Corpse collector in Conan

There seems to be no rule of "eating without speaking" in this temple.

Several young monks started chatting quickly, and the topic unknowingly turned to an ancient legend - the legend about the foggy dog.

In fact, it cannot be regarded as "unknowingly".

The location of Shanni Temple is too remote and there are very few tourists. Every time a guest comes to stay, the old abbot will secretly bring up the topic of "foggy dogs", which is the selling point of their remote temple.

There has always been a legend about the "fog dog" in this area, but what really made it a topic was a murder case two years ago.

——Two years ago, the monk Zhongnian in the temple was suspected of being killed by Wutian Dog. After this incident was published in the newspapers, there was an explosion of tourists visiting the temple, which brought in a lot of money.

Now that the heat has passed, there are fewer tourists, but there are still people attracted by the foggy dogs every now and then.

Some of these guests came because they read old newspapers, while others heard these things from people who had lived in the temple and passed them on by word of mouth.

The old abbot had a guilty conscience regarding the matter of "Wutian Dog killing people" - in fact, it was not Wutian Dog who killed Zhongnian, but him.

But conscience cannot be eaten, so he chose to increase his popularity without hesitation.

The old abbot said to the two new tourists in a sinister tone:

"Tengu is an ancient monster that can fly. They will sneak into the village like fog on rainy nights, break through the walls, kidnap the kind people, and then hang the bodies of their prey high for food."

Speaking of this, the old host wanted to suddenly take a scary turn and move over to scare the two guests opposite.

But at this moment, he suddenly felt something bad - there was always a premonition that if he really scared someone, he would be slapped on the head and thrown into the vegetable soup.

…And there’s no point in scaring two grown men.

The abbot hesitated for a moment, and finally just stroked his beard, skipped the scary steps, and directly said the concluding sentence: "But don't worry, this is just a legend from a time when technology was underdeveloped."

"...But it's not necessarily a legend." The third child in the temple looked unhappy and muttered nervously, "Didn't a very similar thing happen two years ago, Senior Brother Zhongnian..."

"Mu Nian!" Senior Brother frowned and interrupted him, "Don't talk about this kind of thing to the guests."

"It's okay, let's talk." Jiang Xia seemed to be very interested. He didn't eat anymore and looked up at them. "We are detectives and are best at solving strange things."

"!" "!" "!" "!" "?!"

Four young monks, plus an abbot, five exclamation marks seemed to appear above their heads, but the meanings were different.

The four monks looked at Jiang Xia. The youngest one hesitated and said, "Actually, I've wanted to say it for a long time. You look a bit familiar. It's the one who suddenly became popular recently...Jiang Xia? Is that the last name?"

"Oh, I've heard of it! A few days ago I went to the city to do some shopping, and while I was waiting in line, I happened to hear the girl next to me discussing this person." The third child also remembered it, and he said excitedly, "Since he is a detective , maybe we can really solve the mystery - just two years ago..."

"Shut up!"

The old host slapped his hand on the table, interrupting the apprentice's words.

His face was extremely ugly, and he glared at the four disciples: "Didn't I tell you not to mention this matter?! Okay, when the meal time is over, go back and rest, immediately!"

Then the old abbot turned to Jiangxia and Toru Amuro, his tone was much stiffer than before: "This is an internal matter of our temple, so don't ask any more questions."

After saying that, he stood up, rolled up his sleeves and left with a sullen face.

The words "guilty as a thief" were written all over his face.

…

The old monk was very unfriendly, but fortunately his disciples were still very service-minded.

After a few young monks cleaned up the restaurant, they took Jiang Xia and the others to the guest room, found clean bedding, and even found two disposable toothbrushes and razors from nowhere.

Jiang Xia packed up early, pretended to fall asleep, and prepared to pick up ghosts.

Toru Amuro seemed a little curious about what happened "two years ago", but he didn't ask any more questions - detectives in this world seem to have the attribute of "never ask questions when someone tells someone off". Perhaps this is some kind of intuitive professionalism born in order not to lose one's job...

