Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

The next day, Liston sent Craft and Lucius to Elm Street and left first on the pretext of purchasing the items on the list.

Before leaving, Kraft did not say goodbye to him. Instead, he picked up the bird's beak mask and put it on his head in advance. There was a disturbing coughing sound under the mask, as if he accidentally took a breath of toast in Gris's tavern. Secret ingredient powder on fish.

Perhaps it was close to the salt tide area, so that the bad miasma there spread to this area. After approaching this area, Kraft's coughing never stopped, which always made people suspect that there was something in the air that others could not smell. It's irritating his trachea.

It wasn't until Liston walked a little further and looked back that Kraft finally stopped coughing and waved to him, saying there was nothing to worry about. Lucius gave him a hand and persuaded the guy who just seemed to be coughing out his lungs to wait until another time, but he was firmly rejected.

"Ahem...I'm fine, I just got choked." Kraft stretched out his hand to wipe his face and knocked his hand on the lens. Instead of taking it off, he tightened the mask and pressed it more firmly onto his face.

This action is obviously concealing something, and perhaps only a dull person like Lucius would believe it to be true. Liston didn't know what this meant. The distance between him and the truth was far more than just this mask, so he had no choice but to figure it out on his own.

Go to the market near the port first, divide the purchase items on the paper into several parts, and give them to friends and acquaintances who know more about these things than you do.

Liston himself went to change out of his black robe, put on new clothes that had not been used in the academy, and put a hat on his hair. Across half the city, I found a quite secluded street from memory, where Professor Kalman's house was located.

Yes, he had a bold idea.

Liston wanted to confirm his suspicion in person. The Clarifying Potion is something that can change the course of the entire history of surgery. If a person with rich medical knowledge and great influence leads it astray, the consequences will be immeasurable.

It can be seen that Kraft and Lucius are not the ones with malicious intentions. They are just lucky and feel that there is still room for maneuver in the matter. Maybe there are some misunderstandings and twists and turns in it, so they dare not make a conclusion.

It was clear to onlookers that Liston didn't care what role Kalman played in it. Anyway, the professor must be a key part, and he wanted to figure out what the logic was.

It's not for morality or other illusory ideas, it's just the unknown shrouded in fog that drives him to think and pursue. As long as he doesn't have the answer, he can't be freed from the fear of the unknown truth.

Just like being in an invisible darkness, with sounds that are not like human beings coming, enduring this unknown is really a huge torture. It is better to take the initiative to light the fire to see it clearly than to let it be fermented into the most terrifying form by imagination. Nightmare things torment the mind.

When he came to his senses, Liston had already climbed over the backyard fence, and his fear overwhelmed the last struggle in his heart.

He can be regarded as someone who has experienced the plague more than ten years ago. He witnessed the invisible and unstoppable force sweeping past and harvesting lives, which had an indelible impact on him at a young age.

If, as Kraft says, clarity is used in this way, the effect is tantamount to a man-made epidemic.

"I have to figure out where this thing came from." Liston wiped the dust off his hands and said to himself.

The residence of professors is not a secret in the college. It is normal for colleagues to visit each other. Most people who have been in the college for a long time know their respective addresses. Some students from well-off families will also visit when they enroll. How is the economic operation of the college? A small part comes from their donations.

Thinking of this, Liston snorted coldly. After Kraft's last surgery, he wanted to give money to the students who provided the spider thread.

That's because he didn't know that since abdominal surgery became famous, the spider silk thread, which was originally expensive and had no necessary use, was known as "rich in vitality" by the businessman family, taking advantage of the limelight to make a fortune in Wendeng Port.

It distracted him a little and made the tension fade away. Liston looked around the deserted backyard and realized that the owner here was not the kind of person who was very happy to take care of his life.

At least in a place with abundant rainfall like Wendeng Port, it should be relatively rare for weeds to grow poorly in the yard.

After Professor Kalman bought this house, he obviously didn't bother with flowers and plants. Only the outline of the past remains in the dust-covered yard. Half-dry weeds and vines crawl among the sand and stones, making crunchy sounds under their feet. Rustling sound.

The owner of the mansion, who is devoted to academics, has never been married for half his life, and has never had any ambiguous rumors about the opposite sex or the same sex. Naturally, there is no delicate and picky hostess to coordinate the living space of the residence, and the professor's own lifestyle... …can only be described as rough.

He didn't even remember to lock the back door. Liston opened the small door in the backyard of the house with a slight push and entered the room.

The house that has not been cleaned for a long time is full of dust. The air flow created by pushing the door lifts up the dust, flowing through every inch of the space, sticking to the water film on the surface of the eyeballs, and getting into the mouth, nose and throat.

Liston closed his eyes, covered his mouth and let out a suppressed cough. This place was older than the time he remembered visiting.

The interior furnishings were dim and difficult to discern due to lack of light. It seemed that the professor had at least remembered to close all the windows before leaving. Liston closed the door behind him and walked into the house.

