Chapter 36: Welcome Back
979 Words
Upon opening his eyes, Sherlock's suppressed desire to explore the unknown, which had been building up all day, could no longer be contained. He immediately sat up from the sofa.
The room now presented two completely different visual states.
In areas untouched by the worms, the pristine white remained unyielding… while elsewhere, the objects in the room displayed their natural textures.
A large patch of the white seal on the floor beside his feet had been erased, and he could clearly hear the soft creak of his shoes against the wooden planks. The cabinets were covered in crawling marks, and touching the sofa armrest brought back the soft, familiar feeling of lying there for years.
The entire room presented an illusion of gradually peeling away from a dream and slowly merging into reality.
Just as he hadn't yet adjusted to this detachment…
"Awooo~ Awooo~ Awooo~"
Suddenly, a sound came from behind him.
Sherlock froze… This was the first time he had heard a sound from outside the room in his dream.
Instinctively, he turned his head.
Then, he saw the window behind him!
The window was bright and clean, and the magnificent scene of bustling London outside pierced through the glass and entered Sherlock's vision in an instant… It was precisely because the seal on the window had been removed that the sounds from outside could now enter normally.
He took a few deep breaths, slowly stood up, walked to the window, and gazed outside.
Unlike the last time he peered through the c***k, this time, he observed the world of his dream with a completely open perspective.
Blood, boiling, burning—everywhere was filled with an atmosphere of chaos and madness.
Sherlock had actually glimpsed these things before.
But at this moment, he still couldn't control his excitement, his whole body trembling, trying hard to accept what he was seeing.
Because… he saw…
The Demon!!!
In that instant, he clearly saw a carrion dog wandering the blood-red street outside his window; in the shadow of a nearby building, a gigantic centipede covered in spiky, insect-like limbs crawled and twisted; a disgusting creature resembling anteaters emerged from the ruins, its barbed mandibles curled and cruelly plunged into the head of another demon beside it, the latter slowly having its brains sucked out, emitting pitiful howls.
Demons, appearing in his dream…?!
Last time, due to the limited angle of his observation, Sherlock could only see distant scenery, but this time, he clearly saw the long street right before his eyes.
Besides the demons, a blood-red Baker Street was presented before him without any disguise… the same architectural style, the same facilities, identical carriage stops on both sides of the road, the trash cans, fences, road signs, gas streetlights in the alleys—everything was what Baker Street should have in reality, like a mirror image.
However, all of this had been steeped in a tangible decay for billions of years.
Old traces, bloodstained, twisted, rotten, chaotic; even the mist descending from the sky resembled ashes from burned corpses, and the sunlight, as if piercing through the blood-soaked sky, was tinged with an eerie crimson.
Sherlock raised his head…
The enormous, distorted sun still hovered like a demon above London, its billions of tentacles writhing, as if a single second's gaze would plunge one into an inescapable madness.
Yes, just one second!
In that one second, Sherlock's gaze pierced through the blood-red mist of London, through the sky between the clouds, and across billions of kilometers of void beyond the heavens, touching the sun that had long since distorted its normal form.
This time, there was no white seal protecting Sherlock; he was completely exposed at the window!
Exposed to that maddening sunlight!
So, the sun finally noticed him.
And in that instant, Sherlock witnessed a scene he would never forget!
A c***k slowly opened in the center of the sun… within the c***k, countless crimson tentacles intertwined and tangled. The c***k widened until a scarlet eyeball, surrounded by thousands of writhing tendrils, opened. The pupil exploded like countless nebulae in an instant, transforming all the light and heat into pure chaos, shooting directly into Sherlock's vision!
This was a gaze! The first contact between an evil celestial body, or something Sherlock couldn't yet comprehend, and a tiny human being.
At least that's what Sherlock thought;
And at that moment, he felt his brain almost boil over, about to burn without fire, just like the city outside his window.
If it were anyone else, at that moment, they would have surely fallen into absolute collapse, unable to comprehend, unable to think, only able to let this gaze from beyond the heavens erode their reason completely. But Sherlock was different. As he had said countless times, he was a detective.
He loved the unknown, loved puzzles. His mind needed the incomprehensible to fill it; he yearned to tear through the fog of mystery and glimpse what was hidden beneath.
The more incomprehensible, the more excited he became!
So at this moment, his mind began to operate uncontrollably, recklessly, like a mayfly trying to shake a tree, yet incredibly stubborn! Arrogant! Even conceited, conceited! It wanted to analyze, to decipher, to understand what this moment of madness was trying to express!
The next second!
With a thud!
He fainted…
Sherlock's body crashed heavily against the window, like a corpse, motionless.
However, his thoughts continued to stir tirelessly, digesting, deciphering.
However, no one knows how much time passed; perhaps he went mad, became stupid, and simply collapsed! But it's also possible that his mind truly transformed all his madness into information he could comprehend.
In any case, during this coma, a voice slowly emerged in his mind.
The voice was unexpectedly respectful and humble, as if bowing slightly to Sherlock and saying:
"Welcome back..."
"Welcome back..."
"This time, have you thought of a way..."
- Writer
