The Bloodstained Puzzle

Sherlock's gaze followed the tip of his pen as it moved across the map, tracing circles and drawing the route he had calculated in his mind.

"The London Underground map, the tributaries of the River Thames, and the church spires."

"It's not a maze, John. It's a map!"

"Look here, Nana. See the distortion in this loop, the forks in the waterways, the direction the spires point... Now overlay them all!"

In an instant, the answer became clear to everyone.

The arrow ultimately pointed to a clock tower not far from the church. Victor had been right: Emily really wasn't in the church. She was beside it.

Emily had been behind the oak door they had passed. Sitangna recalled what the door looked like and wondered whether Emily had heard their voices at the time.

Everyone snapped out of it and, as if by agreement, felt their chins, afraid they might have drooled through their open mouths and made fools of themselves.

The team leader immediately assembled his team and set out for the location Sherlock had calculated. Before leaving, he gave Sherlock a long look, but Sherlock paid him no mind, frantically replying to messages on his phone.

They had calculated the right location, but the clock tower concealed more than Emily. It also held a deadly trap.

"All right, I understand. I've returned to the hostage. Thank you very much for the device you provided. It's working normally."

Victor shut the church door and took a call on his way back to the clock tower. The person on the other end excitedly told him that the rescue team would soon arrive and asked whether he needed any help.

"No, sir. You've helped me more than enough already. If I survive, I'll thank you in person."

After hanging up, Victor looked at the woman slumped on the floor in the center of the clock tower. Ignoring her flinching, he slowly paced over and sat down on the sofa beside her.

"There's still time if you give me the intelligence key now." He ran his hand absently over the Webley revolver in his hand, carefully wiping away the dust on it. "I don't like using force on ladies."

"Even if I gave it to you, I might not survive. But the Cavendish family would praise my heroic sacrifice." Emily didn't know the value of the intelligence, but she knew what would happen if it leaked.

"Heh. Sacrifice? What if I told you that this heroic sacrifice of yours would cost an entire family their lives? Could you still say that so righteously?"

"What do you mean?" Emily's eyelashes trembled.

Her father had only told her that the intelligence she was holding for safekeeping concerned a serious international money-laundering case. She didn't know the details, and her father refused to tell her.

"Since we're both about to die, I'll let you die knowing the truth." Victor estimated when the rescue team would arrive as he loaded more bullets into his gun.

"Ten years ago, my father was still an honored guest of the Cavendish family, your family's personal adviser. For decades, he helped your family devise strategies, plotting all sorts of shady dealings for you."

"Then that international money-laundering case was brought to the queen's attention. The high-ranking officials involved were brought down with it, and the public outcry was so severe that Britain had no choice but to cut out a cancer to preserve public trust."

"That's how disgusting your father is. To escape punishment, he set his sights on my family, even though my father was the only adviser who tried to stop him from getting involved."

"I was still in college then. Do you remember Sherlock? He and I even sat at the same desk." Victor gave a self-mocking smile.

"I'd just been awarded the best scholarship of the academic year by my department when I heard that my family had gone bankrupt. I naively thought my father's company had simply been mismanaged."

"I thought it was all right, all right. I'd work hard on my research and try to get into a research institute. I'd work hard and earn money to make my family wealthy again..."

"I was such a fool. When you work yourself to death for politicians, bankruptcy is already a sign that everything is about to come crashing down!"

Victor pressed the loaded pistol against the top of Emily's head and looked down at her.

"By the time I got home, I discovered that our family had already become the most hated people in the country. We took the blame for every charge. My father, my maternal uncle, and my paternal uncles were thrown in prison, along with several innocent aunts."

"Can you believe it? There was still stoning in twenty-first-century Britain. We were driven out of our mansion and moved into a shantytown in the slums. Wherever we went, we were recognized. The headshots in the newspapers had exposed our entire family for everyone to see."

"But to get more food from relief, we had no choice but to go out together."

Victor remembered how his mother had once nestled against him, his eyes full of longing. "That was when my mother and my aunt were stoned to death by an angry crowd. Stones from the roadside, food from their shopping baskets, or some other hard objects-I can't remember. They hurt when they hit, and everywhere I looked, there was blinding red."

"My mother still had an unborn little sister of mine in her belly when she died. Are you wondering how I knew it was a girl?" Victor's smile was somewhat manic, but Emily could clearly see tears streaming down his face.

"Those hypocritical guards deliberately arrived very late. Only after dispersing the crowd did they take us to the hospital. My mother and aunt had long since lost their vital signs, and as soon as we got there, they were taken away for autopsies."

"I was the one who asked. I said, please cut the child out of my mother's belly. I want to meet them. I need to know whether they're my little brother or sister. I need to give her a name. Children without names can't go to heaven..."

"Father gave me this pistol before he was arrested. I'd planned to ask him to name my sister the next time I visited him in prison. I was going to wait for him to get out, and then we'd visit Mother's and my sister's graves together. I was willing to wait no matter how many years it took."

"But he killed himself. Along with him, all my relatives died violent deaths in prison. More than thirty lives vanished for no reason at all."

After rambling on for so long, Victor was lost in his memories and sobbing too hard to speak. Ailimi sat on the floor, silently crying as well. Her lips trembled constantly with shock. She had never known that the father who doted on her was such a person outside the home.

"I used to think our family's destruction was our own fault, that we'd done something bad and deserved it. I had nothing to complain about. But when I was close to death, I met my benefactor. He encouraged me to seek the truth behind the tragedy, and I really did find it."

"Why are you crying? Hypocritical Miss Emily Cavendish, did you hear me clearly? Your father is a devil through and through."

When Sherlock and the others broke through the door, they were met by a huge device: a pressure-sensing bomb driven by the gravity of the church's pendulum.

