Nightmen is actually a skilled job. You have to find toilets used by lots of people, but make sure no one is around when you collect, because feces can be sold for money. Nightmen's income depends on selling feces.
If you wander into a toilet at random in the middle of the night, you're likely 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 Soot Street Scamps had less than 20 core members, but there were nearly 100 peripheral members like Griff.
Three or four people going missing was nothing unusual in the Iron Rust District. Maybe they got drunk and drowned, or caught some disease.
But if people were going missing every day, even the Soot Street Scamps would realize that something was wrong.
So Edrick went to a textile factory to look for shit, John Harrison & Co.
Because the feces from the textile factory belongs to the factory owner, and the municipal authorities are responsible for collecting it, those lazy government employees only come once a week, so the toilets in the textile factory stink to high heaven, with plenty of sewage to go around.
Edrick took Griff with him to help him scoop out the 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 niter field, leaving only Griff to do the dirty work.
"John Harrison & Co., Linen Manufacturers?" Seeing their destination, Griff couldn't help but blurt out, "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 place precisely because of the haunting.
"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 had instructed before they set off. "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 some of his Divine Authority..."
Edrick 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?" Edric was already used to picking up trash and turning it into treasure after a night of scavenging for dung, 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✧"
No time to waste! after dealing with up 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 gave them quests. As long as he completed the quests, he could continuously level up...
"5,000 Faith Essence Points, that won't be too dangerous, right?" Edrick said somewhat belatedly as he stood at the entrance of John Harrison & Co., Linen Manufacturers.
The Wealth-Scattering Lad wasn't too sure either: 'It's not that deadly... 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."
"Then, as long as I don't die, it'll be fine?" asked Edrick.
"You have to walk around and look as much as possible. The more you know about this place, the more likely we are to figure it out (.・ω・.)ノ" encouraged the little blue man.
"You mean run around and get myself killed? This is like a horror game." Edrick couldn't help but complain.
When they arrived at the door of the textile factory's toilet, Edrick kicked Griff, who was wearing protective clothing, into the cesspool with one kick and left 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 run away. The kid had the guts to bully others, but he wouldn't dare take the risk when faced with a serial killer.
A thug of his caliber couldn't be said to be loyal. Most of the gang members in Rust Belt 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 gates of the textile factory were tightly shut. The weathered brick walls were covered in ivy, and a few glass windows reflected the cold moonlight.
A few withered leaves lay scattered on the stone steps in front of the gate, gently swirling in the breeze.
The rhythmic hum of steam pipes echoed in the distance, making everything seem deceptively peaceful.
At this moment, he saw the stars in the sky, a moon that looked just like Earth, but with craters that seemed slightly different. Edrick was not an expert on astronomy, but then he saw stars, unfamiliar stars.
With his limited knowledge of astronomy, he vaguely remembered that the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt were the most recognizable constellations 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 wondered that perhaps he was still on Earth, having merely 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 forward cautiously, pressing against the damp brick wall, careful 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 came from deep within the workshop—it sounded like the dying gasps of an old steam engine, with an unnatural rhythm.
Edrick instinctively pulled out a sharp dagger, a knife used by a cutthroat, a knife that had killed people.
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 a transmigrator who had inherited some of the memories of a serial killer was not particularly afraid at the moment.
Edrick's fingertips traced the icy wall, following the sound. At the end of the third workshop, an old spinning machine was operating on its own.
The rusty gears ground out a teeth-grinding friction, the lubricant on the shafts long since dried up, yet it continued to turn with an eerie precision.
What was even more unsettling was that the spindle was not wrapped in ordinary cotton thread, but a pearlescent silk-like substance that faintly resembled human hair under the moonlight.
Edrick's heart pounded violently, and his breathing grew rapid. Despite his best efforts to control his emotions, fear crept up his spine like a cold snake.
The iron doors of the workshop slammed shut behind him, the clanging of metal sending a flock of rusted mechanical sparrows into flight.
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 a spiderweb.
The humming sound suddenly grew louder.
The spinning machines in the third workshop began to accelerate, sparks flying from the rusty gears.
The pearlescent 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 rapid rhythm as the spindles spun.
He backed 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 an infant's hand, with five fingers opening and closing to reveal a gaping wound in the palm.
"Bang!"
The freight elevator gate was tangled in silk threads. Edrick turned and kicked 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 large tangled clumps of hair.
A humming sound followed him like a shadow.
From the depths of the vats came the sticky sound of water. 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, plunging him into darkness.
Without a moment to spare, he felt his way toward the ventilation duct, but froze when his fingertips touched the cast-iron wall: the metal surface was covered with 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, resembling the respiratory system of some living creature. Edrick abandoned his climb and dashed 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 cutting through the fibers with a dagger, Edrick burst open the iron door of the underground warehouse and jammed the bolt shut.
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.
It struggled painfully but couldn't move even an inch.
Although he had never been here before, Edrick was sure that it didn't look like this during the day, otherwise it would have gone out of business long ago.
"The power of pollution is a little more serious than this Mama thought." Edrick seemed to hear the Flower Maiden muttering.
The buzzing sound behind him suddenly ceased, replaced by an even more unsettling silence.
The skeleton, wrapped in threads, twisted silently, attempting to free itself from the spinning machine, 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, there was a scratching sound beneath it, followed by a muffled whimper, 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 sound of someone drowning.
The veins on the back of his hand, clenched around the dagger, bulged, but he forced himself to kneel down and use the dagger to lift the edge of the fabric.
Below lay a desiccated corpse, its skin tightly stretched over the bones, its hands crossed over its abdomen, palms facing upward.
The most bizarre thing was that the tips of the fingers had grown thread-like strands resembling cotton, which were writhing along the fabric's texture, searching.
Edrick heard the rustling sound of the strands 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 froze mid-air, half an inch away from the threads—the desiccated corpse's chest was rising and falling.
Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the ribs, illuminating a dense network of threads inside.
Each silver thread trembled in rhythm with the distant spinning wheels. He suddenly understood the meaning of the corpse's palms facing upward: it was the standard posture of a female textile worker receiving a spindle.
"Snap!"
The corpse's eyelids were torn open by the silk threads, revealing two cotton-stuffed eyeballs. Edrick quickly backed away, but his boot heel collided with a soft obstacle.
When he turned around, the moonlight shifted angle, illuminating the twelve children's clothing sewing machines behind him.
Each workbench was occupied by a withered corpse wearing a pearl-colored apron, their branch-like fingers still twitching in rhythm with the looms.
A humming sound descended from the ceiling.
Edrick looked up to see the ventilation ducts cracking open, 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 threads poured out from its throat, weaving into faces that had once been in the dye vat.
All the spindles in the workshop suddenly turned toward Edrick and began to spin.
The nails at the ends of the threads madly struck the metal surface, creating a downpour of clattering sounds.
He finally noticed that all the mummies' abdomens extended silk threads, which converged toward the old spinning machine that had initially operated 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, resembling cotton cloth washed countless times.
The child at the front suddenly stopped. Then, as if guided 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 humming of the spinning machine suddenly grew sharp, as if mocking his intrusion. And the corners of the children's mouths slowly curled upward in identical arcs...