Silent Crown Chapter 2

Late at night, the sound of the crashing waves came from afar.

The town was silent, as if it had fallen asleep. Everything was quiet. The stars and the moon hung in the sky above.

In the dark, only the lighthouse on the coastline outside the town still had light coming from it.

Since the town had been established, the lighthouse had always been standing on the coastline. The church had built it with ancient technology, and it pointed towards the direction of the reef area for ships that came near.

For centuries, at the top of the lighthouse, a had always been burning.

The fire burned on aether's powers, releasing a blindingly harsh light.

Hundreds of mirrors were placed in complex frames, forming complicated arrays,enveloping the fire.

The light, shining through a well-designed refraction angle, would reflect out into a complex trajectory, its brightness increasing tenfold, shining in all directions.

This self-reliant structure is almost semi-permanent, and does not require any manual management as long as there are proficient mechanics carrying out monthly system maintenance tests to prevent possible failures.

However, it was not the priest in black that came today, but two teenagers...and a dog.

The only words that can be used to describe the dirty, golden-haired dog were ugly, ugly, and really ugly. It had laid on the ground ever since it got here, looking disinterested with everything it saw, and had already fallen asleep.

When a mosquito landed on its nose, it sneezed. While sneezing, its lips turned outwards as if it was grinning, revealing a row of uneven canine teeth.

Beside it, a teenager with fair blonde hair leaned back against the wall, focused on shredding chicken meat with his bare hands. The chicken was savagely torn to shreds piece by piece, stuffed into his mouth, then carefully chewed.

He ate in a slow and serious manner, making people think that he was not hungry and just wanted to spend time eating.

He was handsome, but when he laughed his looks gave others the impression that he was a bad person. Those green eyes seemed to look at people as if he were a beast, looking for the best spot to take a bite out of.

By his side, the liquor bottle was half empty. He had already finished half of it by himself.

"Yezi, you already knew, right?" He whispered, "The opportunity to study in the Sacred City has been taken by the third son of the Thomas family."

"I know," Yezi replied.

In the array of light spoke an indifferent voice.

"He also said a lot of ugly words," Victor said.

"I know."

A hand came out of the dazzling light. On the index finger was a ring made out of iron wires that commanded everyone's attention. But his voice was still indifferent, without any emotion.

"Victor, give me the eighth wrench," said the voice.

"Are you really listening to me?" Victor asked.

Victor's eyes were stung by the light, his pupils constricting, "You waited so many years to go into the Sacred City to study. All of your hard work got you here. Are you really going to watch the opportunity fall into the hands of a piece of trash that only knows how to flip maids' skirts?"

The dog awakened. It looked up and barked, as if it were also contemptuous and could no longer stand it.

"I said hand the eighth wrench to me," the voice insisted.

The hand in the array shook gently, reminding Victor not to keep him waiting for long.

Victor picked up the wrench from the toolbox and placed it in his hand. He started to withdraw his arm, but Victor grabbed him by the wrist, keeping him from pulling away.

The hand paused in the air.

Victor stared at the glare of the mirror frame and the array, as if he wanted to see the look on the face of the teen in front of him. He was slightly drunk, so his eyes looked angry--not at himself, but for this quiet friend of his.

"Did you hear today?" Victor whispered, "He said that you were an Oriental bastard."

"I heard."

"He said that kids from the streets should go back to brothels to find their mothers."

"I heard."

"So? Do you want to pretend that nothing happened?" Victor demanded.

Victor's hand clenched the wrench so hard that you could see his veins popping out.

He looked at the mirror array and saw the blurred reflections inside, but the images were motionless and silent. Silence--that was all there was.

"Ye Qingxuan, if someone insulted my parents, I swear there would be a whole hell of poisonous snakes poured into his room; if someone insulted my friend, the same would happen."

Victor continued coldly, "I know that you don't want any trouble for the priest, but sometimes, if you retreat, you will be seen as weak. You will be insulted! You've done so much for this town, and what have you gotten in return?"

"They don't care for you at all!" Victor exclaimed. "For so many years, they have never been grateful for what you have done, and they take everything for granted! Even if you continue to repair the lighthouse for ten more years, create tens of thousands of copies of posters, or reduce their oppression as much as possible, nothing will ever change."

