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Borrowing the Ghost Fetus's vision was equivalent to gaining Night Vision.

Jiang Xia stepped into the pitch-black Exhibition Hall, passed a cluster of bizarrely shaped sculptures, and headed toward the very back.

The smell of blood grew stronger and stronger.

At the end of the room, he looked left and saw a huge Oil Painting hanging on the wall. In it, a demon had been nailed to a cliff by a Knight's sword.

Then he looked right and saw a plump middle-aged man hanging on the wall in the "same pose as the demon," nailed there with blood splattered all over the wall. Streams of blood ran down the surface, gathering into a Pool of Blood at its base.

Jiang Xia swept his gaze over the middle-aged man's corpse, then quickly fixed it on his calf.

A fresh soul was clinging there. It was palm-sized, like a Shikigami cut from a sheet of white paper.

Jiang Xia had seen a similar one just this morning. He had not expected to run into another one after merely taking an afternoon stroll.

Among Spirit Mediums, when people died, some souls dissipated directly, while others with exceptional talent could become Ghost Fetuses.

There was also another kind, somewhere between the two.

—Things like these Paper Shikigami.

Ghost Fetuses usually possessed a strong sense of self and remembered parts of their lives. They were the hardest to lure away, but also the most useful.

As for these Leg-Clinging Shikigami before him... they had little consciousness, only exceptionally powerful obsessions.

Most of them acted on instinct.

After forming, some would cling to their own corpses nearby, while others would float toward the murderer and cling to the murderer's legs.

Although the Ghost Infant's vision had been borrowed, its other senses remained.

It sensed the Leg-Clinging Shikigami's presence and could not resist moving closer. Stretching out its little hands, it tried to pull it off and bring it to Jiang Xia.

Jiang Xia watched from a few steps away.

The Leg-Clinging Shikigami trembled at the Ghost Infant's approach, but it still held on with all its might.

When the Ghost Infant pulled harder, it accidentally crumpled a small part of it.

It froze, let go, and secretly smoothed out the wrinkled spot.

Jiang Xia watched this scene and sighed inwardly.

...Sure enough, he could not tear it off by force.

He still had to follow the proper procedure: send the murderer away first, let the soul resolve its obsession, and have it fall off the murderer's leg on its own.

As a "prophet," Jiang Xia naturally remembered this case at the exhibition hall.

—The cause was that the exhibition hall's owner had gone bankrupt, so he had packaged up the place and sold it to Boss Manaka.

And Boss Manaka was the unlucky middle-aged man nailed to the wall before Jiang Xia.

—After buying the exhibition hall, he had decided that art was nothing but scrap metal and wanted to turn it into a restaurant.

Luohe, the Librarian, who managed the exhibition hall, had worked here for decades. After learning of this, he had been furious and developed Killing Intent toward the new owner.

So that afternoon, Luohe, the Librarian, had put on concealing Knight Armor and waited in this Hell Exhibition Hall.

He had invited Boss Manaka over, then nailed him to the wall.

While recalling the earlier events, Jiang Xia examined the bloodstains filling the hall and felt that the case would not be difficult to solve.

Of course, the first step was definitely to call the police.

Jiang Xia took out his phone and was about to dial Emergency Number 110.

But then he suddenly heard movement in the Corridor.

—Several people were chatting as they walked toward this Exhibition Hall.

Jiang Xia listened carefully and found the voices quite familiar—they sounded like two of his classmates, Mouri Ran and Suzuki Sonoko.

"..." Jiang Xia's hand paused slightly over his phone. He silently glanced at the horrifying corpse beside him and the sword lodged in it.

Then he realized that if he did not want to hear a screaming duet, he had better keep them from coming in...

Elsewhere.

In the Corridor outside the Hell Exhibition Hall.

Mouri Ran hesitantly stopped.

She studied the passage leading to the "Hell Exhibition Hall" and tilted her head in confusion. "I remember there being a 'No Entry' sign here just now?"

Suzuki Sonoko moved beside her and thought for a moment with an air of seriousness. "Maybe an exhibit was being repaired earlier, and now it's fixed?"

The two curiously looked into the dark Exhibition Hall. Their eyes met, and they remembered why they had come today.

Recently, a frightening rumor had been circulating nearby.

—Late at night, the Knight Armor in this Beika Medieval Exhibition Hall would come alive and wander through the Exhibition Halls.

That was why they had come with the idea of visiting a haunted house.

They had even brought Conan along to bolster their courage.

But after wandering around all afternoon, they had never encountered the "Ghost Knight."

Now they had visited the entire building, leaving only this Hell Exhibition Hall unexplored.

When Suzuki Sonoko saw that the "No Entry" sign was gone, her interest was immediately piqued.

"Since we're already here, let's go take a look. Maybe that mysterious armor is hidden in this Exhibition Hall!"

At their feet, Conan stared with dead fish eyes and said wearily, "Forget it. We've been walking around for most of the day. Aren't you tired?"

His feeble protest was completely ignored.

The two girls exchanged a look, nodded to each other, gathered their courage, and dragged him toward the Exhibition Hall.

Conan let out a world-weary sigh and struggled to stand up straight.

But then, the force pulling his hands suddenly vanished.

