A Treasure Worth Less Than Scrap Metal / This Blade Is Right by the Entrance to the Kudo House

"It seems your father must have been inside back then. Should we go in and take a look? Maybe he left something else for you inside?"

Kaito Kid nodded naturally.

Then he turned to look at the lush, grassy, and shrubby hillside behind the trees.

It truly lived up to his father's reputation; even standing so close, he couldn't detect any flaws.

Even after knowing the location, he didn't know where to start.

Jiang Hang, on the other hand, walked to the side of the earthen slope without any hesitation, and then took out tools from his tool bag and started digging a hole.

With his current physique, he could indeed be considered a human-shaped mini excavator for doing this kind of work.

After digging forcefully in one direction a few times, as the outer layer of soil crumbled, a small hole that didn't seem particularly noticeable soon appeared before everyone's eyes.

Then, he quickly brandished his tools and dug the small hole open, quickly turning it into a small hole large enough for one person to pass through.

Seeing this, Kaito Kid no longer wanted to complain about how Jiang Hang had found the entrance to the cave; he just wanted to go and help.

After spending some time clearing away the clods of earth around the entrance, and under the light of a flashlight, one could vaguely see that once one crawled through the opening, which was about a meter wide, there was a secret room inside that looked rather spacious.

Even if you get close enough, you can faintly smell the rotten smell emanating from the room at the entrance of the hole.

Chapter 570: A Treasure Worse Than Scrap Metal

After the air in the room had circulated with the outside air for a while, Jiang Hang turned to Hijiri Fukujo and said, "Do you want to go in first? After all, this is the treasure that your Fu Cheng family has been searching for."

Hijiri Fukujo looked at the interior of the room illuminated by the flashlight; it seemed there was still a long way to go.

Although he still doesn't know how Jiang Hang found this place.

But to be honest, this place seems more credible than the cemetery that Takuzo Axe River is currently excavating.

He barely hesitated before bowing respectfully to Jiang Hang and said, "Let me do it."

Saying this, he didn't care at all that his clothes were getting dirty from the mud, and simply climbed into the cave with his flashlight.

After he lit up the room, he soon saw a heavy iron door at the far end of the room.

Immediately afterwards, Kaito Kid followed Hijiri Fukujo through the hole.

"You two ladies can stay outside and keep watch," Jiang Hang said with a smile to Miyano Shiho after they had both gone inside. "Or would you like to come with me to see what this treasure, which is said to be able to change the world's destiny, is all about?"

Miyano Shiho, on the other hand, had no desire to go in after looking at the environment inside.

She waved her hand dismissively.

"Let's forget about it. We didn't have high expectations to begin with. Let's leave this to you."

As she said this, she carefully reminded Jiang Hang of something else.

"Although there shouldn't be any danger, you should still be a little careful. If there's any radioactive material hidden inside, that would be interesting."

Jiang Hang chuckled easily, "Radiation that can threaten me must be quite a high dose. You guys enjoy the night view here. I'll take you to the observation deck up there for a stroll later."

With a wave of his hand, Jiang Hang was the last to pass through the opening and enter the room that had been there for half a century.

After Jiang Hang's figure disappeared from their sight, Miyano Shiho slightly flusteredly tossed her short hair, while her older sister looked at her with a smile.

So far, the treasure hunt we've been on today has been quite successful, both in terms of the process and the results.

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Inside the secret room.

When Jiang Hang walked in, the two people in front of him were already straining against the rusty iron gate.

"This is indeed an old object with some history," the two of them said, struggling together to open the iron gate.

As the iron gate, which had not been opened for many years, was reopened, a cloud of dust rose into the room.

After brushing away the dust with their hands, the group, who had been covering their noses with their hands and clothes, finally saw the truth behind the iron gate.

Immediately, Hijiri Fukujo was shocked by the rows of huge machines in the room.

"What... what is this?"

Hijiri Fukujo stared wide-eyed as he entered the secret room that had bound his father for most of his life, and at the same time bound him for the first twenty years of his own.

He observed these things up close, things he didn't quite understand. He didn't know what they were, but at that time Saburo Axe River believed they were weapons that could rewrite the world order, and even went to such great lengths to hide them, not even telling his own descendants.

