Corpse collector in Conan

Half a minute later.

boom--

With the sound of a tire exploding, the car suddenly shook.

Then he was quickly stabilized by Toru Amuro, slowly leaned to the side of the road, and finally stopped.

Jiang Xia, who seemed to be sleeping soundly, was suddenly shaken by the shaking vehicle and woke up grabbing the seat belt.

He was stunned for a moment, looked around, and then said helplessly: "A flat tire in the woods again?"

Toru Amuro: "..."

...Why do you sound like he should be blamed for this? He is obviously just a victim of the incident.

After a moment of silence, Toru Amuro decided not to argue with the people who were awake and to deal with business first: "People don't often pass by this area, and there are some gravels on the road. It's easy to puncture the tires... Let's put the spare tire on first."

Jiang Xia nodded and got off the car with him.

…

Before opening the trunk, Toru Amuro walked half a circle around the car and found the blown tire.

If you look closely, you can see a deep scratch on the side. It looks like it ran over something sharp and was punctured.

Amuro Toru used his flashlight to observe. He didn't know if he was being careless, but he always felt that this scratch was too flat, more like it was scratched with something else than a stone... But maybe there was a stone with very neat sharp parts.

He stared for a moment, temporarily writing down this doubt.

Then he stood up and walked to the trunk.

After thinking about it all the way, I finally encountered a flat tire. For some reason, instead of being agitated, Amuro Toru felt a faint sense of relief that the huge stone had finally fallen to the ground.

...Although he didn't want to admit it, in fact, he had already had this level of awareness when he decided to come out with Jiang Xia.

Speaking of which, compared to the previous days when I took Conan with me, "every tire would blow out as soon as I arrived in the suburbs", now I have only had one tire blow out after walking alone with Jiang Xia for so many days... which is gratifying enough.

Jiang Xia's physique, which had a flat tire while riding in a car, didn't seem to be as strong as he thought. Sure enough, the problem still lies with those little boys who grew up in strange directions.

Toru Amuro thought as he opened the trunk lid.

Then I discovered that the spare tire was also broken.

He lowered his gaze and looked at this scene calmly, with a strange light flashing in his eyes.

Then, while Jiang Xia was still looking at the broken tire on the side of the car.

Toru Amuro took the opportunity to glance at his phone.

——Since he had thought about the possibility of a tire blowout in advance, how could he be completely unprepared?

In addition to asking subordinates to carry spare tires and be ready to pretend to be "passers-by" to provide support and wait for opportunities to capture tire saboteurs,

Toru Amuro actually got an infrared night vision camera and hid it in the trunk under the cover of debris.

It's time to put this preparation to use and let him see what was in the car when the spare tire was damaged...

Toru Amuro clicked on his mailbox and found that a new email had indeed appeared in the mailbox.

From the subordinate responsible for checking the camera situation.

He moved his fingers and clicked to check.

As soon as I saw the "Sorry" at the beginning, my heart skipped a beat.

...the bad premonition increased.

Further down, you can see that this email contains a compressed video attachment, which is the key part that the subordinates specially intercepted.

Toru Amuro put her phone on silent and pressed play.

In the picture, there was total silence, with the camera pointing at the spare tire in the trunk and filming quietly.

This harmonious picture did not last long.

After a second or two, the camera suddenly started to shake - it was not a slight shake caused by the movement of the vehicle, but it suddenly moved forward a distance, as if something behind it occupied the space and pushed the camera forward.

Then, just half a second later, the screen suddenly went black.

——The camera was destroyed first.

Toru Amuro: "..."

The veins on his forehead jumped, and the phone in his hand made a small "clicking" sound, bouncing on the broken edge.

Toru Amuro was silent for a moment, remembering that he was in the suburbs now, with an organization member beside him. Even if his subordinates were not far behind him, it would be inconvenient to change his mobile phone... Finally, he took a silent breath and let go of his hand.

He raised his head and looked at the pile of debris next to the spare tire.

Just now, he felt that there was a slight difference here from before, but he thought it was due to the shaking of the car body.

...But now it seems that this is clearly some kind of creature that destroyed the camera hidden in the debris pile, then broke the tires and restored the debris pile to its original state.

Thinking of this, Toru Amuro reached in and rummaged around.

A piece of broken camera equipment was quickly fished out. It looked even more miserable than a blown tire or a punctured spare tire.

At this time, Jiang Xia seemed to be alerted by the sound of rolling, leaving the tires on the side of the car and coming to the trunk.

Before he arrived, Toru Amuro quietly hid the camera body.

Jiang Xia took a look into the trunk with the light of Amuro Toru's flashlight.

After seeing the spare tire clearly, he was slightly startled and said in surprise: "Claw marks? Boss, in your car..."

"No rats."

Amuro retorted reflexively.

Then, remembering that mice don’t have such powerful claws, he added: “There’s nothing else that could bite the tires.”

Next to him, Xiaobai raised his hand, hooked it into a claw, and waved it like water.

Tohru Amuro couldn't see it, but Akemi Miyano and her parents applauded it very much.

Matsuda Jinpei, who is lying on Jiang Xia's shoulder, has only been in the job for a short period of time, and his face needs to be strengthened. It looked at Jiang Xia, and then at Toru Amuro, whose face was calm but whose eyes were slightly twinkling, as if he was doubting his life. He moved slightly away from the victim with a guilty conscience and moved to the other side of Jiang Xia.

…

When Jiang Xia was checking the tires in the trunk.

Toru Amuro picked up his phone and checked his inbox again.

I found that except for the piece of monitoring just now, there was no other information in it.

...In other words, the subordinates who followed did not see any suspicious creatures following them. Otherwise, I must have sent him a message when I discovered the signs.

But the fog is so thick today, and the trees in this mountain forest are very dense. Even if something really catches up with it, it may be difficult for the subordinates to detect it.

…

His wish to catch the enemy with an infrared camera failed. At this time, Toru Amuro still felt a little disappointed.

After calming down a little, he was wary of the thick fog around him and looked at the badly damaged tires in the trunk.

——If you fail to succeed by taking shortcuts, then try using normal reasoning channels. It’s better than doing nothing.

This time, the strangest thing is that, as Jiang Xia said, the tires are not bite marks, but more like scratches from something.

...The claws of a beast?

However, to be able to scratch through a tire of this thickness with one blow... the size of this beast is probably big enough to fill the entire trunk.

But judging from the brief camera footage just now, the creature that suddenly appeared did not seem to be that big.