novelraw Chapter 178: Curse Storm 2.0
Chapter 178: Curse Storm 2.0
The last train carrying Lin Jie wheezed heavily into the rural station of Devon, the midnight bell tolling leisurely from the church steeple of a distant village at that very moment.
Thick night fog rose from the damp grasslands and winding rivers, enveloping the entire world in a milky-white chaos.
William waited quietly on the deserted platform, without lights or sound.
Seeing Lin Jie step down alone and unhurriedly from the empty carriage, a flash of surprise crossed William's eyes. He had thought Lin Jie would bring Julian.
"Everything arranged?"
Lin Jie didn't look like someone coming to handle a crisis, but more like a gentleman arriving in the countryside for a night party.
"All arranged."
William nodded.
"I told them you are a 'feng shui master' from the East. The ritual you are about to perform is an ancient ceremony to pray for next year's bountiful harvest."
"And the key to the ritual is that all the sleeping machines must roar together to awaken the land's vitality."A playful smile appeared on Lin Jie's face.
He could imagine the awkwardness of William, this socially awkward veteran, explaining this set of Eastern hocus-pocus to his rural neighbors.
"Did they believe it?"
"They were more willing to believe in this 'hope' that could help them recover their losses."
William's answer carried the philosophy of country life.
"And you gave far too much."
He pointed to the huge "ritual" deposit in his pocket, sent by Lin Jie in advance, enough to buy half the village's tractors.
Lin Jie smiled and said nothing more. Sometimes, money was persuasive.
The two spoke no further.
They merged into the night fog one after the other, heading towards the field where the good show was about to unfold.
They arrived at the vast, fog-shrouded wheat field on the village outskirts. A strange scene with a "steampunk" aesthetic unfolded before their eyes.
Dozens of old steam tractors of various shapes and ages were driven out from their respective barns by Devon farmers wearing flat caps, their faces etched with confusion and hope.
They were lined up crookedly at the edge of the field, each laboriously belching thick black smoke.
The roar of boilers and the hiss of steam pressure release sounded deafening in the silent rural night.
The entire village was holding a wild celebration dedicated to the "God of Machinery," interwoven with a sense of contradiction between the primitive and the modern.
Directly in front of the noisy "iron legion" composed of dozens of antiques, those few sleek, advanced-looking fully automatic combine harvesters sat quietly, somewhat out of place.
Lin Jie slowly stopped at the center of this stage, signaling William to stay put and keep watch for him.
Then he walked alone to the empty center of the field between the two "mechanical armies."
He turned himself into the priest of this ceremony, and also the sole target for the rats hiding in the dark.
He could feel several gazes fixed on him from the dark woods in the distance.
But he didn't care. He just leisurely raised his left hand.
The bronze-colored Grotesque Armament, the [Cursebreaker Vambrace], crafted for him by Arthur's own hands, gleamed with a metallic sheen in the damp air.
He did not activate the "Chaos Brass" core module that could release the [Curse Storm] as he usually did.
Indiscriminate area-of-effect attacks could destroy the fully automatic combine harvesters, but might also affect those fragile old antiques teetering on the edge of failure.
His fingers gently brushed over the smooth surface of the [Cursebreaker Vambrace].
Finally, they stopped on a brand new module that he had Arthur install for him only during this rest period.
The core of the module was a piece of black crystal, cut into a perfect diamond shape, only the size of a fingernail, emitting a faint glow.
It was precisely a fragment of the Nightingale from the Paris catacombs.
Since the fragment Lin Jie had was consumed during the Ireland trip, he had to spend a large amount of Association points to purchase part of the batch Julian had submitted.
Looking back on his adventures, he realized the [Cursebreaker Vambrace] often couldn't be used, mainly because its functionality lacked versatility.
So after returning to London from Germany, the first person Lin Jie visited was the technical fanatic, Arthur.
He handed this UMA material carrying the concepts of the "laws of sound" and "emotional resonance" to him and proposed an imaginative new modification plan.
He was no longer satisfied with the single "output" function of the [Cursebreaker Vambrace] only releasing curses.
What he wanted was for it to also possess an "input" function capable of detecting the source of curses.
