The Phantom Thief of Heart! But Conan.

"Beep-beep-"

As the sound coming from the receiver continued to lengthen, Araki Yoshizawa, who had found the phone number of the "Escape King", gradually became serious with his originally relaxed expression.

A moment later, as the dial reached the time limit, the call jumped to the answering machine.

Obviously, the possibility of contacting the escaped king by phone is very small.

"Ah, he's probably on his way." Hamano Toshiya didn't care and waved his hand, "He's definitely not home if he goes out, let's wait for a while. Before that, let's just have some fun by ourselves."

"Then everyone, you can go to your rooms and prepare your beds. I don't come to this villa very often. Although the guest rooms have been cleaned, you still need to take the daily necessities and arrange them yourself." Araki hung up the receiver, and the subtle uneasiness in his heart disappeared with the disappearance of the monotonous prompt tone. "I and the helper Sukama will prepare dinner."

The road from Tokyo is indeed not easy to travel, and the weather today is also average, so it is not a big problem and has little impact on the activities.

"Wouldn't it be tiring for two people to prepare meals for so many people?" Mao Lilan blinked and considered whether she should go to the kitchen to help.

"No problem. Many of the ingredients have already been processed. It only takes a simple preparation and it will be ready soon." Huang Yi waved his hand nonchalantly. "Since the chairman is not here, I am the main organizer. Of course I have to fulfill these obligations."

Mao Lilan was still hesitating, but Suzuki Sonoko had already grabbed her hand and pulled her up without saying anything: "Okay, let's go, Xiaolan, we can live in the same room today..."

There are a total of 6 men in this house now. Except for Tang Ze and Amuro Toru, who are her acquaintances, the other men make her feel very uncomfortable. She now wants to seize the time to escape from these people.

Toru Amuro untied the scarf around his neck and noticed from the corner of his eye that Tang Ze started chatting with several other people attending the party. He immediately adjusted his expression and put on a not-so-sincere smile.

Since the impersonation issue has not been clarified yet, he now has to speak as the magic user's disciple. It is also necessary to learn more about this group of people before being exposed.

How to say it, even if today's party was indeed something that Suzuki Sonoko had proposed on a whim and notified at the last minute, and Karasawa told others that he went to the Metropolitan Police Department, but in fact he had just returned from another direction in Tokyo and it was impossible for him to predict his itinerary at this time, he still became instinctively alert and felt that something might be going on at this party.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Tang Ze, on the contrary, he trusts Tang Ze too much.

Tang Ze never fights an unprepared battle. Basically, any event that he takes the trouble to participate in will have some problems to a greater or lesser extent, and it is a minority that does not result in loss of life.

Knowing nothing about this, he should still be vigilant like an intelligence officer and pay close attention to the situation of these people in the building.

Watching Toru Amuro, who was in the right state, walk away with high morale, Tang Ze no longer pretended to join in the chat, but slowly moved his feet and slipped to the window on the first floor without a trace, standing with Doi Takeki, who was scratching the window sill with a bored look on his face.

Seeing Tang Ze's expression that looked like he deserved a beating, Kuroba Kaito wanted to roll his eyes, but in the end he took a step closer and squeezed out a sentence from the corner of his mouth: "Why did you come here? Those two girls and that dark-skinned conspirator followed us... Aren't you tired?"

To this day, although Kuroba Kaito cannot say that he knows the whereabouts of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts completely, he still has a rough idea of ​​their general movements.

Because when these thieves were chatting and talking nonsense, they had no intention of avoiding him at all.

Kaito Line is a communication software specially developed by Noah's Ark for the Kaitos. The network it uses is a special cognitive enhanced version provided by Noah. Even if the mobile phone has no network, it can still work normally. After discovering this, Kuroba Kaito couldn't help but pay attention to their group chat.

Theoretically, since there is a group for him as an outside member, they must also have their own internal group. However, with the increasing number of their members and the emergence of people like Yuga Kyosuke who can only be considered half-members, it is inevitable that the group Kidd is in has naturally developed into a casual chatting group.