"I never expected anyone to appreciate me," Ye Qingxuan replied.

"And there is no one appreciating you! Do you know why? Because in their eyes, letting an unknown wandering beggar stay here is the greatest gift of all in this noble land!"

"Enough, Victor."

In the array, the voice of the other teen echoed. The light was too harsh for people to see his face.

"No it's NOT enough! Do you remember what Thomas said?" Victor yelled. Victor's eyes were sharp, like the knife he hid within. "He said that the opportunity was what he deserved! It will never fall on an eastern hybrid's head because the hybrids have stolen enough from us! In the five years you were here, he took you as a thorn in his side. You spared him again and again, but how did he treat you in return? Are you really going to let it go?"

There was more silence in the array.

After a long time, the array opened and the long floor mirror was pushed open.

A teenager walked out of the light.

With the combination of the matrix, the gleaming light dissipated, showing the young teen's figure.

His wore thick sunglasses--a necessary tool when working in the array, or else the heated light would blind his eyes.

The most eye-catching feature was not his sunglasses, but his hair.

It was a pure silver, like flowing mercury. The long silver hair was shining in the light, fading into it.

Silver hair was unique to the Oriental people. It was his most noticeable feature, but also his greatest sin--it was proof that he was a hybrid. Everyone would know what his silver hair meant. It revealed half-breeds, who would always be seen as an anomaly in both the East and the West.

This identity was more irritating than beggars on the street.

Ever since he had come here, the criticism and attack on him had never stopped.

After the priest adopted him and appointed him to become a scribe of the church library, Thomas, who had originally learned to copy in the church, had been watching him ever more viciously.

In order to get rid of him, Thomas even hid the Holy Bible in his room, and falsely accused him of stealing books.

If Ye Qingxuan had not been able to recite the Holy Bible on the spot, proving that he had no need to steal it, he would have been cast out of town long ago, never to find shelter again.

"Victor, don't try to push me towards revenge. You know that doesn't work on me." Ye Qingxuan was not enraged, and he did not argue. He just picked up the wrench and returned to the array. Then, sounds were the only things that came from the inside.

Ye continued, "Anyone can say bad words, but winning with words is of no use to me. So what if I won the argument? Thomas paid for that opportunity, and it will never be mine. I'd rather save my effort. Victor, since when did you think I was a weak man?"

The sliver haired teen picked up the bottle on the ground, and walked to the window overlooking the foot of the quiet town.

Facing the refreshing sea breeze, he drank all that remained. Then, he threw the empty bottle far away. "What's good in saying more words? At least let your payback be seen by everyone' eyes."

Ye Qingxuan turned around and pulled the hub next to him.

Immediately, the lighthouse moved along with the complex structure, as if it were waking up from sleep, moving along the established trajectory. Gears riveted, winches rolled, mirrors offset, and the angles changed.

The collision of the steel parts caused sparks to fly and a deep groan--the mechanical collision's broken sound was like heavy breathing echoing.

The originally still frame was now in crazy rotation. In the harsh light, it was like a wildly burning lotus.

Victor looked blankly at the changing flashing lights. The sudden flash was like an explosion--gone in the blink of an eye. The lotus shaped array was sealed.

The light jumped in the air, like a tame beast, going in all directions--the same as the original.

But there was just one beam of light projected into the dark town, falling on the mirror in front of the nail on the front of Old Phil's shelter. Along with the will of the young teen, the light traveled through the dark town, jumping from mirror to mirror.

In the end, the hot and harsh light cast itself on the largest house in the town.

It was like a light that came down from heaven.

Then, in the middle of the town, the bell trembled, as if rung in anger. Underneath it, a snarling dog was biting the rope, struggling to shake the bell.

The sharp, loud noise awakened the quiet town.

People awakened from their sleep and got out of their beds. In a panic, they ran to the window, eagerly looking at the street.

There was no beast that broke into the town, nor any bandits that broke into any house. Nothing seemed to have happened. Only the sound of the alarm echoed, and a holy light fell from the sky onto the Thomas's house.

In the town, the awoken residents suddenly became noisy.

"What's the matter?" somebody shouted loudly.

"What happened? Who knocked the bell?"

"Mom, I'm scared!"

"Hey! Look at the Thomas's place!"

