novelraw Chapter 243: Prelude to the Golden Age
Chapter 243: Prelude to the Golden Age
Lin Jie and Ethan were currently standing on the deck of a luxurious ocean liner named the "Queen Victoria."
This colossal steel construct, belonging to the Redgrave family's shipping industry, was one of the era's outstanding industrial marvels.
Its immense power, driven by several massive steam boilers, propelled it forward, cleaving through the waves as it headed deep into the Mediterranean Sea.
To ensure the secrecy of this North American trip, Ethan had invoked the family's highest authority, clearing the liner of all "non-essential" passengers.
Thus, this magnificent liner, which should have been bustling with activity, was left with only the necessary crew and attendants, along with two special guests: Lin Jie and Ethan.
On the empty deck, the sea wind whipped at their well-tailored travel coats, making them flap and snap.
Ethan held a glass of red wine from a renowned Bordeaux winery. His azure eyes gazed into the distance where the blue sea merged with the sky, yet his face lacked the relaxed ease of a vacation.
"I hate the sea," he suddenly spoke, his voice tinged with weariness.
"It's too vast, too empty, too honest."
"No matter how many gold coins or corpses you throw into it, it just silently swallows everything, greeting the new sunrise the next day with the same face.""It makes you feel a sense of powerlessness, that no matter what you do, you can't change anything."
Lin Jie could hear the confusion and pressure born from power itself in the words of this young noble who had just shouldered the heavy burdens of his family.
"But it also carries all the ships sailing to the New World, doesn't it?" Lin Jie's voice followed.
Ethan was slightly taken aback. He turned to look at the Eastern youth beside him, who always seemed to say something philosophical at just the right moment. A bitter smile involuntarily appeared on Ethan's face.
"You're right."
He downed the red wine in his glass in one gulp, as if wanting to swallow that feeling of powerlessness along with the alcohol.
"A toast to that New World, woven from lies and opportunities."
The voyage across the Mediterranean was long and monotonous.
But for Lin Jie and Ethan, it was the last precious period of preparation time before the storm arrived.
They converted a luxurious first-class suite on the liner into a temporary, sea-bound special research room dedicated to the Brotherhood of Light.
The floor and walls of the room were covered with various investigative reports on this mysterious scientific organization, sourced from the I.A.R.C. North American Branch and the London Intelligence Department.
Drawing on his keen insight into high society and business warfare, Ethan took on the task of sociological and behavioral analysis.
He meticulously combed through all the public reports and rumors about Thomas Edison, this "god among men."
"This guy is a tyrant wearing the skin of an inventor."
Ethan's finger tapped on an interview from *The New York Times*, his face showing undisguised contempt.
"Look here. He publicly declared Nikola Tesla's alternating current to be a 'creation of the devil,' and in his own laboratory, he publicly electrocuted an elephant using AC to sensationalize its danger to the public."
"But what he conveniently omits is that before that famous 'War of the Currents,' he had tried to buy all of Tesla's AC patents for a very low price, but was refused."
"He's not opposing a dangerous technology;
he's strangling a competitor who could overturn his DC commercial empire!"
"And here," Ethan pointed to another business analysis report from Wall Street, "within just a few years, he used various patent lawsuits and business mergers to monopolize most of the American electric lamp and phonograph markets. Any company daring to challenge his position ended up either bankrupt or swallowed whole by him, skin and bones included."
"Cold, arrogant, extremely controlling, and willing to stop at nothing to achieve his commercial goals."
Ethan delivered his verdict on this "Mentor of Light."
"In the Surface World, he is a firmly entrenched commercial emperor."
"And in the inner world," Ethan's expression turned grave, "he is a madman trying to build a kingdom of gods for himself alone using science and patents."
Listening to Ethan's precise yet personally charged analysis, Lin Jie, who was flipping through another pile of materials beside him, let out a sigh in his heart.
"More than that... Over a hundred years later, this emperor will be crowned with an even more precise title."
"—Patent troll, and marketing master."
A faint, ironic smile that only he could understand curled at the corner of Lin Jie's mouth.
He understood better than anyone in this era the true historical assessment of this Thomas Edison, whom everyone regarded as the "god of invention."
This "giant" possessed excellent business acumen and political skill, yet had many stains on his scientific spirit.
And his true opponent was that Serbian-born genius who was still unknown at this moment, even suppressed and marginalized by him with every means, and destined to be forgotten by history.
He was the true "fire thief" who would be enshrined on the altar by future generations in the long river of history.
Carrying this complex feeling that spanned time and space, Lin Jie turned his gaze back to the scientific papers in his hands, painstakingly collected for him by Julian from major European scientific journals.
Those papers contained ingenious ideas and complex mathematical formulas that could give any MIT professor a headache.
