Cold Sleep (1)

As Epictetus said, you are nothing more than a small soul carrying a corpse.
-Marcus Aurelius-

While the SIS agents cleaned up the scene, we placed Irene Adler’s body into the coffin Yan brought and transported it to Baker Street.

The ones in the carriage were me, Yan, and Mycroft.

The hexagonal coffin holding Irene Adler’s body was lashed to the roof of the carriage.

As for Head Professor Louise, who had rendered great service…

‘So you’re saying London escaped the crisis thanks to Miss Louise’s great exploits, right? Oh no, Miss Louise is a beautiful-girl head professor and now she’s also a great chivalrous hero…☆ I might be… kind of perfect?’

Head Professor Louise flaunted her greatly raised nose bridge (she was a master of face-changing arts, but this did not mean her nose bridge had literally grown higher) and, brimming with pride, planted both hands on her hips and puffed out her chest.

‘Without your help, Head Professor, we could not have deceived Alexander III’s subordinate. I sincerely thank you for your active cooperation.’
‘S-since Miss Louise is a chivalrous hero, you can leave problems like this to me anytime! Oh. Don’t forget to report my achievements to Her Majesty, okay?’
‘Of course.’
‘The Little Heavenly Demon is so sweet~!’
/<Reporting to Her Majesty is my job, however…>
‘Mm-hm. Please take good care of the Crane Pen too.’

After boasting of her merits, Head Professor Louise went home without even looking back.

The reason was that operating for a long time while transformed into someone else in an environment where the balance of Yin and Yang was broken caused considerable fatigue.

In any case, if that reputation wasn’t earned in Sword Debate Chess alone, it showed. Irene Adler’s body was preserved in perfect condition.

The hardest part of this plan was administering the poison Yan brought while Irene Adler was laughing, yet Louise Carroll solved that problem without difficulty.

Once Irene Adler learned the person who fell into the underground prison with her was not me but a disguised stranger, I thought there was no way she would laugh happily, so what method did she use?

‘Earlier, aside from postmortem rigidity, her muscles were twisted strangely. Did she get cramps in her legs? If not—’

Did she tickle her?

If so, it seemed Head Professor Louise chose a rather hardline method.

When we first met at the Royal Palace, she began the conversation only after striking me and Watson’s acupoints without warning, so she likely used a similar method this time as well.

To tickle vital points to the level that did not cause pain, with perfect calculation, and administer poison while Irene Adler laughed. Should I say it was worthy of a numerologist?

Since she was the author of a fairy tale widely read in Britain, she surely could come up with the childish idea of making Irene Adler laugh by tickling her.

She tended to have poor social skills and weak communication while her self-love was excessively pronounced, but she maintained an appearance that fit objective standards of beauty, and her Kung-Fu was strong as well, so there would be no major issues with her living in Britain.

Perhaps because she maintained a good relationship with my master, she showed a cooperative attitude, so going forward I should borrow her hand from time to time when needed.

Of course, it would be shameful to ask for help every time without any compensation, so I should find out what she wants as well.

“We’ve arrived.”

The carriage stopped in front of 221B Baker Street.

When we carried the coffin into the lodging house, Mrs. Hudson glared at me with eyes that looked ready to faint at any moment.

“Good heavens, Mr. Holmes! I asked you to be selective with your guests! Shouldn’t you at least bring someone living, so I can serve tea and sweets and treat them properly?!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hudson. This guest will be dead when she comes in, but she will walk out on her own two feet when she leaves, so do not worry.”
“Oh my, if that’s the case, then by all means…”

“If it were Jesus, you should have said so sooner.”

Mrs. Hudson grumbled and walked into the kitchen.

“…The landlady is generous.”

Yan muttered with a face that said this was absurd.

“It seems the Yang Qi in the air is excessive, and she’s fallen into a state of intoxication.”
“At first, I thought she saw right through the fact I’m a Living Corpse.”
“You’re fine in every way, but your inferiority complex is excessive.”
“Does it show that much, that I cling to life?”
“Just a little.”

Seeing Mrs. Hudson’s state, it seemed that just from the approach of the Vermilion Phoenix and the resulting collapse of balance between Yin Qi and Yang Qi spread through the air, a very bad influence was already affecting the mental state of those living in London.

If there was a problem in the harmony of Yin and Yang, it also meant abnormalities would appear in the bodies of Kung-Fuists who took in primordial energy through circulating and regulating their qi.

Excessive Yang Qi caused numbness of reason and a touch of madness.

That must be why Mrs. Hudson just acted like a southern Italian.

If, as Alexander II and III planned, the Vermilion Phoenix settled in Lake Ladoga, then the Russians living in Saint Petersburg would start behaving like Sicilians. If that happened, Russia’s public order would only worsen.

At this point, I worried whether Watson, waiting upstairs on the second floor, might also have been affected. Would she be alright?

With no reaction yet, it seemed she was asleep.

Careful not to wake Watson, Yan and I carried the coffin up to the second floor, and Mycroft followed behind.

“Holmes! You’re here!”

