Death Spiral [Infinite Flow] - Chapter 53

Chapter 53 – Butterflies in the Stomach 3

Xu RenDong made a decisive decision. He hid his backpack, walked to the side of the boiler and pretended to study the boiler. The heavy door was pushed open and the foreman walked into the boiler room. Xu RenDong turned his head back pretending to be surprised.

He saw the foreman holding a pen and paper in his hand. The whip was hanging around his waist. He pointed at Xu RenDong with the tip of his pen and then pointed at the medical student who was sitting on the floor memorizing the book. He made two ticks on the paper, muttered something in a low voice and soon left.

The door of the boiler room swung shut and Xu RenDong breathed a sigh of relief.

He turned his head to look at the medical student who was immersed in rote learning. He sighed from the bottom of his heart: “You are so amazing, you can still learn by recitation in this kind of environment.” 

The medical student was addicted to his studies and ignored him. Xu RenDong thought he was indeed very boring. He dug out the backpack from the corner and cautiously walked out of the boiler room.

The foreman hadn’t gone far and the sound of his footsteps was nearby. Xu RenDong’s location was in the middle of the corridor. He listened to the sound and made sure that the foreman was on his left. Next he faced two choices: whether to go to the left and quietly follow behind the foreman, or to go to the right and avoid the foreman?

Xu RenDong quickly made a decision. As soon as his toes turned to the left, Lian Qiao sent him a message: Go to the left. First explore the foreman’s patrol route. It will be convenient to help you hide later.

It turned out that Lian Qiao was thinking the same as him. The corner of Xu RenDong’s mouth lifted and he followed the foreman silently.

The factory was divided into two parts, above ground and underground. The underground area was very complicated, with all kinds of fork roads extending in all directions and easily made people confused. If there was no map, you would easily get lost.

The structure above ground was much simpler. It was basically a structure with an inner circle and an outer square. The molten pool is located in the center of the factory, and above it is a giant gear that is constantly operating, which together form a central circular area. Four straight corridors form a square around the central area. The workshops were all located on the outside of the corridor, with metal fences on the insides. Standing on the edge of the fence, it seemed that you could reach the huge metal gear in mid-air with one hand. The rough but delicate industrial vista was startling. If it weren’t for the fact that he was in the world of ghosts, Xu RenDong would definitely stop and admire this giant machine that can almost be called a work of art.

There were three floors in the workshop above ground. Actually there seemed to be another floor above that, but it was blocked by mechanical gears and the ceiling. The specific situation couldn’t be seen.

The boiler room where Xu RenDong worked was located in the only underground station and his other teammates were in the upstairs workshops. Probably because of this, the foreman started from the boiler room and patrolled up layer by layer.

As soon as he arrived in the first workshop on the first floor, the foreman pushed open the door and glanced inward, the expression on his face became ugly. He raised the notepad in his hand and made a heavy cross somewhere. Then he turned to the next workshop.     

Xu RenDong cautiously followed behind the foreman. When he passed by the first workshop, he glanced inside and found that only the NPC workers in this workshop were working numbly. The teammates who were originally assigned here were gone. No wonder the foreman was so angry, it turns out that he had caught someone wagging work.

Xu RenDong recalled that this was the place where the gentleman and Zhang XiaoXiao had exchanged places. Where did the gentleman go?     

The foreman walked towards the next workshop with a sullen face but within two steps, the door of the second workshop opened automatically and a middle-aged man crept out sneakily.     

The middle-aged man is also one of his teammates. He looked around in a sneaky manner and when he turned his head and saw the gloomy foreman, he was so frightened that he took a sharp breath in. He backed away but was picked up by a foreman like a chicken and thrown to the ground.     

With a loud bang, the middle-aged man fell heavily to the ground and his facial features were all twisted in pain.     

“Sorry, sorry! I was wrong! I’ll go back to work right away!” The middle-aged man begged for mercy while struggling to get up from the ground. The foreman didn’t give him a chance to atone for his sins and immediately drew the whip around his waist and smacked it down as soon as he raised his hand.