There was only one name as the author of those papers.
A name not yet known to the world in 1889, but destined to leave a profound mark on future history.
Nikola Tesla.
"The aether is not emptiness. It is a medium that contains energy, is omnipresent, and can transmit all information."
"By adjusting electromagnetic waves of specific frequencies, we might be able to resonate with the aether itself."
"A global wireless power transmission system is not a fantasy. As long as we can build a sufficiently tall resonance tower on the earth, we can turn the entire planet into a giant conductor."
Reading these words brimming with genius and mad imagination, Lin Jie felt his worldview based on spiritual frequency was once again strongly impacted.
He was shocked to discover that the ultimate theoretical pursuit of this outstanding genius, at its fundamental level, bore a remarkable and uncanny resemblance to the world of spiritual fields depicted in Karl's diary.
One called it "electromagnetic waves," the other called it "spiritual frequency."
One called it "the aether," the other called it "mineral veins."
And the essence of the Brotherhood of Light's Aether Tower might be the crude and forced grafting together of these two completely different "paths up the mountain."
They used Tesla's scientific theory as the skeleton.
Then used the occult technology they plundered from UMA as the flesh.
Ultimately creating a "stitched-together monster" that was neither science nor mystery.
In this mobile operations room floating on the Mediterranean, the two men conducted brainstorming sessions day and night, gradually sketching the complete outline of that "beast" known as the Brotherhood of Light.
Suddenly, a rapid and sharp sound of telegraph transmission broke the quiet in the room.
Ethan walked over to the telegraph machine dedicated to internal I.A.R.C. communications, somewhat surprised.
To ensure the high secrecy of this operation, he had already severed all regular contact with the outside world.
Only someone from Sir Henderson, stationed in Geneva, could contact them using this encrypted frequency.
Ethan skillfully and quickly translated the cipher text composed of a series of disorderly "dits" and "dahs."
Then, his expression changed immediately.
"Something's happened," his voice turned grave.
He handed the newly translated telegraph message to Lin Jie.
Lin Jie took the message and saw only two short lines.
"Change original course immediately."
"Priority mission: Proceed to Lisbon, Portugal, to recover the out-of-control armament codenamed [Blood Holy Grail]. Mission level: Town-class. Details in attachment."
Lin Jie's brow immediately furrowed tightly.
For Sir Henderson to personally issue a priority order, forcibly changing the course of their mission, showed that the severity of the events in Lisbon far exceeded their imagination.
"Why us?"
A huge question surfaced in Lin Jie's mind.
He instinctively glanced at the nautical chart on the wall. Their current location on the Queen Victoria was at the western end of the Mediterranean, indeed quite close to the Portuguese coastline.
A sense of helplessness flashed through Lin Jie's heart, but then an even deeper confusion arose.
"Could it be that the entire Lisbon area doesn't have a single local hunter capable of handling a crisis of this level?"
He immediately opened the attachment to the telegraph.
The attachment was an emergency situation report from the I.A.R.C. Lisbon Branch, its words filled with fear and chaos.
The report's contents sent a bone-chilling cold through both Lin Jie and Ethan.
The report indicated that a week ago, Don Almeida, a senior and the only local hunter in the I.A.R.C. Lisbon Branch with a noble title, was found mysteriously dead in the study of his heavily guarded estate located in the Sintra Mountains.
The state of his death was quite bizarre.
His clothes were completely intact, with no signs of struggle.
But his body was withered and desiccated, looking like a mummy dried for hundreds of years, as if all the blood in his body had been sucked dry by some invisible straw.
Even more bizarrely, his face still bore an extremely terrified expression, as if he had seen something indescribable before death.
And after his death, his powerful armament, recorded by the Association with the codename [Blood Holy Grail], along with all living things in his estate, had mysteriously vanished. This included thirty-seven servants, twelve purebred Lusitano horses, and hundreds of chickens, ducks, and hunting dogs.
As if erased from this world by something unseen.
"Damn it," Ethan cursed under his breath. "A 'walking' Grotesque Armament? That doesn't sound like just Town-class."
Lin Jie's expression was equally grave.
He knew that most Grotesque Armaments would quickly fall into a dormant state after losing their master's control, becoming a dead object no different from an ordinary antique except for its special material.
Unless the armament itself possessed a certain degree of self-awareness.
"Or," Lin Jie's voice became somewhat distant, "it didn't go out of control."
"But was stolen by something even more powerful."
At the end of the report was a supplementary autopsy report from a local Lisbon coroner, its words filled with confusion.
"We found some very abnormal, non-fatal cutting marks inside the deceased's oral cavity."
"The tongue of the deceased, Don Almeida, is missing."