Beginning with the Ubume Bird-Chapter 563 - 59: The Frailty of Flesh (Part 4)

Chapter 563: Chapter 59: The Frailty of Flesh (Part 4)

"What’s the situation inside the tower?"

The Chief Detective didn’t wait for the airship to land before he yelled at the police officers surrounding the entrance.

The officer in charge of coordination shook his head.

Under the murky halos of the moon, steam airships descended like snowflakes, filling the night sky. The officers, wearing bulky heavy-duty exosuits, leapt to the ground, landing with a succession of booming impacts.

Atop Cupid Tower, the golden lookout lanterns circled clockwise, illuminating a patchwork of cannon muzzles and throbbing chimneys, lighting up one officer’s face after another, as an atmosphere of tense, searing urgency undulated ceaselessly.

Even if sabotaging the railways could significantly delay things, the steam guards of San Francisco, the crowning glory of the era, would not be rendered helpless by such trifling tricks.

"We’ve evacuated the crowd and have ascertained that the perpetrator is a maintenance fitter employed by Enfield Security Company, a Chinese man recently promoted to engineer. Dissatisfied with the Health Bureau’s response to the bubonic plague in Chinatown, which caused fires and casualties, he attacked Cupid Tower tonight. Now all the guests at the banquet are under his control. He has a lot of peculiar steam equipment that Enfield hasn’t disclosed to the public, posing an extreme danger."

"Send the steam hounds in first."

At the Chief Detective’s command, a phalanx of steam hounds alongside steam-powered aerial orbs charged toward the banquet’s entrance, when suddenly, a contraption resembling the newest "Hera" personal exosuit emerged from behind a fire and lunged at a mechanical hound, exploding violently.

Countless soaring steam creations collided and exploded in the moonlight, the successive flashes of fire lighting up everyone on the scene; eventually, both the steam hounds and the aerial orbs were completely obliterated, while the self-destructive toys Chang Yu had set up were also exhausted.

The Chief Detective snatched the loudspeaker from an officer’s hand: "Attack!"

The officers advanced in unison, scrutinizing the scrap metal wreckage and dying embers before the banquet hall doors.

Suddenly, the smoke was blown aside by a gust of wind, and there, at the entrance to Cupid Tower, was an all-black steam-powered exosuit.

It was only eighty centimeters tall, with a steel structure resembling the human skeleton, but there was nothing above its neck. Ordinarily, constructing a single combatant weapon with a bipedal humanoid structure is a thankless task; if not at someone’s behest, Chang Yu wouldn’t have designed this automaton in such a form.

The metal plate that was welded on its surface appeared haphazard, some parts were not even fully secured, and its crude, hollow structure enclosed a dazzling steel spine.

This partially exposed steel spine was ornate and complex, resembling a fine piece of art. It was made up of twenty-eight Tri-Orb Devices shaped like hotpots, connecting all the components. Compared with the precision of the steel spine, the rest of the hand-crafted parts looked like worthless scrap metal.

Unlike the other "self-destructive toys", it didn’t blindly pounce upon the sight of living beings; instead, it was like a vagrant scavenger, picking through the scattered mechanical debris. At last, it found something useful — a relatively intact gear.

It inserted the gear into its chest and moved its arms as if it were alive, then faced the approaching officers.

Even without a head, the officers equipped with the latest exosuits felt a chilling intent spreading from their spines.

"What the hell is this thing?"

The officers continued to advance as the humanoid automaton stood upright, its Tri-Orb Devices along the steel spine lighting up with red, fiery patterns from bottom to top. In the end, a total of nine orbs were ignited. A stream of mysterious red steam flowed out from the spine.

It crouched slightly, and the marble beneath it cracked with a spider-web pattern. It leapt up, nimbly dodging a steel net shot by an officer, and then rushed towards the plethora of steam contraptions of the police force.

It moved with the agility of the wildest beast and the precision of the most skilled martial artist, yet in the tide of steel, it rampaged unhindered. The powerful cannons couldn’t shatter its seemingly fragile form, but its slender claws, powered by the red steam, could penetrate the officers’ metal armor and flesh beneath, breaking the legs or twisting the arms of at least five officers in a flash, rendering them combat-incapable without firing a shot.

A not-even-a-meter-tall strange steam automaton had stopped a steam guard force of at least a hundred people, a scene as bizarre and exaggerated as any. But on closer inspection, in just a few minutes’ time, large cracks had begun to appear on the body of this strange automaton...

The Chief Detective witnessed this scene, but he wasn’t about to risk his men’s lives to fill this gap. He whispered to an officer beside him, whose face showed hesitation: "Enfield doesn’t have an obligation to follow the police department’s commands, and they’re unlikely to accept this kind of order."

"This damn thing came from their factory; the perpetrator is their employee; we’re trying to save people, including their boss!"

The irate Chief Detective bellowed, "Even if you have to point a gun at the heads of those bastards, get them to do exactly as I say, immediately."

————————————————

The melee outside the tower also alarmed those in the hall.

Medical Officer Joe Rock Lautford’s body lay in a warm pool of blood. Before his death, he confessed to Chang Yu that the fire in Chinatown was no accident, but the result of arson, authorized by Mayor Michael, personally executed by Pinkerton detectives, and technically supported by gear from Director St. Yves of Enfield. The murkiness of these secret dealings further silenced Chang Yu.

