Heavenly Demon Holmes: London’s Subjugation

I will seek a method of training that can prevent illness, rather than a medicine that cures it.

-Louis Pasteur-

Though it had been some time since the ball ended, the Homeless Clan’s newsboys still cried their extras in the street.

It was rather amusing to see the Homeless Clan, which ruled the yellow press, scattering sensational articles without stint, such as a special on those eliminated from the Royal Palace ball.

As the British Empire’s territory expanded, London had come to be called the greatest metropolis in the world, yet those who lived here also had to endure the shadow of that prosperity.

The gap between rich and poor, and the vicious Kung-Fu crimes that filled the front page, among other things.

In a city full of things that cast shadows on the faces of ordinary people, it was always such small laughable matters that breathed life into it.

If not at times like this, when could one freely mock and jeer at those in high places.

If one did not provide chances like that, from time to time, to vent the resentment built up in a class-bound society, something truly unpleasant was bound to happen. In that sense, the upper-class brats who were photographed in their sorry state after being dumped into the Thames and preserved in print could be called the greatest beneficiaries of such special features.

I said as much to Watson, and she gave me a pleasing response.

“Indeed, there is sense in it. Before your insight, I can only bow my head.”

She said that whatever the parties themselves thought, it was certain that, just as I claimed, the scions of great houses and the disciples of great clans becoming entertainment did help stabilize society.

Beyond that, we spoke of many things during the twenty-five minutes of our ride.

Because we could not speak freely at Buckingham Palace as we usually did, both Watson and I were pouring out words as though a dam had burst.

“So that is why the old masters are known to the world as dead……”

The first topic, as expected, was the fact that masters who had already washed their hands with a gold basin1 and completed their funerals, such as Sir Newton and Sir Maxwell, were alive and well, and the story entangled with it.

After I pointed out that the Homeless Clan’s newspaper, which sometimes even printed ridiculous rumors, served as an effective outlet for discontent, Watson said that the survival of the royal house and the aristocracy required the support of ordinary people as something indispensable.

That led naturally to the story of the Factor VIII Rush that had once swept Europe.

“Yes. To prevent chaos, they had no choice but to cut ties with the martial world and vanish.”

“True. It is not wholly beyond understanding. To compare oneself to others and envy them without end is part of human nature, and if they heard another lived long, they could not have borne it.”

Having heard the old masters’ circumstances, Watson nodded as though she understood.

Immortality has been a dream that has captivated countless people across all times and places.

And the frenzy that consumed Europe was the turmoil that arose when the tale spread widely that if one obtained the Factor VIII, one could enjoy eternal life.

The hands and feet of power-seekers pursuing eternal life, and those who sought to wring high prices from those who desired it, committed all manner of crimes in the name of searching for the Factor VIII.

They attacked the direct descendants of the Asian Kung-Fu Generation2, or rummaged through places where traces remained, pursuing clues to the Factor VIII without regard for means or method.

In the end, the leaders of Europe’s nations and the heads of the great clans, to quell that dreadful uproar, formed a treaty under the mediation of the perpetually neutral Alps Wu-Tang Clan and had to forbid research into pills five through eight.

The reason the martial world’s leaders could not simply control opinion and spread falsehoods that the Factor VIII was mere fantasy was simple.

By then, a considerable number of duelists had already found the method for making the first pill, and it had become known that a few pioneers had completed and consumed the fifth.

That men like Sir Newton, who enjoyed longevity regardless of the Factor VIII’s effects (probably), hid their tracks and feigned death was to indirectly show that the limited ban on Factor VIII research applied equally to the martial world’s masters.

It was akin to declaring indirectly that no matter how high one’s realm, one would not overcome the limits of allotted lifespan by the power of medicine.

“I do not wish to see people again abandon home and work to chase the Factor VIII…… Yet as a physician, I must say it pains me, for it seems the treaty slowed the progress of medicine.”

“I agree. Whether Kung-Fu or medicine, the craft itself is not guilty. Falling to inner demons, and causing trouble, in the end it is always people.”

After the treaty, only pills one through four of the Factor VIII were permitted for research and use in European Murim.

Her Majesty gathering the Factor VIII in secret was indeed to treat Prince Albert’s illness, but it was a clear violation of the treaty.

In other countries as well, those who held power and capital were likely still secretly searching for pills five through eight, so it would not be fair to blame only Her Majesty, but if it became known, the Sword Queen would struggle to keep her throne.

But……

‘To cover a sovereign’s shame is also the duty of one who is a subject.’

As a gentleman, there is no need to volunteer a lady’s secret to the world.

Above all, at present it is to my advantage to guard Her Majesty’s secret.

To face Moriarty, I will likely need her help.

Her Majesty tried to seize the secret of the indulgence talisman through a wager even while knowing my life could be taken by the Zion Clan, so I felt no guilt merely for deciding to make use of Her Majesty.

There was something else important now.

“Still…… it is fortunate that not all eight Factor VIII are forbidden. Seeing that you could secure your share separately like this.”

