Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 416 - 53: Vinyl Record Player

Lilith directly changed the listening channel to 444.4MHz, and then pressed the play button.

The noise that was already quite unpleasant to hear outside became louder. This sound was like countless rusty iron sheets rubbing against each other, mixed with noises similar to fingernails scraping a blackboard and knives cutting glass... Listening to these noises for a few seconds would make one feel extremely irritated. If they were played continuously by the ear for twenty-four hours, no matter how tolerant a person was, they would probably go crazy.

"These sounds are really fucking annoying..." Lilith frowned, "Next, next!"

The three of them quickly went through the frequency bands from 111.1MHz to 999.9MHz, and even tried "special" frequencies like 123.4MHz and 987.6MHz.

Unfortunately, the only frequencies with audio were the nine bands from 111.1MHz to 999.9MHz.

After repeatedly comparing the sounds of these nine bands, they finally locked onto the 888.8MHz band—compared to the other bands, the sound at 888.8MHz was not necessarily the most normal, but it was definitely the most "comfortable."

This frequency was continuously playing a classical piece—Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor.

"Tsk, so classy?" Lilith couldn't help but quip, "Listening to it makes my worn-out jacket feel like it's turning into a tailcoat."

"Speaking of which, where do you think this piece is being played from?" Lilith suddenly stood up, waved her right hand, and a metal bucket on the ground suddenly flew up and slammed heavily onto the top of the workshop, making a loud noise.

"What are you doing?!" Jiang Yu suddenly got nervous, "What if it attracts that thing?"

"It would be great if it could be attracted, then we wouldn't have to look for it." Lilith said nonchalantly, "If this could attract it, it would have been attracted long ago."

Jiang Yu noticed that there were also some heavy objects with obvious marks of being smashed scattered on the ground of the workshop. It was obvious that before they found Lilith, she had already made similar attempts.

"The place where the music is playing is not in this plant." Ling Xiao, holding the headphones and listening intently, shook his head.

The music wasn't too loud, and as long as the room's soundproofing was good, it could completely block out the music. But the noise Lilith just made was different—the bucket hit the load-bearing beam of the workshop, which was made of a 65-centimeter-thick hollow steel pipe connected to the entire plant's steel framework. Such a loud collision, no matter if it was in a soundproof room, would somewhat be heard.

But in the track playing at 888.8MHz, there was no corresponding sound.

Not even the slightest.

"However, I did hear some other sounds." Ling Xiao raised his head and said, "There seem to be very subtle mechanical operation sounds, and equally faint friction sounds… gears, spindles... and a slightly vibrating metal cavity..."

"A black vinyl record player." Lilith interrupted him, "I've heard this thing in Chunming City more than a hundred times... The tone of this piece indeed comes from that kind of vintage vinyl record player, not a CD or electronic recording... Damn, where would a black vinyl record player come from in a chemical product manufacturing plant?"

"I… I might know the reason." Jiang Yu said weakly.

"If you know, then speak up." Lilith urged immediately.

"Before I came in, I glanced at the list of missing personnel at the factory…" Jiang Yu said.

In Factory No. 105, from the factory manager to the cleaners, plus the sheriff squad and soldiers stationed inside the factory, there were more than four thousand missing persons. Jiang Yu certainly couldn't read through the detailed dossiers of all four thousand people—in fact, she only looked at the dossiers of the factory manager, technical engineers, and the garrison officer.

Fortunately, the answer they needed seemed to be among these files.

"The factory manager of Factory No. 105 is named Wu Zhiyuan… There's a sentence in his file," Jiang Yu said, "It says he's quite a fanatical classical music lover... But that's just it. There's no mention of anything like a black vinyl record player."

"That's enough!" Lilith snapped her fingers, "Those who like classical music would definitely buy a vinyl record player... An entry-level vinyl record player costs only a few hundred bucks, and a good one maybe a few thousand... Unless it's an art piece or an antique-level record player, most families can afford it. This guy buying a record player wouldn't be enough to accuse him of embezzlement or anything… Plus, with Factory No. 105's work pace, for the factory manager, probably 25 days out of the month he eats and sleeps at the factory. If he kept the vinyl record player there, it would be quite reasonable!"

"Maybe… I guess?" Jiang Yu said uncertainly.

"The next question is, where is this record player?" Lilith pulled a palm-sized PAD from her jacket lining—although it couldn't be connected to the internet, she had already downloaded things like the layout of Factory No. 105 to the device before the mission started.

"I think the two most likely places are the factory manager's office, which has an area of more than eighty square meters. The front is the office area, and the part behind the partition wall is the living area. Wu Zhiyuan's daily activities take place in this space of over eighty square meters, so the record player is likely to be here. Besides that, the second most probable place is the factory's reception room... Having a record player in the reception room wouldn't seem out of place at all… Maybe that guy even claimed it as office supplies to get an invoice to reimburse the cost of the record player."