novelraw Chapter 261: Clockwork Owl
Chapter 261: Clockwork Owl
Night soaked the sky over Long Island.
The peaceful fields of daylight, having lost the sun's protection, quickly shed all disguise, revealing an unsettling, vacuum-like sense of death.
There was no wind, no chirping of insects. The outline of the distant forest was blurred, the entire world seeming to be wrapped in a thick layer of black velvet that blocked out all sound.
The four-person team lay in ambush on the second floor of an abandoned barn, using the cover of the dilapidated walls to vigilantly monitor the distance.
They did not light any source of illumination, relying only on eyesight gradually adapted to the dark and a Swiss-made luminous pocket watch provided by Ethan to confirm the time.
"Exactly eleven o'clock at night." Ethan closed the pocket watch, his voice pressed extremely low. "Three hours until shift change. According to Phineas's prediction, this time period is when defenses are most lax."
"Lax is relative." Phineas's voice came from the corner, tinged with nervousness.
He was fiddling with a simple listening device made of vacuum tubes and copper coils, trying to capture any abnormal electromagnetic signals.
Hawk sat cross-legged in the deepest shadows, his body motionless, maintaining extreme silence.
He was wiping the broad blade of Thunderbird's Wrath, his movements slow and focused.For Hawk, night was the true hunting ground. Darkness not only did not weaken his perception but instead sharpened his beast-like intuition.
Lin Jie remained in his observation posture through the telescope.
His gaze was locked on the Aether Tower several miles away.
In the night, the giant tower showed no lights, just a silent, enormous black silhouette.
Yet that omnipresent low-frequency humming sound became more distinctly audible at night.
This sound was like a never-ending lullaby, continuously testing everyone's nerves.
"Something's coming."
Hawk's voice suddenly broke the silence within the barn.
Ethan and Phineas immediately stopped their movements, their bodies tensing.
Lin Jie quickly adjusted the telescope's direction, aiming the lens toward the area Hawk had warned about—the pine forest directly to the east.
At first, the view held only a deep darkness outlined by the moonlight's silver edge.
But soon, Lin Jie spotted the anomaly.
Several faint yellow light points, resembling will-o'-the-wisps, were silently floating out from the depths of the forest.
They had no fixed trajectory, sometimes hovering, sometimes gliding, their movements fluid unlike any flying creature Lin Jie knew.
They weaved through the woods without making the slightest sound.
No rustling of wings flapping, no roar of an engine; they were themselves part of the darkness and silence.
"What is that?" Ethan also raised his telescope, looking confused. "Some kind of... glowing flying insect?"
"No." Lin Jie shook his head, his heartbeat beginning to accelerate. "This must be the 'Owls' Morgan mentioned."
As those light points drew closer, their true forms finally became clear under the telescope's high magnification.
They were indeed a group of owls.
But they were not creatures of flesh and blood; they were constructs made entirely of metal and machinery.
Their bodies presented an elegant streamlined shape, pieced together from precision brass feathers with a dull luster, embodying the unique steampunk aesthetics and classical charm of the late 19th century.
Countless tiny gears and connecting rods were hidden beneath the gaps in the feathers, operating in a complex yet precise coordinated manner, driving their silent glide.
The flickering yellow ghostly light came from the two large eyes on their heads, composed of multi-layered crystal lenses.
Behind the lenses, a weak flame burned steadily, emitting light like a gas lamp, providing them with excellent vision in the dark.
The number of these clockwork owls was about ten. They spread out from the woods in a loose yet mutually responsive fan-shaped formation, conducting a carpet search of the area.
Their flight posture was extremely bizarre, possessing both the elegance of a bird of prey and the rigidity of machinery. Combined, they produced a strange, inhuman feeling.
"My God..." Phineas let out a low exclamation. He immediately aimed his listening device at the group of owls. "I can detect a very faint but extremely stable spiritual fluctuation, right in their... heads."
He quickly recorded data in his notebook, analyzing at a rapid pace.
"Just as I thought! The driving force of these mechanical birds is a precise clockwork structure, but their brains, or logic cores, are definitely not purely mechanical."
"Edison must have implanted something specially infused with spirituality into their heads!"
Phineas's eyes flashed with anger. "They despise mysticism, yet they're madly stealing its power!"
"They use rigorous mechanical structures as the 'body' of these creations, then use a controllable, low-level spiritual core as their 'soul.' This... this is simply a desecration of both worlds!"
Phineas's analysis gave Lin Jie and Ethan a more direct and profound understanding of the Brotherhood of Light's terrifying creativity.
This was not a simple application of technology; this was an arrogant attempt to reshape the very concept of life from its roots.
They were playing the role of God.
While they were whispering, an accident occurred.
One of the clockwork owls conducting the fan-shaped search seemed to have discovered something.
Its gear-driven head made a slight "click" sound, then turned with an extremely unnatural angle toward the abandoned barn where Lin Jie and the others were hiding, the rotation nearing one hundred and eighty degrees.