The whip pierced the air with a whistling sound which made people feel pain just by listening to it. The man on the ground was struck by a whip on his leg and suddenly clutched his thigh and screamed. The foreman had a gloomy expression and whipped him a second, then a third time. The middle-aged man sobbed and cried,  rolling around while trying to avoid the whip falling from the sky. The foreman condescendingly watched the agonized reaction of the middle-aged man and a perverted smile appeared on his fierce face.

Should I go to save him?

Xu RenDong hid in the dark and quickly denied it. The only weapon in his hand was the small Swiss army knife and he had no chance of winning against ‘Mr Schwarzenegger the Foreman’. What’s more, he was also right now in the state of leaving his post and if he was seen by the foreman, he would definitely be punished.

At the same time, Lian Qiao in his left eye also typed two words: Don’t go.

Xu RenDong nodded slightly and motioned that he knew. He suddenly noticed that people in other workshops had also poked their heads out, watching the corporal punishment from a distance. The sad screams of the middle-aged man echoed in the factory, like a terrifying midnight opera, filled with horror.

It was unknown how long it took before the foreman exhaled a long breath and finally put down his whip in a contented manner. The man on the ground was covered in blood, his skin was bare and he was still motionless.

He had actually been beaten to death.

The foreman went up and kicked him and the man did not respond. The foreman looked at the blood on his leather shoes, cursed something in a low voice, then rubbed his leather shoes on the man’s clothes, and left proudly.

His cavalier manner when it came to killing was very obvious. Onlookers in the other workshops saw the foreman continue patrolling and hurriedly hid in their workshops, waiting for him to pass.

Lian Qiao said: It seems that this is the condition of death. Don’t get caught.

Xu RenDong sighed inwardly. After regaining his spirits, he continued through the bloodstains to follow the foreman.

There were several workshops on this floor but only two had living people assigned. The others only had joint dolls working. Xu RenDong noticed that the foreman did not only inspect workshops with living people but inspected every single workshop. The speed of his patrol was very slow. Xu RenDong estimated that it would take him about twenty minutes to patrol one floor.

There is nothing unusual on the second floor, everyone was doing their job. However, as soon as the foreman reached the third floor, a whistle sounded in the center of the factory.

The sound was like boiling water, it was high and harsh like a knife stuck through the eardrums. Xu RenDong covered his ears, wondering if he guessed wrongly? But seeing the foreman’s face change, he immediately ran to the edge of the fence and looked towards the gear area in the center. Xu RenDong noticed that the biggest gears had stopped rotating, as if something had caused them to become stuck.

The foreman cursed angrily and ran to the control room. He quickly heard his grumpy roar on the radio, saying that there was a safety incident. He ordered everyone to gather on the first floor immediately.

Security incident? Could it be…

After the foreman left, Xu RenDong also went to the edge of the fence. He squinted his eyes and looked towards the central gear. This time he finally saw clearly what was stuck in the gear.

A bloody corpse.

After half an hour, everyone gathered next to the molten pool on the first floor. The beret man, who had already returned from the town, hurried over when he got the news. He apologized to the foreman profusely. The foreman scolded him with a slap in the face, and continued to direct the NPC worker to operate the robotic arm to take out the corpse in the gear.

The body was badly damaged, the torso was almost crushed by gears and the spine was broken into several pieces. There was a big hole in its stomach and all the internal organs were falling out. Part of it fell into the molten pool below and it was burned out with a hissing noise.

Despite all this, it was easy to tell that this was a female corpse.

The crowd stood silently beside the corpse. There were only seven people present. Other than the middle-aged man who was whipped to death, only Zhang XiaoXiao and the gentleman were missing. The female corpse was obviously Zhang XiaoXiao and so the gentleman…

“It must be that man!” A girl suddenly called out, “I was in a group with this girl! She left, saying she was going to find that man but something like this ended up happening! Now that man is gone too so he must have a guilty conscience!”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true.” Another person muttered, “Maybe he was also killed, it’s just that his body has not been found.”

