Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

"Boom!"

As Ryan's expression changed from puzzled to frightened, Craft's forehead hit the window sill heavily. The thin snow that accumulated last night failed to act as a buffer, and there was an eye-catching red mark on his head.

Some unruly hands and feet and temporarily disabled position sensors did not allow him to react, so he just slid down against the wall and collapsed on the ground.

Ryan, who was still in a state of confusion and panic, quickly stepped forward to help Kraft and moved him to the bed in an awkward position like a princess hug.

When he reached out to lift the blond hair from Kraft's forehead, he realized that what was more serious than the red mark, which was just a flesh wound, was the unusually high temperature on his forehead.

As his cousin who was several years older, Lane had taken care of Kraft when he had a fever when he was young. Even though those memories were blurred, he could still conclude that such a high temperature was too exaggerated. It had far exceeded the normal fever level and was close to the level of being hot to the touch.

What's more, Kraft didn't say a word, and didn't even let out a weak cry of pain from hitting his head to being moved to the bed. He was completely in a state of confusion.

"Craft, Kraft!" Ryan used Old Wood's secret battlefield first aid technique and slapped Kraft's cheek hard, trying to bring back his consciousness.

When he found that two slaps failed to wake him up, he decisively grabbed a handful of snow on the windowsill, compacted it and applied it to Kraft's forehead, performing a simple but effective physical cooling method. Lane adjusted Kraft's head and found that he was still staring straight ahead, showing no intention of reacting to his atrocities.

"I'll go next door and ask if there's a doctor here. Just lie down and don't move!" After a symbolic warning, Ryan got up and ran towards the door. After a few steps, he turned back, closed the window that had been open all night, and walked out from there. Kraft took out half of the quilt to cover him, and then rushed out the door.

……….

After an unknown amount of time, after Kraft gradually broke free from the chaos and barely regained control of his face, his panting cousin dragged a middle-aged man who looked no different from other villagers and rushed in. Followed by the village chief who was out of breath.

After Ryan roped in the village chief, the two of them went to the house of the only person in the village who knew some magic tricks. After searching throughout the village to no avail, they finally found the person they were looking for in Shizhu. Only then did Ryan learn that one of the people they hired to dig the hole was a "doctor" from the village.

This "doctor", who was considered a part-time worker at best, and a few others, who were paid fairly generously but could not dig out the whole thing, were a little bit regretful. They thought that being idle in winter was also idle, and seeing that the sunshine was rare today, Let’s meet to dig some more hoe and pass the time chatting.

A group of three people ran back to the doctor's house to get his tools and herbs. It was already half the morning.

In this way, when Ryan brought the people back, he could already see Kraft looking at him with an indistinguishable expression, mumbling indistinctly, combined with the image of a bar on his head and red and swollen cheeks. , quite funny. He lay on the bed and listened to his relieved cousin describe his condition to half a doctor.

With no personal history, no past history, no family history, no history of marriage and childbirth, and no specialist physical examination, this guy, who in Kraft's eyes was far more amateur than the doctor who amputated the shooter's limbs, could rely only on his family members. The diagnosis was made based on the oral complaint and half of the medical history - your disease, I think, is a characteristic disease of our village!

In his narration, which was a little difficult to understand because of his accent, Kraft and Lane learned that this was still a doctor with a legacy.

From their ancestors who cannot be verified to this generation, three generations of them have worked in this village part-time as doctors while working as farmers, supporting the primary medical and health care here with technology that is basically in line with the average medical level of this era.

The main business is generally bloodletting therapy and indigenous herbal medicine treatment. Compared with clinics in the city, they win because of the orderly inheritance, but lose because of the lack of high-tech technologies such as amputation and enema.

This medical model, which exists only in historical documents and rumors among souls in other worlds, is not to be said to be simple and unpretentious, but it can only be said to be efficient butchering.

However, objectively speaking, after the doctor unexpectedly proposed bloodletting and local potion treatment, it did help Kraft regain his speech ability as soon as possible.

With his still numb lips, he tried his best to squeeze out a few words under the doctor's surprised gaze: "No need, I'm much better."

