"You know, they say there's some underground gangs in here and stuff."

"I've heard of it, and I've heard of man-eating sea monsters that have slipped out of water prisons and drowned ghosts, and climbed up from the sea at night."

Not far out of Elm Street, they soon stood in front of a less pleasant piece of buildings, which the mere sight of from a distance would have led one to associate them with decay and mildew.

Most of these dark-colored buildings are made of wooden planks, growing out of damp depressions, multiplying like colonies, and spreading out densely.

It's not so much an artifact as some kind of alternative creature that grows out of disorder. It is constantly absorbing more and more tiny individuals, driving them to bring more materials, and they will not refuse.

From unformed reef rocks to wood of unknown origin, all the city's leftovers, discarded materials are gathered here and stacked in an amateur fashion.

The only purpose is to make them form a space that barely accommodates human habitation, and there is no room to think about anything else.

Over the course of a few months or years, the already poor quality of the wooden structure slowly but surely changes in the humid air, bending and breaking in the direction of unreasonable stress.

The owner of the house needed to find new materials and repair the defects repeatedly. Holes were covered with slabs, and when they were tilted, they were supported on the outside, and neighboring occupants often built their houses close together, connected by short wooden beams, so that they could lean on each other and become a more stable whole.

Because of the scarcity of sufficiently thick and long wood, it was necessary for the house to be leaning to the extent that it was less than the width of a strong man's shoulders in order to be connected with peripherals as dense as millipedes' appendages and disproportionate to the main body.

Even so, in a land that is soaked in seawater and soft, with a lack of a stable foundation, any effort is doomed to be futile after much longer. Sooner or later, the building will lean to one side under its own weight and lie to the ground.

The remnants of the remarkable were put to good use, and another short-lived structure grew on the ruins, repeating the fate of the former.

With this in mind, don't expect any normal roads, and entrants need to make their way between the twists and turns of the dirty houses, and pass sideways in narrow places so as not to rub against the sticky planks on both sides.

Lucius looked down to avoid a slanted stick of wood with unpeeled bark on the surface. Kraft stopped at the fork in the road ahead and looked back to see if he was following.

"How are we going to get back later?"

Shortly after entering the salt tide area, Lucius quickly lost his sense of direction after turning a few corners. They have hit several dead ends, frequently changing directions.

If they had been here with Liston, they would have been terrified in this labyrinth and turned back to avoid going deeper.

"I remember the way." Kraft pointed to his head, the way he had come was clearly imprinted in his memory, and he sketched the path in his mind to form a map, "This location is almost there, let's ask someone first, and then continue inside." ”

Bypassing a messy pile of scrap, the two found the main entrance to the building in front of them, reaching out and knocking on the wet door.

The door was opened by a thin, unkeenly pale man, who wiped his eyes at the strangely dressed visitor, suspecting that he was hallucinating.

"Hello, we are doctors, have you or your family members been sleeping longer lately and have difficulty waking up?" Kraft asked.

The thin man looked at the bird-headed man who claimed to be a doctor in confusion, not understanding why he was asking this question.

Wanting to get them away as soon as possible, he replied, "No, I'm alone here, and I've never done anything like that." If you want to sell any powder, you're definitely in the wrong place, and no one will buy it. ”

"Have you ever heard of someone sleeping in the neighborhood who is sleeping longer and longer?" Kraft crossed out the dot in his mind and continued to ask for other clues.

The thin man became impatient with the clueless conversation, and left a dry "I don't know", hoping that the two strangers would take the initiative to leave and stop bothering him.

Craft, sensing his impatience, reached out and took out two copper coins from his money bag and spread them in his palm, "I'm not in the habit of letting people help in vain, can you think about it again?" ”

The man reached out to take the money, but the black-gloved palm quickly flipped and clenched, clenched the copper coin into his fist, and disappeared from his eyes.

"Please think about it carefully, whatever the news, just have a little relationship."

He could feel the eyes behind the red glass looking at him, and he wouldn't give out the money until he got an answer.

The long black hand of the nails scratched his face, and the thin man searched his intestines and stomach, trying to find one of the messy rumors in exchange for the immediate reward, and he had no reason to let go of the two copper coins he had given almost for nothing.

And this kind of behavior reminded him of the rich people he had heard of with strange fetishes, who were willing to exchange money for things that normal people thought were completely useless, and maybe they could get more money from that money bag that looked very heavy.

