Silent Crown

by Feng Yue

“Tomorrow?” asked Mary.

  “Yes. Tomorrow,” the voice answered.

  587 Redemption Part 1

  Snow fell from the sky and landed on Charles’ hair.

  He looked down at the pale face in the pool of blood and watched as the soldier on the ground struggled to breathe. The last remaining heat of the soldier’s body turned into a white mist and rose from his nose and mouth, flying into the sky. It then condensing into frost in the wind and fell silently, freezing the blood that was gradually turning cold.

  The pain caused the soldier’s face to convulse. He groaned and gazed at Charles, reaching out with all his might, trying to touch Charles. His lips moved weakly, but no sound could be heard.

  “Hold on for a little longer.” Charles gripped the soldier’s hand hard, feeling a bone-chilling iciness, the coldness seeped into his bones, causing him to panic. “I’ll find someone to attend to you right away, just hold on for a little bit longer. Doctor! Doctor! There’s one more person here…”

  In the hustle and bustle, only groans in the distance responded. The snow continued to fall from the sky as if it would never stop, sprinkling all over the frozen soil. On the plains that had survived the war, the fires from the battle had yet to be extinguished, but the bodies had already turned cold completely.

  Was it thousands of people that had died? Or was it tens of thousands?

  For their new country, they fell in this war, fell in this place that was cold enough that even hell would be frozen. They looked up to the sky until death took them until the powder-like snow covered their faces.

  The medics staggered as they made their way through the plains, moving the soldiers who were still breathing onto the stretchers, one by one. Then, they used their swords to stab the soldiers whose injuries were too far gone for them to be saved through their hearts, one by one. This way, the soldiers who had next to a zero percent chance of surviving need not suffer any longer.

  Charles’ shouts were drowned out by the shattered snow, and no one responded. Not far behind Charles, Wolf Flute was smoking a cigarette. He wrapped his coat tightly around himself and simply watched on without saying a word.

  Charles withdrew his gaze dismally but saw the dying soldier smile.

  The soldier smiled as if heaven was in sight.

  “Ah, ah, the Holy Son…” He held Charles’ hand, his dry lips moving, and exhausted the last of his strength as he implored, “Please… bestow redemption upon me…”

  Charles opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have the heart to avoid the man’s gaze, hesitating as he tried to compose his thoughts into words. In the end, he could only nod wordlessly. The soldier, who was missing half of his body, smiled as if he had finally gotten silent acquiescence to pass on.

  The gates of the kingdom of heaven opened in front of him.

  He closed his eyes with satisfaction.

  His last breath dissipated.

  His body had no more warmth in it.

  Charles let go and watched the soldier’s arm fell onto the frozen pool of blood. Even though the man was already dead, he still seemed to be holding something in his hand, but his palm was empty as if he was clutching on to invisible hope.

  For a brief moment, Charles saw it. He saw a faint and vague figure rise from the man’s body. Just like the last cloud of white mist that was exhaled from his mouth and nose, the figure slowly rose into the sky.

  He didn’t only see one figure but hundreds and thousands of them. Innumerable blurry figures soared in the sky and walked into an invisible doorway. It was as if they had really walked into the kingdom of heaven.

  Charles thought that the illusion plaguing him had returned once more, but when he looked at his hands, he found that no illusory blood was on them—the blood on them was real—and when he looked up again, he couldn’t see the figures anymore.

  They had already left. The wind and the snow were all that was left, sweeping across the plains, covering the battlefield, and eliminating the last remaining traces.

  “Are those real?” Charles looked at the sky blankly.

  Wolf Flute didn’t get it. “What?”

  “Nah.” Charles shook his head, gave a laugh of self-mockery, and withdrew his gaze. “Nah, nothing.”

  Wolf Flute sighed and handed him a packet of cigarettes. Supplies were short on the battlefield. Food was allocated on a per capita basis. Every two persons would get a cotton shirt to share between them and must take turns to wear it, but only tobacco was in unlimited supply.