Emily and Victor were sitting side by side on the sofa next to the enormous bomb. The tears on their faces had yet to dry, and their eyes were red. For a moment, the group almost failed to recognize the man beside her as the kidnapper himself.

He had known it wouldn't be so simple. Ignoring the investigation team leader's instructions, Sherlock walked over to Victor and offered him a packet of tissues.

Victor didn't take it. He simply looked at Sherlock with a desolate expression.

The ticking countdown echoed through the empty church like the heartbeat of death. The bomb's flashing red light made the cold air seem almost to freeze.

"With a bomb this big, do you think the whole building will be blown to dust?" Sheltered behind Watson, Sitangna slowly approached Sherlock with him.

"More than just this place. I'd guess everything within ten li would be reduced to dust." Watson smiled at Sherlock, who had turned toward the sound. It was the same smile of a man with a hard life.

At that, Sitangna helplessly closed her eyes, unwilling to face it.

[Candy! Candy! How do we get out of this? That bomb is huge, and Emily has another one on her. This world is so dangerous. I'm going to faint.]

Previously, Sitangna had had no real concept of explosions. The area where she used to live had been very safe, with a strict crackdown on gangs and crime. The worst things she had encountered growing up were troublemakers getting drunk and rowdy or gangs of hooligans brawling.

Ever since the pool explosion, she had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder related to explosives. Even when Mrs. Hudson baked food in the oven, she kept well away.

[I'm sorry, Nana. I only know the original plot. Our level is too low to use the plot deduction function, so all we can do now is rely on items to stay alive. Have a look in the shop and see what you can use.]

Candy sighed helplessly. In the current situation, she didn't know how to help her host either.

[How about this? I'll give you a file on Victor. It's more detailed than the one Sherlock read. See if you can find any key information in it.]

[I'll give you the five mission points later. First, exchange them for four Golden Bell Shields for me.] After exchanging for the items, Sitangna told the rescue team to withdraw outside. She said they would handle things inside and told the team to stand by at the door.

The rescue team exchanged looks, but ultimately agreed. After all, their first principle was to obey orders.

"You're still the same as ever: intelligent and knowledgeable. After all these years, your technological research has advanced so quickly. Even people in the government say that holographic projector and electromagnetic pulse jammer are the most advanced on the market."

Sherlock passed on the praise he had heard at the police station to his once-genius classmate. From the sealed files, he had learned the Trevor family's history of blood and tears, and he also knew Victor's resolve and determination to avenge them.

"Sherlock, you always manage to finish the puzzle before I do." He put away the gun he had been wiping. Old places like this were always full of smoke and dust.

"Go on, tell me. How did you determine it was me?" Victor's voice carried a hint of weary mockery.

"The experts who examined your holographic projector all agreed that you created a nearly perfect illusion. But unfortunately, an illusion can't produce body heat."

"Emily left long before she disappeared. You needed to leave yourselves enough time to cover your tracks. If I hadn't gotten involved, I expect the bodyguards wouldn't have discovered the problem in the restroom until several hours later."

"You could have achieved your objective faster, too. Unfortunately for you, Mr. Cavendish came to me." Sherlock spoke with pride.

"Sherlock!" Watson gritted his teeth. The man never considered the occasion when he spoke.

"OK, OK. The underground pipes at the opera house were sprayed with beeswax to erase your traces, right? It's the same kind as the wax stuck to the sole of your shoe."

Sherlock bent down and picked up a trace of wax from the floor between his fingertips. Under a portable microscope, tiny golden particles were clearly visible.

"Pollen from a particular oak tree in Kensington Gardens, just like what I observed along the way. A particular flowering season, a particular wind direction, a particular raw material."

"But that doesn't matter. We got here too quickly, after all, so it didn't fully take effect."

"What matters is the evidence extracted from Emily's bottle of perfume. The testing station's precise gas chromatography analysis found traces of an unconventional phenethylamine derivative. The only place in the country with a way to synthesize it is the Royal Society of Chemistry's cutting-edge laboratory."

"I thought you would switch the report. Don't you work part-time there, my friend?" Sherlock met Victor's eyes. He saw the admiration in them, and he also saw his determination to die.

Sherlock understood. Victor had never intended to survive, not since he began planning the kidnapping.

"I know money isn't your goal, Victor. What you want is the evidence that could destroy the Cavendish family-the shady dealings Emily's father has kept hidden."

"I can help you, provided you don't do anything foolish." Sherlock leaned close to his ear and whispered. His words moved Victor.

Victor was the only one left of the Trevor family. He didn't care whether he lived or died; perhaps they could even reunite in hell. But if he could restore his family's reputation, clear their names, and get them justice...

"Aren't you on their side? You're the detective Cavendish hired. How am I supposed to trust you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"

"You can see this piece of the puzzle, but can't you see the bloodstains behind it?" Victor knew that Sherlock's older brother was also a government official, and an important one at that.

If he could recommend Sherlock to the devil, he might be in league with him too.

"Emily's father, that lofty gentleman, used his power to crush my father! My family!"

"Falsified evidence, an accidental bankruptcy, and a carefully planned suicide! He took everything from me!" Victor grabbed Emily's neck from behind and squeezed hard, pressing the muzzle against her head once more.

"But now Emily holds evidence that could destroy him forever, and she chooses to stay silent to protect that devil of a father!" Ailimi smelled gunpowder from the muzzle. He was truly angry.

"I'm not doing anything foolish. I'm correcting a mistake, my way! Time is almost up, Sherlock! Either the truth comes out for all the world to see, or the evidence disappears."

"This church will become everyone's tombstone! London's pendulum never stops swinging for anyone!"

Victor's accusations fell like hail. Only then did everyone realize that the bomb's countdown had entered its final ten minutes. He had never intended to wait until the twelve hours were up.