"It seems that I did hear such a thing a few days ago, saying that someone on the side of the red caisson well lost his job because he overslept, does this count?" He stuck out his tongue and licked his dry lips, staring at the fist that held the coin.

"Thank you, it's useful." Kraft spread out his palms and let the thin man take two copper coins from his hand and stuff them into the strange part of his clothes, "Interested in earning a few more copper coins?" I need someone to take me over and see it now. ”

"But I still have work to do today."

It's not the same thing to make some extra money and lose a job that lasts a few days, and even if you don't know math, you know which is more important.

"What if I make a black silver coin?"

"Two, I still have four days of work over there." The decisive offer convinced him that Kraft was a "rich man with strange fetishes" who could reap more benefits.

Although he didn't know if the price was fair or not, his intuition told Kraft that he might have been wronged by someone else, and that he didn't mind shopping around for the road anyway, knowing the name of the place.

"Okay, then this one coin is going to be earned by someone else." He gestured away, pulling Lucius on his suitcase.

"Wait!"

They had barely taken a few steps when the man behind them stopped them, "A silver coin is fine, it's really stingy, I'm going to lose a whole four days of work." ”

The local guide led the two of them through the crooked alleyways and deeper into the salt tide.

As we go deeper, the messy roadways become more messy and narrower, and the cluttered support structures that protrude from the sheds become more complex and cumbersome.

The more it is inside, the longer it exists, just like the granulation tissue of an old wound, wrapped and connected, and the volume that grows out again will always be larger than the original to be close to the original strength, and repeated trauma has caused more proliferation.

Kraft had the illusion that he was following the capillaries into the tumor. The outside is barely visible, but the depths have begun to die due to insufficient blood supply, and the discarded waste and household garbage are the pus it forms.

They accumulate here, piled up haphazardly wherever there is space, and the congested narrow lanes become narrower, exacerbating the deterioration in a vicious circle.

As the sun rises, the warmer rays squeeze through the criss-crossed structures, and the water vapor evaporates from the ground and the garbage mixture, carrying with it the salty, musty, and excrement smells, which are carried into the human nasal passages by the hot wind that passes through them.

Wearing a beak mask stuffed with several layers of spices, Kraft still smelled like this, which was more intense and penetrating when passing through the large pile of garbage, which made him think of turning back several times.

Their guide seemed to be completely unaffected, breathing in the gases, whether they were used to it or if their sense of smell had been destroyed.

The short distance on the map is negated here, and the subjective perception of time is infinitely elongated. After a long ordeal, their eyes suddenly dawned, and they stopped in a small clearing.

"Are you sure this place is a red algae well?" Kraft looked at the pile of rubble in front of him.

In this rare clearing, a messy pile of rocks was placed in the middle, and it had nothing to do with the well in any way.

"It used to be a well, yes."

"Before?"

"As the name suggests, the water in it is as brackish as seawater, and red seaweed." The thin man kicked the stone on the ground, "It's completely useless after hitting it, someone fell in the middle of the night and was sealed?" ”

This explanation is also reasonable, because the low-lying offshore terrain and long-term seawater flooding make it strange that there are a few normal wells in the salt tide area.

"So can you give me the money?"

Kraft pulled out a black silver coin and handed it to him, ending the brief employment relationship.

Next, he had to visit the hypothetical cases in this area of unknown size. Dilapidated and moldy buildings surrounded them, and they didn't know where to start for a while.

Reaching out and helping Lucius, a heavy gasp could be heard through the heavy mask, "I dare say this is the worst place I know." ”

"Who's to say it's not, do you want to find a place to sit and continue?" Kraft took the box from him and patted him on the back to help him breathe.

The salt tide area is a terrible place, but it makes him feel even worse here, and the indescribable sense of disobedience appears from a certain moment, but he doesn't think that something is wrong.

At first, he thought it was the deteriorating environment that stimulated his senses, but after gradually getting used to it, the sense of disobedience never lingered, and instead of making him more comfortable, stopping made the feeling even stronger.

"How long do you think we'll find out?" Lucius hunched over, his hands on his knees, his beak almost poking into his chest.

He didn't hear Kraft's response.

Kraft was silent for more than a minute, and he realized where the sense of dissonance was, not a sensory stimulus, but a lack of a certain sense.

At this time, the sun was already quite above the roof, and they knew that it was eight or nine o'clock in the morning without the reminder of the bell tower, and they stood in an unreasonably quiet, without even the faint sound of collision and conversation.

[I work as a hired hand at the docks, and I have to go there every day to find work, and I usually get up early......]

"It's not too early."