Watson: The Priceless

Everybody’s Got A Price.
-Million Dollar Man-

“This is……a music box.”

Watson, peering into the contents of the wooden box, wore a dazed expression.

It was only natural.

By common sense, few would think a secret of tremendous value was sleeping inside such an old, shabby, outdated music box.

“The most precious secret manual is always hidden where no one thinks to look. Who would know that this small box is the greatest offertory box the Catholic Church boasts.”
“That the Old Church’s cash cow is hidden in an antique music box……. Honestly, it’s unexpected.”

Just before showing the music box to Watson, I spread a Qi Curtain around us without a single gap, as Her Majesty Victoria had done before beginning a Sword Debate Chess match, to prevent eavesdropping.

In addition, I didn’t forget to lock the window with Poltergeist and draw the curtains.

Perhaps because she witnessed these actions, lending credibility to the story, Watson was taking my words at face value.

“Until now, aside from the Vatican’s Lily Swordsman, there would have been no one who understood and made use of the Indulgence Talisman’s secret, yet you’ve managed to find it.”
“Who do you think I am? Am I not London’s only Kung-Fu consulting detective.”
“Even if you don’t emphasize it every time, I admire your outstanding brain every time…….”
“Then that’s a relief. I was worried you might have forgotten, you know.”

Watson’s memory was excellent, so there seemed no need to rehearse past matters several times.

“As you know, the Vatican’s greatest source of income is the residual Demonic Qi removal business. And inside this music box, in cruder terms, their trade secret is contained.”
“Trade secret……. When you use such a word, it suddenly feels as if the nobility of religion is fading.”
“Religion and the secular cannot be separated. All the more so when it concerns offertory.”

Residual demonic Qi is a vicious aura containing the dead one’s Intent, left behind when a rampaging demonic Kung-Fu cultivator dies.

Demanding a massive offertory in exchange for erasing it completely from the world was the true nature of the Holy Business the Holy See conducted for the salvation of souls.

And the method of removing residual Demonic Qi was the formation engraved on the Indulgence Talisman, as the Kung-Fuists gathered at the Buckingham Palace spring royal ball, including Watson, had witnessed before.

That is, one injects Essence into the labyrinth-like Essence Circuit and circulates it in the proper order and direction to release the seal of Lily Essence and the mnemonic verses.

“As you saw, when the seal of the Indulgence Talisman is released, a song rings out. Until now, didn’t everyone mistake that hymn for something sung by the Lily Swordsman gathered to conduct an exorcism rite hidden behind a mobile curtain. But the truth is—”

I took out one Indulgence Talisman I had placed inside the music box beforehand and held it out to Watson.

“The Yellow Page used to make Indulgence Talismans is far from ordinary. In the process of manufacture, powder made by crushing a Phonograph Stone that recorded a Hymn is added.”

The lyrics of the Hymn themselves have no power.
What matters is that the united Intent of those who sing it moves the Lily Essence sealed together and burns away the residual Demonic Qi.

Lily Essence is a Heritage Essence that can only be cultivated through the Vatican’s special inner cultivation method that erases humanity from a Kung-Fuist.

This was why Intent and Essence, stripped of individual color, could be gathered into one and stored in an object.

And it likely helped that Lily Essence itself resembled a plant’s innate aura and had the nature of taking root deeply in something.

“To think it was possible to put Intent into lyrics and preserve it for a long time……. Was the Zion Clan monopolizing such high-level Kung-Fu principles?”

Hearing my explanation, Watson replied in a voice that was excited, if only slightly.

“An imbalance of information always creates splendid business opportunities.”
“So information becomes money. It sounds meaningful, somehow……”
“You can find examples as many as you like. For instance, Sword Debate Chess.”
“Sword Debate Chess?”
“Is it not something often heard. The rumor that information leaks before the European Murim Alliance’s Sword Debate Chess office officially announces the forbidden, restricted, and semi-restricted Kung-Fu in the next regulation.”

Watson nodded.

She was the sort who went mad for a bet.
Of course, she must have wagered money on the official Sword Debate Chess tournaments where gamblers across Europe bet on wins and losses.

“I have heard the story that resellers, based on information leaked in advance, sell secret manuals of powerful Kung-Fu scheduled to be forbidden at high prices, and buy up secret manuals scheduled to have the ban lifted at bargain prices.”
“It’s the same. For hundreds of years, the Zion Clan used information others didn’t know to inflate their own price, like the bodies of Scotland Yard inspectors who trained Bulk-Up & Cutting.”

The Zion Clan dressed up a miracle anyone could perform, so long as they knew only the Vatican Cameos that unlocked the Indulgence Talisman and possessed refined circulation skill, in a grand name like an exorcism rite, and raked in enormous money.

That the secret could be maintained for a long time must be because the Zion Clan forced a training regimen close to brainwashing upon the few Lily Swordsmen who knew the secret manual.

Whether for faith or for the group’s profit, just from the fact that the secret manual had not leaked until now, one could guess how inhuman an organization the Zion Clan was.

There were likely attempts, more than once, to leak the Vatican Cameos.

Each time, the Zion Clan would have dealt with the traitor using ironclad security and cruel hands.

By using every method to monitor the few Lily Swordsmen who memorized the mnemonic verses and performed the exorcism rite, they must have cut off the possibility of a traitor at the source.

