Baker Street: The Breakpoint Of Gift Shower (2)

In my secret manuals and in French, the word “impossible” does not exist, and the word impossible is not elan.
-Napoleon Bonaparte-

“Hyup.”

I pushed the box fragments aside and looked down at the Cold Stone Creamery Bed.

The heavy stone bed that revealed itself was so white and beautiful it made my eyes ache.

Was it said they made it by shaping an enormous cold jade mined in the far north?

When I first heard from my master the tale of this bed, steeped in such a mysterious legend, I thought it was nothing more than one of the rumors commonly heard in the martial world.

That was only natural, for I encountered the story of the Cold Stone Creamery Bed when I was still only nine years old.

At the time, I lived on the pleasure of my own cleverness. .

A foolish little boy, trapped in his own world and giddy with praise that he was smarter than adults, did not believe in the existence of Father Christmas, and he made it his life’s satisfaction to dismiss and refute any claim that felt lacking in Kung-Fu Physiology grounds as pure nonsense.

So if you told me that in an uncharted land presumed to exist north of Greenland, the ancients mined a mysterious stone, shaped it into the form of a bed, and brought it to the British Empire, how could I possibly believe it?

Naturally, one cannot dismiss all of this as the fault of nine-year-old Sherlock Holmes for being unchildlike.

My master, too, had never presented clear proof to support his story.

He had merely found a clue to the Cold Stone Creamery Bed in the course of investigating and researching old traditions.

Is it really a bad thing to not accept old tales at face value?

In any case, to return to the conclusion, only after I experienced death, and then a strange phenomenon of regressing into the past in a world utterly different from the one I had lived in, did I come to acknowledge my own limits.

If a person can return after death to the past, indeed, to a London that developed in a direction wholly different from the history he knew, then could not the ancients, too, mine a great cold jade in the far north, make a bed, and haul it over?

It is said that although Napoleon, the Archfiend who called himself the Demon Emperor, had brought great chaos to the European Murim, he is still respected by many and praised as a Public Enemy sealed in the Mind Palace.

In my secret manuals and in French, the word “impossible” does not exist, and the word “impossible” is ‘not elan.’

If so, then as a Kung-Fuist living in the Kung-Fu-gentleman nation of the British Empire, I could not lose to a Frenchman.

Just as what remains after erasing everything impossible is the truth, if you erase the word “impossible” from your head, everything becomes possible.

一切由心造 (All things are made by the mind).

Everything comes from the mind.

And though I will say it again, intent is the sovereign.

Does it make sense that the ancients made a bed from a cold stone and dragged it to England? = X

The ancients hated the heat, so they wanted to sleep coolly by any means necessary. = O

Now, do you not feel as if the uneasy mind has suddenly become at ease?

All things in the world change according to how you set your mind.

It means that even if you face an incident you cannot understand, or the person beside you prattles something that sounds like nonsense at first, if you accept it with a flexible mindset, you will not be tormented by the Inner Demon.

“……No, even so, this is a bit much.”

But when I actually beheld the Cold Stone Creamery Bed with my own eyes, I felt as if the resolve I made upon coming to this world, to roam the martial world with an even more flexible way of thinking, was beginning to waver.

-Gooooh!!

Born in a clear and transparent world and shaped by the hands of ancient forebears, this mystery of nature began to suck in the Natural Qi drifting in the air the moment it left the box, with a force that truly resembled a sponge.

I am well aware that various stones, including marble, can hold moisture within.

And likewise, that various rare metals, such as Cold Iron and Dark Iron, absorb the energy of dragon veins underground and come to bear mysterious properties.

But no matter how I thought about it, it made no sense for a lump of stone, finished and processed at least hundreds of years ago, to gulp down Natural Qi so urgently like a living creature.

The speed at which stones and fragments of metal draw in Natural Qi is so slow that humans can scarcely imagine it.

The reason their names all have large numbers like “thousand years” or “ten thousand years” attached is because it truly takes that long for such rare materials to be born.

Yet the Cold Stone Creamery Bed was drinking in the energy of heaven and earth as if it were a living creature.

“My God.”

No matter how I thought about it, it was something common sense deemed impossible unless it was a material cut from a Fantastic Beast.

It could only be called a truly strange phenomenon.

“It would have been enough if I could simply lie down and sleep on it…….”

I stepped closer to the bed made of Cold Stone, and examined it closely.

When I brought my right hand to it, a strange sensation came through my fingertips.

In the aftermath of the Vermilion Phoenix appearing over the English Channel and departing again, London’s air was still warmer than usual, and Yang Qi was abundant as well.

But the stone bed’s surface was strangely cool, and even if I kept my body in contact with it for a long time, or lit Buddha Fire nearby, I could detect no change in its temperature.