In the continuous fright, Kraft still had difficulty moving his trunk and limbs, but his brain had returned to normal. When Ryan applied ointment to the scar on his forehead, he could clearly feel that the high fever had subsided, which at least ruled out the possibility of contracting the disease.

For everything that happened last night, Kraft only remembered fragmentary words such as snakes and scales, which could be summarized as having a nightmare in front of the window of a big snake crawling in front of him.

This is nothing new to anyone here. In this era when neurology has not yet reached the top of the contempt chain, various diseases with complex principles are still explained by some supernatural factors.

Whether you have speech dysfunction and hemiplegia caused by stroke, weakness caused by hypokalemia, or limb twitching or gibbering caused by febrile convulsions or delirium, it can all be interpreted as the intrusion of something evil.

It makes perfect sense that a nightmare about snakes bringing illness could be interpreted as a trick of evil spirits. Since Kraft has improved rapidly, from the perspective of the village chief who has some faith, it should be God's blessing and he will naturally recover without medication.

Ryan hesitated to speak. Not to mention whether the church's gods would protect the relatives of collectors of heretical gadgets. As for Kraft's condition, he didn't know whether the accidental impact caused by a slap on his shoulder in the morning might have added fuel to the fire and turned a small lesion into a serious illness.

Kraft, who was lying on the bed, quickly caught a word in their conversation out of the professional sensitivity of an alien soul. He reluctantly moved his hands to push himself. Ryan noticed his movements and reached out to help him up. He piled a small bag behind him with a quilt and gave him a sip of water from a water bottle so that he could sit up and talk.

"What's the 'special disease' you just mentioned?" Kraft asked in a hoarse voice. Ryan moved the kettle closer to let him take another sip, but he tilted his head to avoid it, "What? Call it a characteristic disease of your village? Sudden high fever like mine is very common here?"

He was vaguely aware of something, but there were only fragmented fragments of last night's memory, and more content was lost in the depths that he could not discover. Now he needed some clues.

Perhaps this symptom is so characteristic that the amateur doctor showed good memory in this regard: "According to my father, and of course he also listened to my grandfather, I don't know how early it was. There has been such a disease here for a long time. It's a strange disease. Most of them are young people, one every eight or nine years. They all suddenly get hot on the head, as if it's been roasted in a fire, and they talk nonsense about snakes and the like, and in the end..." he said. He suddenly paused and looked at the faces of Lane and Kraft. He felt that they would not be angry with him in this situation. "In the end, they didn't live for more than two days. The same happened to my father."

Seeing that Lane and Kraft looked unconvinced, the doctor took out his set of bloodletting tools: "My grandfather was a serious doctor outside before coming here, and this set of things was left by him. He said he had never seen it elsewhere. Such a disease. Even those who talk nonsense with high fever are not all related to snakes, right?" His voice became softer as he spoke, "Of course, this is also what my father said. He guessed that there is a snake here. The spirit, after eating fresh and strong souls, goes back, and comes out again when it is hungry.”

Kraft habitually filtered his words: the onset is acute, tends to occur in young adults, with fever and delirium as the main symptoms, and is obviously regional. The fatality rate is extremely high, and the possibility that local medical measures may be counterproductive cannot be ruled out.

And, of course, there's "Snake." This inexplicable element is still lingering in my mind, lingering. His current state was like waking up from a dream, being pulled back to reality from a distant dream. Except for the most impressive content, I don’t know the rest. The only thing that was different was a hazy feeling that wouldn't go away, making him feel that something had been completely changed in a place he didn't know about.

This hazy feeling was like that of a rafting project on a trip in the past. He was on the kayak looking down at the turbid water where algae had overgrown. Suddenly, an underwater black shadow flashed through his peripheral vision. When he looked closely, there was nothing there. In my self-doubt, it might be an illusion caused by the rippling water waves, or the mottled shadows cast by the rugged rocks and old trees above. I can't imagine and dare not imagine what kind of living creatures are moving in the bottomless pool.

If he had discovered some horrifying truth in the night, it was now beneath the calm surface of reason, because the body's self-protection mechanisms had been temporarily hidden. Instinct told him not to reach down and test the depth.