Therefore, Kidd not only roughly knew that this group of people went to a foreign-style mansion in the suburbs to commit a crime, oh no, to "correct the hidden crimes", but he also knew that after the incident, there was a new person in the group. He didn't know if they picked him up again.

Who knew that when he prepared his disguise as he wished and ran to the party with the mischievous intention of teasing a little girl, he was caught off guard and saw Tang Ze's face, and couldn't help but feel a pain in his liver instinctively.

Damn it! Before he met the Phantom Thieves, X-Alloy was clearly a very rare thing. He never thought that one day things would turn out to be such that someone would chase him with gold bars all day, asking him to speed up and find out where his father had gone as soon as possible...

We are clearly in a relationship where one pays the other and the other delivers the goods, why are you acting like you are the client...

"Why should I be tired? I'm very energetic. You know, I have a special physique." Tang Ze's face remained expressionless. He turned his head and chatted with Doi Takeshu as if it was natural, but his tone was very joking.

Kuroba Kaito, who had been holding back his eyes for a long time, finally rolled them out.

He was not very clear about what the Phantom Thieves of Hearts were all about, but Tang Ze, who could distinguish X-alloy with the naked eye, was definitely not an ordinary person. Ordinary people could not do such shocking operations, so it was really difficult for him to refute the statement that they had a special physique.

"I just followed them around. You know, there are always many things around Detective-kun that I can't refuse." Tang Ze shrugged. "But you, what are you doing hanging out with magician enthusiasts? You even came to a party in disguise. What? Are there any treasures here that you are interested in?"

Hearing this question, Kuroba Kaito blinked twice quickly, quickly concealing the expression on his face, and said lightly: "Why else? There are not many things that interest me."

Tang Ze, who knew the secrets of the party in advance, sorted out the interpersonal relationships in his mind.

The original intention of holding this party was indeed an offline gathering of netizens, but some of them came with different thoughts, which was to pay tribute to their elders who were magicians of the older generation and had passed away during a performance.

The purpose of Kuroba Kaito's participation should be similar to this person's. As the son of Kuroba Toichi, he also knows many seniors in the industry, but the degree of closeness varies slightly.

But now that Kuroba Kaito said so, his reason for coming here was not just to see why his deceased senior's online account became active again, but...

Tang Ze, who was quick-witted, quickly came to a rather subtle conclusion.

"Are you trying to keep an eye on your father's news in these online groups? Or do you think your father's situation is related to the magic industry?" Tang Ze tilted his head. Although he used a question, he actually anticipated the answer to this question.

Kuroba Kaito chose to inherit his father's mantle and became a magician. Over the years, he has been a phantom thief. Although he looks cool and arrogant, active under the noses of the police, playing everyone around, and is simply a carefree outlaw, but hidden under these appearances, his life is not that easy.

He has many identities, but the life he leads is only that of an ordinary high school student named Kuroba Kaito. Apart from that, he is puzzled by the mystery of his father's fake death and disappearance, and spends all day chasing after the shadow that will never turn back.

Kaito Kidd is not as free-spirited as he appears.

"After all, my father's public identity is a world-renowned magician. He faked his death and escaped in a world-renowned performance. I will always pay attention to things in the relevant circle. Outside of this circle, so many years have passed, and no one will continue to pay attention to his situation." Kuroba Kaito turned his head and looked at the thin frost on the grass outside the window, and narrated calmly, "And, as you know, some of the X-alloy is indeed in the hands of magicians."

Although he had never met the famous magician, the case of Kyujuku Motoyasu did give Kuroba Kaito a lot of inspiration, especially what Karasawa reminded him at the time, that X-alloy, as a metal with special radiation or force field, has an impact on human consciousness, and using it to make magic props can achieve twice the result with half the effort.

He later secretly tried to understand the theories of Tang Ze's parents. Combining this with his own experience, he felt that the opposite might be true.

It just so happened that he really needed a more professional person to confirm these things. Since he had met the lingering Tang Ze, he might as well ask him again.

