Heavenly Demon Holmes: London’s Subjugation

With a single apple, I will astonish all of Paris.

-Paul Cézanne-

The first photo showed an Orthodox church building, striking for its onion-shaped roof that resembled a candle flame, and the square wall enclosing it.

A thick forest surrounded the building by the water.

It looked like a view of an island floating somewhere on Lake Ladoga.

“Impressive.”

/<Isn’t it?>

It seemed a Butler Agency agent had lofted a device high to take it, and I found myself admiring the fact he hadn’t been caught by the Russians.

Alexander II spent a painful, stifling late life due to repeated assassination attempts, and the security around him tightened to protect him. Yet even in such circumstances, to carry out a mission for six long years in a potential enemy state and even send photos like these, the Butler Agency agent hiding in Kazan Cathedral must have been a master with considerable attainment in stealth arts.

As I continued examining the photo, I soon realized the building in it was extremely familiar.

“Valaam Monastery?”

Mycroft nodded.

Among the islands of Lake Ladoga, there was only one structure of that scale, so it was not difficult to identify.

“Then this photo was taken from above Valaam Island.”

The great and small islands of Lake Ladoga, numbering some six hundred and sixty.

Among them, the Russians grouped about fifty islands together and called them the Valaam Archipelago.

And the largest island of the archipelago, and the origin of its name, was that place, Valaam Island.

It was a place Alexander I frequented with his family, and likewise the late Alexander II.

“To hide a tree, in a forest, is it? It was a place they came and went so often, so it took longer to confirm, if anything.”

As I said earlier, Lake Ladoga is enormous.

Once the Tsar’s boat left the shore and headed toward the center, tracking its whereabouts was close to impossible.

A Butler Agency agent who infiltrated the cathedral under the identity of an Orthodox clergyman would have begun by searching smaller islands that were easier to hide secrets on, rather than the famous Valaam Island.

“By common sense, it’s hard to imagine an Orthodox Tsar doing something suspicious at Valaam.”

Valaam Island was famous not only for its beautiful scenery, but also largely for its religious architecture.

That was because there was a legend that the Apostle Andrew, one of the twelve direct disciples taught by Christ, planted a cross on Valaam Island.

Even Alexander II’s enemies would never have imagined the Tsar was plotting something in a religious holy land.

“No matter how much it was a favorite place, there’s no reason to visit a monastery every week. It stinks.”

It felt new, but I could understand why Mycroft and the Butler Agency focused on Valaam Island.

In his later years, when assassination attempts sharply increased, the late Tsar could not even go into the city without guards.

It had seemed suspicious from the moment I heard a man like that risked danger to go fishing every week with only his son and close aides, and now it turned out fishing was an excuse, and the place he actually stopped at was an island with nothing but monasteries and churches.

No matter how I looked at it, I could only think there was a major secret.

“Then this one is…”

Next, I finished examining the photographs Mycroft had offered.

The second photo also captured a building.

A golden dome and cross gleaming atop the roof. This too was Orthodox religious architecture with an exquisite balance of straight lines and curves.

The church was built on a small islet, and that islet was connected to Valaam Island by a small bridge.

Since I knew the first photo had been taken at Valaam Island, the name of that church was also clear.

“St. Nicholas Skete….”

And the third photo was the one that captured the secret the Tsar had hidden in the lake.

A dim space that seemed to be inside the church. Relying on the faint light of luminous pearls and moonlight, what the camera illuminated was a subject set before icons of saints, splendid beyond measure.

“…A tree?”

In front of the icons, a single fruit tree was growing.

The photo was too blurry to make out details, but seeing only one round fruit hanging there alone, I felt an unusual air about it.

“This is the Tsar’s secret?”

/<Yes.>

To be honest, I didn’t understand.

That tree must have grown by receiving the mysterious energy of heaven and earth and the light of the sun and moon, but if a tree were planted inside St. Nicholas Skete, rumors would have spread long ago among those who follow Russian Orthodoxy.

Yet I had never heard such a story anywhere.

Meaning the tree growing in the church was originally elsewhere, and someone transplanted it.

“It does seem to be an elixir, but it doesn’t look very healthy.”