Joe Rock Lautford confessed to all his crimes, weeping and begging for forgiveness in front of Chang Yu, but Chang Yu still pulled the trigger.

The death of Joe Rock Lautford made everyone present realize that this Chinese man with the brass mask and voice like Evil Ghost had no intention of using the laws of San Francisco to seek justice for his deceased compatriots. He chose a more drastic measure, even at the cost of more lives.

Fear was etched on everyone’s faces.

"Mr. St. Yves, I have always held you in high regard, do you have anything to say now?"

Chang Yu stared at St. Yves, who unconsciously shrank into the crowd, unable to discern any intense emotions in those bloodshot eyes.

St. Yves stayed silent for a while. After exchanging a glance with Duke Weilang beside him, he slowly emerged from the crowd. His complexion was somewhat pale, but he remained composed.

"I admit my mistakes, but subjectively, I never intended to kill anyone. This might be a bad end for me, but it’s the same for you, Chang, we could have been the making of each other."

"Is that the dream talk you wish to be your last words?"

As he spoke, Chang Yu raised the muzzle of his gun.

St. Yves swallowed. His mind was racing, trying to find something to say to delay Chang Yu, but those indifferent, blood-red eyes only made him subconsciously beg for mercy, unable to think of any excuse.

"Please wait a moment."

Chang Yu turned the gun with impatience. "Miss Dorothy, you’ve had enough to say tonight. Who do you think you can speak for? Hundreds have died in a horrific fire, thousands are displaced, yet this city turns a deaf ear, offering no rescue or aid. They drive the refugees to the island, then hold banquets and celebrations in the high tower. Tell me, is this a situation merely a few racists could cause?"

Dorothy raised both hands. "I just want to know, after your revenge, what do you plan to do, go into exile?"

Chang Yu replied without hesitation, "I will blow up San Francisco’s offshore railway and all of Enfield’s steam product production lines. Everything I have done for this city over the years, I will take back with my own hands."

Dorothy shook her head. "That’s impossible. The entire city’s Steam Guard has been mobilized. You won’t escape even if you grew wings."

Chang Yu smiled. "We shall see."

No sooner had his words fallen than a vivid red figure somersaulted over the crowd, dashing towards Chang Yu. The figure, with steam rising from his armature, struck at Chang Yu’s head with fast, agile movements. It was none other than Duke Weilang, known as the Venomous Snake Detective.

But the bright red armature hit nothing. From beneath Chang Yu’s cloak extended a seemingly bulky, clumsy brass armature. Several supple, swift metal tentacles stretched from its hollow, skillfully wrapping around Detective Duke’s waist. The massive iron pincer at the front clamped around Duke Weilang’s neck, immobilizing him.

"Is that all you’ve got, Mr. Detective?"

Chang Yu fixed his gaze on Duke Weilang as the iron pincer tightened bit by bit.

Suddenly, a series of urgent steam whistle blasts pierced the air. St. Yves looked out of the window; the high tower was built on the mountaintop, allowing views over the old city district below, and the dock with its sea railway.

Visible to the naked eye, two long trains charged along the Mississippi River, bearing the emblem of the Pinkerton Agency. The two train dragons, one to the left and one to the right, each carrying five hundred fully armed Pinkerton agents, converged towards the docks of San Francisco. If nothing went wrong, the trains would climb the mountain and enter the city district of San Francisco in five minutes.

St. Yves had spent a substantial commission to hire a full thousand Pinkerton agents capable of operating single-person steam units, and they had finally arrived.

"It’s the main force of the Pinkertons, we’re saved!"

Someone cheered out loud.

A thousand steam operatives was a military force capable of suppressing a riot in a central city.

Detective Duke laughed out loud, his eyes full of mockery as he looked at Chang Yu, as if to ridicule his earlier ’we shall see’ remark.

Chang Yu also fell into a brief silence. There are times when human efforts are simply not enough, even for him, who had mastered part of the steam technology of the Book of Creation. The entire San Francisco police force did not exceed a thousand men, and he had exhausted most of his steam creations. If a large number of Pinkerton agents were to join the battlefield, the consequence was evident.

St. Yves breathed a huge sigh of relief and nearly collapsed to the ground.

"We’re saved!"

That thought was incessant in his mind.

Just then, the train whistles became sharper as if the drivers were warning someone.

Looking carefully, ahead of the two trains, each track had a man on it who appeared as a small black dot. They faced each other, completely ignoring the sharp whistles of the trains, with only each other in their eyes.

With the insight of St. Yves and Duke Weilang, they still couldn’t comprehend what was happening. But a scene beyond the imagination of everyone present unfolded just like that.

As the two trains were about to collide with the men standing obstinately on the tracks, the train on the left suddenly burst into raging black flames that engulfed the entire train in an instant, while the train on the right was swept by a dense fog. Almost simultaneously, both trains overturned and were thrown off the tracks.

In the end, one of ice, one of fire, buried the fully armed thousand Pinkerton agents from both trains on the banks of the Mississippi River...

The waves churned as the two men on the tracks remained in a standoff, as if nothing had happened at all.