novelraw Chapter 257: Letter from Hong Kong
Chapter 257: Letter from Hong Kong
"The monopolization of spiritual frequencies."
A fire of rage ignited in Hawk's heart, and he thought of his homeland.
That "Blackfoot" reservation beneath the vast skies of Montana.
He remembered the tribe's shaman, who would lead the people to close their eyes and listen before each ceremony worshipping the Thunderbird.
To listen to the sound of the wind, the sound of the grass, and the sound of the running bison.
And the whispers of the spirits of all things flowing through this ancient land.
That was their root.
It was the soul that distinguished them from those white invaders who only knew how to measure the land with steel and steam.
And now, Thomas Edison wants to build a tower.
A steel tower that will completely silence the whispers of the spirits of all things!"Monopolization?"
Hawk's hand had unknowingly tightly gripped the handle of the war axe named [Thunderbird's Wrath] on his back.
A wild killing intent was brewing within him.
"On this land, no one can monopolize the voice of the sky."
"Except... the great Thunderbird."
At that moment, another Marconi wireless telegraph machine, responsible for receiving intercontinental ultra-long-range signals, emitted a crisp clicking sound, breaking the solemn atmosphere in the room.
Phineas, in charge of technical support, instinctively stepped forward and skillfully translated the encrypted message from the distant East.
Then, an expression of confusion and surprise appeared on his face.
"Uh, gentlemen," he somewhat uncertainly raised the telegram draft in his hand, "this letter is very long. And its signature is 'Sir Archibald Croft'?"
"He's my man." Ethan said without turning his head, his thoughts still immersed in the conspiracy of the Aether Tower.
"Read it." Lin Jie had long anticipated the arrival of this letter.
Phineas nodded, cleared his throat, and began to read this battlefield report from another theater tens of thousands of kilometers away.
"My dear friends, Lin Jie and Ethan:"
"When you read this letter, I should have already arrived in this city hailed as the Pearl of the Orient, Hong Kong."
"Please forgive me for using the lengthy traditional letter format, rather than the concise battle reports customary within the Association. Because what I have seen, heard, and felt here is far too complex and fascinating; simple vocabulary cannot accurately describe the immense shock in my heart."
"This is a city of miracles, of contradiction and conflict."
"On this side of Victoria Harbour, there is the civilization of the empire where the sun never sets, full of order and reason. The towering Victorian architecture, the British gentlemen in crisp suits, and the laws and systems all proclaim the power of progress to everyone."
"Yet across that narrow strait, on the land known as Kowloon, it is as if another dark world forgotten by time."
"There is no law or order there, only deeply entrenched gangs and crowded, sunless city blocks, and a set of ancient rules completely different from Europe yet unbreakable."
"Eastern and Western civilizations collide here in a brutal yet peculiarly beautiful way. Then they form a bizarre, kaleidoscopic ukiyo-e painting, both vibrant and fraught with danger."
"The inner world here is even more so."
Julian's literary and vivid description made everyone present feel as if they were there, seeing that Eastern metropolis undergoing drastic transformation at the end of the 19th century.
"The inner world here is not dominated by knights and alchemists. I have not seen any grand strongholds similar to the Underground City here, nor have I sensed any familiar aura belonging to Grotesque Armaments."
"The power here is older and more personal."
"It is constituted by a group of mysterious practitioners who call themselves Feng Shui masters, a group of Nanyang sorcerers skilled in using bizarre Gu poison and Jiangshi, and a group of ancient sects who have tempered their own bodies to the extreme."
"Their rule system is different from I.A.R.C.'s Western logic based on scientific research and hierarchy."
"They place more faith in the master-disciple lineage, value the honor of family and sect more, and also worship those local UMAs from antiquity that they call Mountain and Sea Strange Beasts."
"Here, I, a so-called scholar from the French Academy, am like a mathematician who has stumbled into a magical forest. All the knowledge and theories I possess feel out of place here."
"Fortunately, Ethan, the money you prepared for me remains the most universal language in this world."