There were various standards for judging the value of wild elixirs, especially unprocessed plant-based elixirs, but there was one that was widely accepted in the European Murim.

That was that only when a growing elixir had not been touched by human hands would it finally be assigned high value.

There was a reason even an outsider could easily accept. It was because the turbid qi that any human carried inside their body damaged an elixir’s quality.

There were reasons why one who had not built pure internal energy through an advanced internal energy method since childhood would complete Bath Purification and use tools made of materials that existed in a mutually beneficial relationship with the elixir’s vital energy when collecting plant-based elixirs.

And for an elixir that bore fruit on branches like that, there were two taboo actions.

Harvesting it before the fruit fully ripened, or uprooting it from where it originally grew and transplanting it elsewhere.

“The Tsar did a wasteful thing. It must have been a precious elixir.“

To my eyes, the tree planted in St. Nicholas Skete looked like it had met tragedy at the Tsar’s hands, after violating the second taboo.

No matter if it was planted in a place where a dragon vein lay.

No matter if the climate was similar to the place it originally grew.

No matter if they dug up and brought the very soil the tree had rooted in.

Once human hands had touched it, the fruit borne by the tree could not display even half its Potential.

To ruin an elixir’s future, then hide it on a remote island and call it a secret—

“Wait. Don’t tell me the Tsar, even taking every risk…”

A strange premonition tapped at my skull.

Alexander II was not a fool. If anything, he was among the wise.

Perhaps he had a reason he had to transplant the tree, even knowing the elixir’s efficacy would decline.

No.

What if it never mattered in the first place, even if the fruit’s vital energy diminished.

“The photo is dark, so I’ll ask. What is this tree, exactly?”

When I asked, Mycroft answered.

/<By compiling the fruit’s color, fragrance, and shape as determined through the agent’s report, the Butler Agency’s intelligence analysts concluded the fruit in the photo is, with high probability, Golden Apple.>

“What?”

An answer I had not expected. My voice rose reflexively.

“The Golden Apple… exists?”

/<Lower your voice, Sherlock.>

The idea of hiding an apple tree inside a church, something that would make even Spinoza frown, was no longer important.

Someone might say it.

That in a world where the Azure Dragon and Vermilion Phoenix exist, it would not be strange for there to be a tree that bears Golden Apples.

But the sacred beasts whose lineage continued from antiquity, and the Golden Apple, were fundamentally different cases.

Unlike the Azure Dragon whose skeleton was displayed in the British Museum, and the Vermilion Phoenix for which many sightings existed, there was no one who had seen a Golden Apple tree firsthand.

Even regarding the fruit’s efficacy, the traditions about Golden Apples differed by region and had no consistency, so there were hardly any who believed it existed.

The only record about its appearance, fragrance, and color, which Mycroft said he used as his basis, was what remained in the Bowuzhi1, recorded by Zhang Hua of Western Jin under the Sima clan’s rule.

And even that Bowuzhi survived only in parts of a lost original.

“Even when the authenticity of the Bowuzhi isn’t certain, you boldly concluded that the fruit is the Golden Apple from legends.”

/<This is a photo taken at the cost of a master who represents the Butler Agency, losing half his innate essence and his elixir field. Do not insult the only material exchanged for a Kung-Fuist’s life.>

“…”

Mycroft’s eyes, which admonished me, were calmly settled.

“Can you be certain?”

/<Of course.>

“On what grounds. Zhang Hua’s Bowuzhi isn’t enough. At minimum, one more text that explicitly states information on Golden Apple—”

/<A year ago, among the ruins of Pompeii, part of another lost draft of a Bowuzhi was discovered.>

“You mean Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia…?”

A “Bowuzhi,” as its name implies, refers to an encyclopedia that covers countless topics.

And in the Central Plains and in Rome, there were figures who recorded such “Bowuzhi” in different eras.

The author who recorded the Midfield’s’ Bowuzhi was the Jin civil official Zhang Hua, who possessed Tai’a and Longyuan, among the five great famed swords forged by Ou Yezi, the ones Xiang Yu had once held.

Meanwhile, the Roman Empire’s “Bowuzhi” was the work of the great man Gaius Plinius Secundus, famed as a naval admiral and close friend of the emperor, commonly called Pliny the Elder.

