Permission From Above (3)

The phrase ‘Madame Cézanne and young Paul,’ written in the letter Mr. Victor Chocquet sent me, ended up laying my private life bare before my father.

-Paul Cézanne, discovered by his father after living with a model nineteen years his senior and having a child at thirty, his father halved his allowance and forced him to abandon his grandson-

-Hwaaak!

The moment Essence-imbued ink added letters to the game record, the booklet’s page poured out a dazzling light.

Then black letters began to appear one by one, slowly, beneath the special rules of the Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem.

When the page’s radiance died down, the faint glow emitted by the letters came into view.

The way the previously recorded game record vanished one character at a time, and the erased ink recombined into new letters and reappeared, was quite fascinating.

“Is this something like Mycroft’s Dusk Ink? No, judging by how sluggish the movement is, this must be the original that hasn’t been improved.”

Unintentionally, I learned where my brother’s Unique Weapon had its roots.

“…….”

If there was one thing I didn’t like, it was that the letters appeared at a pace even slower than I’d imagined.

It looked as though ink were seeping out from within the thinnest paper.

It seemed it would take quite some time for all the letters to appear, but even so, I felt fully satisfied that I had solved the booklet’s riddle.

Come to think of it, I had witnessed a similar sight before.

Yes. When I released the function of the Essence Circuit engraved upon the Zion Clan’s Indulgence Talisman by circulating Essence according to the Vatican Cameos.

“……So it wasn’t for nothing that Her Majesty showed such obsession with the Vatican Cameos.”

The game record Her Majesty bestowed had a secret hidden in the exact same manner as an Indulgence Talisman.

The only differences were that the Indulgence Talisman held an absurd amount of internal energy, and its seal was far more covert and firm. The method itself, creating an Essence Circuit in an object, storing power within it, and giving it a special function, was similar.

“So the Ancient Tomb Clan had noticed long ago that the Zion Clan’s Indulgence Talismans hid a secret. Since they’ve been storing secret manuals by a similar method, I suppose it’s only natural.”

The process itself, opening an Essence Circuit in an object and filling it with internal energy to grant it a function, was so difficult it could not be attempted easily.

And sensing it and breaking the seal was likewise impossible unless one knew the proper method.

However, objects made in this way inevitably contain intent that gives the power direction and purpose.

A master who had reached a high realm and could read traces of intent would have felt something off the moment they touched an Indulgence Talisman.

“Since the method the Zion Clan used to seal the Indulgence Talisman’s Essence Circuit and internal energy was loftier than the method the Ancient Tomb Clan uses to hide secret manuals, their pride must have been quite wounded.”

The Pope who leads the Vatican’s Zion Clan, the seat of Catholicism, and the British King, head of the Anglican Church, have long been famed as Cat And Dog.

It was plain as day that the Westminster Ancient Tomb Clan, what one could call a Queen-Patronized Clan, would, given the chance, stop at nothing to ruin the Zion Clan’s moneymaking.

For that reason, the Westminster Ancient Tomb Clan must have been striving for a long time to solve the riddle of the Indulgence Talismans.

But because the Essence Circuit engraved on each talisman differed slightly from one to another, they likely could not find the method to break the seal and activate its function.

“And that’s only natural, for the Vatican Cameos are a kind of complex equation-trick.”

Every Indulgence Talisman’s Essence Circuit looks, at first glance, tangled like a maze, but once you read its structure and apply the equation-trick, a different value is derived each time.

That was the key to activating the talisman’s function.

It meant that even trying to solve it by brute force, moving Essence randomly to attempt every possibility, would take an absurd amount of time, and even if one succeeded by heaven’s grace, one could not break another talisman’s seal the same way.

A method that could not be reproduced held no meaning, so brute force and all the rest were useless. They never found a way to pierce the seal.

Still, separate from not discovering the Vatican Cameos, the Ancient Tomb Clan may have known the crucial secret that, for the exorcism rite that demanded enormous sums, there was nothing used but a single Indulgence Talisman.

If my guess was right, there was a strong chance the Ancient Tomb Clan had also noticed the purpose behind the Zion Clan spreading Indulgence Talismans across all of Europe.

If the aura of demonic Kung-Fu practitioners hiding here and there reacted with the talisman, tracking became easy, and selling the talismans also brought in massive money, so for the Zion Clan, it would have been killing two birds with one stone.

In the first place, there would have been no shortage of demonic Kung-Fu practitioners who, to conceal their identity, actively paid large sums to buy and carry Indulgence Talismans.

If one could merely track the Inquisitors’ movements, it would not have been difficult to realize that the Indulgence Talismans held some sort of secret.

“By now, the Zion Clan must be regretting the fact that they spread Indulgence Talismans across all of Europe to purge demonic people and make money at the same time.”

What I did at the royal ball must have dealt a great blow to the Vatican Apostolic See.

Because no matter how expensive an Indulgence Talisman was, compared to the cost of an exorcism rite, it was nothing but pocket change.

Once it became known that by unsealing an Indulgence Talisman in a special way, one could clear away the troublesome residual demonic Qi left by a dead demonic fiend, people would no longer offer massive offertory to the Zion Clan.