Kraft avoided the parts he didn't like and picked the parts he was most accustomed to. He asked whether those people were related by blood, whether they had any other diseases before the onset of the disease, whether they had been bitten by snakes and insects, and whether they had been bitten by snakes and insects when they were children. Fever and cough.

Taking into account the characteristics of this world, he focused on asking about the eating habits of the lower village and the creek that was used as the main water source by the village. Are there any problems upstream? Ryan watched in surprise as his cousin showed off his unknown meticulous side, and then gave him a few more mouthfuls of water and asked him to speak slower.

The doctor and the village chief patiently answered the guest who had increased the village's GDP. The main components of the answer were "don't know", "unclear" and "no".

However, the elderly village chief remembered the names of a few people in his memories and sighed that they were all good young men, but they were smart, and the evil spirit really knew how to pick people.

"Okay, I've finished asking, thank you." Unsurprisingly, even the patient's family may not be able to answer this information, let alone the two people who have never had such awareness. "Since this strange disease is the only one here , haven’t you considered going elsewhere?”

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Kraft knew that he had said something stupid. A disease that only occurs once every few years may not have even a fraction of the common causes of death here. Moreover, the location of this village is quite good. It happens to be stuck in a location where there is no lord to collect taxes, and it is not too far from Wendeng Port where things are bought and sold. There are even traveling merchants passing by.

Although this also means that there is not enough protection, it is not difficult for a relatively united village to drive away some wild beasts together. The exemption of taxes will allow them to accommodate more people. Over time, they may not be able to develop into a small town. .

In contrast, the "special disease", besides looking scary, is probably scabies.

Kraft, who said something stupid, ended the topic consciously, and sent the village chief and the doctor away on the grounds that his brothers had some private matters to discuss. Before leaving, you could see on their faces, "He is indeed a rich young man, maybe something else." Nobility" and the like.

Regarding this disease, considering that he is a semi-time traveler, it is understandable that other supernatural events will occur. Of course, he can explain it this way. Oh, no, it should be called an abnormal phenomenon here.

However, from a strict perspective, it is more reasonable for you to interpret this as a special acute central nervous system disease. It may be caused by opportunistic pathogenic bacteria or parasitic infections. Because everyone's immune system is different, the disease only occurs under specific conditions, and the incidence rate is relatively low.

They all mentioned snakes in a vague state of consciousness, which may be due to the influence of rumors from generation to generation in the village. They subconsciously felt that they were related. Naturally, they felt that they were entangled by the evil spirit of snakes.

And I just happened to see the snake-like patterns on the ground, thinking about it day by day and dreaming about it at night? This is the course of the disease... Forgive me for my lack of knowledge, but there are many messy cases in the world, not least of which is this one.

Kraft tried to move his arms again, this time maneuvering himself into a more comfortable position without his cousin's help.

"Okay, I'm sorry for scaring you. Although it looked serious before, I feel like I'm getting better, so can you put away the bloodletting kit?" He looked at Ryan next to the bed and stretched his arms. Feet means that you are doing well. Abundant energy was returning to this young body, and control of his limbs was basically restored, and now he felt a little hungry.

Kraft refused Ryan's help, climbed out of bed, walked to the luggage, pulled out a piece of dried meat, twisted it in the middle, and handed one piece to Ryan.

For a patient who had been half-dead a moment ago, his condition was incredibly good. The powerful chewing muscles give the teeth the power to bite the marinated meat jerky: "See, there's nothing wrong with me."

"I'm a little suspicious that you were just faking it." Ryan carefully took the dried meat, still feeling worried, "How about we rest here for a few days before setting off?"

"No, I feel like I can leave tomorrow morning. And that damn pillar, let them fill the hole back. The soil is solid. I don't want to come to this unlucky place again." I didn't get any souvenirs, and I lost a lot of money. Silver coins, and almost killed his own people, which is a lighter-level job.

"you sure?"

"I'm sure, we'll leave tomorrow. You don't want to wait for the snow to melt and ride in the mud. Also remember to remind me to let them fill the hole." Kraft was a little eager to put all this behind him. He could feel that his whole body and mind were resisting delving into this matter from certain angles, and it just so happened that he had long wanted to leave.