No time to waste!
After dealing with Mudlark, Fox, and Brick, edrick immediately set off for John Harrison & Co., Linen Manufacturers.
Now he understood that the Flower Maiden and the Wealth-Scattering Lad were like NPCs who guided new players and assigned tasks. As long as he completed the tasks, he could continuously level up...
"5,000 Faith Essence Points, that shouldn't be too dangerous, right?"
Standing at the entrance of John Harrison & Co., Linen Manufacturers, edrick said somewhat belatedly.
The Wealth-Scattering Lad wasn't very sure either: "It's not very dangerous... probably (⊙_⊙?)"
"What exactly do you want me to do?" edrick asked.
The Flower Maiden explained, "As long as you stay in this environment contaminated by the power of the Master of Murmurs long enough, this Mama will be able to figure out a way to expel it."
"So as long as I don't die, right?" Edrick asked.
"You should walk around as much as possible and observe everything. The more you know about this place, the more likely we are to figure it out (.・ω・.)ノ" The blue little person encouraged him.
So I have to run around and risk my life everywhere? This is like a horror game. Edrick couldn't help but mutter to himself.
Arriving at the door of the textile factory toilet, Edrick kicked Griff, who was wearing protective clothing, into the cesspool with one kick, leaving behind a sentence: "You can try to escape, but I can't guarantee what will happen."
After saying that, Edrick went to the factory door by himself.
He wasn't really worried that Griff would escape. The kid had the guts to bully men and women, but he wouldn't dare take the risk when faced with the threat of a serial killer.
A thug of his caliber couldn't be said to be loyal. Most of the gang members in the Rust District were there because they couldn't make a living. When it came to gang interests and their lives, there was no question that they would choose the latter.
Under the moonlight, the iron gate of the textile factory was tightly closed, the mottled brick walls were covered with ivy, and several glass windows reflected the cold moonlight.
A few withered leaves lay scattered on the stone steps, swirling gently in the breeze. The rhythmic hum of steam pipes echoed in the distance, and everything seemed eerily calm.
At that moment, he looked up at the stars. There was a moon, just like Earth's, but the craters on its surface seemed slightly different? Edrick wasn't an astronomer, but then he noticed the stars—strange, unfamiliar stars.
From his limited knowledge of astronomy, he vaguely remembered that the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt were the easiest constellations to identify in the night sky, but they were not here.
A strange and absurd feeling arose within him, even more so than when he first obtained Edrick's body. After all, during the six months he had spent as a statue, he had gradually grown accustomed to life here. He had even fantasized that perhaps he was still on Earth, having somehow traveled to a different era.
But looking up at the stars in the sky, everything was so unfamiliar.
Moonlight filtered through the broken glass windows, casting mottled shadows on Edrick's feet. He moved cautiously along the damp brick wall, taking care to avoid the suspicious water stains on the floor.
In the empty factory, only the sound of his breathing echoed between the steel beams.
Suddenly, a mechanical humming sound echoed from the depths of the workshop—it sounded like the dying gasps of an old steam engine, with an unnatural rhythm.
Edrick instinctively pulled out a sharp dagger—it was a butcher's knife, a knife that had taken lives.
This world was full of magic, so it was not surprising that there were wraiths, but the fact that the textile factory had not closed down meant that the danger here was not fatal, or at least tolerable, so the transmigrator who had inherited some of the serial killer's memories was not particularly afraid at the moment.
Edrick's fingertips traced the cold wall and looked in the direction of the sound. At the end of the third workshop, an old spinning machine was operating on its own.
Rusted gears ground out a teeth-chattering friction, and the lubricant on the shaft had long since dried up, yet it continued to operate with an eerie precision.
What was even more unsettling was that the spindle was not wound with ordinary cotton thread, but a pearlescent silk-like substance that faintly revealed human hair-like textures in the moonlight.
Edrick's heart pounded violently, and his breathing became rapid. Despite his best efforts to control his emotions, fear crept up his spine like a cold snake.
The iron door behind him slammed shut with a loud bang, and the sound of metal colliding sent a flock of rusty mechanical sparrows flying.
Edrick's breath condensed into frost inside his dust mask. When his fingertips left the wall, they tore away several strands of silver thread—those threads were seeping out from the bases of every idle spinning machine, crawling across the walls like spider webs.
The humming sound suddenly grew louder.
The spinning machines in the third workshop began to accelerate, rusty gears sparks flying. Pearl-colored silk threads glowed with vein-like purple patterns in the moonlight, and Edrick finally saw clearly: each thread ended in a translucent fingernail, tapping out a dense rhythm as the spindles spun.
He retreated toward the nearest freight elevator, but his boots sank into some elastic substance.When he looked down, his heart stopped—clumps of silk were writhing in the cracks on the floor, weaving themselves into the shape of a baby's palm, with five fingers opening and closing to reveal a festering gap in the palm.
"Bang!"
The freight elevator gate was entangled in silk. Edrick turned and pushed open the side door, his nostrils instantly filled with the sour, rancid smell of wool grease.This was the dyeing workshop, where three hundred dye vats stood like tombstones in the darkness, their indigo-blue liquid surfaces floating with tangled clumps of hair.
