Lin Jie and Ethan were currently standing on the deck of a luxurious ocean liner nad 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 imnse power, driven by several massive steam boilers, propelled it forward, cleaving through the waves as it headed deep into the diterranean Sea.
To ensure the secrecy of this North Arican 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 rged 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 sa 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 seed to say sothing philosophical at just the right mont. 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 diterranean was long and monotonous.
But for Lin Jie and Ethan, it was the last precious period of preparation ti 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 Arican Branch and the London Intelligence Departnt.
Drawing on his keen insight into high society and business warfare, Ethan took on the task of sociological and behavioral analysis.
He ticulously combed through all the public reports and rumors about Thomas Edison, this "god among n."
"This guy is a tyrant wearing the skin of an inventor."
Ethan's finger tapped on an interview from *The New York Tis*, 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 comrcial 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 rgers to monopolize most of the Arican 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, extrely controlling, and willing to stop at nothing to achieve his comrcial goals."
Ethan delivered his verdict on this "ntor of Light."
"In the Surface World, he is a firmly entrenched comrcial 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 assessnt of this Thomas Edison, whom everyone regarded as the "god of invention."
This "giant" possessed excellent business acun 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 mont, even suppressed and marginalized by him with every ans, 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 ti 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 na as the author of those papers.
A na 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 dium 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 fundantal 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 diterranean, the two n 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, sowhat surprised.
To ensure the high secrecy of this operation, he had already severed all regular contact with the outside world.
Only soone 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 imdiately.
"Sothing's happened," his voice turned grave.
He handed the newly translated telegraph ssage to Lin Jie.
Lin Jie took the ssage and saw only two short lines.
"Change original course imdiately."
"Priority mission: Proceed to Lisbon, Portugal, to recover the out-of-control armant codenad [Blood Holy Grail]. Mission level: Town-class. Details in attachnt."
Lin Jie's brow imdiately 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 diterranean, 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 imdiately opened the attachnt to the telegraph.
The attachnt was an ergency 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 Alida, 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 so invisible straw.
Even more bizarrely, his face still bore an extrely terrified expression, as if he had seen sothing indescribable before death.
And after his death, his powerful armant, recorded by the Association with the codena [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 sothing unseen.
"Damn it," Ethan cursed under his breath. "A 'walking' Grotesque Armant? That doesn't sound like just Town-class."
Lin Jie's expression was equally grave.
He knew that most Grotesque Armants 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 armant itself possessed a certain degree of self-awareness.
"Or," Lin Jie's voice beca sowhat distant, "it didn't go out of control."
"But was stolen by sothing even more powerful."
At the end of the report was a supplentary autopsy report from a local Lisbon coroner, its words filled with confusion.
"We found so very abnormal, non-fatal cutting marks inside the deceased's oral cavity."
"The tongue of the deceased, Don Alida, is missing."
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