Shadow of Mechanical Soul

Unidentified Flying Object in the Wilderness

The twisted carriage resounded with intermittent noises, and a pair of hands emerged from a c***k stretching over two meters long and half an arm's width wide, gripping the edge of the fissure.

"Creak... Creak..." The metallic screeching filled the air, grating on one's teeth, as the c***k widened, eventually forming an opening large enough for two people to pass through side by side.

Another commotion arose from within the carriage, and unopened alloy boxes were hurled out through the newly formed aperture.

Tom was also injured. During the violent tumbling of the train, he had been ejected from his alloy box. Unluckily, the stacked boxes collapsed instantly, pinning him down. The twisted metal sheets of the carriage ripped apart, and several sharp iron fragments either pierced or sliced through his body. Even with his exceptional physique, he sustained cuts, and one particularly sharp fragment embedded itself in his abdomen.

If he possessed his original body, such an injury would have been fatal, but with his current form, it merely left him with a few wounds. After extracting the iron shard from his stomach, his body promptly healed itself.

Tom replenished his energy solely through those "earpieces," recognizing their vital importance. Hence, upon emerging from the pile of boxes, he began tossing the unopened ones out of the carriage one by one. Energy was life to him, and his 1.36% reserve energy was insufficient for his safety. Any significant energy expenditure would drop his reserves below 1%, necessitating the absorption of more.

Before long, Tom stumbled upon two unfortunate train robbers buried beneath the debris. Both were unconscious, with the taller one covered in blood, likely from a head injury.

Despite their unintended involvement, they were, nonetheless, Tom's saviors. Unsure of the reasons behind the explosion and derailment of the train, he carefully carried the two men out of the carriage.

As he carried the shorter one out, the man, Tang Xieyong, regained consciousness.

Startled and frightened by the unfamiliar face cradling him, Tang Xieyong struggled to free himself from Tom's arms as soon as he regained his senses.

Upon landing, Tang Xieyong immediately felt a pang of pain in his left leg, not severe but hindering his movement. He then noticed Fang Xu, lying motionless and bloodied on the ground.

Hopping on his good leg, he rushed to Fang Xu's side, shouting, "Fang Ge! Fang Ge! Ah..."

But before he could finish his third call, someone clamped a hand over his mouth and toppled him to the ground. It was the stranger who had just saved him.

"Shh, it's dangerous!" whispered a barely audible voice in Tang Xieyong's ear. He saw the stranger crouching, eyes fixed on the direction of the locomotive.

Tom suddenly detected a powerful electromagnetic interference, impossible for ordinary humans to perceive but highly sensitive to his advanced body. The source of the interference stood out like a beacon in the dark, particularly strange in this desolate, sparsely populated area. Even more puzzling, there were three such sources, all hovering in mid-air, according to his passive measurements: two at over sixty meters above ground and one at an astonishing eight hundred meters.

Tom's rationale told him that both the earlier explosions, the train derailment, and now this intense interference were highly unusual. Facing the unknown, it was wiser to remain undetected.

The sky seemed devoid of anything, but Tom knew that two low-altitude interference sources were slowly descending.

Suddenly, a beam of light shot up from the ground towards the sky in the direction of the train's locomotive, resembling the lights from urban landscape lamps. However, before the light could ascend very high, it was obscured by something, and the previously empty sky flickered, and then, unexpectedly, a massive silver-white saucer-shaped craft materialized.

Before anyone could clearly see it, the entire saucer exploded mid-air, sending flaming fragments flying everywhere, with some even reaching as far as the carriage where Tom and the others were hiding.

Immediately after the explosion, small glowing dots began to emerge suddenly from the void not far from the blast site. They swarmed towards the locomotive like bees, and the locomotive area was illuminated by short, dazzling flashes of light that lit up the entire night sky each time. Yet, despite the light, no sound propagated outwards, and the earlier light beam shooting into the sky did not reappear.

Within a few kilometers around the locomotive, everyone felt as if they were standing on a dark stage, beneath which relentless flashes of light blinded them all. Those suddenly appearing dots flew chaotically everywhere. Tang Xieyong, with sharp eyesight, discerned that each tiny light was actually a saucer-shaped craft the size of a bathtub. Compared to the massive saucer earlier, these ones resembled them in shape but were thousands of times smaller.

Sometimes, as the saucer-shaped crafts skimmed past the train, glimpses of burning flames on the ground revealed that something was falling from them. Yet, every time something dropped, the ground would be illuminated by a brief, silent burst of intense light.

One saucer-shaped craft flew straight towards the earthen slope where the three men were hiding. Just as everyone feared they had been discovered, it suddenly and unexpectedly banked at least 130 degrees in mid-air without slowing down, flying towards a carriage about fifty to sixty meters ahead of them.

This mode of flight left the two witnesses stupefied. Though they didn't know much about airplanes, they realized how difficult such a maneuver would be to execute. No airplane, they thought, could fly like that; it seemed to defy the laws of physics.

The craft's target was a carriage that had derailed but appeared relatively intact. However, this fortunate carriage soon became the most unfortunate. A metallic sphere fell from the craft's underbelly, and the craft left without hesitation.

The metallic sphere struck the carriage accurately. A faint spark flared up, extinguishing within 0.5 seconds, followed by a blinding white light emanating from within the carriage, temporarily blinding anyone who looked directly at it.

When people regained their vision, they saw that the previously near-intact carriage now had a massive hole in its middle, accounting for almost a third of its length. If anyone could approach, they would notice signs of melted metal on the carriage's interior walls.

"Uh..." Tang Xieyong could no longer contain himself, twisting his head in an attempt to free his mouth from the hand covering it. Less than half a minute of experience had him convinced he was dreaming. How could a scene straight out of a science fiction movie occur in reality? He felt compelled to uncover what was happening. And Fang Ge, his pillar of support, lay motionless; what would he do if anything happened to him? Yet, the hand covering his mouth was surprisingly strong, and he couldn't break free.

"Stop shouting, and I'll let you go," Tom whispered, knowing that the man, nicknamed "Four Bricks," was timid and feared he might lose control and scream.

Upon discovering the interference sources, Tom had resolutely expended a small amount of energy to activate his detection capabilities.