Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

It is not difficult to notice the strangeness of the sleeves. They fluctuate rhythmically, which is particularly discordant on the skeletal body wrapped in black robes.

Kraft drew his sword and stabbed it straight into the palm of his hand. Unexpectedly, it went right through.

This is not a normal phenomenon. The skin and muscles surrounding the bones have disappeared, replaced by a substance with almost no resistance, flowing slowly around the edge of the blade, and there are subtle tremors of biting, grinding, and twisting and clinging.

He stopped Green's move to pour oil, twisted the blade, and cut the entire sleeve lengthwise to the armpit of the robe.

There was no doubt that this body was dead, and it was difficult for Kraft to judge the exact time of death. It is in a special state like drying in the shade. The water-filled fat is dissociated. The long and thin muscle bundles are attached to the surface of the left upper limb skeleton with four curves. The cortex is tightened to form longitudinal folds.

However, the clear texture and pores are preserved, vividly frozen at the moment when life passes.

The complete opposite is the palm, as if all the passing life has been gathered here, condensed to the point of saturation, and the skin melts into bones.

The boundaries between tissues became blurred, retreating into a less differentiated state, pulsing like a fetal heart, forming the undulations they saw under the sleeve.

The slender fingers melted and spread out, like webbed palms, flowing like nearly boiling paste on the iron plate, filling the newly carved gap.

Among the surging creatures, several hard objects of different sizes were lifted up. They were pale stone fragments, emitting a dim glow that was better than nothing but could not be covered up by torch lighting.

The calcified nodules quickly precipitated, condensing into irregular tooth-like structures, rubbing and biting, crushing the nearest dry tissue into themselves.

Kraft raised his sword and slashed across the shoulder, cutting off half of the limb. A second slash came through the same incision, completely severing the limb. He didn't want to watch this thing completely swallow up the remains that might contain clues, and then realize that there was new feed nearby.

There was no blood gushing out from the incision, and the body fluids dried up as expected. Oily, viscous black liquid seeped out from the blood vessels, condensed into liquid and drooped down.

The seepage was so slow that Kraft used his body to block his view behind him and took out a new bottle to catch the liquid.

The flowing and non-condensing state reveals its identity, a fully activated black liquid.

It is almost synonymous with attraction, and the active and dangerous biomass on the ground did not prevent the surrounding eyes from shifting towards the black flow in the bottle until it was covered by a bag.

The amount of liquid was very small, and Kraft quickly completed the collection, dragged the remains aside, away from the shapeless mass, and cut the robe completely to rummage through his belongings.

Tweezers, vascular clamps, long needles, and a leather-bound booklet with a buckle.

There is a layer of oil on the surface of the cover, and the back is slightly cracked. It must have been turned over frequently. The scrawled writing is interspersed with ink marks and mottled stains.

"What is it?" Green waved away the torch that occasionally had sparks escaping, and used a lantern to help illuminate the page.

"It seems to be a notebook, anatomy notes." Kraft flipped through a few pages and understood the contents. The time span was quite long, and the first few pages were dated three years ago.

What he recorded was the dissection of a dead infant. He found a strange piece of tissue in the front of the upper mediastinum that had not been seen in adults before. He marked the location and general shape with a simple sketch, and noted that it should be removed next time. Pay attention to this area.

Then the next dissection was three months later, and he couldn't get another subject of the same age.

"What does it say?"

"Say that your work is very successful." Kraft continued to turn the pages. According to this recording frequency, the book cannot be that thick.

Although the practice frequency is very low and the handwriting is not very good-looking, the attitude and professionalism of the note owner are still commendable. The logic and description accuracy are very good, and the level has reached a level that allows Kraft to quickly confirm the identity of his peers.

The author's vocabulary has become a habit, and he can fill in rare proper nouns in appropriate places without thinking, and he can continue to write continuously.

It seems that they have already considered that the notes may fall into the hands of other people. There is no signature in them, but the identity can basically be locked to a small range without reading.

"Those who are in the medical school, not students, can lead anatomy at this level are at least lecturers, but it is more likely that they are still lecturers, and those professors should practice more frequently."

After the first few dissections, the recording intervals began to become shorter about a year ago, to the point where they were almost weekly, and the content quickly became more detailed and no longer limited to dissections.

There is a very rare neat handwriting in the booklet, which records step by step how they bypassed the arm muscle bundles and cleaned up a complex fracture of the upper arm while avoiding damage to blood vessels based on the experience gained from previous dissections.

Kraft could imagine that scene. The surgeon would need to separate the tissues layer by layer and use pull hooks to retract the tendons to expose the fractured parts below. They would check the blood vessels, clean up the bone fragments and reset the backbone. Traction reduction on the surface of the body was not yet common. At the moment, it is a groundbreaking advanced operation.

The most important thing is that this takes a long time and requires a stable environment.

The follow-up can be seen in the records a week later. The operation failed. The patient developed high fever after the operation. Some of the bone fragments were missing, causing the joint to become unstable. The radial side of the palm lost sensation and motor ability, and the patient was unable to continue his blacksmithing work.

Seeing this, Kraft sighed. He had insufficient understanding of nerves and difficulty in healing after a large area of ​​bone was missing. This was basically an unsolvable problem, and no matter how hard he tried, it would be useless.

Unfortunately, they really tried a variety of options, including backfilling with bone fragments and substituting other materials.

One of the most elaborate examples was in patients with syphilis, who tried to carve animal bones to replace the fractures caused by the bacteria.

The result this time was even worse. It should be due to incomplete disinfection and the fact that the underlying condition had deteriorated to a certain extent due to long-term pain and suffering. Postoperative complications directly relieved the patient from pain.

Under the blow of repeated failures, you can feel that the recorder is driving crazy, and even came to the conclusion that even with the help of that unknown source of magical medicine, complex surgeries are basically impossible.

This means that the anatomical development that has been achieved at great cost over a long period of time may not be closer to the end of curing patients, but rather it will be in vain.

"They went too far." Even if the anesthesia problem was solved by using black liquid as a shortcut, the rest would be a dead end. The problem of the limitations of the times is not a problem of people.

However, the next record changed. They found the patient who had failed for the first time and tried some kind of "new filling material."

There was no fever, no lingering recovery, and even the lost mobility and consciousness returned to the affected limb.

There was only one small problem, the patient seemed to be experiencing less serious auditory hallucinations.

"Down below, I heard people talking to me in the sewers, lots of people."