  The inferior tobacco leaves produced in East India were chopped with a sickle and cured in a simple and rough manner, then wrapped with white paper that was very thin and coarse. The cigarettes didn’t even come with filters.

  “Too bad there isn’t any wine.” Charles ignited the cigarette and inhaled deeply. Pungent smoke gushed into his lungs, scraping his throat like sandpaper, and brought a sense of misery similar to that of swallowing gravel. Smoke spurted out of his nose and mouth and flew into the sky.

  Is it flying to the place the souls are at? Charles couldn’t help wondering.

  “Allow yourself to relax, we’re at war.” Wolf Flute patted his shoulder. “It’s not the first, nor will it be the last, and there’s definitely more to come in the future. The war will continue for as long as it takes for the countries to recognize the revolution that has taken place here.”

  “I know,” Charles replied.

  “But you have to understand.” Wolf Flute sighed. “How many times have you done it? On our way here, how many men have you tried to save? You are a leader, you are their hope, but you are not a medic. Just give up. You can’t save everyone, but you can ensure that they died a worthy death.”

  Charles was silent. After a long time, he asked softly, “Do they truly believe that I am some Holy Son?”

  “Yes,” Wolf Flute replied curtly.

  “But I’m not.” Charles shook his head. “I know that I’m not. I have no-goddamn-thing to do with that bullshit of a god. He has never loved me.”

  Wolf Flute pondered quietly for a good while and finally found an answer. “Then maybe you’re not His own?”

  Charles said nothing.

  Wolf Flute shrugged with a fair amount of disappointment. “I thought the joke was good.”

  “Where is Mr. Gaius?” Charles snuffed out the cigarette and asked suddenly, “I need to look for him for certain matters.”

  Wolf Flute thought for a moment and said, “He should be very busy right now.”

  “I know.” Charles turned back and gazed at the vast battlefield covered in snow. “Titles like the Holy Son are totally meaningless for this place. I don’t want to merely be a mascot, Wolf Flute.”

  “Gaius will never agree to let you fight,” Wolf Flute answered straightforwardly. “You are a symbol, Charles, you’re the proof that miracles exist, you must hold yourself aloft.

  “If you get involved in the war, other countries will have a reason to mobilize their scepter musicians and catastrophe-level weapons, and maybe even saints… Gaius will never allow you to roll up your sleeves and join in out of impulse. ” As he said so, he pointed towards the far end of the battlefield. At the end of the horizon, in the camps in the distance, a huge aether wave rose into the sky from afar, declaring its own existence.

  “See? We can’t allow ourselves to fall into a passive position,” Wolf Flute said. “Whoever succumbs to the temptation first loses.”

  “Rest assured, I won’t be the one.” Charles laughed self-mockingly and lowered his head, looking at the cold face in the blood and snow. He murmured softly, “I just feel like I should help out a little bit…even if it’s just a little bit.”

  …

  It was three hours later in the White Mountain Research Institute. No semblance of heat could be found in the icy room, and it was so cold that it made one’s lungs convulse. Even the house itself had just been built and was only good for blocking out the wind with its four walls. The fireplace w
as burning in the corner of the room but failed to provide any warmth.

  Old men sat by the table, wrapped in thick coats, mugs of hot water in their hands, but they were all still shivering from the cold.

  No one spoke in the silence.

  They quietly looked at the drawings on the table with full concentration, not letting any loopholes or errors slip past them.

  Footsteps sounded from a distance. A young researcher opened the door and ran in, holding a bulge of mass in his arms. Despite the snowy weather, he was sweating profusely from running. The drops of sweat on his face turned into ice and were almost frozen stiff.

  “We only have so many left in storage, I have taken all of them here.” He put the gray iron-like ingots he was holding on the table. The iron-like ingots which were about one thumb thick fell onto the table and collided with each other, producing crisp, clear sounds.

