Chapter 8 Welcome to my hometown

"Luna," Holmes leaned forward slightly, "Can you also appear anywhere at will?"

"No." The girl said, she opened a biography of Queen Victoria and looked for clues as instructed by the young detective, "He can't either."

"It seems that he can suddenly appear in our living room because of the mirror." Watson analyzed.

"Makes sense," Holmes raised his hand and placed it on his forehead. He closed his eyes, as if thinking about something.

Nature and power, he chewed on these two words over and over again. As far as he knew, the thirteen kings were shaped around this core. For example, all of Half's supernatural powers come from average.

So what does Riel come from?

Luna looked at the biography carefully. "When Queen Victoria was young, she met Prince Albert. Then they had many children and spent a happy time together. However, Prince Albert died young."

"So she had reason to desire Riel." She raised her eyes. "Is that the conclusion?"

The girl thought with her chin in her hand, her fingers hooked on the string around her neck. "But humans are going to die, right? Once dead, dead. Why should we miss them?"

She could not understand this emotion, nor could she understand this longing that had made the whole of Britain wear black for decades.

"Love," she thought about the word carefully, "What is love?"

"Watson often has love." Holmes put down the book in his hand and said.

"Not very often." Watson took out a cigarette and lit it. "What do you mean I often fall in love? Love is not that simple."

"Love means from now on, you will be loyal to another person, and she will be loyal to you wholeheartedly. You share souls and everything. It is a combination of divine law and human law." The chestnut-haired young man raised a finger and talked freely. "Just seeing a beautiful woman on the street and looking at her a few more times is called instinct, not love."

Luna nodded.

"Oh." She said seriously, "Are you really going to the other world?"

"It seems that there is nothing you like in the conventional sense." Luna said, she put the key on her neck in the palm of her hand, quietly staring at the shiny metal piece, "But I like it very much."

Holmes did not understand the nature of the king's key. The last time he accidentally entered the other world was on a night with thick white fog. When he walked along the road, the light of the street lamp turned into a faint white, and the fog became thicker.

The world suddenly became quiet, several degrees quieter than the outside world.

He looked around and saw some pedestrians. However, when they came very close, he could see that they had no facial features, like puppets in a shopping mall. However, they seemed to be talking to each other and living in an orderly manner.

They could understand each other without speaking, and would nod to show their agreement or shake their heads to show their disapproval.

They would not make any noise when walking.

In fact, most creatures in the inner world had pads on their feet, and they walked in a soft and silent manner. The reason was very simple.

Because it was much more difficult to survive in this world than in the outer world.

There were not many suitable areas for each creature to live in. If you were not careful, you would stray into the hunting grounds or enter some symptoms that you could not adapt to.

For example, the symptoms of heavy rain.

When it rained heavily in the sky, these faceless people suddenly fell into a panic. They quickly hid in the building. The heavy rain painted the sky black, and the lights became unstable. He saw some predators made up of black lines, but they were wandering not far away, as if they were worried about something.

A higher level predator has appeared, Holmes thought, and the street lamp began to flicker with flames again.

A girl climbed up the lamp pole with a ladder and lit the flame.

She tilted her head at the top of the ladder and looked at him, the flame flickering in her eyes. It should be the first time he saw Luna, but they did not talk. Luna reached out and touched his collar and took out a small key.

Then she threw the key down from a high place, and the key dissolved into the floor like falling into the water.

The world turned upside down, and he stood on the streets of London again. Only his wet clothes told him that his experience was not a dream.

This is the ability of the king's key, he thought, to communicate between the two worlds at any time and anywhere.

"The inner world and the outer world are very similar in elements." Luna said softly, "So you will feel that many things are familiar, but they are just similar in appearance."

"Don't think you know the way." She raised a finger, "Anyway, I don't know the way here."

"So I think humans don't know the way over there either." She said seriously.

"Are there any maps or something?" Watson asked. He took a puff of cigarette. Nicotine made his brain calm down a lot.

"Map?" Luna raised her eyes and showed a puzzled expression.

The underlying rules of the inner world are different from those of the outer world. Luna did not understand the rules of the map. Roads and buildings can be fixed and drawn, and then you can get there by following the map.

This is completely impossible in the inner world.

But they are not her believers, and she has no obligation to ensure that they will not be eaten by anything in the inner world, Luna thought. She thought for a while and felt for no reason that they were eaten. She did feel uncomfortable.

So she stood up and stretched out a hand, "Be my believer."

The two looked at her together.

"If you don't become my believers, you will be prey in the other world." Luna tilted her head slightly, "Just like you will make specimens of the creatures in the other world and put them in your museum." "

Of course, sometimes I will let you go back to where you should go out of pity." Luna said, "but if you want to move around in there, the best way is to become my believer."

"In this way, all creatures in the other world will recognize my mark." She said, tilting her head to think about the wording, "I can also retaliate against any creature that dares to eat my believers."

"Otherwise, things like the Wanderer will belong to whoever finds it first." Luna said, and she blinked, "When you don't need it anymore, of course you can stop believing in it."

