Chapter 202: Signatures

"The environment in Dunling has never been good since the Church tightened its noose." Viren walked steadily beside Kraft among the square pillars that resembled salt columns, "After most deaths are discovered, the deceased's relatives are notified first, and the Church second. For those without relatives, the Church's order is moved to the top."

"People of status are buried in the church cemetery; ordinary cemeteries also have gravekeepers employed by the Church to patrol, ensuring that no sacrilegious grave-robbing occurs where people peek at the deceased's funerary items."

"I am curious how you obtained... 'research subjects'." Kraft disconnected his spiritual senses, stopped at the nearest tombstone to maintain balance, and leaned on it.

Viren, a peer from Dunling, rubbed his fingers with hidden meaning, "There are no research subjects, or at least no one has admitted to having research subjects. All our achievements are derived from interpreting the great works of our ancestors and observing the body surface; there are no research subjects."

"Of course, there are also no incidents of bribing gravekeepers with money, or paying eight silver coins as a tip to invite 'people' to visit the academy. Sometimes, when believers of the Heavenly Fathers visit, it is quite reasonable that they happen upon grave robbers who, upon being discovered, flee in panic and abandon the corpses nearby."

"Very reasonable."

"I am glad you think so too; we have always been troubled by our inability to reach a reconciliation with the Inquisition. The current situation is particularly difficult."

"Mutual understanding between people is always difficult; let us go see the academy's instruments instead." At this time, the sky was still early, making it a perfect time to press the advantage and seek more information, lest time pass and the other party realize the ulterior motives.

This was not difficult; Viren made a "this way please" gesture and, without thinking much, led the several Rivet guests into the instrument storage room. Because he acted too naturally, the student managing the warehouse did not even ask who these new teachers they had never seen were.

Numerous metal instruments and glass apparatuses were stored on solid wooden cabinets fixed to the walls; the upper levels required climbing specialized ladders whose design inspiration was suspected to come from siege cloud ladders to access them.

This place was almost a glass exhibition hall, concentrating several generations of technological change. From clumsy, semi-transparent thick round bottles to thin-walled, pure-colored new instruments, creations of various standards all had their place, including small pieces of extremely high transparency that stood out among their peers.

Seeing Kraft's curiosity, Viren took one down and handed it to him; the tiny ice-crack patterns running through it showed that this was a finished product hollowed and ground from a single piece of natural crystal.

"Very luxurious, right? You probably won't see such things anywhere else, and there won't be any more in the future."

They arrived before the storage cabinet for the newest white glass instruments; this should have been the product of that unfortunate alchemist before he perished in the mine shaft. At this time, this shelf had many more vacancies, like the gums of a child in the teething phase; the deceased had gone, but the new batch had not yet been replenished.

"The previous raw materials ran out, leaving us unable to replenish for a long time; news only reappeared this year, but then a fire occurred, destroying quite a bit. Since these were custom-ordered in Professor Mo Lisen's personal name, some delivery issues arose. The remaining ones are currently available for use; one only needs to register here."

"Excellent." His eyes swept over the various containers on the shelf; one could see the level of glass craftsmanship from the church stained-glass windows alone. The craftsmen here were not inferior to those in Consolation Port, and he saw many things that challenged imagination and skill.

Some oddly shaped bottles, due to a lack of rubber connectors with sufficient airtightness, simply had their accessories and containers fused together. This included a condenser tube, made by inserting a beaded inner tube into an outer tube, sealing both ends, and directly fusing it to the flask; heaven knows how they cleaned it.

"May I see the list?" He actually cared little about what remained here; what was missing was more important.

That student pulled a thick booklet from a drawer; the item entry and exit records with varying handwriting and signatures filled half the book. Kraft could hardly believe that something that might reflect most of the medical school's recent experimental activities on its side had come into his hands.

The things came too fast and too easily, giving a sense of unreality.

Kraft silently turned sideways to block the pages; the date separations carefully marked by the administrator provided great help for consultation, easily tracing back to over half a year ago.

However, a new difficulty appeared; he saw a sea of unfamiliar names, with some individuals using cursive or initial abbreviations instead. The font reflected the writing tradition with historical inheritance among medical personnel; these were true internal documents. Except for internal personnel, no one could hope to understand what was written, making it hard to say it didn't carry some function of preventing audits.

The initial idea was too simple; there was another problem. As an academy professor, Mo Lisen did not necessarily have to deign to come to the warehouse personally to borrow and sign; checking this was completely in the dark.

After flipping a few pages, just as Kraft was about to waste time memorizing half the book slowly for comparison, a magnificent signature that stood out like a crane among chickens saved him.

【Karlman】

Perhaps people named Karlman were everywhere in the world, but there probably wouldn't be a second one who happened to have such good handwriting and also appeared here.

The capital letter had a trailing stroke, leading to a long, sharp serif resembling a branch; the remaining letters were like perching birds, leaning against each other in arrangement. The fluid connected strokes made one feel it was a signature carefully designed and brewed at the end of a formal letter, rather than a daily signature.

According to the date on this record, about half a year ago, when Kraft was pondering the location of the ore deposits in Consolation Port, Professor Karlman arrived in Dunling as scheduled.

It might have been even earlier; after all, he came as fast as possible upon receiving the news. When signing, he had already undertaken the work of helping Mo Lisen handle experimental affairs, borrowing several knives, pliers, tweezers, and a few graduated beakers.

The signature's beginning, development, turn, and conclusion were coherent, completed in one breath.

【He seemed to be in good condition】

There was no sign at all that this was the same person who left behind a box of obscure and difficult-to-understand experimental records; it was as if he had returned to his spirited days, willing to devote his energy to every task assigned by his mentor.

Flipping down two pages, he saw Professor Karlman's borrowing record again; they did not return them, but instead borrowed several graduated containers and medicines that looked far more suited for surgical purposes than drug processing.

Half a month later, after an identical signature, the list stated that the laboratory had returned the original glass containers and surgical instruments—with the funding method, instructing the equipment room to find the original craftsman shop to replenish them in the academy's name.

The reason was that instruments contacting patients with highly infectious diseases could not be reused; Karlman's own handwriting even seriously supplemented the report, stating that he performed tumor resections on syphilis patients for whom mercury therapy and honey application had been ineffective.

Probably realizing that the disappearance of batches of instruments was somewhat abnormal, the subsequent behavior became much more restrained, missing only a few pieces in a batch, such as reimbursing two small knives for incision and drainage of patients with abscesses and fever.

Over several months, among the precision glass instruments used for distillation, boiling, and extraction, only occasional pieces were temporarily borrowed; those with complex structures basically remained forever under Karlman's borrowing name, either due to damage compensation, with none returned, until a great fire sent everything into the permanent loss list.

From beginning to end, beautiful signatures followed one after another, never written carelessly, as neat as lamp posts copied and pasted along a deserted midnight road, finally standing in the center of the wasteland.

"Professor Kraft, have you found what you need?"