Chapter 28: Sewers and Mechanical Spirits

London's underground world was the vast, rotting interior beneath the glamorous surface of this great city.This Victorian-era engineering marvel designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, one of the era's proudest achievements, resembled a network of capillaries deep beneath the earth. It carried away the filth from the city's surface while nurturing countless unknown darknesses.

After Sergeant William efficiently and violently pried open the rust-covered iron grate of the drainage channel with a crowbar, a wave of stagnant, foul air erupted from the pitch-black opening.

Even Marcus, who had been following behind responsible for "observation," couldn't help but frown when he smelled the odor.

"Damn, looks like this insurance payout won't be easy money. Barton screwed me over again," he muttered, but still dutifully took up position outside the entrance.

His mission was to provide support from the surface and prevent their movements from being discovered by idle people in the ordinary world.

Lin Jie, without hesitation, was the first to light his portable carbide lamp.

A steady, bright white beam of light pierced through the darkness, illuminating a narrow passage that could only accommodate one person moving in a crouched position.

The walls of the passage were covered with green moss and some kind of slimy fungus, while a layer of foul-smelling sewage flowed along the ground.

"I'll take the lead," the usually silent William said tersely, then took the carbide lamp from Lin Jie's hand.

Holding the lamp in one hand and his long-barreled Colt revolver in the other, he was the first to crouch and enter the opening.

Lin Jie followed closely behind, gripping his Serene Heart tightly.

The moment his body completely entered the passage, a bone-chilling cold from deep underground penetrated through his clothing, invading every inch of his skin.

The darkness here was different from nighttime on the surface.

It was more pure, more oppressive.

The two men moved forward slowly, one after the other, through this maze-like sewer system.

William was responsible for scouting and vigilance—his eyes, honed on the battlefield, could detect any unusual traces.

Meanwhile, Lin Jie completely immersed his mind in the unique perception granted by his Reverberation Touch, acting like a mobile sonar tracking the increasingly clear "will echo" coming from the Gremlin nest.

"Take this left fork," Lin Jie's voice echoed in the narrow passage. "That 'will'... that 'desire to build' is coming from this direction."

Hearing this, William turned into the left fork without the slightest hesitation.

After the verification in the warehouse, he had developed an instinctive trust in Lin Jie's seemingly miraculous "intuitive" ability.

In this unknown underground world, this young man's "perception" was far more reliable than his own naked eyes.

As they continued to delve deeper, their surroundings became increasingly complex.

They passed through main drainage pipes as large as church domes, where rushing sewage could submerge a person's calves.

Occasionally, enormous mutated rats living underground would scurry rapidly past their feet, emitting unsettling squeaks.

While passing a corner, William's lamp-holding hand suddenly stopped abruptly, and he made a "halt" tactical gesture.

Lin Jie immediately held his breath.

Following William's beam of light, he saw scattered cloth fragments on the ground ahead, soaked in sewage until their original color was unrecognizable, along with a corroded brass button.

William crouched down, carefully pushing aside the cloth fragments with his gun barrel.

Beneath the cloth were several long-dried dark brown bloodstains and some white bones that had been gnawed down to mere remnants.

"It's Billy," William said, pointing at the button. "A uniform button from the United Spices and Textiles Company Night Watch. We've found our first missing person."

Looking at the pitiful remains, Lin Jie felt a weight in his heart.

This confirmed his suspicion—the missing night watchmen had all been dragged into these Gremlins' underground kingdom, becoming either some kind of sacrifice or simply "obstacles" that the creatures had casually disposed of.

"They're not carnivorous UMA," Lin Jie analyzed calmly, looking at the fine gnawing marks on the bones. "These marks look more like they were left by the mutated rats down here. The Gremlins just killed him, then abandoned him here."

William nodded in agreement.

The young man's composure had once again left a deep impression on him.

After witnessing such a horrific scene, instead of showing any fear or discomfort, he could immediately extract valuable information from it and conduct logical analysis.

This kind of mental fortitude didn't resemble that of a complete novice.

"He should have something of interest on him," Lin Jie said.

Putting on a leather glove he'd obtained from Barton, he began carefully searching through the remains.

Soon, he found what he was looking for—a string of keys that had been rendered somewhat dysfunctional by sewage immersion, and an equally soaked, tattered notebook.

Opening the notebook, Lin Jie found the writing inside had become blurred and illegible, but on the corner of one page he discovered a line of hastily scrawled writing that had been preserved because it had been pressed deeply into the paper: "...noisy monkeys...clock thieves...they're afraid...grandfather's..."

The writing that followed was completely illegible.

"Grandfather's?" Lin Jie frowned. What did that mean?

"Music box," William suddenly spoke up.

Lin Jie looked at him, puzzled.

"When I was young, I worked as a dockhand for several years," William said, his voice carrying a distant recollection. "The old-timers of that generation, especially the old sailors who had participated in the Battle of Trafalgar, all liked to carry a music box shaped like an anchor."

"That was their honor, and their only comfort in their later years. They called that kind of music box 'the old captain's lullaby.' I think what Billy meant by 'grandfather's' was probably that thing."

Lin Jie's eyes suddenly lit up.

William's seemingly casual addition perfectly corroborated the I.A.R.C. manual's information about Gremlins' weakness—their "aversion to rhythmic sounds"!

This poor night watchman Billy had likely discovered these monsters' secret at the last moment of his life, but hadn't been able to pass it on in time.

And now this buried clue had been rediscovered by them.

"We've found our 'silver bullet' against them," Lin Jie said solemnly, carefully storing the tattered notebook—it might play an unexpected role at a critical moment.

They continued forward, and their surroundings grew increasingly bizarre.

The walls began to display strange, meaningless "totems" constructed from brass, tin blocks, and various metal scraps.

Dismantled clock components "grew" from cracks in the walls like vines.

They also saw a massive mechanical construct composed of countless interlocking gears, slowly rotating, completely powered by underground water flow.

The air here was thick with that intense "desire to build" characteristic of Gremlins.

Lin Jie knew they were getting very close to the heart of the nest.

Just then, Lin Jie's unique reverberation perception suddenly detected something abnormal.

It didn't come from the Gremlins, but rather represented an intense negative human emotion of "resentment" and "unwillingness"!

"Wait!" Lin Jie urgently called out to William walking ahead. "There's something up ahead. Not Gremlins, but something else. I sense... extreme malice."

Hearing this, William immediately raised his gun in alert, directing the carbide lamp's beam toward the unknown darkness ahead.

At the end of the passage ahead, on a massive "throne" piled high with discarded components and metal junk, sat... no, three humanoid figures were tightly bound together with metal wires.

They were the other missing night watchmen.

Except, they were no longer among the living.

Their bodies had undergone inhuman "mechanical modifications" by those insane Gremlins.

Their arms had been replaced with twisted brass pipes, their chests cut open and filled with ticking clock components, and their eyes replaced with two crystal lenses that emitted an eerie red glow.

They were dead, but their souls, trapped within these mechanical bodies, had transformed into another, more terrifying and dangerous existence due to immense pain and resentment.

A kind of "mechanical wraith" driven by clockwork and resentment, filled with dual hatred for both the living and machinery!

When the carbide lamp's light fell upon them, the three modified corpses simultaneously raised their heads stiffly.

Their crystal-modified eyes projected pure agony and undisguised killing intent toward Lin Jie and William, the two intruders.