"Is it that simple?" Watson couldn't help asking.

"Well," Luna nodded, "the standards for entering and leaving are set by ourselves." "

Some will require cutting off a piece of flesh to show loyalty, some require tattoos, and some require offerings," Luna said, "As for getting out, some stipulate that you must die before you can get out."

"But these are just rules we made ourselves," Luna said, "because the essence is that we share our power with other creatures."

"Whether we want to take it back or give it, it is our own will." Luna blinked, "So I will make a rule now. When you want to become my believer, you are my believer."

"When you don't want to be my believer, you are no longer my believer." She said, without a trace of emotion in her tone, as if she was just announcing something. A faint golden line appeared in the air, outlining something like a charter in the void. She bit her fingertips, and a drop of blood fell on the golden text, forming layers of curses, and then dissipated into the air again.

"I promised." She said lightly, "That's all."

Watson seemed to suddenly understand why this girl had no believers.

Just based on her laissez-faire attitude.

Humans have always cherished things that are difficult to obtain, which is why those mysterious churches have set up countless complicated rituals and ways to show loyalty.

But Luna didn't understand this.

Or maybe it was her nature.

"If you continue like this, there will be no real believers." Watson said softly.

The girl blinked, "Why?" she asked.

"Because human nature has always been like this. If you give so much, they will not value it, nor will they regard you as a higher being than them." Holmes replied, "So if you want to have believers in the sense we understand, you can't make such a rule."

Luna put the broken finger in her mouth and sucked it gently. Her heterochromatic eyes looked at the white mist, as if she was thinking about something.

"Is that so?" She said, "But let's do it this way for now."

She seemed to have been hit by something and lowered her head in depression. "But I won't give you any of my power, because I don't understand it myself."

"It's just a symbol, indicating that you are not ownerless drifters in the other world." She said, and Watson lowered his head and saw a flash of a crescent moon on the back of his hand.

The girl took the key from her neck and let it hang quietly in the air, then let go of her hand. The key fell on the carpet, and the carpet suddenly became like a pond, with layers of ripples spreading from the point where the key fell, and the next second, a kind of inversion-like feeling surged up, making people feel nauseous.

Then all the sounds disappeared.

The sound of cars and horses outside the street window and Mrs. Hudson's busy voice were all cleared in an instant. This silence made the ears even uncomfortable for a while. When Watson opened his eyes again,

he found that he was still standing in room 221b.

But the dust outside the window fell like snowflakes, and the furniture in the room turned into a hazy gray.

All the colors seemed to be fading, and only the girl standing opposite had a pair of heterochromatic eyes that were still bright.

"Welcome to my hometown." She said softly, "This is the other world."

Then she walked over by herself and walked out of the window. After the two followed, they felt as if they had walked into a thin curtain, but there was no feeling of falling.

Because they didn't come to the road at all, but stood in another space.

It was a huge hall, like a train station, and indeed, there were railroad tracks on both sides, and some signs with dense timetables on them.

"This is the hub," Luna explained. "Follow a king through any window or door panel to get to the hub. If there is no king to lead the way, you need to find the ticket office, buy a ticket, and then use the ticket to pass through the entrance of the ticket office to get to the hub." "

No fighting is allowed in the hub," Luna said seriously. The girl stood on the marble floor one step away. Watson felt that something seemed to have changed in her. The puzzlement and confusion that she always showed in the surface world disappeared.

Because at this moment she was standing on her familiar homeland.

"Just get on the corresponding train and you can go to where you want to go. Since I brought you here, you don't need to buy a ticket." She said, "So where do you think we should go to find your queen?"

Watson looked around. It was too quiet. His feeling about the inner world was that it was too quiet. However, under his gaze, this hall actually had many living beings.

There were tall human figures twisted with rough black lines, small predators like hounds, humans without facial features, and smooth spheres, but they all seemed to be in awe of the faint crescent symbol on the two people.

Of course, it is also possible that this so-called hub does not allow hunting and fighting.

And Luna's head had a small crescent crown on it at some point, and the light was very dim, probably because she was not yet an adult.

Holmes leaned over and looked at the characters on the timetable. There were various languages ​​and texts, and of course there were many written in English. It seemed that different place names would be marked in the local language, and from this so-called hub you could reach the other world corresponding to that place.

Sure enough, maps are useless here.

As long as you find the so-called ticket office, pay a coin to buy a ticket, and come to this hub, you can go anywhere, and these places may also overlap, and you can't just walk to them directly.

A black train slid into the platform silently, and several creatures walked up, and then it floated away silently, as if it had dissolved in the white mist.

"It went to Manchester." Luna said softly, "There are a lot of permanent residents there."

This feeling, which was completely different from everything he knew, made Watson tremble and fascinated. Luna looked up at another page, which was a barometer.

"Here, there will be a large influx of predators during heavy rain syndrome," Luna said softly, "because that time is the best time for them to hunt, and their activities require a lot of water to cool their overheated limbs."

How fast will these predators hunt, Watson couldn't help wondering, then he looked up and looked at the barometer.

"One hour later, British Isles, heavy rain syndrome."