"Don't look at me like that, isn't shoveling shit your old job?" Edrick dumped a wheelbarrow full of shit into a hole he had dug, either intentionally or unintentionally, right under Griff.
This unlucky soul was the same person Edrick had encountered in the middle of the night while cleaning a public toilet. One of the core businesses of the Soot Street Scamps was to collect feces from public toilets as part of their Nightmen duties.
For his long-term plan, Edrick needed to secure his own salt field. While defecating yesterday, he suddenly had an idea. In his memory, he had never heard of gunpowder, which left him both surprised and delighted.
Given the level of civilization in this world, gunpowder should exist. Currently, he could think of three possibilities: either this world lacks a crucial element, or an advanced magical civilization renders gunpowder unnecessary.
The third possibility was that Edrick's knowledge was simply too limited to have ever heard of it.
Regardless of the reason, gunpowder would be a huge asset in dealing with the Soot Street Scamps. The three key ingredients for making gunpowder are charcoal, sulfur, and potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate.
Charcoal and sulfur are relatively easy to obtain, but the most troublesome ingredient is potassium nitrate. Currently, the only way Edrick knows to obtain it is through human feces.
This warehouse is a secret buried deep in edrick's memories—an abandoned dockhouse that was abandoned years ago due to river siltation. Now, it serves as edrick's slaughterhouse—the Ripper's slaughterhouse. And now, edrick plans to fill it with human excrement, turning it into a saltpeter field.
The Transmigrator had gradually adapted to Edrick's hidden memories. When he captured Griff, he was unusually calm, and with the rationality of a modern man, he devised a strategy that was even more cautious than that of the Ripper.
To cut the grass, you have to remove the roots. Since he was going to kill them, he might as well uproot the Soot Street Scamps.
"You want to take on Blackbeard's gang's wharf?"Edrick asked with a look of disgust as he untied the cloth soiled with manure from Griff's mouth.
"It was all the boss's idea! The boss wants to trade people! Blackbeard's wharf is closest to Soot Street! The boss needs the wharf! It was Fox's idea, and Brick reported us. Mudlark killed your father, and I was only responsible for kidnapping the women!"
Edrick felt a headache coming on. Every time he revisited these memories, he experienced this symptom. Fortunately, he quickly found the relevant information: Gideon "Mudlark" Fletcher, Eli "Fox" Moss, and Jem 'Brick' Rookwood—the three thugs of the Soot Street Scamps—and their boss was Mordy "Soot" Ashdown.
This villain was once a chimney sweep. He started out as a chimney sweep, then he gathered all the chimney sweeps to form a gang, and sent child laborers to climb into the chimneys of aristocratic mansions to steal jewelry.
Now they control the chimney sweeps, dung collectors, river mudlarkers, and coal porters in the Rust District.
"Mudlark, Fox, and Brick," said Edrick as he walked over and pulled back a piece of ragged cloth. Underneath lay three dying men, and Griff's eyes widened. "Are you talking about these three?"
The three poor wretches lay on the ground, tied up tightly, but it was completely unnecessary because they were covered in wounds and had difficulty breathing. They were on the verge of death.
The Transmigrators easily found these thugs with the help of three cats. They happened to be scavenging for excrement, so Edrick mercilessly took their excrement cart and kidnapped them.
After all, in Ashrat Alley, these thugs bullied men and women all day long and never hid their tracks.
According to Edrick's memory, these people were all destined for hell, and kidnapping women and forcing them into prostitution was commonplace.
If Edrick hadn't returned early that day, Hannah's fate would have been predictable.
Therefore, the Transmigrators were much calmer than they had imagined when dealing with these scumbags. Even though they had never fought before, under the influence of Edrick's memories, they were even a little excited.
Griff couldn't believe his eyes. Why was Edrick so powerful? No, why was Edrick so brave? Wasn't he afraid of the Soot Street Scamps? Wasn't he afraid of the police?
Suddenly, Griff thought of a possibility. He remembered the malicious report he had filed earlier, and he couldn't help but cry out, "You... you really are... the Ripper of Rust District..."
Hearing Griff's words, Edrick was clearly taken aback, not because his identity had been guessed, but because this idiot had only just realized it.
The fact that his opponent was just a low-level thug left Edrick feeling rather helpless.
"Speak. Why are you targeting the Blackbeard Gang now?" Edrick controlled his facial expressions, revealing no emotion—this was the skill of a serial killer.
"If you truly coveted the dockworkers' business, you could have acted three years ago when the Blackbeard Gang was at its weakest. Now they've established a well-established business network with Councilman Horace. This isn't the right time to act."
