Chapter 203: The Obscure Hint

"I suppose so—your school's foundations run deep; even just these remaining items would be sufficient for the experiment." Kraft pretended to walk toward the storage shelf, his hands speeding up as he flipped through the pages.

The records flashed across his fingers and converged in his mind; Kaerman 's distinctive cursive signature greatly accelerated the process.

Each appearance of it meant several instruments vanished from storage, then naturally slipped back into the college's bulk procurement list for replenishment—no one ever raised objections.

Because these losses had clear, rational documentation: minor glassware broken; most metal instruments exposed to infectious disease patients, no longer returned to inventory or mixed with other equipment—clearly indicating Morison's research had begun shifting toward infectious diseases.

Including skin disfigurement from syphilis, a disease described as "genital cluster warts," subcutaneous abscesses, tubercular hemoptysis, and deformities caused by leprosy—many illnesses believed to afflict those deemed faithless or unclean.

A significant number of patients chose not to seek medical care, letting their conditions deteriorate until visible surface lesions formed; or were denied treatment altogether due to these diseases, left without surgical intervention when needed.

Of course, aside from incision and drainage—which still had some effect—most other methods only inflicted greater suffering.

This became a vast blank space, with few willing to enter such a field; add the suffix "surgical intervention," and it was virtually impossible for anyone to conduct overlapping research.

Thus, using it as an excuse was entirely reasonable—no need to worry about frequent visitors popping up wanting to exchange related experience.

Meanwhile, Kaerman repeatedly, though superficially earnest, cited "contact with highly infectious disease patients" as the reason for instruments not being returned on time—so frequently that it could no longer be ignored, yet strictly adhered to form and procedure.

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After jotting down these perfunctory notes, Kaerman then meticulously signed the end with a carefully designed cursive signature.

A subtle, hard-to-describe dissonance brewed within the text—a nuance requiring full reading and analysis to perceive—as if deliberately crafted, whispering through the barrier of time, attempting to convey some directional message to those who read with care.

Only a listener endowed with an inexplicable Moqi could, under specific circumstances and in a specific manner, decipher information no clearer than the fracture of a single paper fiber.

Kraft wasn't sure if he was that person, nor could he confirm whether a nominally dead man was truly communicating, through a loan record, with someone arriving months too late.

Ciphers, codes, or metaphors? Kraft sifted through the text, searching for hidden messages in typography or letter combinations—found no information at all; the only certainty was that the writer's logical thinking was clear, having shed the initial chaotic fervor of transcending cognitive boundaries, writing these words under his own volition.

Yet he could not express his meaning directly—this indicated the message contradicted the will of those controlling this place.

Kraft partially dismissed the possibility of ciphers or acrostics; anything easily detectable by him would also be easily detected by others, and under normal circumstances, no one would have the opportunity to spend long periods flipping through the instrument loan logbook.

If there truly were instructions embedded within, they should be more obvious—and smarter.

"The preparation of anesthetics carries risk; I must preface this: a secure experimental environment is essential, and one must be prepared for losses." Since he couldn't figure it out, he set it aside—for what truly concerned Kraft were the missing instruments.

There were far too many metal instruments and far too few glass containers; if Morison could perform precise extractions using only a few large flasks and beakers, Kraft would have nothing to say.

But objectively, this clearly indicated surgical preparations—not for a few individuals, but for a scale so large that the vanished instruments could easily sustain six or seven Liston-style surgical clinics operating in rotating shifts.

So where had this nonexistent specialty hospital gone? Or did they serve some other purpose?

Imagine those tools being lifted—blades and clamps turning in dozens of hands, dissecting incalculable tissues, generating records piled high enough to obscure one's head—yet the Inquisition's ceaseless investigation found no living or dead bodies to account for their consumption.

When Kaerman arrived in Dunling, Morison showed him precisely this operation.

No one could say what lay beneath the blades—only that whatever it was was enough to make Kaerman, who had come here believing he had found his ultimate goal, recoil in fear, forced to convey his message through obscure, cryptic hints.

As if he had sensed an omnipresent force, capable of emerging from any corner of the city.

But how could that be? The Church and secular powers tightly controlled this city; for such a force to arise spontaneously, there would need to be a second Dunling to house and sustain it.

【This is just absurd.】

Such a possibility was minuscule at best—perhaps merely some method of effectively monitoring and controlling participants.

"The college values the time required to replace instruments, not their cost." Viren flipped through the recent pages of the logbook and affirmed, "No one has needed them lately—you may use them freely. We'll also allocate other labs as soon as possible, though the environmental conditions..."

"We're not people who care about such trivial details—just don't store too many flammable materials. Ideally, the work should be done on the dissection table." Kraft waved dismissively, uninterested in anything beyond safety.

The ether extraction experiment had already brought him face-to-face with the clue; the real difficulty now was interpreting it.

It must naturally guide any investigator toward its target; failing to decipher it only meant he was not the intended audience.

He needed to bridge the information gap between them, to step into the other's mindset. Without a clear target, he could only pick a random entry point and proceed slowly—but as a pure surgical professor, infiltrating this was difficult.

Fortunately, he had anticipated this scenario. "Professor Viren, speaking of anesthesia, I have another matter bringing me to Dunling."

"You've expanded into other fields? Remarkably broad interests."

"Allow me to introduce the Society for Tuberculosis and Rare Diseases, established under the direct authorization and funding of the Duke of Westminster—its primary focus is cataloging the clinical characteristics of rare diseases and researching the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis." In an era lacking effective control measures, tuberculosis was nearly ubiquitous.

Once infectious diseases entered the picture, tuberculosis became an unavoidable topic—several of Kaerman 's discarded instrument justifications involved tuberculosis.

"Huh?" Viren didn't understand how a competent surgical professor had become entangled with tuberculosis—but the testimonies of Feiernan and Lin Deng confirmed the society's existence beyond doubt.

"We hope to learn about the general state of tuberculosis patients in Dunling—do you know anyone we might be introduced to?"