I Must Be Mad

London at dusk looked like a torn oil painting.

This era had public libraries and workers' colleges, but it lacked a certain little pamphlet shop, because Mr. Red Ghost had not yet written those two books.

Ye Yan was suddenly overwhelmed by despair.

A thousand times, ten thousand times worse than failing to find Samsara Bookstore.

He should have realized it sooner.

In this world, people who did not exist had become real, so those who originally existed must have become nonexistent. Otherwise, would Conan Doyle not have become a pirated fan-fiction writer who wrote Holmes biographies?

Old Jack continued talking without pause.

Ye Yan did not interrupt him throughout, though his breathing was a little more hurried than usual.

221B Baker Street.

"Oh, little Ewan, come in quickly. You must be starving, right?" Mrs. Hudson welcomed them inside with delight, and Ye Yan caught the scent of food.

It was an extraordinarily lavish dinner.

Ye Yan tasted the chicken curry Holmes had specifically mentioned. It was indeed delicious.

He smiled as he ate.

His hungry stomach was thoroughly satisfied, yet he still felt as though something inside him was hollow.

He waved goodbye to the kindly old woman.

Click—

The key opened the door to the apartment at 222 Baker Street.

Ye Yan returned once more to the "starting point" where he had crossed into this world. The corpse was gone from the floor, and the room was pitch-black.

Carrying a gas lamp, he climbed the stairs step by step.

He pushed open the door.

Ye Yan entered the place where he had awakened. The curtains were still open, just as they had been at the beginning.

But there was no light outside.

He silently sat at the desk and opened the Encyclopaedia Britannica beneath the glow of the kerosene lamp.

The history of this world was not the history he remembered. It was like a reflection in water: seemingly identical, yet everything had changed.

Just as England had still been conquered by the Duke of Normandy.

But it had not been William I, but his father's legitimate son, who should not have existed. The protagonist of the Norman Conquest had changed, along with the Hundred Years' War, the Wars of the Roses, the Reformation...

He could no longer make out what came after, because he could not control his tears at all.

At that moment, he clearly realized one thing.

No matter how similar this world was to his own, it was a completely different otherworld.

Ye Yan felt terrible.

He could not describe what kind of feeling it was.

At the same time, he regretted something deeply.

He had not seriously read those two books when he was in school, to the point that even with a pen in hand now, he could not write them.

He should not have committed the crime of "not studying properly."

Article 44 of the Education Act was truly useful. Educated persons were required to study diligently and complete their prescribed learning tasks, while he, an outlaw beyond the law, had already tasted the bitter consequences.

But he still wanted to write something.

Ye Yan searched through the drawers and found a blank Diary with all its earlier pages torn out.

The yellowed paper still bore traces of violent tearing.

He picked up his pen.

The light cast his shadow onto the wallpaper, like a ghost from another time and space.

By the light of the gas lamp, Ye Yan wrote his first sentence: "February 12, 2024. Otherworld. Cloudy. I have arrived in a world that does not belong to me..."

Stroke by stroke, Ye Yan used neat Chinese characters to record everything that had happened today.

He suddenly remembered the saying he had often heard in his previous life: "What normal person keeps a diary?" He had once scoffed at it as a joke, yet now it had become the lifeline upon which he pinned his hopes.

"I must be mad..."

Ye Yan gave a self-mocking chuckle as the ink silently spread into a small patch of deep blue.

"I actually deluded myself into thinking I could leave a mark in this misaligned world of reflections and change history through it." The faster he wrote, the more scratches his pen gouged into the paper. "But I do not think I am mad, because this world was never normal to begin with."

He should have understood long ago.

As someone who had crossed over from the twenty-first century, he carried an air utterly incompatible with this era.

He had once tried to blend into this world.

But now he realized that if he erased the marks of the "old" upon himself and chose to completely integrate into this "new" world, then was he "Ye Yan," or was he "Ewan Dalmans"?

Then...

Was changing this world truly what he wanted to do?

"No, I do not want to be a savior."

He was not that great.