Those crystalline eyes flickering with ghostly light locked onto the second-floor window of the barn.
"Discovered!" Ethan gripped Evening Star tightly, lowering his body.
Hawk also rose from the shadows. The massive battle-axe was lifted with one hand, his muscles bulging, his entire body entering a state of readiness.
The atmosphere grew tense.
But contrary to everyone's expectations, after locking onto the target, the clockwork owl did not sound an alarm.
It simply hovered silently in mid-air, engaging in a silent standoff with the four hidden in the darkness with its mechanical eyes.
"What is it doing?" Phineas asked. "Its logic core should have already identified us as 'intruders.' Why isn't it sounding an alarm?"
"It doesn't need to." Lin Jie's voice sounded, a strong and deadly sense of crisis welling up in his heart. "Could its task not be to alert, but to...?"
Before he finished speaking, the ghostly light in the eyes of the hovering clockwork owl suddenly increased in brightness severalfold.
Then, two invisible, formless energy beams shot out from its eyes!
The two energy beams traced straight lines through the air, accurately striking the load-bearing column of the barn made of thick oak.
An unsettling scene occurred.
The surface of the wooden column struck by the energy beams showed no signs of burning or penetration, but its interior seemed to have been injected with something.
The entire column visibly trembled violently, fine cracks instantly spreading across it, forming a shape like a spiderweb.
In less than two seconds, that sturdy column, which would require an adult to wrap their arms around, lost its structural strength in this silent resonance originating from an internal level. With a "puff," it disintegrated into a pile of wood chips and powder emitting a charred smell!
"Ultrasonic waves!" Phineas exclaimed in shock. "It's highly focused ultrasonic cutting! It can generate high-frequency resonance with non-metallic materials like wood and rock, causing structural disintegration in an instant!"
Before his words faded, two more silent energy beams shot forth, severing another key wooden beam supporting the roof.
"Boom!"
The second floor of the barn, having lost two core supports, could no longer bear its own weight. The entire floor collapsed downward with a piercing sound of breaking!
"Jump!" Hawk roared, the first to react.
His burly figure leaped fiercely from the collapsing floor, directly crashing through the side wall and landing steadily on the grass outside.
Ethan's reaction was equally swift. He grabbed the still-stunned Phineas and, using the moment the wall shattered, executed an elegant and agile rolling maneuver to land safely.
Lin Jie, in the moment his body lost balance, forcefully threw the telescope in his hand into the distance to potentially attract the attention of any other owls.
Simultaneously, using the momentum of the fall, he pushed off with both feet against the sloping floor, his body flipping in the air, finally landing in a half-kneeling position with a perfect force-dissipating motion that neutralized the impact of the fall.
At the exact moment all four of them escaped, the second floor of the barn collapsed amidst a series of silent cuts and structural disintegrations, raising a cloud of dust.
And the clockwork owl, having completed its work, hovered coldly in mid-air, using its icy crystalline eyes to scan the four who had risen again from the ruins.
Hawk's massive body blocked the front, forming an impregnable fortress.
Ethan quickly formed crossfire with Lin Jie back-to-back, protecting the still-flustered Phineas in the middle.
After confirming all targets were still alive, the ghostly light in the mechanical eyes of the clockwork owl intensified again, appearing ready to launch a second round of cleanup attacks.
Ethan's gun muzzle was already aimed at it, but Ethan did not fire.
In this environment of absolute silence, the abrupt gunshot of a revolver would be no different from sounding a death knell, instantly drawing the encirclement of all patrol units.
Lin Jie's movements were faster than everyone else's.
Two seconds before the lethal ultrasonic waves were to fire, Lin Jie raised his left arm.
The complex golden circuits on the surface of the Cursebreaker Vambrace hidden under his sleeve lit up with a faint glow.
Curse Storm!
But he did not choose a wide-area release. Instead, he lowered the power, concentrating the interference field that caused mechanical disorder into a directional interference beam.
The clockwork owl preparing to attack stiffened.
The intense light bursting from its mechanical eyes flickered twice, then suddenly dimmed.
The miniature clockwork structure inside powering the ultrasonic emission module was forcibly jammed by an invisible hand. After a series of "creaking" sounds, it stopped working.
The attack was forcibly interrupted!
Simultaneously with activating Curse Storm, Lin Jie's right hand had already drawn Serene Heart with lightning speed.
Aim, fire.
The entire motion was seamless.
A bullet endowed with the dual principles of "Absolute Silence" and "Absolute Straight Line" left the chamber.
It traced a perfect, smokeless trajectory through the darkness, brutally drilling into the clockwork owl's multi-layered crystalline eye.
"Crack."
The ghostly light in the clockwork owl's eyes completely extinguished.
The core inside it that served as its "soul" and was infused with spirituality was detonated by this shot, shattered into countless tiny particles.
The mechanical bird of prey, having lost its power, became a puppet with its strings cut, falling helplessly from mid-air.
Finally, with a "thud," it crashed onto the grass not far away, becoming a pile of scrap metal.