Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

Returning to Wendeng Port is a good thing for both people and horses.

After two full sunny days, the snow gradually began to melt, and the white faded from the earth, revealing the dirty patches of color underneath. The resulting water quickly turns the road into an inferno of small quagmires.

If we had set out any later, we would have been in the despairing mud, with the mud splashed by the horses' hooves making us question our lives. You can choose to wear a cloak on the outside, but you have to be mentally prepared to carry an extra half a pound of weight when you arrive at your destination.

Kraft thanked himself for deciding to set off as early as possible two days ago. The two of them were now riding horses on the stone pavement of Wendeng Port. The horses' hooves collided with the stone slabs, making a crisp "ta-da" sound.

Yes, there are stone roads in Wendeng Port, at least on several main roads. As a port city, although it is not a big port, it still has to consider transportation issues. Horse-drawn carriages carrying goods or catches come and go non-stop every day. The former will leave deep ruts on the soil road, and the dripping water from the latter will keep the soil in a slurry state all year round.

Therefore, out of the truest practical considerations, Wendeng Port has a noble stone pavement. Because at the seaside, you can still find enough sand to be used for bedding and filling gaps to prevent muddy water from accumulating under the floating stone slabs and turning into a "trap" that will spurt out sewage from the gaps if you step on it.

Careful designers even designed drainage channels on the roadside, and appropriately raised the height of the center of the road to create a flat obtuse-angled triangle cross-section to allow water to flow to both sides. It may not be comparable to the road conditions in another world, but here it is already the best among the first-class roads, and Kraft will not hesitate to praise the designers.

But even this kind of road surface cannot solve the problems currently encountered by Kraft.

"I mean, is there a possibility that no one will come out to set up a stall now?"

The snow in the middle of the road has been cleared away and is waiting to melt by the drainage ditch. This provides convenience for the carriage, and obviously also occupies the original ecological niche of small vendors. The temperature now is not low, and certainly not high, at least not high enough to set up a stall.

There are no antique shops in Wendeng Port. This kind of relatively high-end market does not exist here. If you want to buy something strange and old, your priority is roadside stalls. In fact, many of these stalls are part of the sailors' side business. They deal with some scattered small items obtained from various places and exchange them for a few copper coins suitable for turning into beer in the tavern.

Fortunately, there are no problems such as counterfeiting or tampering, because we don’t have the energy and skills to perform such operations on street stall goods.

The streets are a bit deserted without street stalls. In these days, the streets have not yet evolved into the form of people living upstairs and shops downstairs. The streets are mainly lined with pure residential buildings. These two- or three-story buildings adopt a semi-exposed structure, with bricks and adhesives filled between the supporting wooden frames. The more sophisticated ones will have some light-colored paint on the walls to create a color contrast with the half-exposed frames. It's like a sketch that has just been finished with outlines and lines.

Compared with the single-story houses in the previous small village, the houses here are taller and require better load-bearing. It is not easy to hollow out a wall on the first floor to show the interior. Only horizontally extending signboards show their functions. There are not many such signboards. There are only "Tavern", "Tailor" and "Bread" within sight, and there is another "Tavern" a little further away.

"It doesn't matter. I'll ask the captains I know. They always have a few things that look very mysterious." Ryan said without changing his expression. "You go shopping by yourself first. We will go to the academy in the evening." Meet at the door and then find a place to stay together."

"Ah, then why don't you take me with you?" Kraft didn't understand at all, but Ryan had already disappeared at the fork in the road on his horse and seemed not to have heard his words.

Under the noon sun, Kraft, who suddenly had an entire afternoon of alone time, didn't know where to go. He reined in his horse and stopped on the street, watching the pedestrians, carriages and horses passing by, confused.

There weren't many people on the streets. A few sailors were singing boat songs and walking hand-in-hand into the building with a tavern sign in front; a carriage carrying several barrels of fish passed by the door, and a big fish stuck upside down in the barrel was still flapping its tail. A man wearing a scholar's robe used his sleeves to block the water droplets thrown from the fish's tail.

Craft watched all this. The barcarolle was a little out of tune, and the water droplets moved along the blue lines on the fish's tail, and then were shaken off. There were two diluted ink marks on the cuffs of the brown scholar's robe. He always felt that something was wrong, especially when he was alone, and it had been like this since a certain day.

He became...interested and took the initiative to capture more content. When galloping on horseback, I would pay attention to the gorgeous snow on the treetops, insist on catching up with my cousin to chat, and pay attention to the water droplets and ink spots on the street.

Logically speaking, human attention is limited. When you focus on something intentionally, you will inevitably ignore more. However, his storage channels seemed to have suddenly been expanded, and his abundant attention could be allocated to more things, collecting more useful or useless information, and he was very interested in this behavior.

It's like picking up every coin on the ground, like collecting the scattered data in the whole book into a volume, like cleaning every drop of bone marrow in the barrel. He derived a kind of satisfaction from this behavior, a weird satisfaction.

His divergent thinking is spreading. The tune of the barcarolle should be a little higher, and perhaps it would be more natural; the fish tail seems to have been seen in the last time I came to the port. This kind of fish has a sharp mouth; the water droplets deformed and elongated in the air, overcoming the obstruction of the sleeves and heading toward its owner. Flying on the face...

"Hey, damn it!" The angry curse interrupted Kraft's continuation.

It was two people wearing scholar's robes who bumped into each other while avoiding water drops. One of them stumbled forward and fell on the ground with his palms on the ground.

Kraft shook his head vigorously to get rid of the messy thoughts, and rode around the scholar who was arguing with the coachman.

He felt that he was a little too sensitive. This kind of uncontrollable attention to all kinds of irrelevant things is very similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder. The other half of the world has a fairly typical form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is especially obvious when the pressure is high. He would count the steps on the stairs, wash his hands until they were wrinkled, or blow on them three times.

This time around, I may have made myself too nervous without even realizing it. Familiar yet unfamiliar bodies, fused thinking patterns, and unfamiliar environments all have the potential to create too much anxiety for the other half. But he was not convinced of this. After all, the passing score in psychiatry was obviously not the result of his efforts, but more similar to the teacher's efforts.

Riding along the street, Kraft decided to put these things aside and do something else to change his mind.

For example, he can look for places that sell pens, paper and ink.

Here, under the guidance of Mr. Anderson and a little bit of supervision from his grandfather, Kraft reluctantly learned how to write in exquisite and complex cursive script. The otherworldly part is a lover of flowery bodies. Although they were not the same characters, the similar writing style made him want to try it out.

Kraft felt that his grandfather and Mr. Anderson would be more willing to see something else than another small object with no characteristics. It's great and surprising that my grandson/student who went out for a trip has learned to calligraphy well. Optimistically, it can be recognition of their educational level.

With this idea in mind, and not expecting much from Cousin Ryan who suddenly disappeared, Craft began to look for pen and paper on the street.