Was it that she had shrunk, or was this factory just impossibly massive?
Lin Sanjiu sat dazed on a wide black rubber conveyor belt, staring blankly for several seconds, unsure where to direct her gaze first. She instinctively looked down.
The conveyor belt beneath her was covered with white scuff marks and radiated a faint warmth from its internal machinery. It hummed and vibrated slightly, steadily carrying her forward. Apart from being as wide as four lanes of road, it resembled a standard conveyor belt in every way.
No, there was one key difference.
Scattered along the conveyor belt ahead of her sat other people, motionless. At a glance, she recognized several familiar figures: ordinary people who had been traveling with her just moments ago. Two silhouettes away, she spotted the thin man, or rather, the back of his head, smeared with blood.
So dead or alive, they were all sent to the same place.
1
A massive silver mechanical claw, as large as a crane, suddenly descended into her field of view, precise and deliberate. It clamped down on a body ahead of her, then rose again, carrying its limp, lifeless cargo. Lin Sanjiu's eyes followed it upward, frozen in place.
The claw held the thin man's lifeless body, his limbs dangling limply. Objects he had stolen and stuffed into his jacket fell one by one. Swiss Army knives, fog spheres, and canned food all clattered onto the conveyor belt before rolling off its edges into the abyss below. The items he had so carefully hoarded were now scattered and forgotten, plummeting into the depths where no one cared to retrieve them.
Lin Sanjiu watched as the claw moved the corpse off the conveyor belt and released it with a faint "plop" into the void below.
As the conveyor carried her past the spot where the thin man had fallen, she crawled to the edge for a better look. All she could see, several dozen meters below, was another conveyor belt running in a different direction. The thin man was already gone.
The lower conveyor belt was streaked with layers of fresh blood, crimson and black blending together. Just as Lin Sanjiu was carried farther away, she caught a glimpse of another pale, lifeless corpse emerging from the lower belt. It was quickly shifted onto a different track, disappearing from her view.
Peering further down, she saw nothing but more colossal machinery: pipelines, conveyor belts, and gears spiraling endlessly into the abyss. The sheer scale was dizzying, as if even her gaze could be swallowed whole. Lin Sanjiu felt like she had been reduced to the size of a tiny raw material, dropped into the belly of a giant factory. She was about to be processed through a series of intricate steps, though she had no idea what she would ultimately become.
What was going on with this old lady and this factory?
Lin Sanjiu lifted her head. Conveyor belts crisscrossed the air above like ribbons hanging in the sky. Their cold, metallic surfaces shimmered faintly under the light as they moved in smooth, orderly rhythms, accompanied by the steady hum of machinery.
When she turned to look back, she spotted the place she had fallen from—a massive plastic cylinder with a diameter of at least twenty or thirty meters. Its open end hovered in mid-air, and it appeared that anyone who fell from the old lady's cloth sack landed here, tumbling onto the conveyor belt.
Her questions surged like an ocean, vast enough to drown her.
"Better take off [Facial Hair] for now," Mrs. Manas advised. "This place is too strange. Best to be cautious. By the way, those ordinary folks ahead of you look like they've lost their minds; they haven't moved at all."
Could the old lady have done something to them?
It seemed that only the people from her group were in this trance-like state. If Lin Sanjiu listened carefully, she could distinguish faint human voices amid the mechanical noises from farther away. The sound was distorted and distant, stripped of its full tone by the echoing expanse, but the lingering thread of terror in the voices was unmistakable. Ṙ𝘢₦𝙤฿ĘS̩
If even Lin Sanjiu was unsettled and confused, how much worse would it be for these ordinary people, who had lived peaceful lives and rarely encountered danger?
As she pondered this, she reached up to remove [Facial Hair]. Her fingers brushed against her face, and she flinched in shock. She had never felt so much fur on her face before; it was like a massive squirrel's tail, completely engulfing her fingertips.
'How much hair is this?' she thought, trying to touch her face. She couldn't even locate her eyes under the thick fur.
Lin Sanjiu quickly plucked the [Facial Hair] from her right eyebrow, and immediately felt a surge of power rushing through her body, as if it had been held underwater for far too long and was now desperate to break the surface for a gulp of air.
"Removing part of the hair restores part of your combat strength," Mrs. Manas remarked.
Lin Sanjiu was about to reach for the hair in her left eyebrow when a sharp electronic voice suddenly blared, startling her to her core.
"Posthuman detected!" The piercing, urgent cry echoed through the endless factory, accompanied by loud alarms. "Posthuman detected! A04 track! A04 track!"
She cursed inwardly, realizing the truth. The conveyor she was on must be A04 track.
The clump of [Facial Hair] in her hand hadn't even warmed up yet before she hastily pressed it back into her eyebrow, holding her breath in panic. The item's description had only mentioned that combat strength could be adjusted every eight hours by removing and reapplying the hair. Whether removing and replacing part of it in a short time would maintain the same effect was left ambiguous.
"Phew, that's a relief." Mrs. Manas sighed audibly as the familiar weakness once again seeped into Lin Sanjiu's muscles and drained her strength. "Lucky break. You're back to being 94% weakened."
1
This time, Mrs. Manas seemed genuinely relieved.
Special Items often had a lot of ambiguous rules in their usage; perhaps because they were alive in a sense, with room for growth and unpredictability. Lin Sanjiu sat on the conveyor belt, holding her breath for a few seconds. When the alarm stopped after the initial blare, leaving only faint echoes, she felt a twinge of relief.
"So, my 6% combat strength... happens to be below this factory's detection threshold?" she muttered.
"Seems like it," Mrs. Manas replied. "Detection systems usually have a margin of error, don't they?"
Lin Sanjiu hummed in agreement, then fell silent.
The conveyor belt continued moving steadily at a slow pace, carrying the silhouettes ahead of her toward a large square metal enclosure. As each figure approached, the shadows swallowed them whole. After the alarms subsided, the factory appeared unperturbed, running like clockwork. Perhaps her quick reaction had ensured the alarm ended without triggering a larger response.
"Speaking of combat strength..." Mrs. Manas broke the silence. "You've thought of it too, haven't you?"
Lin Sanjiu exhaled heavily.
Such an obvious oversight. How had she only realized it now?
She had always assumed that when faced with a crisis, she could simply use [Planar World] to turn [Facial Hair] back into a card. Earlier, she had removed the hair manually only because she wasn't in a rush. But upon closer thought, she suddenly realized that turning [Facial Hair] into a card might not work at all.
After all, wasn't [Planar World] part of her combat strength too?
If it was part of her strength, it was also likely weakened by 94%.
She could understand operating at 6% speed. The real problem was, how was she supposed to rely on a [Planar World] functioning at only 6% capacity—or [Mosaic Censorship] at 6%—or even her air vortex ability at 6%?
What was she supposed to do?