He wanted to upgrade this purely offensive armament into a multi-functional "tactical platform" combining detection, locking, and precision strike capabilities.
Arthur transformed this "laws of sound" carrier into a "sonar" that could actively emit and receive echoes, namely the "Spiritual Frequency Amplification and Reception Module."
Then he grafted this new detection module together with the original attack module on the vambrace using his newly developed second-generation "spiritual conduction circuits."
What was ultimately born was the [Cursebreaker Vambrace] Type II now worn on Lin Jie's left arm.
A "curse radar."
Lin Jie slowly closed his eyes, channeling his mental energy into the cold black crystal on the vambrace.
Then he switched the vambrace's mode from "dormant" to "receive."
"Hum..."
A hum only Lin Jie could hear swept across the field instantly with his left hand as the center.
About ten seconds later, faint, sharp static simultaneously echoed back from inside several tractors parked not far away.
The frequency sounded like countless tiny insects gnawing at the mechanical cores, and this frequency didn't originate from the tractors themselves.
It came from cleverly disguised, tiny foreign objects hidden among the complex gears and drive shafts of the harvesters.
They were micro-parasites existing between UMA tissue and spiritual devices, neither biological nor fully mechanical.
They were the true "mechanical ghosts" that even William's [Zulu's Gaze] could not detect.
The truth was revealed.
Lin Jie shook his head, clearing the static.
Then he looked at the vambrace. On the small brass dial Arthur had installed, a magnetized needle, ignoring Earth's magnetic field interference, swung back and forth between the distant machines.
Lock complete.
Lin Jie snorted a laugh. He raised his left hand and whispered to himself in a playful tone:
"Got you... little rats."
His fingers switched the [Cursebreaker Vambrace]'s mode from "receive" back to "release," then turned the power valve on the vambrace's side, which controlled the Chaos Brass energy output, to its lowest setting.
He needed to perform a rather precise "surgical operation."
Several invisible, highly concentrated "curse shockwaves" instantly crossed several meters of distance.
The shockwaves mixed the "chaos" concept of the Curse Storm with the "acoustic resonance" law of the Catacomb Nightingale, and were precision-guided by the "spiritual sonar" targeting function.
Their attack targets were the tiny "curse sources" parasitizing inside the tractors that Lin Jie had locked onto!
In that instant—
The micro-parasites had their innermost core spiritual circuits shattered by those precise impacts, turning into a pile of meaningless metal dust.
The malfunctioning steam tractors, after having the "pathogens" within them cleared, had their tightly meshed gears and power-delivering pistons injected with a dose of "lubricant."
Their roars became smoother and more powerful than before, and even the black smoke billowing from their chimneys lost its clogged, sluggish feel!
"God! Look! Hanson's 'Lance'! It... it moved! It moved on its own!"
"My old friend, its pressure valve returned to normal by itself!"
The skeptical Devon farmers on the distant ridge erupted into a huge cheer upon witnessing this miraculous scene.
And Lin Jie, this "feng shui master" who had just performed a miracle, pointed his left hand wearing the [Cursebreaker Vambrace] towards the fully automatic combine harvesters parked in the distance.
Then he pushed the power valve he had just set to minimum all the way to maximum in one go!
"Well, now it's your turn."
This time, it was no longer a precise "scalpel," but a large-scale "Curse Storm"!
"Screeeech— creak creak creak—!"
Piercing shrieks erupted from inside the harvesters.
Their gear assemblies and drive mechanisms failed instantly upon being swept by the storm. Thick black smoke with a burnt smell billowed from the seams of their metal shells.
Their steel bodies, possessing beautiful industrial design aesthetics, now convulsed violently like epileptic patients.
Finally, accompanied by several crisp "crack" sounds of internal core components snapping and shattering, they were paralyzed.
Turned into piles of scrap metal smoking with black fumes and emitting a foul stench.
From the dark woods in the distance, several suppressed exclamations filled with disbelief and panic rang out.
Lin Jie saw several figures in matching black uniforms leap out in panic from their hiding spots and flee headlong, without looking back, deeper into the forest.