London is a very outgoing city in the Holy Calendar, it is the birthplace of the first generation of the Steam Revolution, it is also the starting point of carrying forward countless heavy industries, it is the hardest hit area of the second demonic invasion, it is the most perfect city for post-war reconstruction, and after the abdication of Augustine the Great, it is the starting point of new power and energy.

It seems that the places related to all the revolutionary events are in the city, as if there is some god in the dark who writes everything, but he is too lazy to think of place names, so he simply stuffs everything into the city and does it hastily.

Of course, this is also where Sherlock lived.

He knows every street, every alley here.

Naturally, it was easy to find the humble tavern in the alley.

It's been a week since he got Watson back, and this guy is badly injured, and although he is a doctor himself, he still needs to rest, so this time Sherlock walked into the alley alone.

In the course of two years, the steam engine was being replaced in large numbers, causing the fog to fade at night and the choking dust in the air to become less, which caused Sherlock to be a little uncomfortable, so he lit a cigarette and pushed open the door of the tavern.

It was still melodious music, and the piano accompaniment echoed in every corner of the tavern, but it didn't feel noisy, passing by a row of wine racks, Sherlock subconsciously moved a few steps away from the shelves, and a random bottle of wine on it was worth a fortune, and if he knocked it down, it was estimated that he couldn't afford to sell Mrs. Hudson's old mansion secretly.

Led by a waiter, he soon came to a secluded little box in the tavern, and along the way, the waiter was very professional and did not cast a surprised or adoring look at Sherlock, and his face remained the most decently small.

But when he turned to leave, he still couldn't help but look at Sherlock a few more times.

After all, this face, in the past month, can be said to have appeared most frequently in the entire empire.

Lifting the curtain of the private room, Sherlock saw the woman she hadn't seen for a long time, she was still dressed conservatively, but she was showing endless style, and the long cigarette pinched on the black silk glove was like a seductive finger, constantly tempting every man who saw it.

But if there is really a man who dares to approach in a daze, then as long as he understands the woman in front of him a little, he will definitely be shocked, and then leave in shame.

Erin's Bar.

It was a place of great security, and it was certainly not just for drinking and eating, it was a place of exchange of money and power, a place that every city in the empire possessed, but only a few classes knew about, and there were countless great decisions and disputes of interest, which were decided or resolved in such dim light and melodious music. It is even said that every papal hearing of the Holy See is first discussed in the Erin Bar of the local diocese, and only after it is passed, will it enter the normal official trial process.

Of course, compared to these rumors, the owner of Erin's Bar is the most mysterious, yet the most legendary.

At this time, Irene. Adler sat down on the couch and gestured to the man he hadn't seen in a long time.

She didn't have the gaffe of Catherine when she got the news of Sherlock's return, nor Nightingale's howling and crying in spite of all the attention, nor did she have Mrs. Hudson carrying her long dress and slamming into his arms.

She just poured out her cigarette and poured Sherlock another glass of wine, as distinctly bland as a most ordinary meeting.

"Suffered a lot over there?"

"It's fine." Sherlock laughed.

"Have you ever met a new woman?"

"Eh, I know, she chased and killed me for more than a year."

"There is no eternal opponent, if you have cheated on each other for more than a year, then you must know each other very well, if one day your interests are the same, it is very likely that the relationship will go further." Erin said, then smiled, "Of course, I don't care about that. ”

In the reunion after the separation of life and death, there is no true expression of true feelings between the two people after the thoughts are filled, and Erin does not ask the other party what he has seen and experienced over there, because if Sherlock doesn't want to talk about it, then she doesn't need to know, but if Sherlock has told it, then she will definitely know that in the Empire, there are few secrets that Erin doesn't know.

Sherlock liked the simplicity of the conversation.

In fact, if you do the math, he knows not a small number of people of the opposite sex, but Mrs. Hudson only exists in the scope of the landlord in his heart, of course, he also knows that His Royal Highness the Holy Maiden, who has always regarded himself as an ordinary girl in the lower city, has some good feelings for him, but this good feeling is really not necessary for him to respond.

As for Nightingale, most of them are an exchange of life and responsibility, every time they get along with that girl, they are accompanied by fire, gunsmoke, life and death, blood, that is a girl with the most ambitious ambitions and powerful abilities, and she is just a small citizen with no dreams, so he has always held a helpless and wry smile attitude towards the recent gossip news in the radio newspapers.

Only Erin is this woman.

It is even possible to remove gender as an element.

It's one of the few friends Sherlock thinks he has a good chat with.

Erin lifted her curly hair to her ear, revealing a face that was not old, but definitely beautiful: "So, do you need to prepare a celebration for you?" ”

"Of course not."

"I don't think so, because it doesn't have to be a happy thing for everyone to come back alive, and as far as I know, there are quite a few people who stay up all night after learning that you've returned. You've caused too much trouble in the empire, you're alive, and it's nerve-wracking.

And I admire you very much, just a month after you came back, you dared to cause trouble with the Holy Light Temple.

When I first heard the news, I even wanted to cut ties with you.

Who wants to invest in such a madman. ”

Sherlock shrugged helplessly, mixed the wine in his glass with cigarettes, and swallowed it into his stomach, wasting the thousands of pounds of liquid in the glass.

I didn't expect Erin to know about her going up the Elbes Mountains, but after thinking about it, she must have known about Watson's arrest, so naturally she couldn't hide her information from her information network about going up the mountain.