"This is an old-fashioned cipher machine," Kaito Kid explained from the side.

"It was a tool used to crack codes. During the war, Germany used it to create encrypted intelligence, which caused great losses to the Allies. In the end, it was Turing, the father of modern computers and artificial intelligence, who cracked the code machine. It provided important value in the war and, to some extent, did accelerate the end of World War II."

"This is probably the instrument that Japan copied back then," Kaito Kid, looking at the cipher machine in the middle and the other instruments next to it. "The ones next to it should be the corresponding code-breaking machines."

"During wartime, those military fortresses on Mount Hakodate probably used these machines to decipher the codes of many countries."

From this perspective, if we can intercept sufficiently important intelligence, it could indeed have a significant impact on the world order.

After all, intelligence has always held a very important position in both modern and ancient warfare.

Seeing this, Kaito Kid understood why the military had completely covered up this matter.

"It is likely that Saburo Axe River and the military at the time realized that the other Axis powers were already on the verge of defeat. After Germany's defeat, Japan, which had become the target of everyone's criticism, would probably not be able to escape defeat as well. At the same time, they also believed that these intelligence instruments, which had been manufactured at great cost, might continue to play an important role in the subsequent war. Therefore, in order to prevent these instruments from being wiped out and destroyed by the victorious powers, they secretly hid them."

The rest of the talk was left to Jiang Hang.

"However, no one expected that the atomic bomb would completely destroy people's understanding of weapons. It is likely that after the atomic bombs were detonated in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the military had already given up resistance and had no intention of digging these things out again, so they have remained until now."

"Now that so many years have passed, the advanced instruments that were so precious during the war have long since become scrap metal with the development of computer technology. Not to mention any computer, even today's smartphones far surpass these old relics in terms of computing power. If we were to use these instruments to crack the cryptographic technologies used by various countries today, we probably wouldn't even be able to crack a 4G network."

Upon hearing this fact, Hijiri Fukujo stood there blankly, trying to accept it.

However, he is young after all, and his ability to learn is indeed stronger.

"If my father were here, he might collapse upon seeing these things. After all, this is the treasure that he and that Master Fujiang have been searching for their whole lives."

Even the treasure you spend your whole life searching for isn't the point; the point is to confirm whether the treasure truly has that much destructive power after you find it, and then decide whether or not to destroy it.

It seems that this thing really doesn't need to be destroyed, because even if it's taken out, the best outcome would be for it to be displayed in a museum, and it would have no other value.

But if this were to get out, his father's efforts to destroy the treasure for half his life would seem particularly powerless and ridiculous.

Even his earlier determination seemed so naive.

Looking at the scene before him, Hijiri Fukujo knew he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight.

He had absolutely no idea how to explain this to his father.

Giving the other party some space to calm down and think, Jiang Hang then looked at Kaito Kid was still groping around in the room.

It seems he has also found what Toichi Kuroba left behind.

A card bearing the Kaito Kid's symbol was placed on a desk next to it, which was covered with numerous records and documents.

There was only one sentence written on it.

"Don't go looking for trouble."

"So what did Dad mean by leaving this card?"

Kaito Kid put the card away, while also trying to continue searching for clues in the room.

Jiang Hang also activated his Eagle Eye in the room.

He originally just wanted to see if he could find any war documents left over from that time, so he could take them back and display them in an art museum or send them directly to the relevant departments in China.

However, it seems that those documents have already been taken away.

On the contrary, at the location where Kaito Kid was now, he was somewhat surprised to find a familiar mark.

It is the mark of the Assassin Brotherhood that can only be seen from Eagle Vision.

System, what have you been doing behind my back again?

This thing was left behind by an NPC from the Foundation you created, right?

As Jiang Hang walked into the Brotherhood's sign, he questioned his system, which had been rarely showing up lately.

After he had been carefully observing the Brotherhood symbol, which was emitting a faint glow in his Eagle Vision, for almost a minute, the system finally responded.

Then this response also seemed particularly subtle.

"Just think of it as an Easter egg that you can collect."