"The Thomases..."

Thus, the town that was just now extremely noisy turned incredibly silent.

In everyone's gaze, a ray of light from the sky shone down, forming a line of writing. The writing was so clear that it was like a blessing that the gods sent from heaven.

But it was only a few simple words, with beautiful handwriting like flowing water. It wrote out the teen's kindest greetings.

- Son of a bitch!

Victor scoffed, and then sneered, "Saving effort? Do you mean to use that effort to come here in the middle of the night to fix the lighthouse and contribute even more to this town that has never accepted you?"

"At least I get a bit of pay doing this. If I hadn't come over, the priest would have had to come by himself, and I don't want to trouble him. He's already devoted so much to getting me that opportunity," said Ye Qingxuan.

"He never wanted you to go to the Sacred City!" Victor said coldly, "He wants to train you to become a hustler! To pick up after him, to keep you as a companion to all these cold iron lumps all your life! Until you die in this town that is not even on the map, these piles of garbage will be the only things that will stay with you!"

"Actually, I think there's nothing wrong with dealing with the machine," said Ye Qingxuan. In the array, he whispered: "At least they never lied and never looked down on you. Sometimes I like them better than I like people. As long as you know them, they will never betray you."

Victor did not say a word as he drew back his sight and silently tore the chicken meat in his hands, putting bits and pieces into his mouth, grinding them with his back teeth.

The angry beast was eating.

"I'm not letting go of this," he whispered not to Ye Qingxuan, but to himself.

This time, the routine maintenance seemed to be unexpectedly long.

In the silence, there were only the faint sounds of the array mirrors moving. In the tool debugging process, the array design took a turn in new structure changes.

With the teen's skilled operation, the set of large mechanical structures easily began to run.

Hundreds of frames moved along the copper rail to adjust the new angle, like leaves of a lotus opening and turning in rotation. The complex light path jumped within it, flying over to the sky.

When the maintenance check was almost done, Ye Qingxuan came out of the array, did the final check again, and nodded.

"Victor, hand the screwdriver to me. This frame is a bit off."

"Let it be a bit off. Why are you so serious about these useless details?"

Victor threw the screwdriver on the draft paper to him. "They still look down on you, laugh at you, then they sleep on your results and continue to enjoy their lives."

Ye Qingxuan acted as if he had heard nothing, but used the screwdriver to carefully adjust the scale on the frame. His hand holding the screwdriver was as steady as a rock. "Sometimes a little difference will completely change the results." He paused and whispered in an Oriental language that Victor didn't understand, "A mistake in millimeters could change thousands of miles."

As if to respond to the teen's words, a strong sea breeze suddenly blew in from afar. It poured into the window and passed from the lighthouse to the church.

With no screwdriver pressing down, the stack of draft paper at the bottom of the toolbox was blown upwards, as if they had wings, and flew into the sky. There was a piece of paper that covered Victor's face. Victor rushed to rip it off. He wanted badly to tear the paper to shreds, but when he saw the sketch on it, he was stunned.

On white paper, the teen sketched out the array frame with a dipped pen. The array on the sketch had deviated from the original structure, with the rotation of its base moving away from the original place. The new light trajectory was marked out, but compared with the original it was almost unrecognizable.

The inherent structure was broken, the track that the priests had preset was completely disrupted. The old complex and sophisticated system has also been completely destroyed in this maintenance check.

Simply put, it was way beyond recognition!

In silence, Victor looked at his friend like he was watching a monster.

"Yezi, do you know what you are doing?"

"I know." Ye Qingxuan's voice was still calm, like always.

"You know nothing!" Victor jumped up. "Do you even know how long the priest group took to design this set of arrays? How much it costs just to maintain it?!"

He grabbed Ye Qingxuan by his collar. "This is the reef area, Yezi! Do you know how many boats rely on the lighthouse to lead the way every night ? And if anything goes wrong, you will be thrown in prison! Quickly, change it back before anyone finds out!"

"Nothing will go wrong, nothing will happen, nothing will change." Ye Qingxuan whispered, "I just made a little 'adjustment'."

Ye Qingxuan waved his hand, and Old Phil got up from the ground and ran down with a grin.

"You must be crazy," Victor whispered, unable to ease his hands.

Chapter end