It was only...

A moment of pity, a moment of indignation, a moment of confusion, a moment of... fear.

He was afraid of forgetting where he had come from.

So he wanted a world that was familiar to him.

But how insignificant could one person's strength be? Even when he was young, he had stopped dreaming of becoming a wandering swordsman roaming the world.

Dreams were like soap bubbles.

They had long since burst one after another beneath the sunlight of reality.

Ye Yan felt like Sun Wukong now.

He had leapt beyond the Six Realms.

But he was clearly not the Great Sage, merely a little demon who usually liked shouting, "The king sent me to patrol the mountain."

Now the king was gone, and so was the mountain.

Those words...

Those slogans that had once been everywhere, printed on the first pages of textbooks, pasted onto the backs of seats, and scrolling across giant screens in public squares—the twenty-four characters.

No one would ever say them to him again.

They would not repeat in his ears, flash before his eyes, or fill every corner of his life.

The pen tip cast a long, thin shadow beneath the gas lamp. Looking almost crazed, he crossed out everything he had written above.

Then, with a force that seemed to engrave it into his soul, he solemnly wrote a new sentence:

"I only want to find a road home."

But...

Did such a road truly exist?

[What is illusion, and what is reality? I need not distinguish them too clearly, because the reflections I have walked through are real as well.]

That strange description from the Diary surfaced in his mind.

At that moment, Ye Yan suddenly gained a profound understanding of those words.

Yes, why did he have to think so much?

Ye Yan's eyes shone with a frightening brightness. His stalled pen began moving across the page once more. "Even if the road does not exist, I will carve one out myself, because..."

"I never belonged here."

When he wrote the final sentence, the quill pen in his Consciousness Space suddenly stirred.

[The first book you have written has been selected. Based on its content, it has been named Travelogue of the Homeless]

[Please choose your pen name—]

So, did he even need to choose?

The prompt had already told him how to return home.

Even if the other two pen names offered broader roads, how could he possibly abandon the path his heart desired?

[You have chosen the pen name: Homeless One]

The instant the prompt appeared, the Pen of Surface and Interior, which could not be removed, manifested in the real world.

Its tip glimmered with a silver-gray light.

A gust of wind from nowhere swept past. The Diary's pages fluttered wildly before finally closing softly.

The quill pen hovered above the cover.

Gray ink flowed by itself like a living thing, outlining a line of elegant cursive script:

Travelogue of the Homeless

After leaving behind the title, the Pen of Surface and Interior dissolved into specks of starlight and returned to his Consciousness Space.

"Is that it?"

Ye Yan was somewhat baffled as he stored the Diary in his Consciousness Space.

[Travelogue of the Homeless]

[Category: First-Tier Book (Incomplete)]

["I have no fixed abode, and my body has nowhere to rely on, but my heart has always known the direction of home." —Homeless One]

[Aspect: Guidance]

Ye Yan had not expected that the diary he had written on a whim would not only become a travelogue under the catalysis of the Pen of Surface and Interior, but would also be granted an unexpected special effect.

"Find the coordinates of a 'home' and leave behind your own mark. You will ascend the steps of the Principle of [Guidance]."

Principle?

What was that?

Ye Yan focused his consciousness on the word "Principle" in the prompt, and moments later, he understood. A Principle was the foundation through which mystery manifested its ideas, influences, and characteristics.

As for the Principle of [Guidance], it contained only one brief sentence: the Compass Rose that guides all things.

All he could do was sigh and say, "Mysticism really is mysterious." Even the prompt's explanation was so obscure and difficult to understand.

Ye Yan scratched his head and reluctantly understood it as a mystical rule called "Guidance," seemingly connected on some deeper level to "direction" and "hope."

The final Aspect was much easier to understand.

It represented the attribute of a mystical item.

To Ye Yan's surprise, he had already completed one mark.

[Coordinate Marks Collected: Detective's Resolve]

[When I was young, I once betrayed a child's trust and left behind only a rotten red apple.

Now, I will never betray any child's trust again, because I am a detective.]