A buzzing sound followed him like a shadow.
A sticky sound came from the depths of the dye vats. Edrick's kerosene lamp swept over the nearest liquid surface—the floating strands of hair suddenly straightened, forming the blurry outline of a human face.
Edrick's kerosene lamp was knocked out of his hand by the hair strands, plunging him into darkness. Without pausing to lament the loss of his lamp, he felt his way toward the ventilation duct, but froze when his fingertips touched the cast-iron wall: the metal surface was covered in granular protrusions, like countless hair roots struggling beneath the skin.
The silver threads on the ceiling began to rise and fall.
The entire ventilation duct network contracted and expanded in rhythm with the spinning machine, like the respiratory system of some living creature. Edrick abandoned his climb and changed course, rushing toward the drying workshop.
As hot air mixed with the stench of burning hit him, he saw the hanging dolls turn their heads, which were made of woven hair, and pearl-colored silk threads dangled from their empty eye sockets.
The door handle of the western safety staircase was wrapped in silk cocoons and couldn't be moved. After severing the fibers with a dagger, Edrick burst open the iron door of the underground warehouse and jammed the door shut with his hand.
He turned and entered the fabric warehouse. In the darkness, the sound of tearing fabric echoed, and bundles of fabric automatically unfolded to cover the ground, rippling like pale skin.
At the end of the warehouse, a dim blue light illuminated a sorting table, where a half-skeleton wrapped in silk threads floated, its pelvis connected to the cast-iron base of a spinning machine.
The skeleton's finger bones clutched a pulsating shadow, struggling painfully but unable to move even an inch.
Although he had never been here before, Edrick was sure that it was not like this during the day, otherwise it would have closed down long ago.
"The power of pollution is a little more serious than this Mama imagined." Edrick seemed to hear the Flower Maiden muttering.
The buzzing sound behind him suddenly ceased, replaced by an even more spine-chilling silence. The skeleton, wrapped in threads, twisted silently, attempting to free itself from the spinning wheel, as if foretelling the intruder's doom.
Moonlight streamed through the broken window, casting mottled shadows on the piled-up fabric.
When Edrick's shoe sole crushed a damp piece of fabric, the sound of nails scraping against something came from beneath the cloth, followed by muffled whimpers, as if someone with their tongue cut out was trying to cry for help in their final moments.
Edrick's neck suddenly stiffened. It was a sound only a human vocal cords could produce, accompanied by the bubbling of someone drowning.
His knuckles turned white as he gripped the dagger, but he forced himself to crouch down and use the blade to lift the edge of the fabric.
Below lay a desiccated corpse, its skin clinging to the bones, its hands folded across its abdomen, palms facing upward.
The most unsettling sight was the cotton-like threads sprouting from the fingertips, writhing along the fabric's texture, searching.
Edrick heard the rustling sound of the filaments creeping closer and suddenly realized that in this world where magic existed, the most dangerous things were never the visible monsters or street thugs, but the ancient curses hidden behind the gears, disguised as industrial civilization.
Edrick's dagger hovered half an inch above the filaments and suddenly stopped—the corpse's chest was rising and falling.
Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the ribs, illuminating the intricate network of threads inside. Each silver thread trembled in rhythm with the distant spinning wheel. He suddenly understood the meaning of the corpse's palms facing upward: it was the standard posture of a female weaver receiving a spindle.
"Snap!"
The mummified corpse's eyelids were torn open by the silk threads, revealing two cotton-stuffed eyeballs. Edrick quickly stepped back, but his boot heel collided with a soft obstacle.
When he turned back, the moonlight shifted angle, illuminating the twelve children's clothing sewing machines behind him. Each workbench was occupied by a emaciated figure wearing a pearl-colored apron, their withered fingers still twitching in rhythm with the looms.
A humming sound descended from the ceiling.
Edrick looked up to see cracks in the ventilation ducts, with hundreds of silk threads hanging down like curtains. Behind the curtains, the outlines of children emerged, their joints suspended by silk threads, moving like marionettes performing the standardized motions of textile workers.
The child at the front opened its mouth, and pearl-colored silk threads poured out from its throat, weaving into faces that had once appeared in the dye vat.
All the spindles in the workshop suddenly turned toward Edrick and began to spin. The fingernails at the ends of the threads struck the metal surface frantically, creating a rain-like patter.
He then noticed that all the mummies had threads extending from their abdomens, which converged on the old spinning machine that had been operating autonomously—it wasn't a machine at all, but an altar constructed from hair and bones.
They wore outdated coarse garments, their skin an unnatural grayish-white, as if they had been washed countless times.
The child at the front suddenly stopped. Then, as if pulled by invisible threads, the entire row of children turned their heads in unison.
Their eyes were black holes without pupils, yet they stared intently at Edrick.
The hum of the spinning wheels suddenly grew sharp, as if mocking his intrusion. And the corners of the children's mouths curled upward in identical arcs...