Seal of the Four-Colored Horse (8)

Watson bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, the pain clearing his mind for a few seconds.

By the flickering candlelight, he saw that Pastor Austin's pale skin had blossomed like jasmine, with writhing pink flesh buds pouring from every scar on his body.

Those clumps of flesh swiftly twisted and grew, forming baby-soft white hands and curled toes.

An even more intoxicating fragrance began to fill the air.

Finally.

One cultist trembled as he bit into the clumps of flesh.

The next second, his body was wrapped in flesh and transformed into a fresh puddle of blood and meat, merging into it.

It was as though some switch had been flipped.

The cultists who had originally been subdued began crawling toward the flesh clumps, including several police officers.

They couldn't stay here any longer!

Watson forcibly suppressed the surging hunger within him. The cross around his neck felt cold against his skin, slightly soothing his restless appetite.

He knocked out three colleagues crawling toward the altar with knife-hand strikes, then dragged them through the pool of blood by their collars.

When the church doors were within reach, Watson could not help looking back. Holmes's silver-handled cane sword was hacking through the fleshy tumors, and blood had already soaked through his black coat.

The sight made Watson burst toward the outside even faster.

He had to call for reinforcements quickly.

This cultist ritual had truly summoned an Abomination. If it were allowed to keep growing, who knew how many people would die throughout Southwark District.

And Sherlock.

Even with the protection of the talisman, he would not be able to hold on much longer.

Panting, Watson reached for the Signal Gun. A brilliant flare appeared above the fog-shrouded Southwark District.

The doctor clenched the cross between his teeth and turned back once more.

Since he could still endure it, he could save even more people.

[The detective stopped the monster from escaping, but his talisman has already cracked.

The inspector did not run, and now he cannot escape either.

The doctor has been saving people. Just moments ago, the person he saved bit his arm.

Without question, our operation is on the verge of failure...]

The Diary clearly described the collapsing situation on the other side, while the silver thread pointing toward home was also on the verge of breaking.

Inspector Lestrade's situation was extremely dire.

Ye Yan tightly gripped the strange little knife in his hand, caught in a tangle of conflicting emotions.

Should I go support them?

This thought had not come from a rush of hot blood or a desire to charge in recklessly. It was because he truly possessed something that could save lives, though it required taking an enormous risk.

Shell-Opening Blade. That was the name of the little knife in his hand.

It was a peculiar knife whose blade was wrapped in white, web-like fuzz. Whenever Ye Yan held it, he could feel those threads pulse rhythmically like arteries.

It seemed like a living thing.

And in a certain sense, this oyster knife truly could be considered half alive. It had already bound itself to Jules, and they served as each other's shelter.

Therefore, Ye Yan could not put it into his consciousness space to inspect its information.

But this knife was undoubtedly a Curio.

Jules had used this knife to cut open a horse's belly, open a door, and escape the pursuit of the Sunset Church.

He had told Ye Yan that the Shell-Opening Blade had initially been nothing more than an ordinary oyster knife. Its only special trait was that it had accompanied him for nearly ten years.

It was not until that day, when the cultists forced him to kill himself as a sacrifice, that the Shell-Opening Blade revealed its extraordinary nature.

The blade first severed the chains binding his body, then pierced through the ritual leader's temple, and finally carried him out of the Sunset Church branch headquarters alive.

This suddenly reminded Ye Yan of an easily overlooked note in the introduction to Soul Essence:

"Most other things possess far simpler souls."

Perhaps Jules's knife had indeed been utterly ordinary at first, but years of use had bestowed spirituality upon it, while the cultists' blood sacrifice had happened to awaken the knife's sleeping soul.

Objects became Curios because they possessed souls, not because becoming Curios gave them souls.

He suddenly understood this truth.

The Shell-Opening Blade was powerful, but using it came at a severe price.

Jules was only in his forties, yet using it to escape had turned his hair completely white, making him look like a little old man.

Besides that, it had one fatal mechanism.

The unknown doors it opened led to random destinations.

If Jules had not accidentally awakened a mysterious ability during the cultists' ritual and bound the knife to himself, it might have teleported him to some random place.

As for anyone else, it depended on luck.

Perhaps it would be a remote mountain forest, perhaps the abyss of the sea.

If the user was unlucky, they might very well die the moment they arrived.

But Ye Yan was different.

The ability granted to him by the Principle of Guidance was to point the way.

When he used the Shell-Opening Blade as a coordinate medium and locked onto the cultists' gathering place, he knew he could use the knife to arrive there with precision.

This meant that, as long as he moved quickly enough, he could save people and open a door to leave, just like Flying Thunder God.

He was different from the cultist who had died before.

Ye Yan could not sit idly by and watch a good person who truly existed before his eyes die like that.

Call him sentimental, or call him hypocritical.

