Tobacco

Rumors of the martial world are like a kind of smoke scattered by a pipe and tobacco leaves, nothing but the foul hobby of a smoking Kung-Fuist.
-George Eliot-

“…….”

Watson was silent for a while.

It seemed she could not believe that a secret manual that could be traded for the highest price in Europe was lying right before her eyes.

“My mind went blank for a moment, so I didn’t properly hear what you said. Will you say it once more?”
“As much as you like.”

I repeated exactly what I had just said, without missing a single syllable.

“Ah.”

Watson let out a short groan like a broken music box, then froze with her mouth hanging open.

As if she had been struck in both the mute point and the paralyzed point at once, Watson turned into something no different from a wooden dummy, and it was so funny that I let out a snort without thinking.

“Pull yourself together, Watson.”

When I grabbed her shoulders and shook her a few times, Watson’s head bobbed front, back, left, and right like a broken doll.

“Eueueueuh……. I didn’t see anything……. Truly.”
“From the way you say that, it seems you’ve memorized all of the Vatican Cameos.”
“Damn this memorization! Why didn’t it show itself when I was at University College London?!”
“Is it not something you brought upon yourself……? You were so curious that I had no other method but to tell you.”
“Again! You’re saying such irresponsible words again!”
“In the first place, would it not have sufficed to leave the cylinder quietly inside the music box…….”
“How can a person possibly endure curiosity……!! Say something that makes sense! When the secret the Vatican guarded for hundreds of years is right in front of my nose!”

Watson rattled off shameless words.

“Would you endure it?!”
“That—”

Hm. Thinking carefully, it did seem normal not to endure it.

After all, it was a secret worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and if you left that alone, you wouldn’t be human.

“My apologies. I ended up asking for something common sense deems impossible.”
“As long as you know.”

Watson’s curiosity was exceptional, but going against human nature was impossible.

I decided not to blame her.

“Wait……if I sell this secret outside…….”

Watson fidgeted in anxiety for a while, but then, as if coming to her senses, jerked her head up.

“Holmes. Do you remember what Her Majesty the Queen offered as the price for this secret?”
“She offered gold equal to my body weight.”
“Hiiiii……!!”

Clutching her cheeks tight with both hands and gaping wide, her eyes were stuck to the ceiling.

“My God, how much is that! Isn’t it enough to buy a mansion with a yard on all eight sides!”

The way she rose on tiptoe and shook her head violently back and forth was like an evil cultist.

“Now it seems it’s finally sinking in.”
“Uaaaaaaaah!!!!”
“However, from now on you must be even more careful in word and deed. As long as you live with me, you and Mrs. Hudson will also be watched by those who covet the Vatican Cameos.”
“Why are you only saying something that important now?!”
“Do you……have no such thing as thought?”

Even when we returned from Buckingham last time, I sensed plenty of pursuers, so how had she been living so carefree all this while.

What was fortunate, at least, was that Her Majesty the Queen had sent SIS agents and palace maids to prevent suspicious persons from approaching Baker Street.

Even if she couldn’t have it herself, she was not the sort to let other forces steal the secret manual, so Watson and Mrs. Hudson would not be kidnapped and made into hostages.

In any case.

“Will you believe now that I trust and rely on you enough to reveal even my most important secret, Watson?”
“I believe it now……. Haa, now I can’t even go to work with peace of mind…….”

I wondered whether I should reveal that there were SIS agents who protected Watson even on her way to work, but keeping silent seemed more amusing, so I shut my mouth.

“It’s been nothing but unimaginable stories today. The matter of your demonic Kung-Fu, and even the Vatican’s secret…….”

Since Watson said she had memorized it all, the page I had rolled the music-box cylinder across no longer seemed necessary.

-Hwa-reuk.

Only after I picked up the page whose ink had begun to dry and burned it with Buddha Fire did I withdraw the Qi curtain.

“Give me a moment to think. There’s so much information, I think it will take a bit longer to accept it.”
“As much as you like.”

Watson entered her bedroom with a tense face and closed the door.

I returned to my bedroom at once without making a sound of footsteps and picked up John Watson’s scattered manuscript.

Then I took out the page bearing Watson’s handwriting and hid it in secret.

When The Strand Magazine’s editorial office came to the boarding house, Watson would recall this matter again, but if I hid John’s traces like this, she would not come to harbor doubts about her twin brother’s movements.

Someday, when she finished preparing to accept everything, then I too could speak of the secrets of Regression and John Watson, but for now it was premature.

It was enough that I alone knew the clue to John’s whereabouts.

Surely, someday the time would come when I meet him again.

If that day came soon, it would be joy beyond measure, but as long as John was deliberately hiding his trace, it was first to discern what was in his heart.

That he had never come looking for me until now meant either he had a reason he could not come to Baker Street, or his memories of his previous life were not intact, one of the two.