Kuroba Kaito carefully chose his words and talked about what he had gained from X-alloy in recent days. Tang Ze held his chin, listened patiently without saying a word, and slowly thought about the possibilities.

"…So, what you mean is that you are more inclined to believe that X alloy is actually a special artificial metal." Tang Ze concluded, "It's not that instruments made of this alloy are more likely to attract people's attention, but because magicians have been using these props for many years and have completed too many successful frauds with them, which has endowed these instruments with special characteristics in a conceptual sense?"

"Yes, that's what I think." Kuroba Kaito snapped his fingers and tapped Tang Ze's collar.

When Tang Ze is the joker, this is where the K brooch on his scarf is located.

"The one in your hand may be a little special, but you know the origins of the others. Just like your parents' theories? Or concepts? In short, it's just like what those mysterious things describe. It may be closer to a 'crystallization of cognition' rather than an existing definite product."

"Well, that makes some sense..." Tang Ze pondered this somewhat novel perspective and nodded slowly.

Others may not know, but Tang Ze is very clear that the world he lives in is different from the normal real world. In this world, the boundary between cognition and reality has been broken, and it is very likely that there is no secret treasure of collective subconsciousness at the bottom of the subway.

If X-alloy and the Holy Grail are indeed products of the same nature, then since the Holy Grail is likely to have been broken, perhaps the truth is that the broken Holy Grail has already been integrated into this world, and with the changes in people's cognition and the surge of thoughts, it has appeared in this world in different forms.

If the cognitive fraud created by magicians also has a similar effect, then there is an explanation for why the famous magician Toichi Kuroba was targeted by an organization and then suddenly disappeared during his performance.

"Maybe your father's 'disappearance' is really related to my father's research." Tang Ze thought thoughtfully.

"...Huh? You're not trying to say that my father's inexplicable disappearance was caused by your father?" Hei Yu Kaito's mouth twitched twice, "Is this world really such a ridiculous thing?"

"Of course not." Tang Ze responded with a particularly obvious eye roll, "What are you thinking about? My father is only the discoverer of cognitive science, not the inventor. The phenomenon came first, and then there was research and explanation. What I mean is that your father's situation may not be simply faking his death to avoid his enemies, or he may have encountered some accident, so that there is no news until now. I think, he, maybe..."

Tang Ze lowered his head hesitantly and glanced at the program on his mobile phone.

There, the All-Seeing Eye logo of Different World Navigation is eye-catching and shining.

"Maybe he just really can't come back, not that he doesn't want to come back."

"...I also hope that what you said is true." Kuroba Kaito curled his lips, pushed the window open a crack, felt the chill coming from it, and whispered, "If dad really can't come back, I can forgive him a little. It's really too much, in front of a child..."

Tang Ze paused, raised his hand, and patted Kuroba Kaito's shoulders, which had become much broader after his disguise, comfortingly.

He could more or less understand the other person's complicated feelings.

If Kuroba Toichi was actually able to move freely and contact his family and children, but for some strange reason he was avoided for many years and there was no news of him, it would actually be a blow to Kuroba Kaito who had worked hard for so many years to investigate the truth of his disappearance.

Kuroba Kaito has not been active as Kaito Kid for a long time, but he is actually not lacking in either skills or psychological qualities, and has long been a top thief far exceeding industry standards.

If there is anything that is not mature enough about him, it is that his heart does not belong to the Kaito. Although he is equally playful and humorous, and also wants to perform some fancy tricks, his heart is much softer and firmer than that of the previous Kaito Kid.

I'm not here to be a thief, I'm here to save my father...

Thinking of this, Tang Ze patted Kuroba Kaito's shoulder again.

"You've already made all kinds of preparations anyway, right? Little things, the best way to eliminate fear is to face it, right, Red Herring?"

"Huh? Hey, I already told you that this name doesn't mean that! How on earth do you know me... and how on earth did you learn English? A red herring is an escape tool used to confuse hounds, and by extension, it means to divert focus and attention. In the magic world, it is a special technique and a type of prop, okay?! What's that expression on your face? Hey, stop laughing, Tang Ze——!"