Sherlock had no idea how badly he had traumatized an ordinary man like Yinsen.
Once he finished eliminating everyone inside the cave, he strode casually to the entrance and stopped in plain view.
Outside, countless rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers were already trained on the cave mouth.
The moment Sherlock appeared, a storm of bullets and RPG rounds came tearing toward him.
He remained perfectly calm.
This time, rather than attacking immediately as he had inside the tunnels, Sherlock raised the Holy Lance and walked toward the center of the valley at an unhurried pace.
Every bullet that approached him transformed into a shower of white petals, while rockets and explosive shells simply vanished before they could detonate.
Sherlock advanced through the barrage like a god of war, untouched by either gunfire or artillery.
Bullets were easy enough to deal with.
A basic conversion array could transform them into harmless material before impact.
By Sherlock’s standards, that was elementary alchemy.
Explosive projectiles were more complicated.
Simply transmuting a rocket at close range risked triggering the warhead, which was why Sherlock had embedded a second array inside the first.
It was a compound transmutation array of his own design, created by combining Universal Analysis from the wizarding branch of alchemy with Deconstruction Alchemy from the principles he had learned through Truth.
Its function was straightforward.
Universal Analysis identified and mapped anything entering the array, while Deconstruction Alchemy broke the object down completely, reducing it to harmless base matter before it could activate.
When Sherlock first created the technique, he had been so excited that he barely slept for several days.
An ability like this was both offense and defense in one, practically a miracle—and at the very least, something close to an absolute barrier.
Unfortunately, experimentation soon revealed one serious flaw.
The mental strain increased in direct proportion to how long he kept it active.
The longer the array remained open, the more calculations his brain had to process.
If Sherlock ever tried to maintain it around the clock like Gojo Satoru’s Infinity or Accelerator’s reflection, only two outcomes were possible.
Either his brain would cook itself inside his skull, or the transmutation would collapse and rebound on him, sending him straight back to Truth.
If this mission had not been essential to protecting his future peace—and if Sherlock had not needed to create the image of someone completely untouchable—he never would have used a technique whose primary benefit was looking impressive and whose primary drawback was potential brain damage.
With both arrays layered together, however, nothing could stop him.
Sherlock crossed the valley beneath an endless barrage of gunfire and explosives without slowing once.
The terrorists had already realized their weapons were useless.
Even anti-armor rockets powerful enough to tear open a tank could not make Sherlock so much as break stride.
Yet they continued pulling their triggers in desperation, because shooting was the only response they had left.
Sherlock apparently decided that despair alone was not enough.
After reaching the center of the valley along a road of white petals, he turned the Holy Lance downward and drove its spearhead into the ground.
The lance’s amplification ability activated immediately.
Using its tip as the center point, an enormous transmutation circle spread across the valley at incredible speed.
The instant the array reached them, every weapon in the terrorists’ hands dissolved into white rose petals.
Thousands of petals rose into the air and drifted through the sunlight like snow, beautiful enough to make the entire valley seem almost romantic.
There was nothing romantic about what came next.
The moment the gunfire stopped and the terrorists stared at their empty hands in confusion, countless stone spikes erupted from the earth.
Before they could understand what had happened, the men who had been attacking Sherlock were impaled and lifted into the air.
Blood and filth stained the drifting white petals, transforming the valley into a grotesque landscape of crimson, stone, and pale flowers.
The men inside the cave had been hidden by darkness, narrow passages, and obstructed sightlines, dulling the full impact of what Sherlock had done.
Out here, beneath the open sky and harsh sunlight, there was nowhere for the horror to hide.
White petals filled the air above corpses, blood, stone spikes, and mountains of stolen weapons.
The contrast gave Sherlock’s vision of hell both shape and life.
A handful of men somehow escaped the transmutation.
Whether through luck or because Sherlock had deliberately spared them, even they did not know.
The moment they saw what had happened, they broke completely.
Screaming about demons and monsters, they fled the valley on hands and knees, scrambling over one another in their desperation to escape.
Sherlock paid them no attention.
The moment the transmutation was complete, overwhelming exhaustion crashed down on him.
John and Yinsen had just reached the cave entrance when they witnessed the aftermath.
Neither of them could find anything to say.
They simply stared at the valley before them—a scene that was cruel, beautiful, and deeply unnatural all at once.
“Sherlock!” John remained frozen for several seconds before finally gathering the nerve to walk toward him.
Hearing his voice, Sherlock turned with visible fatigue.
The moment he opened his mouth, the familiar man John knew returned as though the hellish landscape around them had been created by someone else entirely.
“Johnny, get over here and hold me up.
My legs are about to give out.” John hurried forward and caught him before he fell.
Only then did Sherlock finally look properly at what he had created.
His first reaction was something neither John nor the trembling Yinsen could have anticipated.
“Ugh—!” Sherlock took one look at the bodies impaled throughout the valley and immediately vomited.
He threw up so violently that even John was left staring at him in disbelief.
“You did this,” John said, patting him on the back.
“And now you’re the one throwing up after looking at it?” Sherlock tried to answer between heaves.
“Obviously—ugh!
The petals—ugh—were blocking everything!
I couldn’t actually see—cough—any of this while I was doing it!”