Jiang Xia was not curious.

After all, he is a "prophet" who knows a lot.

Two years ago, monk Zhongnian in this temple "hanged himself".

But in fact, he was killed by the old abbot.

The old abbot wanted his granddaughter to marry the heir of a large monastery, but the granddaughter fell in love with Zhongnian and even wanted to elope.

The old abbot worried about this matter for a long time and could not convince his granddaughter. Finally, he had an idea and suddenly thought that as long as his loyalty was gone, his granddaughter would no longer be able to elope.

So the old abbot used the terrain of the temple and combined it with the legends nearby to come up with a murder method.

——In Shanni Temple, there is a narrow confinement room about 10 meters high. There is a window at the top of the confinement room near the waterfall. The quality of the confinement room is particularly good and there is no water leakage.

Two years ago, after the old monk killed Zhongnian, he sealed the doors and windows below with tape, then used wooden boards to introduce water into the confinement room, floated the body to the top, and hung the body from the top beam. Then the old abbot returned outside and smashed the wall below, causing water to flow out instantly.

In this way, since there are no signs of climbing on the top of the dusty beam, it looks like the body was carried up by the foggy dog ​​and flew up.

Of course, the police couldn't use "foggy dog ​​murder" to close the case, so in the end they had to treat it as suicide.

Jiang Xia didn't have much thoughts about this case.

I just feel that the old monk is really capable of doing things. According to the average level of police handling of cases here, maybe if the abbot just hanged people up, it would be regarded as suicide.

However, these have nothing to do with Jiang Xia. Now, he only has the new ghost fetus in his heart...

The guest rooms are large, all covered with tatami mats.

Jiang Xia dragged the bedclothes a little closer to the door and lay down.

After almost all the young monks fell asleep and Toru Amuro next to him stopped making any noise, Jiang Xia let a few pieces of shikigami fly into the corridor through the cracks in the door, preparing to construct the puppet.

However, before the puppet took shape, Jiang Xia suddenly felt something approaching outside the door.

Jiang Xia paused the gathering of puppets, shifted his vision to Miyano Akemi, and asked her to go through the door to see the situation.

I saw the new ghost fetus running all the way over, looking very anxious, as if it was looking for help.

Jiang Xia's eyes lit up.

He regained his sight and went to the corridor under the pretense of going to the bathroom to communicate with the new ghost.

The new ghost has something to ask for. It can be seen that it is still panicked when facing Jiang Xia, but it is not avoiding him like before.

As she got closer, Jiang Xia discovered that the extra bumps on the back of the new ghost fetus were shaped like a pair of chicken wings.

Jiang Xia took the ghost to the empty bathroom and politely endured it for two seconds. In the end, he couldn't hold it in any longer. Under the trembling gaze of the new ghost, he stretched out his hand and pinched the tip of its wing.

With a little effort, Jiang Xia pulled the wings open. The new ghost fluttered in panic.

Jiang Xia let go of his hand, and the new ghost hid behind the hand sanitizer, folded his wings bitterly, and smoothed out the ruffled feathers.

Jiang Xia watched from the side and felt very magical.

The appearance of the ghost fetus is actually the product of Q-like transformation of a real person.

But when this monk ghost died, it must have been in a normal human form and not with wings on its back - otherwise the foggy dog ​​murder incident two years ago would not have been so well-known.

Many rules in this world are different from what Jiang Xia was familiar with before.

He could only guess based on those messy principles that the sudden mutation of this new ghost was related to the legend of the foggy dog ​​killing people - that legend was once widely popular in this area. It may be that these chants affected the shape of the monk ghost.

I don’t know if the wings are just a decoration or if they can really fly...

Thinking of this, Jiang Xia tentatively poked the ghost in front of him, and the monk ghost hid aside.

But soon, it remembered that it still had something to ask of the psychic in front of it, so it stood stiffly on the spot and let Jiang Xia poke at him.

Because the ghost was too calm, Jiang Xia failed to test it out.