Taking up most of the area on the first floor is the reception room, where the professor receives occasional visitors.

In my memory, the reason why I came here last time has been forgotten. I only remember that the professor made himself barley tea at the tasteless and generous table. The honey in it tasted good. If only that table was not the same style as the table in the college pharmacy. Even better.

But now, the square table and chairs have been moved to the corner, and the entire main hall has been cleared, as if to make room for rearrangement, but the new furniture has not yet been put in place, making it uncomfortable and empty, giving rise to a sense of emptiness and lack of reliance.

Liston walked back and forth in the dim living room. The floor here was very clean and he didn't step on anything.

The lack of light made him regret not bringing any lighting, and he didn't want to risk attracting unnecessary attention by opening the window, so he had to walk towards the stairs in the dark in the dim light. The bedroom and study room are probably upstairs. If there are any clues, these two places are most likely.

As in the layout of most houses, the second floor is divided into several single rooms, and in addition to three doors, there is a ladder leading to the attic.

Liston pushed open the door closest to him, which was probably Kalman's bedroom. There was a large bed against the wall, and a desk with drawers in front of the sunny window.

The dust here has reduced a lot, replaced by a faint smell of ink.

When he walked to the desk, Liston realized that he must have left footprints. Fortunately, he had changed his shoes before coming.

There are several thick books spread out on the table. You can see it through the sunlight leaking through the cracks in the window. The book in the middle is one of Liston's most familiar books. He has a handwritten copy of "The Structure of the Human Body" and opened it to the chapter "Skeleton". of one page.

Surrounding the beautiful and precise hand-drawn drawings, in addition to the original content, there are also supplementary summaries transcribed by the professor himself in small characters, which are the results of his research when he first came to Hong Kong in the early years.

Today, the study and summary of bones has actually become perfect, and many of the added details are from Kalman's hand. The new "Structure of the Human Body" written in the name of the original author Edward is actually quite a bit different from the first edition. Small difference, the one in Kraft's hand is like this.

These achievements are the pride of Professor Kalman. He believes that it is only a matter of time that the palace of anatomy is completely built on a solid foundation. Later generations can use the skeletal landmarks confirmed by his generation as coordinates and roughly understand them just by touch. Determine the location of structures in the body.

But why did the professor suddenly open the old book and look up the knowledge that he already knew well? Curious, Liston looked closer.

There is also a piece of yellow paper with a corner exposed under the open book. The jagged edges caused by the tear are uneven. It was temporarily appropriated from a certain book. Liston had only heard of certain artists treating paper like this when inspiration struck, but he had never seen Kalman act in such a hurry.

Carefully lift up the book and pull out the broken page. The description on it is no more formal than the piece of paper itself.

Scribbling letters, coupled with sketches drawn with unevenly thick lines, the hurried record can only be read normally by the writer, who has to identify the original meaning of the missing letters one by one in the continuous strokes.

While reading intermittently, Liston skipped a few strange words that were completely incomprehensible, and roughly figured out that this passage was about Professor Kalman's belief that muscles and bones are connected in a completely different way than previously understood.

"Can such a thing happen?"

If this is true, then the entire anatomy may be under threat of being reshaped on a scale as vast as the transition from purely speculative structures a century ago to today's doctrines based on actual objects.

The current structure of the human body is confirmed by actual secret dissections. Liston himself has witnessed its correctness many times. Even if there are small differences in individual people, they are not enough to overturn the overall correctness.

Curious about this novel point of view, he forgot his purpose and continued reading involuntarily.

Kalman proposed that he had observed a completely new combination of human movement systems that was no less efficient than the original structure, and might even be more efficient. An example is the sketch below.

If it were not for the text content, it would be difficult to associate this group of lines with skeletal muscles.

Several overlapping double straight lines are connected end to end. Judging from the small folded angle and rounded end of the port, one of them may refer to the femur. The femoral neck and femoral head are drawn too abstractly. If it wasn't the only long bone with such a shape, Liston would never have recognized it.

All around it was a tangle of lines, perhaps muscles and tendons, arranged in forms never seen before, defying all the combinations Liston knew. It is as if the creator has never seen human limbs before, and uses them as materials such as ropes and cloth to combine them on the bones.

Cystic cavities and nodule-like organs and tissues blend into the gaps, filling in the empty parts of the complex structure. I can’t imagine what kind of body would need such an arrangement.

On the periphery, two curves with raised burrs outline the rough boundary, leaving a section unsealed, indicating that it is part of a whole.

At first glance, it looks chaotic, and even children's paintings are more orderly than this. However, if you think carefully, you will find that there is another set of logic that goes against common sense in the chaos, showing the feasibility that Liston had never imagined.

It was like another solution to the same problem, which instantly opened up new ideas. He was so happy that he couldn't wait to see its full picture.

Turning over the paper, he poured cold water on the empty back. This was just a temporary draft without any follow-up.

Liston stuffed the paper back into place.

"Is it possible that the professor has been studying these things recently, and there is someone else related to the Clarifying Potion?"