Holmes swirled the red wine around his glass. “The way this gentleman holds the knife shows that he has had medical training, yet, he has the bearing of a soldier. So, it is clear that he was a military doctor. His face is dark, yet the rest of him fair-so he must have spent a good amount of time in the tropics. His complexion is poor, his face haggard, and he has obviously been wounded on his left arm because it looks a little stiff. So, the question is, where in the tropics can a military doctor get wounded? Clearly, only in Afghanistan.”


  “Impeccable inference. It looks like I would have to concede the bet,” Zhang Heng announced.

  “Don’t be so quick to give up,” encouraged Holmes. “If you win, I will show you my collection of newspaper clippings. You can always come to me if there’s anything you don’t understand.”


  “Really?” Zhang Heng’s eyebrows rose in intrigue.

  “Yes,” Holmes answered. “If you lose…… Erm…… you will have to help me with my experiments whenever you’re available.”


  “Agreed.” Zhang Heng then began, “His name is John H. Watson, a graduate of King’s College, London, and he served in the 66th Infantry Brigade.”


  Holmes was speechless for a minute. “Are you cheating? You didn’t even see anything. How could you have guessed that? Don’t fib, I happen to know the people he’s with.”


  Zhang Heng made a gesture.

  Curious, Holmes put down the wine glass in his hand and made his way to the doctor’s table. After a while, he returned to his seat.

  “Incredible. Mr. Watson claims he doesn’t know you.” “Actually, I learned about him from a friend. A military doctor who just returned from Afghanistan to London with an injury on his left arm is not a common sight, no?” Zhang Heng deducted.

  Watson was the infamous second protagonist and the first-person narrator of all ‘Sherlock Holmes’ novels, so of course, Zhang Heng knew him better than Holmes did. According to events told in the books, Watson had supposedly spoken to someone that he was unable to find a suitable room for rent in this restaurant. Through a mutual friend, he was then introduced to Holmes, who happened to be also searching for a flatmate. Though it appeared that Watson would now have to find another place to rent.

  “You win,” Holmes conceded with good graces. “I’ll hand you the newspaper clippings when we get back.”


  “You mentioned that you are writing a journal on the effects of hand shapes based on professions. Can you show it to me when you’re done?” asked Zhang Heng .

  “You’re quite studious, my Oriental friend,” Holmes raised his glass. “But for now, let’s set everything aside and enjoy dinner.”


  On the way back, Zhang Heng leaned back in the carriage, closed his eyes for a while, and checked his character panel like he always did.

  Name: Zhang Heng

  Gender: Male

  Age: 20

  Player ID: 07958

  Games played: 6

  Current game points: 1005

  Items in possession:

  Pestilence Bonebow (B), Infinite Block (B), Filter Lens (D), Paris’ Arrow (D), Evil Wall (D), Shadow Key (E), Lucky Rabbit Foot (E), Betty’s Shell (E), Hunter’s Blessing (F), Water-soluble Metal (F), Oath Ring (F)

  Skills:

  Sailing Lv.3, Swordsmanship Lv.3, Language Proficiency Lv.2 (Eight languages at daily communication level), Lego Assembly Lv.3, Archery Lv.2, Wilderness Survival Lv.2, Driving Lv.2, Car Tuning and Maintenance Lv.2, Shooting Lv.2, Space Travel Lv.2, Hacking Lv.2, Piano Lv.1, Skiing Lv.1, Rock Climbing Lv.1

  Evaluation:

  Player is a Lego Master, is slightly luckier than most and has higher chances of encountering enemies. He is protected from shadows, storms, evil thoughts, and plagues. This player is also an experienced sailor, skilled at knife-fighting, archery, shooting, knows how to drive a car, fly an airplane, spacecraft, and various other vehicles. The player is also highly adaptable to the wilderness, has a rich reserve of skills, combat skills included. He is also a trustworthy and noteworthy player.

  Yeah, that’s right. In the Whistleblower quest, in addition to his Level 2 Hacking skills, Zhang Heng’s biggest gain was the 382 points he bagged, 300 of which the Tetris game contributed—the biggest easter egg he had found in the game so far.

  Of course, the most prominent item was still the second B-Grade game item, the Pestilence Bonebow, that he had taken from the horseman. It was an extremely powerful weapon that could inflict its target with a range of two to five plagues, as long as the arrow released from the bow drew blood.

  On the other hand, Zhang Heng was still trying to figure out the C-Grade game item White Horse Crown. The description attached to the item was simple and not very informative. All it said was that it could be used to summon the horseman’s white horse and had a lifespan of three usages that would last up to an hour each. But because of how modern it looked, Zhang Heng didn’t carry it into this quest.

  Truth be told, the Pestilence Bonebow was also somewhat overly-conspicuous, especially the material it was made of. Carrying it around in full view on the streets would prompt his arrest, so Zhang Heng was careful to wrap it in a white cloth. On top of that, he replaced the less versatile Weather Marble with the Oath Ring

  Another matter to remark on was that Evil Wall only had one more last use.

  Thus, the above was Zhang Heng’s status update in the new quest.

  Back at the apartment, Holmes invited Zhang Heng into his living quarters. It wasn’t exactly what Zhang Heng had in mind at all. The private detective’s bedroom was spick and span, with everything organized in the most systematic of manner. Of course, this was when Holmes was his a model-flatmate disposition.

  If the quest did not stray from the original writing, where Holmes still endured intermittent phases of melancholy. He would hide in his room the entire day, completely apathetic and uninterested in anything at all, relying on small pills and syringes to keep himself functioning, like a fish out of water whenever there was no cases to solve, no adventures and nothing exciting for him to dissect.

  He, or more accurately, most of us, had two such contradictory sides to our personalities.

  Holmes pulled out two boxes from under the cabinet, blew off the dust and said to Zhang Heng, “Here, I’m lending this to you. I don’t have much use of it anyway-most of the cases are already stored in my head.”


  “Thank you.”


  Zhang Heng opened the box and did a quick study of its contents. There were all kinds of newspaper cuttings and notes from various time periods; even articles from the time before Holmes was born. He made deductions based on the articles and jotted his hypothesis on the blank spaces around them.

  These things were all that Zhang Heng needed.