"What are you doing?!" Edrick's angry shout scared away the crows on the eaves, and the tattoo of a god on his chest burned with emotion.
Griff's crowbar stopped in midair, and he turned back with a look of surprise in his eyes—he thought Edrick, who had been taken away by the Covenant Patroler, was picking up a discarded steel pipe from the ground.
Behind Edrick, Miryam watched the scene in panic.
"You bastard from the Croft family..." Cold sweat seeped from the thug's palms, and the shadow of the crowbar flickered on the wall.
Edrick then noticed Hannah's washboard wedged in the crack of the wooden door. She was using her entire weight to hold the door shut to prevent Griff from breaking in.
Griff's Adam's apple rolled as his gaze swept over the iron pipe in Edrick's hand. He was a low-ranking member of the Soot Street Scamps and knew very well the consequences of breaking and entering: the Covenant Patroler would hang him without mercy, and the murderous intent in Edrick's eyes was more deadly than any police baton.
Griff didn't want to get into a fight with Edrick, who was a skilled fighter and had beaten him up more than once.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm just here for some hot water." Griff's crowbar slipped quietly into his sleeve, and he put on a greasy smile. "I heard that your steam spirit can sing folk songs. I want to borrow it to cheer up the boss..." Before he could finish, Edrick was already standing in front of him.
The transmigrator Edrick had never been in a fight on Earth, but facing a small thug with ulterior motives, he was full of confidence at this moment.
Edrick has the Third Set of Low-Level Civil Servant Broadcast Exercises from the Celestial?
"Get lost." Edrick's fingers pinched Griff's wrist, and the gear-shaped calluses hurt like hell. This grip was exactly the same as when Edrick bent the steel cable at the dock three days ago.
"You're lucky." Griff broke free and knocked over the coal bucket at the door as he backed away. He deliberately raised his voice so that Hannah inside could hear, "Tomorrow, we, the Soot Street Scamps, will burn this building down and throw your sister's hand into the gear furnace!"
Edrick watched the thugs flee, hearing Hannah's sobs from inside. Her hand reached through the door crack, tugging at his sleeve, her fingertips still tingling from the lye in the laundry room.
"Don't be afraid, he won't come back." Edrick stroked his sister's hair, his gaze fixed on the pry marks on the wooden door.
He knew that Griff's retreat was not out of fear, but out of calculation — breaking and entering to kidnap someone was different from robbery in broad daylight, and Griff's deliberate reporting meant that he himself was unwilling to confront Edrick head-on.
Edrick patted Hannah's trembling shoulder, his fingertips touching the patch under her apron, which his younger sister Miryam had sewn in imitation of the patterns on a god's statue.
"Take care of your sister." Edrick turned and pulled the still-shaken Miryam closer. "You're a strong child. We need you here now. Can you do it?"
For a ten-year-old girl, everything that had happened today was overwhelming Miryam's nerves. But children from poor families had seen too much suffering. She had seen too much violence, pain, and death on this street.
Under her brother's gentle words, Miryam regained her composure, held her trembling sister tightly, and nodded firmly at Edrick.
Edrick forced a smile the size of a coin, pressing his palm against his temple, but as he turned away, the shadows concealed the coldness in his eyes.
Something stirred within him, like a white mist flowing through his veins—the power left behind after the divine statue had fused with him, colder than any weapon.
The midday sun was sliced into fragments by the gears of the tower, casting shadows on Edrick's coal-stained work clothes. He knelt down and gently wiped away the tears from Miryam's face with his fingertips. The little girl's eyelashes were still trembling, like a frightened baby bird.
"Don't be afraid, follow your sister home." His voice was a hundred times gentler than when he was fighting at the dock. He placed his palm on Hannah's cold hand and found that she was still clutching half of her torn apron — it was left behind by Griff when he tried to drag her away.
Hannah's gaze fell on the bandage on his chest, still damp with water. "But Father—" "I'll go to the dock to see if Father is safe." Edrick interrupted her. "The patrol guards change shifts at noon; no one will question us on the way."
He stood up, pushed Miryam into his sister's arms, and ran his fingertips through the lye crystals in the little girl's hair. Suddenly, he remembered the half-burnt Faith Essence candle left in the ruined temple.
He wondered if that thing still had any magical properties.
The cinder road crunched under his feet as Edric's boots crushed half a piece of frozen gear.
The midday dock was shrouded in steam, and the steel frames of the cranes cast huge shadows, like rusty dinosaur skeletons.
