Leaving those words, Nora Scott tightened her down jacket and led the way along a narrow path.
The path was too narrow for Pedro Langley to walk alongside her, so he could only follow closely behind.
Even though winter presented a bleak scene, the forest landscape was just right, with trees, fallen leaves, and snow interwoven into a unique winter beauty.
However, Pedro was not in the mood to enjoy the scenery; his gaze was fixed on Nora’s silhouette, on the snowflakes on her hair tips and shoulders, the strands of hair lifted by the wind, the fluttering hem of her coat, and even the leaves she unconsciously held in her hand. Each of her movents could tightly grasp his attention.
They walked for about ten minutes.
Nora stopped at the top of a slope.
As Pedro arrived, his view opened up again, and the towering trees blocking the way up front suddenly disappeared, replaced by an open space. Nearby was barren grassland, vast and extensive, and farther away were harvested fields, frost-covered ponds, and densely crisscrossed ridges.
Even farther was a village, with houses of varying heights and curling smoke rising in wisps, shrouded in a thin layer of mist, peaceful and beautiful.
"Buzz buzz buzz—"
The sound of an engine, from far to near, caught Pedro’s attention.
Raising his eyes abruptly, his gaze moved upward, and an object was gradually becoming clearer in his view. A few seconds later, upon seeing the object clearly, surprise climbed into Pedro’s eyes and brows.
It was a drone.
To be precise, it was a drone structured differently from conventional ones. It had multiple rotors and a design similar to regular consur drones on the market, but it was made of lightweight wood, unpainted, with its material clearly discernible.
Realizing sothing, as it approached, Pedro looked forward, and sure enough, he saw that Nora was holding a simple remote control, operating it with both hands.
Nora happened to turn sideways, her phoenix eyes slightly lifted at the corners, a clear smile in her eyes cutting through the wind and snow, calmly seeping into his heart.
She said, "Watch closely."
In the next instant, Pedro raised his eyes again.
The drone hovered high in the air, accompanied by the buzzing sound, with a faint "click" sound.
Like a magic trick, the drone’s body changed with the clicking sounds. The tiny chanical changes were hard to catch with the naked eye, only visible was the popping open of wooden flaps on both sides, extending two thin wooden strips, under which a hint of red was drawn, stretching out, and just as it reached its limit, the chanism restraining that red loosened, allowing it to unfold and reveal itself. On closer inspection, they turned out to be two red cloth strips.
This transformation left Pedro stunned, but soon, the astonishnt blossod in his heart, only to be gathered back in an instant.
On the two cloth strips were eight characters written in beautiful running script.
On the left: Blessings as deep as the East Sea.
On the right: Longevity as enduring as the Southern Mountain.
"..."
Pedro was frozen for a while, speechless.
Nora naturally harbored an inexplicable mischievousness, with a capricious and unpredictable style of doing things. Disliking convention and monotonous order, she enjoyed orchestrating small surprises that were logical yet unexpected. Only the uncontrollable and unforeseen piqued her interest.
Expected, yet unexpected.
"I initially planned to add so strears, but it’s a bit tricky to handle in the wild," Nora explained, raising her eyebrows at Pedro, "So, what do you think, not bad, right?"
A small, proud emotion leaked out from her eyebrows, yet she deliberately feigned modesty, retreating so he could advance, intentionally giving him a chance to complint her.
Breathing out, Pedro forcibly ignored those eight big characters and regained his initial astonishnt.
Pedro said compliantly, "Astonishing, like a celestial being."
Nora was delighted.
He was also amused and asked, "All controlled by chanical techniques?"
If Nora’s concept hadn’t changed yet, then, according to her philosophy, she should use as many initial chanical techniques as possible. The form change should never be entirely controlled by electricity, but instead completed by internally intricately designed chanical parts after triggering a certain point with the remote.
To complete all this in half a month...
Estimating the engineering difficulty, Pedro could only speculate: over the years, Nora’s research on chanical techniques had beco more sophisticated.
One could not help but recognize Nora’s excellence.
In these years, he had encountered many elites in this field, exceptional individuals, so with innate talent, so with accumulated experience, nurtured with significant national financial support, yet he had never t another Nora.
Nora tossed the remote to Pedro, "More or less, one switch to control the trigger point."
The remote had a screen, smoothly displaying the footage shot by the drone, with a complete set of operational buttons, but also two specially made buttons marked in red, likely for controlling the chanism to change form.
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