It did not draw Essence from my body, but judging by how the balance of yin and yang was maintained, the cold jade was surely absorbing Yin Qi and Yang Qi evenly from its surroundings.

Next, what startled me was the material’s hardness.

-Tung!

As a test, I drew the blade of the Heavenly Demon Cane, made of Cold Iron, and lightly struck the bed with the flat of the sword, and a clear sound rang out.

Unable to resist the curiosity to take a sample for study, I raised a thin Sword Aura and tried to shave off a corner, but astonishingly, the Heavenly Demon Cane’s blade could not cut the bed.

“What kind of nonsense is this…….”

For a ten-thousand year-old Cold Iron blade, one that even cuts enhanced energy to be blocked so easily.

How could jade be this hard?

“……Just what sort of Kung-Fuist was the Ancient Tomb Clan’s founder.”

It was not only the cold jade’s sturdiness that left me aghast.

The bed’s form was far from a crude slab of cold jade cut down to size.

Not only was the British royal seal engraved at the head, ornate carvings were incised all across the bed.

Which meant the ancients processed this hard material.

The very existence of this bed pointed to the fact that their Kung-Fu was no ordinary thing.

“So it wasn’t for nothing that my master coveted this.”

My master had said.

That the King of the British Empire, generation after generation, served as the head of the mysterious sect rooted in Westminster Abbey, the Ancient Tomb Clan, and that none but members of the royal family and descendants of those who contributed to the nation could learn their Kung-Fu.

In truth, even my formidable master could gather little information about the Ancient Tomb Clan, so I, too, knew little.

The reason I broke into a cold sweat answering Her Majesty’s questions when setting the wager stakes before the Sword Debate Chess match was also because, to steer negotiations in my favor, I had to act as if I knew at least something about the Ancient Tomb Clan.

“Still, I don’t know what purpose this was made for.”

For what, exactly, did the ancients carve a lump of stone that could not be cut even with a Ten-Thousand Year-Old Cold Iron sword into the shape of a bed?

In truth, the reason I asked Her Majesty for the Cold Stone Creamery Bed, on top of the secret manual was very simple.

It was because my master wanted it.

Until Her Majesty Queen Victoria acknowledged its existence and promised to give it to me, I still doubted whether the object called the Cold Stone Creamery Bed truly existed, but the moment I received confirmation, I cheered inwardly.

The items my master coveted were without exception Heavenly Substances and Earthly Rarities that could overturn the martial world, divine weapons, or else wondrous treasures fit to be called history itself.

Thus I believed the Cold Stone Creamery Bed, too, must be hiding some secret.

If not, my master would have shared his research with Her Majesty long ago, as the Ancient Tomb Clan’s head.

Without a doubt, he saw through the fact that the Ancient Tomb Clan’s Kung-Fuists did not know the bed’s true value, and concealed the secret.

And the moment I saw that, though uneasy, Her Majesty Victoria still readily bestowed the Cold Stone Creamery Bed upon me, my suspicion turned into certainty.

“So this is what they call Out Of Blue.”

An item even he, once the British Empire’s strongest Kung-Fuist, could not obtain, had come into my hands.

Though I, Sherlock Holmes, still could not defeat Phileas Fogg in Kung-Fu prowess, I wished, at least in this moment, to enjoy the thrill of having surpassed my master.

Now all that remained was for me to uncover the secret of the Cold Stone Creamery Bed that even my master could not unravel.

“That’s right. They wouldn’t pour this much effort into an ordinary bed. The contents of the research document my master found were, as expected, far from the truth…….”

In the old text where my master found information about the Cold Stone Creamery Bed, it was recorded that if one trained an internal energy method atop this bed, the cold jade’s nature would suppress the heart fire, allowing one to devote oneself to cultivation without falling into Qi Deviation.

But to put this much effort into making a bed, of all things, was not an action befitting the ancients.

Humans, by nature, wish to sleep in a comfortable bed.

Persians used waterbeds made from goatskin, Egyptians used ebony beds, Romans used mattresses of hay and wool and the like, and Europeans of the Renaissance era also used soft mattresses.

From mattresses stuffed with cotton gathered by black men who trained Cotton Hand, to mattresses that used springs.

It meant that nowhere in the Western world did anyone prefer a hard bed.

If so.

“Was it not a bed made for people to sleep on…….”

If this was not something made for humans to rest comfortably, then why was the Cold Stone Creamery Bed called a bed?

A few possibilities danced through my head, then vanished.

One hypothesis remained.

Utterly simple, yet an absurd notion that was difficult to arrive at for one whose eyes were stolen by the bed’s form, and who had felt its firmness with his own fingertips.

But if this hypothesis was correct, then even the strange sight earlier, of the Cold Stone Creamery Bed sucking in Natural Qi at a monstrous speed, made sense.

“……It means something is already sleeping inside it.”

It seemed that some unknown life-form was living inside that hard stone bed