But he believed that any ordinary person with principles in his position would become similarly conflicted.

Otherwise.

The trolley problem would not be so difficult to solve.

He had only three seconds to think.

The silver coordinate thread representing Lestrade on the Compass was like a fishing light in a storm, liable to vanish at any moment.

He held the key to saving people in his hand.

But what he needed to bear was the cost of his lifespan, as well as the risks brought by the terrible battlefield situation.

Perhaps he should wait a little longer.

Wait until the Diary wrote down the key to breaking the deadlock, or until some other turning point appeared?

In the end, Ye Yan stopped thinking.

He cast all calculations of gains, losses, pros, and cons out of his mind, because they had never been what truly mattered to him.

There was only one thing he had ever cared about.

Going home!

Lestrade could not die. Watson could not die. Holmes absolutely could not die.

They represented the marks of "home."

Without them, how could I find the coordinates to return home?

Fear and dread of death lingered in his heart, but whenever Ye Yan thought of the hopeless future of dying in a foreign land and never returning, his eyes filled with determination and resolve.

No one could stop him from going home.

No one!

If anyone tried to stop him, then he would crush every obstructing stumbling block into dust!

Just as Ye Yan was about to act, Jules beside him seemed to have anticipated what he intended to do. He reached out and pressed down on Ye Yan's trembling wrist, his eyes filled with pleading.

"Don't go. Please, don't go. Even if all those people die, what does it have to do with us?!"

The old man's lips trembled as one hand reached for the Shell-Opening Blade. "If you don't want them to die, let me go. I'll open the door for you!"

Ye Yan stopped the old man. When his fingers touched the other man's equally trembling hand, he paused. "Uncle Jules, others will die from using this knife. With your lifespan, using it one more time will kill you too."

"And if I open a door once, I'll only grow up a little."

Old Jack, who had been silently crying, raised his head.

He felt that he ought to stop a good child from doing something foolish, but he opened his mouth and ultimately said nothing.

"Wait for me to come home."

Ye Yan showed a strained smile.

"We'll find a way to pay back all the debts we owe."

Jules trembled. Every word of persuasion seemed pale and powerless before the words "come home."

As he watched Ye Yan's resolute back, he suddenly realized that this stubborn youth was gambling for a place to return to, for a bastard like him.

How ridiculous.

So there was still someone in this world who remembered to take him home.

The knife tip sliced across the cabin door, and Ye Yan spoke the incantation for opening a door. "Solid things always have flaws."

As his words fell, ripples suddenly spread across the door before him.

The hem of Ye Yan's clothes fluttered without wind.

The entwined white fuzz suddenly came alive, spreading like a spiderweb and piercing into the veins on the back of his hand. In an instant, it became scarlet roots that throbbed and grew beneath his skin.

He saw the scene beyond the door.

Inside the dim church filled with crimson light, a long carpet paved in blood stretched all the way to the doorway. Directly ahead stood a bizarre Statue of the Virgin, and the Holy Infant in her arms wept tears of blood.

Yet behind him, Jules's pupils reflected an entirely different scene.

The darkness within the door and the Radiance outside it intertwined here. Within the hazy transitional space, a figure stretched and warped grotesquely, like dough pulled apart by invisible hands, before finally turning into a beam of light swallowed by darkness.

This was the first time Jules had watched someone pass through a "door" as an observer, and he could feel the Shell-Opening Blade's delight.

There was a sense of closeness mixed with eager excitement.

This was feedback Jules had never received when using the Shell-Opening Blade before.

He had used it to escape, while his nephew used it to forge ahead.

Perhaps he was the Shell-Opening Blade's owner, but the person most suited to this knife was undoubtedly his nephew.

"You damned thing..."

Jules cursed hoarsely, not cursing Ye Yan, but the version of himself who had chosen to flee all those years ago.

"Th-that was..."

Old Jack stared wide-eyed. Even he, who prided himself on having seen much of the world, was stunned by the sight before him.

"Damn it!"

Jules shouted at Old Jack.

He grabbed a bottle of liquor and smashed it against the cabin wall. Glass shards and cheap whiskey splashed across both their faces.

"My nephew's gone off to be a stupid savior, but his uncle is a complete and utter bastard!"

"Listen, Old Jack!" Jules grabbed Old Jack by the collar. "If my nephew doesn't make it home in the end, I'll fight you old bastard to the death first, then I'll go fight those Londoners to the death, and finally I'll send every one of those damned cultists straight to hell!"

Holmes was breathing heavily, and his arm was already so sore that he could barely lift his sword.

His judgment had been wrong.

This was not an immature Abomination. It was a fully grown adult Abomination that refused to be born.

This completely violated the Sanctuary's archival records.

Under normal circumstances, once an Abomination matured, it would be eager to emerge and greedily search for prey.