The moment I opened the door and went in, I met eyes with Watson as she happened to be coming out of the bedroom.

Judging by the fact that her eyes were not puffy, it seemed she had not been sleeping.
Her face being flushed was likely the influence of Yang Qi.

In her arms, she was tightly hugging the single rose of Elagabalus I had given her.

“…It suits you.”
“Hm. What does?”
“Nothing.”

As if she had hurriedly prepared after hearing the carriage arrive, she had changed into casual clothes and even put on a fake mustache. She greeted me with a bright smile, but then she noticed the hexagonal coffin we were carrying and made a strange face.

“Well… I didn’t think you’d bring the whole coffin. Is what’s inside Mrs. Norton, no, Irene Adler?”
“That’s right.”

Since I had told Watson our plan in advance, she recognized the coffin’s contents immediately.

Ironically, perhaps because the energy in her body naturally leaned toward Yin, she maintained a far more normal mental state than Mrs. Hudson, and I let out a sigh of relief inside.

“The fact you brought that woman here safely means it ended without incident. Then what remains now is—”
“If Sir Fawcett returns the egg to the Vermilion Phoenix, London can avoid destruction.”

No one needed prompting. Everyone gathered on the second floor nodded.

The current time was 3:30 p.m.

Outside the window, the sunset was still casting a red radiance.

“To think a sunset could feel this unwelcome.”

Beyond the sky, the end of the empire where the sun never set was wavering.

The encounter with the Vermilion Phoenix was more intense than I had imagined.

On the North Sea’s waves, made lukewarm by the divine beast’s heat, Henry Fawcett lay still, leaving his body to buoyancy.

The clothing that had been shredded by waves and wind until only sleeves remained had already been burned to ash by the scorching Yang Qi the Vermilion Phoenix emitted.

Fawcett thought.

That he looked like Icarus, whose wings fixed with wax melted after approaching the sun.

For the boxers of the Kunlun Clan, their wide sleeves were like wings used to ride the wind and move.

It was embarrassing to liken himself to a figure of myth, but objectively it was an undeniable fact that what the two had gone through was remarkably similar.

‘…Wasn’t Icarus a boy? Even if only for a moment, I felt young, so it’s not bad.’

He wanted to speak, but he didn’t even have the strength for that.

All Fawcett could feel was that his body was floating on warm seawater.

That strange omnipotence and transcendent sensation he had tasted earlier had long since vanished.

‘I overdid it. That’s so unlike me.’

The movement-arts master who boasted a fully ripened Transcendent Realm squeezed out even his Innate Essence and ran over the sea, and as a result, he looked beyond his given limits and glimpsed the next realm.

But the price was unimaginably harsh.

The inner light was still illuminating his image, but the flame was steadily dying down.

Not only had he run over the sea for a full two hundred nautical miles, he had even used movement arts to approach the flying Vermilion Phoenix right up to its beak, so he knew well that he should be grateful he wasn’t dead.

So Fawcett showed not a trace of complaint.

The new sensation that bloomed inside him sensed the Vermilion Phoenix’s intent at the last moment.

The divine beast was expressing gratitude to Fawcett, who had brought its egg back.

The moment the Vermilion Phoenix met Sir Fawcett, its massive beak tapped the eggshell.

Immediately after, the chick that woke from the egg dangled in the air by the Vermilion Phoenix’s Poltergeist and returned the way it came, following the adult (whether mother or father, he did not know).

The transcendent sense created by the inner light showed Fawcett the last moment of farewell in fine detail.

The departing chick looked straight at Fawcett and waved its wings.

It looked like someone leaving on a steam locomotive waving at a dear friend left on the platform.

More than the pride of saving London from disaster, the gratitude the Vermilion Phoenix and its young emitted satisfied Fawcett.

Ignorant people might see spirit beasts and call them paltry creatures, but they too were living beings who held familial affection.

By the reunion of parent and child, their world, their family, was protected, and as a result, the humans’ world that Fawcett lived in, London, was also saved.

Protecting the small led to the result of protecting something greater.

Sir Fawcett smiled brightly, as if satisfied.

The Vermilion Phoenix departed east once more.
They had gone home, so now Fawcett too had to head for London.

But.

“Can I get back?”

There was no strength in his hands or feet.
He could not move, and he could not even circulate and regulate his qi.

That was when.

Sir Fawcett’s body, which could feel nothing but slight differences in temperature and Qi Frequency, came into contact with a large object that radiated heat.

‘This is…’

A log. No. The shape was different.

An unidentified object emitting intense energy.

The Yang Qi it emitted began filling Fawcett’s empty elixir field at speed.

Sensation and strength returned.

Grasping the object floating on the sea, Fawcett finally realized what it was.

“…A feather?”

It was a large feather.
A Vermilion Phoenix feather, as big as a small raft.

And the moment Fawcett clung to the feather.

-Kiiiih!!

With a piercing cry, a fierce northeasterly wind came roaring in.

-Kwaaah!!

The surging waves began pushing Fawcett’s body quickly to the southwest.

To the place where he had begun to run.

To Norwich’s coastline.