't disappeared.

The group of nearly twenty men and women were working together to support the large rock. Each of them was disheveled and grimacing, their expressions a mixture of excitement and fear. Their eyes were bloodshot as they pressed against the rock, forcefully pushing stones and branches into the ground beneath it.

Shirou instinctively knew this was a scene of sacrificial offering in the cave. He just stood there blankly, staring.

A man shouted, "Hurry up! Move faster!" Another shouted, "Lock him up! Lock him up!" The woman's repeated pleas and cries for apology could be heard, along with the insult, "Your apology won't help!" The tense atmosphere was like a series of needles pricking his skin, Shirou couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine.

Twenty men and women whispered among themselves. The villagers' fighting spirit, guilt, and sadism intertwined and transformed into a steaming heat that slowly shook the air, causing the leaves and soil to resonate in response.

Shirou shook his head vigorously, and the surroundings became bright again. The villagers were nowhere to be seen, the forest Serenity, and the noisy voices had disappeared.

The scene just now seemed to be haunted by vengeful spirits from the cave, their hatred unquenched. Even after a hundred years, they still linger here, conveying to outsiders the wickedness of the villagers and their unfortunate fate.

Shirou steadied himself and approached the rock. He had come here precisely to prevent the emergence of such evil spirits.

Shirou stood in front of the rock and compared it. The rock was about chest height and slightly spherical, but it shouldn't roll just by touching the surface. The stone and wood he used as wedges were embedded in the ground below the rock.

There is a gap on the right side of the rock, about shoulder height for an adult and about 30 centimeters wide. It is probably the gap between the rock and the cave entrance, much like the mail slot of a large mailbox. It seems that the food was sent in through this gap.

Shirou bent over and brought his face close to the opening. A stench, accompanied by a cold wind, assaulted his nostrils. It was a fishy stench mixed with the smells of food, sweat, and excrement. It was hard to describe whether it was sour or bitter. While it wouldn't make him cover his nose and run away, it was certainly not a pleasant smell.

The sound of wind blew through the cave. Shirou remained still, holding his breath and listening intently. Then, he heard a rustling sound from deep within. Was it someone? Shirou spoke up, "Is anyone there?"

Only the echo of those words reverberated through the cave. Shirou pressed his ear close to the opening, but heard nothing.

"Is anyone there?" Shirou called out again, this time speaking more slowly and clearly.

Then, a faint sound of dragging footsteps seemed to come from inside the cave, or perhaps a weak groan. There really was someone there! Shirou quickly pressed his face against the opening and called out, "Hey! Who are you?"

He deduced that there were only two possible candidates for the people inside the cave. He tapped the smooth surface of the rock wall with his fist as if knocking on a door, then shouted even louder:

Are you Hatano? Or Kameda?

Almost simultaneously, Shirou sensed someone behind him. To be more precise, he felt the breath on his head as he bent over, the sound of shoes on the muddy ground, and the air vibrations caused by his back arching as he raised something high above his head. Suddenly, an iron Shirou appeared out of thin air and was placed behind him.

The next instant, the wooden stick struck the iron sword with a crisp sound. Shirou turned his head and saw a man standing in front of him holding a thick wooden stick, staring wide-eyed at Shirou had blocked the stick's swing.

The man had a short, gray haircut, the physique of a fighter, broad shoulders, and muscular arms beneath his shirt, with a bronze complexion.

The man raised the wooden stick again, Shirou stood up, his gaze never leaving the man. The man's expression was serious, but his round face revealed a kind and approachable nature.

Shirou extended his left hand to stop the man, shouting firmly, "Stop!" He thought to himself, "This must be Hatano."

Although he was wielding a weapon and attempting to attack Shirou, the man did possess a gentle demeanor, not far removed from the descriptions given by Kinoshita and Nene.

"You're Hatano, aren't you?" Shirou wanted to use this question to dissuade the other party from attacking. Things had taken him by surprise, but Shirou didn't want to hurt an ordinary person.

As expected, the man's cheek twitched slightly. "How did you know...?"