  Solder. All the ingots were made of solder.

  The old men examined the solder on the table, then looked at each other with uncertain expressions, and started discussing.

  “Is it really feasible?”

  “No one has gone down this train of thought before, and the principle behind is fairly simple, I don’t see any major problems with it.”

  “Similar designs have been carried out before, but they had their fair share of flaws. Plus, we lack a better alloy formula.”

  “The Sacred City has imposed a technical blockade on us. If we are to conduct the necessary research on our own, it will take another four years.”

  “The idea is very good, but we don’t have so much time.”

  “Let’s make a batch of prototypes based on this design first. Maksim, you have more manpower in your department, how long will it take?”

  “The carpenter apprentices and blacksmith apprentices who have just been recruited have to undergo training before they can be of use to us. If you want to make prototypes of acceptable standards, it will take about three months.”

  Behind the table, Charles listened to their opinions quietly. After a long time, he slowly shook his head. “It won’t take so long. If you all are alright with the design, it can be done now.”

  “Now?” one of the old men asked.

  “Yep, now.” Charles nodded and spread his palms.

  A crisp sound rang out. As if an earthquake suddenly came, the sound of the tables and chairs shaking rang out, and the glass on the wall suddenly fractured, revealing innumerable cracks, and fell apart. The old men looked at each other in confusion and couldn’t help but want to back away.

  Bang! A chair collapsed suddenly, and the person sitting on it fell and tumbled. He raised his head in shock, only to see iron nails breaking free from their bonds and flying towards Charles’ palm.

  The wind bellowed. A fog-like cloud of gray dust gushed in from the window and gathered around Charles. One could vaguely see the innumerable coarse grains of metal in it.

  The cold wind whistling and poured into the room from the window, but no hint of coldness could be felt anymore. It was because born in the palm was a high temperature much hotter than lava. It was like a furnace.

  Countless alchemy arrays were born and destroyed in an instant. As they were gathered and moved around by the five fingers, an abstract furnace was formed. A dazzling flame of pure white was brewing up in it, and the temperature high enough to vaporize the entire room in an instant was restrained within the grasp of the hand.

  The mere trace of leaked heat was enough to make the room so hot that it was suffocating. It made the old men’s beards curl and they retreated into the corners.

  When steel fell into the furnace, it became a liquid, and the impurities evaporated instantaneously. Then, countless fine particles of dust flowed into the furnace. The dust consisted of powder-form minerals contained in the depths layers of the frozen soil. An invisible hand had extracted them from the soil and add them to the furnace to be smelted in the terrifying temperature.

  Heating, hammering, purification, formation, reprocessing, casting, quenching… In a flash, the lengthy process had been completed in one-shot.

  In Charles’ hand, dozens of parts had been forged, and the fire had been extinguished. The parts collided and scraped against each other, then pieced together, assembled, and finally formed the prototype of his creation.

  It was an odd iron tube that came with a grip.

  “It’s done.” Charles placed it on the table. “As long as no errors have been made, we can test it now.”

  588 Redemption Part 2

  The old men looked at Charles, astonished.

  The engineers from all over the world had never seen anyone who could build things at such a speed. Even for an alchemist, it would take days to build it, but now, in just a few seconds, the design on the paper was turned into finished products for them to inspect.

  As Charles waved his hand, a lead rod ruptured soundlessly, and a column one-centimeter in length fell into Charles’ hand. A piece of an iron sheet was cut from the window frame and wrapped around the lead column as a thin shell for it. Then, several dozen iron sand was put into it. Thus, the packaging was finished. An iron rod of the length of half a cigarette was held between Charles’s fingers.

  “Shall we begin?” Charles asked the old men who were transfixed.

  “You may begin, Charles.” The old man wearing a coat by the stove in the corner raised his eyes. “I cannot wait to see it.”

