Conditioned Counterattack (1)

Study tricks, prepare for tricks, and accumulate tricks.
-Ivan P. Pavlov-

After dealing with the Afternoon Tea Party elders, I struck the acupoints of the owner of Newens Tea House and immobilized him, then gathered those still inside the estate and moved them somewhere safe.

Nearby, members of the London Fire Brigade, who had been stationed in advance, pulled up the fire handcarts and were carrying out firefighting operations.

I tried conducting a light interview on the Afternoon Tea Party members left in the estate, but they refused to divulge any information about the underground secret spaces.

As for the space Head Professor Louise and Irene Adler entered, I knew which spot on the floor to press because I had peeped from beyond the door, but if I couldn’t identify where the other Afternoon Tea Party members were hiding, the SIS agents on standby wouldn’t be able to capture them.

Of course, even if they never opened their mouths to the end, I had a method.

More precisely, with this man.

/<…I didn’t want to work this hard.>

It’s all your fault.

Mycroft, who had arrived on the scene in the meantime, grumbled as he looked at me, yet had the SIS agents line up the large jars they brought one by one along Serpentine Avenue, where firefighting was underway.

Preparations to locate the underground spaces where Irene’s subordinates were still hiding.

The residents living along Serpentine Avenue had already been evacuated by Scotland Yard and the fire brigade, and only the minimum personnel remained to protect private assets.

Perhaps because at the last moment I concentrated the formation’s output on the estate to startle Irene Adler, the damage was milder than expected compared to how much the flames had swept through.

The insurance investigators wouldn’t have that much work.

If the houses were only a little singed, and many of them were solidly built from the start, the owners probably wouldn’t take it too much to heart.

Well, if they want someone to resent, they should resent the Zuckerburg Family.

Because they left room for the formation to lead to a real fire, it made me want to exploit it with an improvised response, didn’t it?

While I secretly moved the roses with Poltergeist, I ended up using even a slightly harsh trick to knock out those who noticed my suspicious movement and tried to attack, but feeling sorry for underworld types is wrong in itself, so I have no qualms.

The innocent rich of Serpentine Avenue would have lost even their lives to the Vermilion Phoenix’s flames if I hadn’t acted.

They kept their lives for the price of a few scorched walls, so they ought to be thanking me and everyone involved in this affair, if anything.

In any case, because Head Professor Louise had neatly tied up Irene’s feet underground, I could handle the rest of the process smoothly as well.

The one thing I worried about was whether the elderly postman I saw earlier would safely carry the egg to the sea.

But worrying about it wouldn’t change anything, so I decided not to dwell on it.

This affair involves the fate of those living in London, and further still, those who live stepping on Britain’s land.

There was no way Sir Fawcett, who headed the Ministry of Communications, one of the government departments most directly connected to the lives of both the upper class and ordinary commoners, didn’t understand that fact.

He would surely carry the Vermilion Phoenix’s egg to a safe place by any means necessary.

This was not confidence based only on his exceptional movement arts.

In the letter Sir Fawcett sent me before, it said there was an item to be delivered.

It was certainly an arrangement prepared by my master, Phileas Fogg, but I didn’t know the details.

It must mean that Sir Fawcett, like old man Newton who carried the letter, was also close to my master.

Which meant that they might be among the members of the Reform Club that my master often kept company with.

Judging by the rings worn by the two old men at HENRY POOLE & CO, Henry Poole and Samuel Cudney, they too must be connected.

Unlike me, my master was not the type who believed one must live always holding chivalrous intent in the chest, but he clearly tried not to keep anyone around him except gentlemen.

Sir Fawcett too must be someone who could set aside everything he possessed for a great cause.

It is unfortunate, but in the martial world, Kung-Fuists of that sort usually die young.

Unless they possess overwhelming Kung-Fu.

Fortunately, Sir Fawcett was one of the master group the Kunlun Cathedral boasted, known as Alcanzadors.

He would surely return safely.

“……”

Yes. Surely, as always, he would return to his London, neat as ever, wearing tinted glasses.

-Coo-coo

A pigeon’s cooing, unusually loud even from afar, made me turn my head.

On the roof of the estate’s roof, now dark, a gigantic pigeon the size of an albatross sat and looked down at me.

“…You.”

David, was it?

That fellow was the spirit-beast pigeon Sir Fawcett raised.

It was the top contributor who brought the decisive clue when we solved the Phantom Fist incident last time.

Its feathers looked less glossy than when I saw it in the Central Post Office, and it seemed somehow dispirited.

David looked at me for a moment, then turned its body away again.

The way it stared at the red sunset that had appeared far earlier than usual looked strangely lonely.

I once read a Sword Thesis that said a spirit beast that has bonded with a Kung-Fuist for a long time becomes connected to its master by intent.

David too was surely sensing instinctively where its master was headed, and what he was about to face.