I lifted the small wooden box beside me and handed it to Watson.

Watson opened it, and with a deeply moved expression, her eyes brimmed red.

“Medicamentum Communionem…… If I take this, I may be able to remove more of the yin nails that block my blood paths.”

Watson, who had fainted after meeting Professor Louise earlier, had cried once upon waking when she saw the Medicamentum Communionem.

She could not have imagined she would obtain an elixir usable for treating her Severed Meridian Syndrome at the Royal Palace ball.

“You can remove it for certain, so be at ease. It is teachings given by none other than Professor Louise, who directly opened my minor meridians.”

“Thanks to you, I have gained a fortunate encounter once again. I do not know how to express this gratitude……”

Watson, her face flushed, placed her right hand over her chest.

As though trying to calm the pounding of her heart.

……No. Was she trying to feel the beat?

Suddenly, I recalled the day I first met Watson in this world.

Her pulse was weak, and her complexion more pallid than it was now.

Though she was a human being with all four limbs intact, only limping on an injured leg, when I closed my eyes and examined her by Qi-sense, her meridians were packed with Yin-Qi, and she felt like an incomplete half-life.

But now, I could feel a somewhat harmonized energy.

A sign that her Severed Meridian Syndrome was being treated, if only partially, and she was drawing closer to a normal human being.

‘We removed only one nail, and yet the side effects improved greatly. Which means, if all nine nails vanish, Watson……’

I saw great possibility in her.

Watson was still at first-rate, but if she were fully freed from the shackles of Nine Yin-Qi Nails, she might leap to a far higher realm.

“I look forward to the day we erase the second nail with the Medicamentum Communionem.”

“If we keep pulling them out one by one like this, I might soon run about without a cane, like the old days.”

“Of course. The season and the solar terms are on your side as well.”

At my words, Watson made a startled expression, as though she had only then remembered what day it was.

“Now that you say it, you are right!”

Summer drawing near meant that the nature of the natural essence flowing between heaven and earth was rushing toward Yang.

It did not merely mean the temperature rose.

Summer was the season when fire energy was most vigorous among the Five Elements.

That patients with excessive Yin improved over the three months from June through late August, and that intensive treatment for them was focused in that period, was because natural essence greatly aided the correction of Yin-Yang balance.

Therefore I too had to obtain Extreme-Yang elixirs to give Watson over the next three or four months and proceed with the treatment.

“Shall we make it our goal to remove at least up to the fourth nail during the summer?”

“It would be welcome to me, but I wonder if you’ll be all right…… Did you not collapse the last time, the moment the treatment ended?”

“Anything is difficult at first. I am used to it now, so there is no need to worry.”

It was only about half true.

It was true that when we removed the nail embedded in Watson’s blood paths, I entered Faust Moment for the first time and gained insight, but repeating the same work many times in a short period was no small burden even for me.

But as a gentleman, I could not refuse a matter upon which my friend’s life depended.

“Th-then I will not refuse. So long as the medicine is sufficient……”

“As for medicine, do not worry. I will obtain it, one way or another.”

Fortunately, I had two more elixirs that held Extreme Yang-Qi.

The first was the venom of the Blue-Eyed White Snake.

Of course, this was not something I could give Watson before studying it properly.

Even if I had the White Worm brew an antidote, the nature of the energy contained in the venom was too rough, and I would have to find a method so Watson’s blood paths would not be harmed.

The second was the Millennium Nitroglycerin Nobel had handed over.

For the same reason as the snake venom, this too could not yet be given to Watson.

That strange artificial elixir that built internal energy in the middle Elixir Field was exceedingly tempting to me.

The Renewal Lion Method I had learned was a supreme method that could absorb vitality fully from any elixir.

But building internal energy in the middle Elixir Field was a method most duelists had never mastered.

The reason Nobel threw me only the elixir and did not hand over a manual was likely to test me.

He likely meant to watch whether I, who had grasped a new Kung-Fu principle upon seeing that he could circulate energy not only through meridians but through blood vessels as well, could discover on my own the proper method of taking the Millennium Nitroglycerin.

Until I found it and could pass it on to Watson, I could not administer the Millennium Nitroglycerin.

“Remarkable confidence. Yet what you say is strangely reliable.”

“Did you not doubt when I said I won the match with Her Majesty earlier?”

“That is a wholly separate matter……!”

As I teased Watson suitably, the carriage had already arrived at Baker Street.

However, just after I took Watson’s hand and helped her down from the carriage.

-Clack!!

All at once the lodging-house door flew open, and Mrs. Hudson rushed out.

“Madam.”

“Dr. Watson!! Dr. Watson!! Hurry and look at this!!”

Mrs. Hudson ignored me, ran straight to Watson in her dress, and thrust a thick document envelope into her hands.

The name written on the front was exceedingly familiar.

1. TL/N: Washed one’s hand in a gold basin is the Chinese term for retire, usually in martial affairs, or organization affairs such as crime ️

2. TL/N: The first generation of duelists, the people of European Murim ️