Perhaps both, as well.

I sat quietly in the chair and took out my pipe for the first time in a while, and lit it.

Now that I had confirmed John crossed over to this world, I had to find him by any means necessary.

This was as important as bringing down Moriarty, no, more important than that.

But before that, I needed to control the risk factor that existed in my head.

-Jjireureu.

As a test, I sent a tiny amount of Essence through my left arm, but there was still no response.

It was the same when I tried to move the arm.

The sensation of a sharp pain piercing through my shoulder.

“Haa…….”

It was only irritating to think I had to live like this for several days on end.

Since I could use only my right hand, even just now, when I used Buddha Fire to light my pipe, it took twice as long as usual.

It was something I could do with Poltergeist, but right after suffering Qi Deviation, I didn’t want to waste Essence.

“If I cannot rein in the doctor persona, I will suffer something similar next time as well.”

How would my master have dealt with it?

That thought only lasted a moment.

I shook my head fiercely.

Phileas Fogg is Phileas Fogg, and Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock Holmes.

No matter what his method was, I had no reason to follow it exactly.

As tobacco smoke spread, I closed my eyes and sank into thought.

I needed to call up a way to stop the doctor persona’s rampage, using all my experience and knowledge.

‘Until now, the most effective method was to continually consume expensive elixer…….’

To be honest, this was the very part my master emphasized most when transmitting the Renewal Lionheart Method.

Because his theory was that if one had sufficient internal energy, one could live without issue even if one expended power on sealing the doctor persona.

He likely never experienced the problem I was facing now.

He raised his realm while fully keeping the doctor persona sealed, and in the end achieved 탈마.

The problem was that I could not walk the same path as him.

For some reason, the doctor persona sealed in my head possessed strangely strong Intent and martial force.

To the point I had my body’s control partially taken, even though only a small fragment leaked out.

Based on this, the hypothesis I formed was as follows.

Another doctor persona created by imitating the man called Sherlock Holmes.

Could it be that, like me, the original, it possessed intelligence that surpassed the Heavenly Demon Red Dragon Phileas Fogg.

Perhaps the doctor persona, inside the seal of the black book I could not look into, came to realize a way to use the side effects of demonic Kung-Fu in a direction I never imagined.

A thought I would once have dismissed as foolish delusion.

But.

‘If I think about what Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s Kung-Fu was like, it is not impossible…….’

Amazingly, Pavlov’s Kung-Fu used both extremes of the imbalance created by demonic Kung-Fu, turning them in a direction beneficial to himself.

He succeeded in manifesting ferality by stuffing the loss of reason, the side effect of demonic Kung-Fu, into the soldier persona, and gained reflexes and strength that surpassed human limits.

So if my dark half (I have no choice but to admit it now) found its own path based on the Kung-Fu principles it encountered before being sealed, and that was a special Kung-Fu that used the side effects of demonic Kung-Fu as its driving force.

Suppressing its power through consuming elixir alone would be impossible.

Though I might be able to endure for a time, if I did not quickly reach a higher realm, I might end up handing over full control of my body to it.

‘Even Pavlov, who had long trained similar Kung-Fu, could not freely switch personas when fighting me…….’

If, by luck, I could reach an amicable agreement with the doctor persona (though I suspect it has little reason left, and a great deal of hatred toward me), it might be possible to draw upon its power, but I did not want to harbor vague hope without clear grounds.

The remaining path was only to subdue it, or suppress it by some other method.

Come to think of it, had it moved the chess pieces in the Mind Palace.

If I beat it at chess, would something change?

No. I couldn’t be sure of this either.

No matter that its original was me, once it was tainted by the madness demonic Kung-Fu causes, it would not try to compete fairly.

No. The very definition of a fair match would be outside common sense.

That was something I could know just by recalling how I faced Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

‘Its gloomy aura was not at a level I could bear easily.’

Demonic Qi, which is extremely aligned towards the Yin, was like the Essence I observed in Watson while treating her..

Even if I consumed a large amount of Ultimate Steroids, it would be difficult to face its aura.

Unless it was at the level of sucking in Yang Qi as easily as breathing—

“Hm?”

I noticed that the tobacco mixed with elixir had a different scent than usual.

There was no way anyone changed the mixture. It was medicine that hardly spoiled, so why?

“……So that was it.”

The cause was the proportion of Yang Qi contained in the air.

The influence the Vermilion Bird had caused still hadn’t vanished.

It seemed the reason I could recover from Qi Deviation quickly was that the Yang Qi in the air had grown dense. If so—

-Click.

I opened the safe and took out the precious item I had received as a gift before.

A way to supply Yang Qi as if breathing. This was it.

“I’ll have to pay Sir Harcourt a visit again soon”

When I unfolded the cloth, the elixir revealed itself.

The horn of the Unicorn Salamander, which would become my new pipe through the hands of a sculptor.