"After paying a 'tea fee' that could buy half a Bordeaux vineyard, I finally succeeded in contacting that senior informant, one of the Association's few remaining in Hong Kong, who lives in seclusion in the deepest part of Kowloon."
"He is a gaunt old man with the codename 'Old Abacus'. It is said he was once a Fifth-Rank Astronomical Officer of the Qing Dynasty's Imperial Astronomical Bureau, forced into exile here after being implicated in some palace secret."
"He is a true know-it-all, and an old fox greedy to the marrow."
"From his mouth, I confirmed our conjecture."
"That UMA codenamed River Jiao indeed has a close relationship with the Black Lotus Sect behind Yan Xilou."
"According to Old Abacus, the River Jiao is not a UMA reared by the Black Lotus Sect. On the contrary, it is the totem of the Black Lotus Sect, or rather, the root upon which they depend for existence."
"Legend has it that hundreds of years ago, the founding ancestor of the Black Lotus Sect signed some kind of symbiotic contract with a dying River Jiao in an ancient Dragon's Lair within the Witch Mountains in the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River."
"The River Jiao shared its spiritual essence with the followers of the Black Lotus Sect."
"And the Black Lotus Sect must, generation after generation, provide it with nourishment to sustain its life."
"However, the bad news is..." Julian's pen suddenly shifted, becoming very grave.
"That so-called Witch Mountains Dragon's Lair was turned into an iron fortress by the Black Lotus Sect decades ago. It is their holy land, an absolute forbidden zone."
"Let alone outsiders like us, even the Qing court's own armies cannot take a single step near there."
"Old Abacus warned me that any attempt to force entry there has only one outcome."
"That is to become new nourishment for that river."
This description tinged with despair plunged the atmosphere in the operations room to freezing point.
The hard-found clue was a dead end with no way through.
Was William's injury truly incurable from now on?
"...But."
Phineas's tone, carrying a sense of transition, made everyone's hearts lift again.
"But that old fox, Old Abacus, after squeezing the last silver ingot from me, offered me an unexpected folk remedy from the black market."
"He said that to cure internal injuries caused by spirituality, one doesn't necessarily need to find the UMA's main body."
"Because in the East, since ancient times, there has been a theory of mutual generation and restraint."
"According to the ancient Eastern geographical record 'Shan Hai Jing', there exists a peculiar UMA between heaven and earth. It 'cannot be seen when looked at, cannot be heard when listened to, formless, shadowless, existing everywhere'. It has no fixed form, neither grass, nor wood, nor stone, nor fungus. It is the most primitive manifestation of life force itself."
When the name "Shan Hai Jing" was uttered from Phineas's mouth in a clumsy, heavily New York-accented transliteration, the solemn faces of Ethan and Hawk showed confusion and bewilderment.
Lin Jie's body, however, jolted.
"Shan Hai Jing"!
For 19th-century Westerners, this name was merely an absurd, nonsensical collection of myths and stories from a distant foreign land.
But for Lin Jie, these three characters held a special sentiment; he had read plenty of such strange ancient texts in his previous life.
"The locals call it Tai Sui."
"This UMA itself has no offensive capabilities. But its flesh possesses powerful assimilation and restorative abilities."
"Legend says a piece of Tai Sui flesh the size of a fingernail can make a corpse that has been disemboweled heal completely as good as new within a mere two hours."
"And its formidable, overbearing life frequency might be the divine medicine that can fundamentally overwrite and reshape the foreign spiritual energy within William's body."
This description colored by Eastern mysticism made Ethan and Hawk feel a sense of incredulity.
Capable of overwriting and reshaping life?
What kind of terrifying existence would that be?
"And most crucially," Julian's letter, at the end, brought good news that lifted everyone's spirits.
"According to the latest intelligence Old Abacus received from his informants spread throughout Southeast Asia."
"Just one week from now."
"In Saigon, French colonial Vietnam, at the largest and most chaotic inner world black market in the Far East region."
"A piece of thousand-year-old Tai Sui, said to be from the depths of China's Kunlun Mountains, will be publicly auctioned!"