Even Sherlock suspected that there might be one or two servants in the Temple of Light, who had some interests with the woman in front of him.

"No one in the past few hundred years has dared to do such an excesses to the Temple.

You're amazing, you just came back and kicked the temple door, Watson killed a servant, and you rescued him alive, and it seems that this matter really ended like this.

If I'm not mistaken, there will be no less than 20 people in the Empire in the coming month.

Although it is likely that all are ambiguous information or rumors.

But it was enough to make them even more sleepless. ”

"My partner is in trouble, of course I'm going to help." Sherlock said it for granted.

"yes. You're cold-blooded, but you have a very strange attachment that normal people don't have. Erin said, and then asked suspiciously, as if every woman cared, "Then if one day, I also kill the Divine Servant, are you willing to break into the Holy Light Temple for me?" ”

"Yes." Sherlock replied without thinking, and Erin smiled and didn't say anything, but she didn't hide her satisfaction in the slightest.

Of course, she still doesn't know the relationship between Sherlock and the Light, so even if Erin kills the Divine Servant, Sherlock used to be a matter of words.

It's really not a hero to save beauty, let alone sacrifice his life for her.

But suddenly, the smile on Erin's face changed, and she asked faintly, "Then if the Pope suddenly breaks with the Temple of Holy Light, or even fights against each other, who will you help?" ”

"Huh?" Sherlock frowned.

"You've been out of this world for too long, and you probably don't know what has changed in the Holy See over the past year." Erin smiled and began to talk to Sherlock about something seriously:

"Mr. Moriarty is different from all previous popes, since he came to the throne, he has not consolidated the position of the Holy See in the hearts of the people, the holy city of Jerusalem no longer grows sunflowers, the major dioceses are merged, and even in the next year, there will be cities without diocesan jurisdiction, all the prayer times in the churches have been canceled, the sacraments have become a voluntary act, and 70% of all church donations are sent to the front.

I've been watching these changes, but I've never understood why the Pope did this.

This is simply making the position of the Holy See more and more marginalized among the people, and even a fool would not make such a reform.

What I can't accept the most is that for this expedition, he once went to the Holy Light Temple in person and asked the divine servants to join the expedition team and speed up the progress of the Holy Light.

And the price turned out to be that he allowed the independence of the Holy Light Temple.

It's almost like a fundamental abandonment of the whole Holy See, and I've known Moriarty for some time, and he's a wise man, but now I find that I can't read his wisdom. ”

Sherlock was silent, savoring what Erin had said.

He's a detective, and he's got a good mind, he's quick-witted, and he's quick-witted, but he has to admit that he's not good at things like faith or politics.

Because politics is not something that can be played with a good brain, a good detective is not necessarily a good writer, let alone a good scholar, and naturally not necessarily a good politician or theologian.

But he knew Moriarty and knew that this guy had a very quirky ideal since he was a child.

"Excuse me. What would happen if the Pope of the Holy See and the Emperor were the same person? ”

Sherlock asked, he seldom humbly asked for advice, but perhaps Erin's ideas were more valuable than his own.

Erin blinked, not seeming to understand Sherlock's words.

"What? The Pope is the Emperor? How can you have such an unrealistic idea? ”

"Although it sounds incredible, there is no need to consider its feasibility, just speculate, if there is a real day, what will happen to human society?"

“.” Erin was silent for a long time, as if the question was more ridiculous than anything she had ever thought about.

It's been a long time.

"Do you know the religion before the opening of the Sacred Calendar?"

"Just a little bit of it."

"Before the Sacred Calendar, the wars between religions were fierce, and in a certain era, there were a large number of religious records that were annexed and erased by faith, but which eventually survived, and historians have found that they all have a very similar link.

That is. All religions have a concept of the ideal kingdom of God. ”

Sherlock didn't interrupt Erin, who listened very quietly.

Erin continued, "The Ninth Heaven, the Garden of Eden, the Western Heaven of Elysium, Valhalla, etc., etc.

In short, these religions depict a perfect world, where there are no barriers, no wars, no conflicts of interest, and where all people are happy, rich in goods, good wine, fruit, grain, and meat. There is no disease in these places, there is no birth, old age, sickness and death, and there is no severe cold and scorching sun.

In short, it's the ideal world where everyone can be happy. ”

"So, what does this have to do with the question I asked?"

Some scholars have pointed out that such an idealized world cannot exist in human society.

First of all, it is the class of society that leads to an inadequate supply of resources.

The resources consumed by the upper society will always be hundreds or thousands of times that of the people at the bottom, and even with the development of society, this gap will reach an uncontrollable level.

In order to complete the idealized world, first of all, it is necessary to eliminate all classes, people are equal, and resources are distributed according to their contribution to society.

Of course, human selfishness and greed are in nature, and before the Sacred Calendar, people spontaneously separated each other by race, surname, nation, and interest groups, frantically grabbed resources, and wasted a lot of materials to develop weapons against each other.

In the early days after the gates of hell were opened, this barrier was forcibly broken by the enormous pressures of genocide.

At that time, there was a real feeling that the kingdom of God was about to come into the world, because all mankind had a common goal, and people began to stop worrying about the distribution of resources, or the problem of class disparity.

In the face of demonic invasion, life and death must be above everything else.

This perfect and extremely dangerous situation lasted for about half a century.

And then it was broken.

Because.

The Light has appeared."

(End of chapter)