“Yes, there may be more than one death condition this time. Or should we look again, maybe there is still a corpse hidden inside the gears?”

Everyone talked about it and only Xu RenDong stood silently next to the corpse.

Lian Qiao was suddenly excited: VR autopsy, exciting!

Xu RenDong ignored Lian Qiao and moved closer to observe the fragmented corpse. The body was covered with blood and the crushed internal organs gave off a suffocating stench, which was very disgusting. Xu RenDong felt itchy in his throat and forced himself to observe the corpse carefully.

Although the corpse was crushed by gears, the big hole in the stomach was a bit strange. The edge of the wound was very flat. It didn’t look like it was crushed by a machine but more like it was cut open by something sharp.

Lian Qiao: What is that? Inside the stomach, look carefully.

Xu RenDong looked at the corpse’s stomach. The stomach pouch was also crushed by gears, leaving only the upper half connected to the esophagus. But because of this, the stomach contents were completely exposed. A few gray-white objects the size of a thumb lid can be clearly seen on the stomach wall.

Xu RenDong resisted the feeling of discomfort and looked closer. He saw that the off-white objects were round and short, with a circle of lines on it which looked like…

A chrysalis? !

The pupae were attached to the stomach wall and they were even squirming slightly. They didn’t seem to notice that the owner of the stomach pouch had died and were still greedily absorbing the body’s nutrients.

Xu RenDong couldn’t help it anymore. He walked to the side, bent over and vomited.

The teammates behind him noticed his strangeness and came over to ask him what was going on. Xu RenDong told everyone about his findings and everyone’s expressions suddenly changed.

“Pupae? Do butterflies really grow in the stomach?!”

“If that’s the case, that other man probably also met a terrible end. I just don’t know what they did to end up like this…”

“This is horrible…. It’s terrible! I can’t stand it anymore! I want to go home! I want to go home wuwuwuwuwu…”

The beret man suddenly exclaimed: “Quiet! Quiet! The foreman knows that it must be terrible to lose a compatriot on the first day and that you must be feeling down. So he’s kindly allowed you to go back to rest in the afternoon and come back to work tomorrow!”

Everyone was a little surprised but they all accepted this decision. The girl who was crying to go home also choked to a halt and stood tightly in the middle of the group, indicating she was going to follow the crowd. 

On the way back to the dormitory, everyone was still whispering, discussing what had just happened. He suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to take off Lamia’s eyeball when he vomited and Lian Qiao must have seen the indecent picture.     

He felt embarrassed and his first reaction was to apologize to Lian Qiao. However Lian Qiao had already written him a message asking: Are you okay? There are water and wet wipes in the bag.     

Xu RenDong took out the wet wipes from his backpack and wiped his face. Then he took out his phone and replied: I’m fine. Sorry to let you see something terrible.     

Lian Qiao: It’s okay. An autopsy is a necessary process. The corpse carries a lot of information.     

Xu RenDong: I’m not talking about the corpse…     

Lian Qiao: Uh… that’s okay, didn’t I also vomit and you saw it too? We are even.    

Xu RenDong thought that: en, Lian Qiao made a lot of sense. He couldn’t help but nod his head.  The vision of his left eye suddenly flashed and a fountain of vomit flashed in front of him, spraying forward in a parabolic shape, and finally fell on the ground and turned into a yellow and greasy puddle.     

This first-person visual effect is too realistic. This fountain of vomit seems to be sprayed out of his own mouth. Xu RenDong felt his throat greasy and almost vomited again along with him. {LOL I think the author is way too realistic when repetitively describing probably what she feels is an inevitable physiological reaction from a medical standpoint haha.}

He panicked and only then realized he had also made the mistake of nodding. Xu RenDong hurriedly typed to apologize. Lian Qiao vomited for a long time before tapping a line tremblingly. “Now I have earned it.”