  “Ok. Mr. Gaius.” With a smile, Charles pulled the mechanism at the grip of the iron barrel and put the iron rod into it. Then he aimed the barrel at the wall. After a little hesitation, he looked back and said, feeling a little embarrassed, “Could you please cover your ears? This might be a little loud.”

  Gauis put down his water cup and plugged his ears. Seeing this, Charles turned back and raised the barrel at the wall again. Then a sharp blast almost shattered everyone’s eardrum. It was like thunder. What they saw was only super-hot fire, and light blasted out of the iron barrel and everything was finished. The wall was no longer intact. There were numerous big holes as if someone had made them with invisible knives and axes, then burned them with fire so that the holes had become black and seemingly melting.

  The iron barrel, burned by the thunder-like blast, had become red. As the blast produced enormous power, the iron barrel was under huge pressure at the moment of firing. Charles’s arm was completely destroyed; bones piercing out of his flesh and his skin cracking into pieces. But Charles seemed not to care at all and smiled happily. “Wow. What they recorded in the ancient books was real!” He muttered, “It was only a replica of the original mechanism based on my estimations. I never expected it to be so powerful! I am so lucky.”

  As if time went backward, Charles’ blood returned into his body, the peeled off skin healed quickly, and the bones recovered too, leaving no trace of injury at all. Even the blood-stained sleeves were clean. It was as if nothing had happened. And this all happened in a split second.

  The old men, almost having lost their sense of hearing to the big boom, recovered from the shock. Figuring out what had happened, they looked at the strange iron barrel with terror and astonishment.

  They all knew what had happened.

  The principle was simple: melting lead reacting with aether in a closed space. Then, the reaction generated a huge amount of gas and heat which propelled the iron sand out of the iron barrel, causing the damage they had seen. However, no one had ever thought of applying this new alloy in this way.

  “This was inspired by a story told to me by my friend.” Scratching head, Charles said, “In the story, there was a musician named Rain Artist. This reminded me of something recorded in some ancient book. I’ve always wanted to try it, but I had no chance until just now. Now that you have seen it yourself, it was really great! Do you think it will work? I think there should be no problem with it, right?”

  The old men looked at each other. They were the best mechanical engineers from all over the world, renowned in th
eir respective fields. They didn’t need to think to make a conclusion. They’d know if something would work by a simple glance at it. But when they saw this thing, they were shocked by the terrible power generated by such a simple mechanism. However, its flaws were as obvious as its advantages.

  “We’ve seen similar things in the research institutions of the Asgardians. They powered their crossbow cannons with steam pressure to provide the initial speed for the crossbow arrows. But it was too costly to make steel that could take such high pressure. The budget of the mechanism was totally out of control; it became a decoration rather than a useful design. So, they dropped it at last.”

  After a short discussion, one of the old men said, “With all due respect, it’s much too difficult to mass produce the machine in your hand. If we make it manually by alchemists, the cost would be too high due to the requirements of the steel material and the long time needed for production. According to our estimations, it would be as expensive as a guided cannon. It’s too luxurious for us.”

  “We can use other materials. Use wood for the grip, and ordinary steel for the non-essential parts.” Charles said, “It doesn’t need alchemy metrics as it relies on pure aether reaction and mechanical engineering. According to my calculations, the cost will be lowered by 90 percent if we produce it in an assembly line.”

  “Then, there’s no way to guarantee its safety.” Engineer Maksim said, “I am an apprentice musician, though not as skilled as you are. I can do the math. It is okay to do the trials in the white area, but if we use it outside of the white area, the aether fluctuation caused by the noise will damage the thing itself and may even compromise the safety of the user. That will be suicide for the soldiers.”

  “We can reduce the amount of the melting lead by half,” Charles said immediately. “Though it may be less powerful, it will still work.”

  Maksim, taking paper and a pen out of his pocket, shook his head and said, “No use. The pressure is still too high. The pressure inside will destroy the barrel. And the barrel will be damaged completely after shooting only once, unable to be used again.”