Since the root cause of killing demonic Kung-Fu practitioners and creating residual demonic Qi in the first place had been the Zion Clan’s Lily Swordsmen, the Europe Murim’s Kung-Fuists and common folk could not help but harbor deep discontent.

Perhaps fearing Zion Clan assassination, those who witnessed the truth at the royal ball were not carelessly wagging their tongues, yet newspapers were already running articles that hoarding of Indulgence Talismans was breaking out everywhere.

I would wager that more than half of those buying Indulgence Talismans were Zion Clan lackeys.

If one had even a little sense, it would not be difficult to predict that if they failed to retrieve the Indulgence Talismans they mass-produced and spread before, the moment the Vatican Cameos became widely known, the Zion Clan’s income source would dry up.

By now, Europe’s big spenders and the Zion Clan must be buying up Indulgence Talismans from each other, driving the price up.

Right after discovering the Vatican Cameos, I secretly bought up used Indulgence Talismans whenever it seemed profitable; thinking of it now, it truly feels like I did well.

It wasn’t so much that I meant to profit from investment, but rather that I thought they’d be useful again and again later. Still, if it came to it, I should consider selling them to obtain a large sum.

The price had already risen to about half the cost of an exorcism rite, so merely disposing of the talismans I owned at an appropriate price would become a considerable amount.

It struck me anew just how great a value the secrets in Watson’s head, and mine, held.

“If I hadn’t known the truth about the Vatican Cameos and the Indulgence Talismans, I wouldn’t have noticed the booklet’s secret.”

The hidden letters were already close to sixty percent revealed.

Looking at what had been added to the special rules, as expected, it seemed I would have to continue solving the Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem on the new premise that the first-rate Kung-Fuist and the Sword Queen had learned the secret manual being revealed from here on.

“And if I had not learned Buddhist Kung-Fu, I could not have excluded intent entangled with power, even with the pure Innate Essence I used to break the booklet’s seal.”

Without the experience and Kung-Fu knowledge I had built up, I could never have come this far.

I still couldn’t tell anything beyond the fact that the secret manual beginning to appear was some sort of sword art, but the booklet itself was a mysterious fortuitous encounter to me.

The reason I, who had not separately completed the training of Twelve Less, excluding twelve emotions, could separate intent from Innate Essence and refine it into the purest power was simple.

Because I had received the essence of Kingswood Kung-Fu from my master, Heavenly Demon Red Dragon Phileas Fogg.

Powerful Kung-Fu, commonly known as a clan’s prized special move or Distinct Kung-Fu, mostly cannot display proper might unless combined with Essence cultivated through a suitable internal energy method, or else they trigger Qi Deviation and threaten the user’s life.

It was the same principle as the world I lived in before crossing to London Murim, where an internal combustion engine only ran when given the proper fuel.

The reason I built pure internal energy through the Renewal Lionheart Method was so that no matter what Kung-Fu or internal energy method I learned, I could transform the stored power in time into Essence with the required nature.

And in the case of Buddhist Kung-Fu, the internal energy needed to perform tricks was Emptiness Essence, imbued with the wondrous principle of mindlessness, created by cutting off the Five Desires and Seven Emotions.

That meant not only the Twelve Less presented as the Ancient Tomb Clan’s life-nourishing method, but also the internal energy refined through it, and Buddhist Kung-Fu, possessed similar, or identical, natures.

Long ago, the royal family granted offices to those who inherited Shaolin Kung-Fu, appointing them to manage the royal hunting grounds.

Moreover, the fact that Shao-Lin Monastery Western Branch existed beneath London was also confirmed through my conversation with Home Secretary Harcourt.

So it would be nothing strange if the Ancient Tomb Clan’s Kung-Fu were influenced by Buddhist Kung-Fu. Rather, one could call it natural.

Fearing Emptiness Essence might not be enough, I refined Innate Essence even more purely and breathed it into the letters, but in any case, I succeeded in breaking the seal, so there was only satisfaction.

“……Thirty minutes. Has that much time already passed?”

And at last, after a long wait, every sentence appeared in full on the booklet’s page.

Starting from the last line of the special rules, I read the newly appeared content from beginning to end.

<Third.>

<The White side’s first-rate Kung-Fuist and Sword Queen are, by the rules, treated as having learned the British King’s Prime Number Swordsmanship in this match.>

<The mnemonic verses of the British King’s Prime Number Swordsmanship are as follows.>

“Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship……?”

A Kung-Fu with a strange name I was encountering for the first time.

The mnemonic verses of the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship were written directly atop the illustration of the chessboard where the White and Black pieces were arranged.

A Kung-Fu fundamentally different from Gibraltar Temple’s swordsmanship, which forced two choices upon the opponent again and again and increased the possibilities without limit.

From two to three, three to five, five to seven, seven to eleven—

“How could such a thing…….”

Without any imposed constraints, it was composed only of lonely numbers divisible by none but one and themselves, producing endlessly branching, varied sword paths from a single stance.

An invincible quick-sword art that even Heavenly Eye Gate’s eye technique could not break.

“……A sword art that makes no sense.”

That was the true nature of the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship.