At this moment, Old Ma’s face had turned a complete ashen gray, his eye sockets deeply sunken as if he were a corpse that had been dead for several days.

Not only that, but his clothes were tattered and his body was covered in dried, brown bloodstains, as though he had been mauled by a pack of wild beasts.

With a rigid expression and a vacant gaze, Old Ma stood there holding a nearly 2-meter-long iron rod, one end fashioned into a sharp hook, just watching He Gu.

Seeing this scene, He Gu felt a chill crawl over his scalp and instinctively wanted to flee.

However, at that moment, a voice from the shadows whispered in He Gu’s ear: “Don’t move! He can’t see you!”

Hearing this, He Gu forcefully suppressed the urge to run and stood stiffly in place.

The shadow continued, “With me on you, until daylight, none of the living things here can sense your presence, unless you disturb them yourself.”

As the shadow spoke, Old Ma’s lifeless eyes were fixed on He Gu.

If it weren’t for the rule that the shadow’s words could be trusted, He Gu might have thought it was deceiving him.

In the next moment, Old Ma suddenly reached out with the iron hook towards He Gu.

He Gu’s pupils contracted, but he realized that Old Ma’s target was not him, but a wooden box beside He Gu.

“Thud!”

With a dull sound, the iron hook plunged deeply into the wooden box.

Then, with a wooden expression and stiff movements, Old Ma dragged the box out from the pile of cardboard boxes with the hook.

“No! You can’t do this!”

“I gave you blood, let me go! Let me go!”

“Don’t—”

…

Suddenly, a series of panicked screams erupted from the box, the voice hoarse and ragged, as if the throat was filled with nails.

Old Ma showed no reaction to the screams, as if he couldn’t hear them at all, mechanically dragging the box away with the hook.

It wasn’t until Old Ma had dragged the box through a nearby door that He Gu finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Only then did He Gu notice that, besides a pile of cardboard boxes, there were also a few wooden boxes mixed in, identical to those in the storeroom.

“Was that box just now… one of those from the storeroom?” He Gu asked.

A sinister voice from the shadow replied, “Yes.”

“The boxes put on the conveyor belt at night end up like this… Only those who escape from the boxes become shadows.”

He Gu nodded, still shaken, and then said, “So if you weren’t attached to me, entering here would result in a similar fate, right?”

The shadow fell silent for a moment, then said impatiently, “To get into the core area, I can’t do without you, and you can’t do without me. That’s all you need to know!”

With that, the shadow urged impatiently, “Enough, move on, exit through the door at the front.”

He Gu nodded and crawled out from the pile of cardboard boxes, taking the opportunity to survey the workshop more carefully.

It was a very messy workshop.

The size of the workshop was about half a basketball court, with a 2-meter-diameter tunnel on one wall, from which a short section of conveyor belt protruded, still in operation.

Beneath the conveyor belt was a pile of disordered cardboard boxes, among which were a few wooden boxes.

On the other side, there were two workbenches whose purpose He Gu couldn’t discern, tools like iron hooks and pliers by the wall, and garbage strewn all over the floor.

Yes, garbage.

There were all kinds of snack wrappers, drink bottles, fast food containers, instant noodle boxes, and even a few discarded condoms.

The trash had long since decayed and faded, some even moldy and rotten, as if it had been there for many years.

The presence of these items gave the workshop an abandoned and neglected feel.

On the left side of the workshop were two tightly closed iron doors, covered in red stains that were either rust or blood, and Old Ma had just dragged the wooden box through one of them.

At the other end of the workshop was a double fire exit, the very door the shadow had instructed He Gu to leave through.

As He Gu surveyed his surroundings, he cautiously moved forward.

Thinking of the little crow’s blood he had on hand and lacking a container to collect other blood, He Gu picked up two relatively clean mineral water bottles from the scattered trash on the ground and stuffed them into his pockets.

Then, He Gu quickened his pace, preparing to cross the workshop and leave through the fire exit.

Just as He Gu reached the middle of the workshop, the radio in his pocket suddenly crackled to life.

“Shhh…zzz…”

“Woo woo woo woo…”

“Woo… Mommy… woo…”

“Let me go! What are you going to do…”

“Please… please let me go… please…”

…

The voices from the radio were chaotic, with women and children crying, men shouting, pleas for mercy, and angry curses…

The noise was deafening, with at least dozens of voices overlapping.

“Clang clang… buzz—click click click click…”

Then, the sound of chains dragging on the ground and machinery operating followed in succession.

“This batch is wrong, why are there so few?”

“And there are defective goods, look, those few are almost broken, how can we use them?”

“The client is pressing hard, make do for now, sort them by quality, send them to the pre-processing workshop.”

“Zzz…shh…”

…

As if a button had been pressed, the radio abruptly played this chaotic segment, followed by endless static.

However, He Gu felt a chill, sensing that the temperature in the workshop had dropped significantly.

He was almost certain that what the radio had just played was a recording.

Although the recording was disjointed and messy, He Gu still realized that it… seemed to have been recorded right in this workshop!

It must have been a scene that once took place here!

As He Gu pondered, the shadow’s voice echoed again, “Didn’t expect you to carry this thing…”

He Gu, sensing something, quickly asked, “Do you recognize this radio?”

The shadow paused for a few seconds: “I’ve seen it.”

He Gu pressed on, asking if… someone had used it to record here before?

The shadow let out a strange laugh: “Record? You underestimate it.”

“This thing seems to resonate with its frequency, revealing some voices that have been buried… With it, you should be able to make it to that place.”

He Gu’s heart skipped a beat: “What place?”

But the shadow fell silent again, seemingly unwilling to continue the conversation.

Left with no choice, He Gu continued forward.

Passing through the workshop, he quickly arrived at the heavy fire exit.

“Creak—”

The fire door seemed to have not been opened for a while, the hinges emitting a grating sound.

Yet, as soon as the door opened, He Gu saw a figure standing outside…