Xu RenDong was taken aback, staring at the words “I earned it” for a while before he understood what Lian Qiao meant. He couldn’t help but laugh.

After returning to the dormitory, everyone gathered together to discuss what had just happened. Xu RenDong told what he saw when he followed the foreman and everyone had different opinions. The biggest point of disagreement is where the gentleman has gone and whether he was dead or alive.

There was no answer at all based on the current clues. In the end, everyone decided to wait for the opportunity tomorrow and sneak out to explore the factory. The method is also very simple, just sneak out after the foreman has inspected their room. The foreman started patrolling from the boiler room on the first floor. It took about 20 minutes to patrol the first floor. There are three floors of workshops on the ground. This cycle takes one hour. That is to say, as long as you are present to punch the card when the foreman checks on you, after that there will be an hour of exploration time. During that period all they had to do was carefully avoid the foreman’s patrol route and then return to the post before the foreman’s next patrol round.     

Judging from the number of participants, this instance should not be difficult. But three people died on the first day and everyone’s hearts were very heavy. After discussing all this, it was already evening. There is no electricity in this small broken apartment and only candles could be lit at night. It was of course impossible to take a bath and everyone only lay down in their own sweat and oil.     

Xu RenDong closed his eyes and suddenly noticed that in the field of vision of his left eye, Lian Qiao was sandwiching a piece of silver-white metal between his two fingers, which he was dangling to attract his attention.    

The elevator button?! He found it so soon? !     

Xu RenDong hadn’t even gotten over his surprise yet when the angle of view moved slowly and the elevator appeared in his field of view. Lian Qiao pushed the button into the groove beside the elevator door and then made a “V” gesture.     

Xu RenDong was so shocked that he watched Lian Qiao’s teammates walk into the elevator one by one, and then the elevator doors closed slowly but Lian Qiao did not enter.     

He sat down leaning on the elevator, took out his mobile phone and typed: I’ve done it, how about you?     

Xu RenDong felt like he had been given a big mental hit. He finally calmed down, and replied: No progress.

Lian Qiao: I was playing a boss in the afternoon and didn’t pay attention to your situation. What did you guys talk about?

Xu RenDong repeated the content of their conversations. After Lian Qiao finished listening, he took out a gun from his bag and said regretfully: It would be great if I could send this to you.

Xu RenDong: … Kill the foreman with one shot so I can explore freely, right?

Lian Qiao: That’s right!

Xu RenDong was amused by his simple and violent methods. However, thinking about it carefully, if everyone worked together, it would not be impossible to kill the foreman. But it was possible that the foreman, like the black rabbit of the matryoshka instance, could be resurrected immediately after being killed and may enter a second form. This would be terrifying.

Xu RenDong and Lian Qiao chatted casually for a while. They felt a little tired. After putting down the mobile phone, Xu RenDong was about to go to sleep when he saw that the medical student was still sitting at the table, studying diligently to the flickering flame of the candle.

He really didn’t have it easy.

Xu RenDong sighed inwardly and slowly fell asleep.

When he woke up, he felt sore all over, as if he had been beaten. His muscles and bones felt very rigid. His eyes were dry and it was hard to open them because of the strong light. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, thinking: The sun is up so high, how come no one has come to urge us to go to work?

He finally got used to the light, opened his eyes little by little and found that there was a silvery white wall in front of him. His shadow reflected on the metal plate and it was a familiar scene.

The elevator.

Xu RenDong was shocked and suddenly jumped up from the ground. He looked around in amazement, making sure that this was the elevator when he came. The five characters “Butterflies in the Stomach” appeared in front of him. Lian Qiao in his left field of vision was typing fast with his mobile phone in his hands.

“Butterflies in one’s stomach: refers to the flapping wings of a butterfly inside the stomach, describing a constant feeling of fear, tension, and anxiety.”

Xu RenDong looked at all this blankly and suddenly felt an itching in his stomach, as if something was squirming up to his esophagus. He couldn’t help it anymore so he bent down and retched violently.