However, there is no such thing as an eternal secret anywhere in the world.

Perhaps it displeased him that a monastic clan, which should return to faith to help the weak and crush evil, was greedy for money, because a new whistle blower stepped over his seniors’ corpses and succeeded in spiriting the mnemonic verses outside by a secret method.

“This music box is an item one of the Lily Swordsmen, sick of the Zion Clan that colluded with the secular world, finally made after reaching a great resolve.”

The reason I was able to find this music box was in fact thanks to what I experienced in my previous life.

Before I solved the case entwined with the Baskerville family (in this world, it is correct to say a Murim family better known by the name Iron-Blood Sword House), I once took Pope Leo XIII’s request and went to seek the Vatican’s leaked secret in that other world.

According to Leo XIII, the secret was immense enough to deal a fatal blow to the Vatican’s honor.

For this reason, at the time I had to swear, in exchange for an enormous fee, that I would neither confirm the secret’s identity nor spread it.

This was the whole story.

A monastic order that rebelled against the colonists who desired to enslave South American natives, the Societas Iesu¹.

They earned the respect of all and strove to restore the natives’ rightful rights, but in July 1773, the Zion Clan’s leader of the day, no, Pope Clement XIV, who had bowed to secular power, ended up stamping the decree that suppressed them.

In opposition, the Societas Iesu leadership leaked documents recording the Vatican’s shame to South America in the same year, then used them as a hostage to pressure the Holy See, and in the end, after a long, secret struggle spanning forty-one years, succeeded in making Pope Pius VII approve the Societas Iesu’ restoration.

However, forty-one years is a long span, enough for the martial world to change four times over.

The confidential documents kept in South America disappeared somewhere, and based on a few clues, I began tracking their whereabouts.

From South America to Japan, from Japan to China, from China back to Europe.

Even after chasing after every trace of Societas Iesu clergymen who firmly guarded the secret and fought against secular pressure, I could not find the documents, and I recalled the only possibility remaining.

The confidential documents might have passed into the hands of a former clergyman who had returned to secular life and been expelled from the order.

If one knew the value of the documents, after returning to the secular world, he might have tried to sell the secret for a hefty sum.

But the fact that neither the Vatican nor denominations like the Anglican Church, who were not on good terms with them, had gotten their hands on it meant the documents had not yet been traded.

That meant something had happened to the body of the secularized clergyman.

I made inquiries about former clergymen expelled from the Societas Iesu and their descendants, and in the end I found a promising candidate.

The clergyman who fled South America crossed to Europe and had a child, and that child inherited pocket change and a music box from his father.

The destination of a journey spanning months was, ironically, London.

London’s representative antiques market, Portobello Road Market.

There, I succeeded in finding the music box that the son of a former Societas Iesu monk had sold off for a pittance.

This was the whole story of the Vatican Cameos incident, which even the Watson of my previous life decided not to serialize in the magazine.

In this life as well, based on my memory, I succeeded in finding the music box in the same place.

Of course, I cannot reveal to Jane Watson that I came from the future, so I would have to make something up suitably.

“Considering how solid the Zion Clan’s internal unity is, that an item like this leaked outside can truly be called a miracle.”
“I’m curious what process you went through to obtain this.”
“The whistle blower who leaked the secret and his errand-runner asked that everything be kept secret. I also didn’t try to find out who they were.”
“Well, if that’s so……. Their lives would be on the line too.”
“Thank you for understanding.”

Instead of revealing everything in detail, I decided to guide Watson’s gaze in a different direction.

Small music boxes used in this era were broadly divided into two types.

Cylinder music boxes, made by casting copper into a cylindrical form and inserting steel pins.
Disk music boxes, which reduced the volume they took up by engraving bumps and dips onto a circular metal plate.

Both were made to play music by plucking thin metal plates with pins or protrusions, and the music box made by the Vatican’s Judas belonged to the former.

-Click.

When the lid opened, thick steel rods revealed themselves.

“A cylinder music box. How on earth did he hide the mnemonic verses in here……. Is the inside of the rod hollow?”
“No.”
“Then what…….”
“It would be best for you to find out for yourself.”

I wound the spring a few times and released the clamp, and the music box began to play, but only a discordant sound rang out, with both melody and rhythm all wrong.

Watson looked disappointed for a moment, but then raised her eyebrows and snatched the music box from my hand.

“Could this, perhaps—”

With her gloved hand, she fetched an ink bottle and a notebook, then took out the thick cylinder fitted into the music box and pulled out all the thin steel pins attached to its surface.

-Cheolpeok!

Watson dipped the cylindrical steel rod into the ink bottle, shook it off a few times, then immediately opened the notebook and rolled it across the page.

“My God.”

What was completed was a rectangular diagram.

Watson set the Indulgence Talisman beside it, compared the sizes, then sighed.

“It matches perfectly…….”

The spots where the steel pins had been pulled out were the vital points of the Essence Circuit.

The shallowly engraved lines and letters on the cylinder’s surface were indicating the route and mnemonic verses for injecting internal energy into the Indulgence Talisman.

This was the key to releasing the vast Lily Essence and song sealed within the talisman.

“Congratulations, Watson. You are now looking at one of the most valuable secret manuals in Europe.”

It was the moment an enormous price was placed upon Watson’s brain.