Griff couldn't hide the fear in his eyes. He hadn't trembled this badly even when he was eating shit: "It... it was the boss... the boss's idea. He... he... he said we must control the port before the 10th of next month. He didn't tell us the specific reason, he didn't tell anyone, but he recently got in touch with a Lineage Scribe from the Pureblood Order."
"Lineage Scribes?" Edrick was taken aback. It was a very strange term. He wasn't unfamiliar with the surface meaning of the words, but Griff clearly meant something else.
"No... That's right, a Lineage Scribe of the Pureblood Order!" Griff screamed as if he had grabbed a lifeline. "That's right, the Pureblood Order!"
"I don't know anything about the Pureblood Order." Edrick shook his head.
This was not something a dock worker who had almost never left the Rust District would know. In fact, Griff had only recently learned about it from Fox showing off his knowledge: "Yes, you know, it's... the Pureblood Order. They've always wanted to get their hands on Stellaxis, and we don't know exactly what's going on, but they've set their sights on a batch of important cargo in Stellaxis..."
Edrick then remembered that there seemed to be some open and covert struggles between various religious orders within the church in his fragmented memories.
Although most countries believed in the Luminous Pontificate, in reality, each country had its own agenda, and the various chaotic religious orders and sects were actually the forces supported by these countries.
Edrick didn't want to get involved in high-level struggles, but after thinking about it, he realized that this was only one aspect of the many struggles. The Pureblood Order's infiltration of Stellaxis must have started long ago, and this chaotic situation could be exploited.
"Mordy 'Soot' Ashdown, enjoy the rest of your life."
Nightmen was actually a skilled job. They had to find toilets with lots of people and no one around, because feces could be sold for money. The income of nightmen depended on selling feces. If they looked for a toilet in the middle of the night, it was easy to run into the Soot Street Scamps, such as Griff and his friends.
Having gathered enough information, Edrick had no intention of continuing to cause trouble for these thugs for the time being.
The core members of the Soot Street Scamps numbered less than 20, but there were nearly 100 peripheral members like Griff.
Three or four people going missing was nothing unusual in the Rust District. Maybe they got drunk and drowned, or caught some disease.
But if people were disappearing every day, even the Soot Street Scamps would realize that something was wrong.
So Edrick headed to a textile factory to look for shit, specifically John Harrison & Co., Linen Manufacturers.
Because the shit in a textile factory belongs to the factory owner, and the municipal authorities are responsible for collecting it, those lazy government-fed workers only come once a week, so the toilets in the textile factory stink to high heaven and are overflowing.
Edrick took Griff with him to help him scoop shit. After doing it once, Edrick didn't want to do it anymore, so he kidnapped Gideon "Mudlark" Fletcher, Eli 'Fox' Moss, and Jem "Brick" Rookwood, largely because he wanted them to do the dirty work for him.
Because Edrick wasn't sure he could control all four of them at the same time, he had stripped the other three naked and buried them in the salt marsh, leaving only Griff to do the dirty work.
"John Harrison & Co., Linen Manufacturers?" Seeing their destination, Griff couldn't help but exclaim, "My God! This place is dangerous! How could you choose such an evil place?"
"I know, this place is haunted," Edrick nodded. His fragmented memories contained information about this place, and his choice wasn't random. Besides the fresh, stinking manure, he had chosen this location precisely because of the hauntings.
Such supernatural events were not uncommon in Stellaxis, occurring every few days.
The police and patroler could handle the less serious incidents, and occasionally, when there were more difficult cases, the church would send heroes.
Edrick didn't have detailed information about what heroes were. After all, he had only heard the names of a few heroes in casual conversation and had never seen one in real life.
Like John Harrison & Co., Linen Manufacturers, unsolved cases like this were actually quite rare. This meant either the situation was too complicated for official Heroes to handle, or the local boss didn't want official intervention.
"While the Master of Murmurs is still unaware that the Sanctum of the Village Deity has a new owner, you can quickly raise your status," the Flower Maiden said before they left. "The Master of Murmurs has fallen into an eternal sleep, but traces of His existence are scattered across the continent. By collecting these traces, you can quietly seize part of His Divine Authority..."
Edric asked, "What can Divine Authority do?"
"You cannot use His Divine Authority directly, but you can convert it into your Faith Essence through the Sanctum of the Village Deity."
"So?" Edrick was used to picking up trash and turning it into treasure after a night of scavenging, so he wasn't very excited.
So the Wealth-Scattering Lad added, "There is a trace not far from here. If you absorb the Divine Authority there, you can directly convert it into 5,000 Faith Essence Points (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧"