A Scientific Urban Detective

The door was tightly shut, blocking out all outside sounds. Lin Wuming felt as if he had entered a closed-off little world.

“Hoo…” He exhaled a long breath, allowing himself to completely calm down until he could hear his own heartbeat.

…11506, 11507, 11508, 11509, 11510…

The seconds he had been counting since he left the room that morning gradually surfaced to the forefront of his mind.

“11520, exactly three hours and twelve minutes!” Lin Wuming stood up, stepped off the wheelchair, and walked to the wall where he had stacked the Gekota merchandise, squatting down.

At the very bottom of the wall of figure boxes was a safe. When Lin Wuming opened the safe, the first thing he saw was a counter.

11630—this was the number displayed on the counter.

11530—this was the number Lin Wuming had counted in his mind.

The “counter” inside the safe was actually a miniature atomic clock that Lin Wuming had borrowed from the lab. Due to its size, and because Lin Wuming had deliberately emphasized its anti-interference capabilities, its accuracy was somewhat sacrificed, only reaching the level of one ten-thousandth of a second. However, this was already sufficient for the situation Lin Wuming was facing.

On the other hand, Lin Wuming’s own biological clock wasn’t quite that precise, but he did possess “bullet time,” giving him a very acute sense of time. When consciously counting seconds, he could also achieve an accuracy between one-thousandth and one ten-thousandth of a second.

However, this kind of divided attention required a significant portion of Lin Wuming’s energy, so his combat power would be greatly reduced in this state.

In other words, during today's operation, Lin Wuming had been carrying a self-imposed debuff that reduced his abilities by thirty percent from beginning to end.

But now it seemed that this sacrifice was worthwhile.

“100 seconds are missing.” Lin Wuming stopped counting in his mind and sat down on the ground with a thud.

He didn't know whether to feel nervous and scared, or to feel triumphant that things had gone as planned.

“Memory—no flaws.” Lin Wuming re-examined his recent memories. “Original plot—I still remember it… but I need to confirm this with Shokuhou.”

In the original plot, the alchemist Aureolus had erased the memories of Kamijou Touma and Stiyl, so Lin Wuming wasn't surprised by his current situation.

In fact, Lin Wuming had prepared for this—the “time synchronization” operation he had just performed was to guard against this.

Moreover, Aureolus could delete memories, or strictly speaking, “reset” other people's memories, but he couldn't directly read other people's memories like a mind-reading esper. This was also a prerequisite for Lin Wuming's willingness to take the risk.

“I thought it would really go so smoothly, but I still got caught, huh?” Lin Wuming got up and opened the door.

“Wuming?” Seeing Lin Wuming walking out on his own two feet, Hachisu Tooru was a little surprised.

“Hachisu, can you double-check to make sure you're not injured? Do you feel any discomfort anywhere?” Lin Wuming asked.

“Injured? No.” Hachisu Tooru stood up and casually lifted the hem of her uniform, revealing her slender waist.

She turned around in place, showing Lin Wuming: “How is it? I'm definitely not injured, right?”

“I suppose that’s good news.” Lin Wuming carefully scrutinized her, then muttered to himself, “Then the next question is, how can I recover those missing one hundred seconds…”

Dong, dong, dong, someone knocked on the door.

“It’s Shokuhou Misaki.” Hachisu Tooru glanced at the door. She could already identify visitors by their knocks, especially Shokuhou Misaki and Misaka Mikoto.

Lin Wuming waved his hand, using his Nen ability to open the door remotely.

“I’m here, Wuming-senpai~” Shokuhou Misaki greeted him and naturally entered the room, followed by Kazakiri Hyouka, Keisaku Kanna, and Dolly.

“The situation is a bit dangerous right now, so Hyouka-nee-san is a little worried.” Shokuhou Misaki explained with a smile.

That's why she brought all of Shokuhou Misaki's true "core guards."

“We’re here to bother you, Wuming-senpai~” the two Misaka sisters, Unit 0, greeted him with a smile.

“Kamisato Iruka and Houjou Ayasuzu are upstairs,” Shokuhou Misaki added. “They want to visit Toomine Hariri-sensei.”

“It’s good to be cautious.” Lin Wuming nodded.

“So…” Shokuhou Misaki came up to Lin Wuming and looked up at him. “I’m still not quite used to it.”

—Lin Wuming, not sitting in his wheelchair, but standing normally.

Shokuhou Misaki had grown significantly in the past year, her height approaching 1.7 meters, but standing in front of Lin Wuming at this moment, she was still a head shorter and had to look up to meet his eyes. However, Lin Wuming usually sat in his wheelchair, so his true height wasn't apparent.

“Crouch down a little.” Shokuhou Misaki patted Lin Wuming’s shoulder, as if to push him down.

Lin Wuming knew what the girl wanted to do and cooperated by bending down.

Shokuhou Misaki closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against his.

At the same time, Shokuhou Misaki pressed the remote control…

The other girls watched this scene with interest; Hachisu Tooru also stared intently at the two of them, unconsciously toying with a strand of her golden hair—with a little force, she could pluck a hair and turn it into the sharpest sword…

After a brief but seemingly long few dozen seconds, Shokuhou Misaki finally put down the remote control and took a step back.

“How is it?” Lin Wuming asked.

“Indeed, only with careful examination can one discover that there is a trace of incongruity in Wuming-senpai’s memory.” Shokuhou Misaki also frowned slightly. “But the operation was so precise that even I would have been deceived if I hadn’t checked so carefully, right? Wuming-senpai’s caution is indeed meaningful.”

Shokuhou Misaki deeply admired Lin Wuming's "second-counting comparison" method. The most primitive and crude methods are often the most effective.

Lin Wuming shook his head: “I can only say that I was lucky.”

After all, he had prepared himself mentally for “something going wrong” from the beginning, which is why he had gone to so much trouble to make such preparations.

If he hadn't known the original plot of the "Vampire Hunter" arc in advance, he probably wouldn't have even realized that his memory had been deleted, right?

Moreover, Lin Wuming's method wasn't something that everyone could use.

Accurately counting seconds for three hours, with an error range of no more than one hundred seconds—otherwise, he wouldn't be able to detect the “lost hundred seconds” in his memory.

This was something only high-level ability users could do.