It was an existence that violated every known rule.

But there had to be a reason behind such an abnormality.

A sharp light flashed in Holmes's eyes as, despite his trembling, his blade once again severed the newly grown limbs of the flesh clumps.

As long as he killed this abnormal specimen, he could obtain its corpse through dissection and investigate the secret behind this Abomination's defiance of biological instinct.

Therefore, I must find its core.

The Light in the Skull shone brightly once more.

The mind is everything I am. The body is merely an accessory.

Holmes silently recited this creed, forcibly suppressing the hunger and thirst surging through his body.

His gaze swept inch by inch across the writhing, twisted flesh clumps before him like a dissecting knife, searching among those nauseating folds for the fatal flaw hidden within.

There!

Silver light stabbed into the depths of the flesh mass.

However, the sensation transmitted through the blade made Holmes's pupils contract sharply.

"Shell?" He frowned deeply as the sword edge scraped against some unknown substance with a piercing screech. "And it can actually withstand an enchanted sword infused with the spiritual substance of 'Sharpness'?"

Holmes wanted to pull out his sword and retreat.

But at that moment, the flesh clumps on the monster's body erupted into chaos, wildly growing limbs and dragging both the detective and his cane sword toward itself.

Feigning weakness?

So this monster possessed a certain degree of intelligence?

Even as he was about to be swallowed by the flesh clumps, Holmes continued calmly analyzing every detail exposed by the monster. His mind was like a precisely operating, cold machine, seemingly indifferent to everything.

Except for one thing.

He only hoped the Abomination would not eat his brain.

He thought.

Screech—

The sound of flesh tearing apart was especially piercing.

Ye Yan, who had just landed, slashed out fiercely. He imagined the grotesque mountain of flesh before him as a fish ready for slaughter, gutting it like a cruel butcher with bloodstained hands.

Ye Yan's hand was trembling.

But the speed of his blade continued to increase.

He could feel a strange hunger budding within his body, and it involuntarily reminded him of the chill that had affected him the last time he killed a Walking Corpse.

If he did not deal with this monster quickly, he would likely lose his mind.

Shell-Opening Blade was excited.

Ye Yan sensed Shell-Opening Blade guiding his movements, its tip slicing through flesh as though it were alive.

The moment the edge plunged into the lump of flesh, a slimy sensation traveled up the blade. The bloated mountain of meat suddenly convulsed violently, countless irregular bulges swelling across its surface.

Then, the blade struck something hard.

A piercing shriek came from within the meat mountain, followed by a great gush of bloody fluid spraying from its bloated body.

"Thump, thump—"

A beating heart shot from a crack in the mass of flesh and lunged straight at Holmes's face.

But Holmes did not dodge.

Because the talisman on his body had completely shattered.

There was no time.

Ye Yan used the Compass to mark the flesh still clinging to Shell-Opening Blade, directly locking onto something hidden within the heart.

The throwing knife flashed before his eyes.

A precise hit.

Shell-Opening Blade nailed the heart firmly to the ground.

Thick plasma flowed slowly from the wound like melted Honey buttercream, carrying a forbidden allure that continuously assaulted Ye Yan's sense of smell and sight.

This was bad.

Ye Yan wanted to restrain the urge to devour it, but his body moved toward it of its own accord.

A half-human, half-insect Abomination struggled to crawl upright.

Its scythe-like shell gleamed metallically beneath the Lamplight. Like a fish out of water, it desperately crawled toward the mass of flesh, only to stiffen motionlessly a few inches from the blood.

So that was it.

This Abomination could not breathe in the air.

With the Abomination's death, Holmes briefly regained his sanity, only for his thoughts to come to an abrupt halt.

He saw a ragged young man slowly kneel down, his face twisted as he stuffed the Abomination's corpse into his mouth.

Though the other man's build and appearance had changed considerably, Holmes still recognized his identity through certain details about him.

Ewan Dalmons.

He raised his hand and knocked the young man unconscious with a punch.

The moment Ye Yan collapsed, the detective used his last shred of clarity to sever his brain's control over his body.

Like shutting down a machine that had gone out of control.

So when Watson rushed in with a cross clenched between his teeth, he found that the battle was already over.

The bizarre sight before him gave him a strange expression.

A vaguely familiar stranger lay on the ground, half a grotesque insect limb still in his mouth. Even unconscious, he continued to chew fragments of shell without awareness.

Meanwhile, Holmes knelt beside the young man in an unnatural posture, staring blankly up at the sky.

His muscles spasmed and twitched from time to time, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Whenever he tried to brace himself and stand, his uncoordinated limbs sent him crashing heavily back down.

It seemed he had missed many important things.

Thinking this, Watson hurried over and slung one man over each shoulder.

Never mind.

He would get them out first.