—Mouri Ran and Suzuki Sonoko stopped. Not only did they not move forward, they seemed to take a faint step back, on the verge of huddling together and trembling.

Conan froze and alertly looked up ahead.

In the dim Exhibition Hall, a sinister figure was slowly emerging from the darkness, one step at a time.

Conan jolted. "!"

...But he soon realized that the "sinister" feeling was merely an illusion caused by the dim light.

In reality, the person emerging from the Exhibition Hall was walking perfectly normally. His posture and steps were both ordinary, and he even looked somewhat familiar.

Conan: "..." Hm?

...Familiar?

Jiang Xia emerged from the darkness of the Exhibition Hall and leaned against the doorway. Looking at Mouri Ran and Suzuki Sonoko, who were clinging to each other and shivering, he asked in confusion, "...Are you cold?"

"N-No." Seeing Jiang Xia, Mouri Ran let out a breath, both disappointed and relieved.

Disappointed that they had not encountered a ghost.

Relieved that... well, they had not encountered a ghost.

Suzuki Sonoko's thoughts, however, were completely different.

"Jiang Xia?" She skipped straight past disappointment, her joy doubled as she enthusiastically greeted the handsome young man before her. "Did you come to see that moving suit of armor too?"

As she spoke, she pointed toward the darkness behind Jiang Xia. "Is it in this Exhibition Hall?"

Although Suzuki Sonoko had basically concluded from all her previous attempts that Jiang Xia was an SSS-level target, extremely hard to win over.

That did not stop her from liking pretty faces.

For an experienced face fanatic, as long as Jiang Xia appeared before her, Suzuki Sonoko's mood would shoot straight up as though she had taken hormones.

And looking at him a few more times would help her maintain high standards when flirting with guys, so it was quite practical...

As Suzuki Sonoko spoke, she wanted to pull Mouri Ran into the Exhibition Hall for a look.

With Jiang Xia here, he would surely be much better than Conan at giving them courage.

However, after the two girls took only one step, Conan blocked them in front of their legs.

They lowered their heads in confusion and found that the child's expression was complicated.

Conan looked at Jiang Xia, his face grave. "...Why is there blood on your shoes?"

The others froze and all lowered their heads to look at Jiang Xia's shoes.

Jiang Xia included.

Jiang Xia was wearing a pair of black sneakers today. The uppers were clean, with only a little freshly gathered dust around the edges.

Suzuki Sonoko and Mouri Ran breathed sighs of relief, suspecting it was one of the brat's pranks.

But then Jiang Xia looked down at the ground, as if remembering something, and stepped back half a pace.

Once he lifted his foot, half of a faint bloody Footprint was left where he had stepped.

"Ah." Jiang Xia looked slightly embarrassed. He simply took another step back, returning to the carpet-covered Exhibition Hall, and said apologetically, "I didn't notice. I stepped in it."

As he spoke, he took out a handkerchief and crouched down, seeming ready to casually wipe the bloody print off the floor.

Conan: "..."

He darted over and stopped Jiang Xia, preventing this act that looked every bit like destroying evidence.

"Where did this blood come from?!"

Conan had strong Observation Skills and was short.

The moment Jiang Xia came closer, Conan had noticed that the color of the carpet Jiang Xia had stepped on was subtly different.

After confirming it was blood, and because he had seen similar incidents before, Conan had initially suspected that his neighbor had gone off to secretly cut himself again.

But after looking carefully, he found that Jiang Xia looked healthy and moved normally. There were no strange wet marks on the black Wrist Guard on his left hand either.

But judging from the fact that Jiang Xia had walked all the way across the carpet and still left a faint blood print on his shoes...

The amount of blood he had stepped in could not have been small... Someone had most likely died here!

Unlike Conan, Mouri Ran and Suzuki Sonoko did not have such strong Observation Skills. By a fortunate accident, they were not nervous at all.

They merely thought Jiang Xia had accidentally stepped in red paint left behind by the staff—after all, this Exhibition Hall had previously had a "No Entry" sign hanging outside it, suggesting it was under repair.

Now that Jiang Xia's attempt to wipe away the "paint" had been stopped by the brat.

They too took out handkerchiefs, moved closer, and planned to help Jiang Xia wipe away the Footprints.

Only when they approached did they discover that the prints truly did resemble blood.

The two silently nodded to themselves. As expected of the Hell Exhibition Hall, even its paint was so unique...

As she wiped, Suzuki Sonoko curiously asked, "What did you step in? Paint? Pigment?"

Jiang Xia answered apologetically, "A Pool of Blood."

"Oh, blood..." Suzuki Sonoko paused, then her voice suddenly rose. "A Pool of Blood?!!"

She raised her head in shock.

Jiang Xia was crouching by the edge of the scarlet carpet. As he watched her wipe the floor, he raised a hand and pointed into the Exhibition Hall. "Someone died. They were nailed to the wall. You..."

Jiang Xia had just been about to say, "You'd better not go in. It's a little scary."

Before he could finish, Conan darted past him and rushed into the Exhibition Hall.

At the same time, Conan pressed his wrist and turned on the Flashlight built into his Universal Watch.

—The first batch of equipment the doctor had made for him had already arrived.