He dodged the coal transport fleet and ran along the hot steam pipes, his work pants wet with condensation, but it was nothing compared to the cold in his chest. Griff dared to break into the mansion at noon, which meant that his father had probably been taken care of.
Edrick was on his way to the docks, but before he had gone two kilometers, he smelled the sweet, bloody scent of rust.
This smell was common in the Rust District, but Edrick couldn't get used to it. It was the first time he had ever smelled it.
Perhaps it was a special ability of the deity, but Edrick's sense of smell was far superior to that of ordinary people. He followed the bloody smell and climbed over the wall to enter John Harrison & Co.
Because it was close to the docks, dock workers often came here to help with transportation, so they were very familiar with the place.
This textile factory was quite famous in the Rust District. Rumor had it that it was haunted at night. Several superstitious workers had come here at night, but when they returned home, they kept silent about it and never mentioned a word about it to anyone.
Edrick recalled his memories of the textile factory and finally found his father in the unattended, dilapidated boiler room.
His work pants were soaked in standing water, and his shoelaces had been stained a deep brown by blood. He lay face up on the cold concrete floor, his head tilted to one side, his face bearing an expression of confusion and pain that was hard to describe.
Edrick rushed to his father's side, his gaze instinctively drawn to his father's head, where there was a horrific wound. Blood was slowly seeping out from the torn flesh, trickling down his temples and neck.
The edges of the wound were jagged, as if it had been violently struck by a blunt object. The skin and hair were matted together, and faintly visible were the pale bones and dark red blood clots beneath.
His father's left temple had caved in, the surrounding area swollen and covered in a mixture of blood, brain matter, and碎发, staining half his face. Edrick wasn't a doctor; he couldn't assess the severity of the injury, but his instincts told him that such a severe wound would never heal with rest alone.
His father's eyes were half-open, his gaze unfocused, as if he still clung to a thread of consciousness. His chest rose and fell slightly, his breath shallow and wet with the metallic tang of blood.
The air was thick with the sweet, iron-tinged stench of blood, and Edrick's heart pounded wildly in his chest. He tried desperately to stop the bleeding from his father's head, but there was nothing he could do. When his fingertips touched the wound, he could feel warm blood flowing out continuously, and beneath the skin, it seemed as though shattered bones were shifting slightly.
"Edrick..." The calluses on his father's hand scraped against the low steel frame, making a sound like nails scraping against metal.
Edrick knelt on the scorching iron plate and noticed that the old man's pupils were moving involuntarily.
"Gr-Grif..." His father's groan was mixed with coal dust, 'They... are smuggling... people...' Before he could finish, his cough was drowned out by the roar of the steam locomotive.
Edrick's fingertips brushed his father's eyelids, and the white mist within him suddenly surged—it was the divine statue responding to his anger. Within this body, the divine statue had never disappeared; it had merely transformed into a colder, more primal instinct for survival.
The midday steam suddenly grew biting cold. Edrick clenched his father's hand tightly. His father's fingers weakly scratched at Edrick's palm before finally dropping limp, his eyes growing dim.
Edrick could only watch helplessly as his father's life ebbed away like receding tide.
Griff's sneer echoed in his mind, mixed with Hannah's sobs and Miryam's gasps, finally condensing into a cold, hard blade.
At that moment, the soul of the dead Edrick seemed to emit a heart-rending cry from below. With each desperate cry, the fragments of the Transmigrator's memories and Edrick's memories further intertwined. These were the memories of a child who had suffered greatly, a brave man who had challenged the rules, a serial killer, and a ripper!
The murderer who killed his father hadn't gone far. He sat on a massive gear, smoking a cheap blend of nettle leaves, dandelion stems, and willow bark. The mixture was spicy and throat-burning, but it alleviated the craving for nicotine, making it an affordable alternative to cigarettes for dockworkers and chimney sweeps.
That was Edrick's father's cigarette.
In the dilapidated temple on the mountain peak, the TV screen on the altar flickered with two pixelated figures, one red and one blue, and two dialogue boxes:
"In this world where even the sunlight tastes of rust, some debts must be settled in the shadow of noon."
"Shut up! You're driving me crazy!"
Edrick had no memory of this person, but judging from the current situation, they were likely affiliated with the Soot Street Scamps.
"Have you decided how you want to die?" Edrick looked up at the man, as if he were looking at a corpse.