Over long years, he left behind a vast quantity of drawings and writings as records, but during publication, Mount Vesuvius erupted.

In his stead after he died saving Pompeii’s commoners, it was his nephew, Pliny the Younger, who organized the remaining manuscripts and released the work to the world.

For this reason, a hypothesis had also been raised that there were drafts of the Naturalis Historia that were lost amid the chaos caused by the eruption.

But.

“As I know it, Pliny’s Naturalis Historia covers humans and animals from Books 7 through 11. Plants begin from Book 12.”

/<You know it accurately.>

“What was published before Vesuvius erupted was Book 10. If Book 11 was later published normally, it would be natural to think it never covered Golden Apples in the first place.”

/<In a jar found in Pompeii’s ash, pages from the draft were left torn out. Content linking Books 11 and 12 was written in Latin on on fine Egyptian papyrus.>

“You’re saying there were pages deliberately omitted?!”

Mycroft nodded in affirmation.

/<An agent who infiltrated the Zion Clan verified the excavation site in person. The relationship between the two beings was so close that it seems he tried to write it on the same page, rather than split it between Book 11, which covers Mysticobiology, and Book 12, which covers plants.>

“That relationship, don’t tell me—”

/<It was a record concerning the firebird and the Golden Apple. The description of Golden Apple matched perfectly with what Zhang Hua’s Bowuzhi covered.>

“……!!”

I had believed the myths where Golden Apples appeared were limited to Norse mythology, Greco-Roman mythology, and Celtic mythology.

That was what I thought.

But I had forgotten.

That there was one more tradition that mentioned the Golden Apple.

“The Golden Apple and the firebird… Golden Apple and the Vermilion Phoenix… That’s it. It was a Russian folktale…!”

Folktales, unlike myths or legends, were stories that required no evidence of any kind, passed down purely for interest, so they were thought to be unreliable.

But if Golden Apples existed in this world, I had to think differently.

In the story about Prince Ivan’s marriage, what the firebird loves to eat is none other than the Golden Apple.

If even a tiny part of what the folktale says is true, then the Tsar’s objective becomes clear.

“He never intended to eat the Golden Apple from the start. The Tsar prepared the apple tree as feed to keep the Vermilion Phoenix bound.”

What Alexander III wants is for the Vermilion Phoenix to nest on Valaam Island.

If the divine bird known as the embodiment of Fire Qi and summer settles at Lake Ladoga, the average temperature around Saint Petersburg will rise sharply.

It means Saint Petersburg’s ports, which froze every winter, will all become ice-free ports.

But at the same time, it also foretold something.

The colossal catastrophe the Tsar would soon bring upon Russia.

“He means to raise a living active volcano at Lake Ladoga. It’s an impossible idea unless you’re a madman.”

/<If the Vermilion Phoenix nests on Valaam Island, Orthodoxy’s holy land, everyone will cheer and call it the reign of a sage king. A Meissen Bespoke crushing move to quell the workers’ backlash.>

“He would tame nature’s power for something like that?”

/<For Alexander III, who seeks to reign as an absolute monarch, it is not something he cannot do.>

I couldn’t hold back a long sigh.

If it was to keep power, did it not matter if commoners were exposed to danger.

“A crown is a frightening thing. Just how far does it make a human arrogant…”

Russian folktales depict the Vermilion Phoenix as a being that gifts humans with both blessing and ruin.

What will the highest-flying bird bring to Britain and Russia, I wonder.

“…I’m worried about Saint Petersburg, but for now, protecting London comes first.”

To twist the Tsar’s plan and find a way out, what is needed is not force, but knowledge.

“I’ll have to seek an expert’s opinion on the Vermilion Phoenix’s ecology. Lend me a carriage.”

/<Where are you going/>

That man should be able to answer my questions.

Britain’s foremost Mysticobiologist, and the son-in-law of the Wedgwood Family.

“I’ll go and meet the Lord of the Lunar Society.”

If it’s Charles Darwin…

1. TL/N: Bowuzhi by Zhang Hua was a compendium of Chinese stories about natural wonders and marvelous phenomena. ️