"Easter egg? What Easter egg? You're not going to tell me that Saburo Axe River actually found Eden Shard that you created in Hakodate, and then Saburo Axe River thought it was too dangerous, so he hid the Eden Shard along with these cipher machines in this secret room, are you?"

Jiang Hang complained to the system administrator about this.

If the system says that's really the case, and even pulls out evidence that Saburo Axe River was also a member of the Brotherhood back then, then he'll immediately continue to complain to the system about how terrible this outdated setting is.

Fortunately, the system didn't actually do anything so terrible this time in the history of the world.

There are indeed no Eden Shard here.

The Brotherhood's symbol is similar to the "feathers" he collected little by little throughout Tokyo when he first arrived in this world.

Jiang Hang spent a full six months, basically with the help of Eagle Eye, covering more than 99% of the Tokyo area, and still hasn't completed the 100% collection of feathers.

At this point, Jiang Hang still expressed some dissatisfaction.

At first, the achievement reward for collecting feathers was indeed quite good, but as his agency level increased, he searched for all the easy-to-find feathers, and the remaining 10% of the feathers were basically hidden in various nooks and crannies that would not be noticed under normal circumstances.

Even with the help of Eagle Eye and Altair, he still hasn't found the last 1% of hidden feathers, and he doesn't know when he'll be lucky enough to stumble upon one and complete the final collection.

In short, the side quest of collecting feathers had already infuriated him, and now this Easter egg side quest of collecting Brotherhood symbols seemed to be even more troublesome than collecting feathers.

Heaven knows where the system has hidden those marks in some even more secret location.

"Such a troublesome thing, unless you're offering Eden Shard as a reward, who would bother searching for this thing?" Jiang Hang complained, and then received a positive reply from the system.

"For every seven Brotherhood Marks you find, you will receive a Treasure Map containing an Eden Shard. It's the real deal, no fakes."

As he said this, the mark of that Brotherhood gradually faded in Jiang Hang's sight.

Finally, the mark turned into a map fragment that Jiang Hang couldn't make out.

It seems that we won't be able to see the exact location of the map until all the map fragments have been collected.

Seeing this scene before him, Jiang Hang finally became interested.

If he were really given the Eden Shard, then he might be able to pay more attention to this matter.

So he quickly looked for where the system would place these 'Easter eggs'.

After answering the previous questions, the system went silent again and pretended to be dead.

Well, since it's an Easter egg after all, an Easter egg that you know about beforehand can't really be considered an Easter egg.

Anyway, Jiang Hang plans to use Eagle Eye to scan the places where things are hidden whenever he goes to a new place, to see if he can trigger these Easter eggs.

Composing himself, Jiang Hang looked around.

Hijiri Fukujo seems to have recovered by now.

Kaito Kid searched the room again carefully to make sure he hadn't missed anything.

"Let's go, there's no point in staying here any longer."

All three of them gained something from this trip.

Kaito Kid found his father's "heirloom".

Hijiri Fukujo finally learned what the "treasure" that had troubled his father his whole life was.

Jiang Hang didn't find anything related to his biological father, but he did receive a new side quest, giving him another direction to work on in the future—his bottom line was to call his system "Big Brother" and absolutely not to elevate its seniority any further.

Seeing the three people who emerged from the cave with their different expressions, Miyano Shiho asked Jiang Hang about the situation inside.

Upon learning that it contained a cipher machine from World War II, she couldn't help but put on a restrained expression, trying not to laugh out loud.

This is even worse than what Jiang Hang used to tell people before, "The hidden treasure in this place is this beautiful scenery."

At least the night view from Mount Hakodate is quite beautiful. From this angle, the city below doesn't necessarily look much worse than from the observation deck above, and it at least offers a little comfort.

The pile of cipher machines inside is hardly comforting; it will only give those trying to find the treasure a stomachache.

Chapter 571: This knife was placed right in front of the Kudo family's house.

Jiang Hang originally intended that after finding the treasure, he would take anything of value, decorate the hiding place simply, leave a heartwarming inspirational short article, and continue to promote the concept that "green mountains and Aoyama are better than gold and silver mountains" to cleanse Takuzo Axe River's heart, which had been corrupted by desire.

But now, looking at the pile of scrap metal inside, Jiang Hang lost interest.