“…Is that the Vermilion Phoenix?”

A red flying object approaching as it flew between the sun and Britain.

The heat and intense aura the Vermilion Phoenix emitted was affecting the atmosphere and warping the balance of Yin and Yang.

If the Vermilion Phoenix set foot in London, no one would be able to avoid death.

Unless it was someone with transcendent power like Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

If the League of Gentlemen¹ and the elders of the Royal Combat Society all rushed out and faced the Vermilion Phoenix, there might be a chance, but while they fought it, London would become a sea of fire.

So, no matter what it took, we had to make the Vermilion Phoenix recover its young over the sea and return.

The opponent was not a mere spirit beast, but a divine beast that was labeled as a calamity.

It would never withdraw its fury until it recovered its egg.

“It would be arrogance to think they cannot feel the emotions humans feel.”

Spirit beasts possess intuition far superior to ordinary animals, and powerful intent.

While tragedies where animals eat their own young occur far more often than one would imagine in nature, most spirit beasts truly tend their eggs and young with devotion beyond even humans.

To take a child from their hands is, quite literally, to invite death.

Does not the Bible also speak of how dangerous spirit beasts are?

Even King Solomon, that wise grandmaster of Kung-Fu, emphasized in Proverbs 17:12 that the danger of a female spirit-bear robbed of her cubs comes right after that of a fool.

Not only that, in Second Kings² as well, there is even a record that two female spirit-bears suddenly barged in and literally tore apart forty-two Super Juniors who mocked a prophet’s bald head.

Thus, a massacre caused by the intrusion of spirit-bears—no, by the intrusion of spirit beasts—can become a deadly issue for Kung-Fuists.

For that reason, I personally could not understand why the late Tsar Alexander II and the current, great Tsar Alexander III decided on the madness of drawing the Vermilion Phoenix into Lake Ladoga.

The moment the plan slipped even a little, all of the Russian Empire, including Saint Petersburg, would burn.

Should I say it was fitting for the high-spirited people who, during the invasion by the Great Demon Napoleon, burned their own territory and carried out a field clear operation?

The ‘all or nothing, now or never’ mindset is admirable, yet to someone’s eyes it might look like vicious recklessness and arrogance.

Of course, I am not saying I see Russians that way.

In any case, considering it had not been long since the postman departed, we would still have to wait a good few more hours until it became certain London would avoid the fierce flames.

All that remained was to wait for the egg to return safely to its parent’s embrace.

Whether I should tremble in anxiety or feel at ease, to be honest, I still couldn’t get a read on it.

All I could do was remain here, clean up the Afternoon Tea Party, and wait for the postman’s return.

<Then, let us begin.>

To find the Afternoon Tea Party remnants, I watched Mycroft draw up his internal energy.

He gathered Essence to his fingertips, then pricked the tip of his index finger with a thin needle.

Then a small drop of blood steeped in internal energy fell into each of the twelve jars in turn, mixing into the liquid within.

And the next moment.

-Kwaaah!

Like a waterspout, the black ink contained in the jars surged into the air, then fell back down toward the ground.

Like a snake burrowing through soil and heading underground, the mass of ink seeped into the front yard of Green Willow Manor in an instant and began moving somewhere.

“Find them.”

-Gogogogogo…!!!

Avoiding the onlookers’ eyes, Mycroft quietly spoke with his voice rather than a Direct Message, and the ground began to tremble.

The ink that had seeped into the ground was moving along Mycroft’s intent to search for the hidden underground secret spaces.

The reason the SIS Spymaster Mycroft Holmes normally uses only Direct Messages rather than his voice is because his exclusive weapon, Dusk Ink, has a nature of reacting so strongly to his voice that it moves beyond even his intent.

I would have to look into what principle made such a thing possible, but watching a rare distinct Kung-Fu my brother unfolded before me made it feel as though some new inspiration was welling up.

/

No matter how difficult the Afternoon Tea Party had made their secret spaces to find, there was no way Mycroft would fail to locate them.

Among all Kung-Fuists in London, he was the one most thoroughly versed in extracting secrets.

And Dusk Ink was a weapon whose efficacy was far more suited to his work than to matches or life-and-death duels.

From the fact that he used something like liquid as a weapon, it was certain he had a gloomy disposition on par with the three Tanne Clans, but piling up slander about a brother only in my head and not letting it out was terribly stressful, so I should stop here and rest.

As I was thinking that.

-Koong!

The sound of advancing steps coming from somewhere.

-Koong!!
-Koogoong!

That sound was drawing closer and closer.

Someone was running this way.

The moment I realized it.

-Kwaang!

A man with a build like a spirit-bear burst through the wall of Green Willow Manor.

“I have come to take Irene Adler’s life.”

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.

The army surgeon and Alexander III’s trusted confidant appeared with a sharp smile.