Chapter 225

The next day, Kraft spent half the day in the clinic with Dai Wei, as agreed, enduring intense labor.

This was a task requiring prolonged focus with no visible end—a merciless grind of patience and energy, the perfect breeding ground for irritation and exhaustion.

The general procedure involved sitting in a small room, opening the door to admit one or two people at a time, sometimes more, asking the same questions in the same tone, condensing subjective narratives into concise, logically clear descriptive terms, and recording them on paper for archiving.

Occasionally, he had to interrupt patients and family members, steering their rambling conversations back on track.

Dialects and slang made communication even more difficult; family members would often speak at length in a rush, leaving listeners feeling as if they were abroad, requiring Dai Wei to intervene and "translate" to proceed.

Kraft's own phrasing was also hard to grasp—even simple instructions like "sit down" or "lie down" often needed repeating once or twice. When such repetitions accumulated, each additional one deepened the inner swell of irritation.

None were major obstacles, but their cumulative effect prevented the process from running smoothly like an assembly line; instead, it was slowed by countless small, predictable and unpredictable snags, rendering efficiency visibly low.

Each time the clinic door opened, he glimpsed the crowd outside—no sign of reduction, growing denser as the sun climbed higher.

At this pace, no more than fifty patients could be seen in a day, and even that assumed Kraft could sit motionless from dawn to dusk without food, water, or movement.

Clearly impossible. Kraft couldn't possibly remain glued to his chair all day; urgent matters would inevitably pull him away.

The temporary ward still held many patients confirmed the previous night as eligible for artificial pneumothorax; leaving them to Dai Wei would only pile up more cases, and they had to be treated before the ward filled again.

He was glad he'd filtered out most of them last night—even so, over a dozen still required intervention.

With two sets of equipment—using one while sterilizing the other at maximum speed—it still consumed his lunch break and half the afternoon, half of which was spent reviewing the original medical records.

Even after a second round of editing and revision, the final versions handed to him were nearly impossible to comment on.

To put it mildly, roughly one in every three records invented entirely new terminology; at least half completely overturned one or two volumes of *Human Anatomy*; a few even possessed the potential to replicate medicine's traditional art—invading literature.

They were either too verbose or too sparse, riddled with basic factual errors.

It wasn't entirely Dai Wei's fault; the raw information he received was of poor quality, and he couldn't reasonably improve it under such haste.

Kraft silently circled the problematic sections, tucked them into a drawer unlikely to be opened, to avoid having them discovered by Professor Weren during a visit and sparking thoughts of revoking someone's degree.

After finishing his work, he glanced into the clinic—Dai Wei was submerged beneath the afternoon heat and the tide of people.

New patients filled the recently vacated beds; assistants and apprentices shuttled between them.

Kraft himself successfully slipped away from the clinic, changed clothes, climbed over the backyard wall, and used the last stretch of daylight to check on Father Green's progress.

The weather was decent; he assumed they were still methodically eliminating possibilities in the labyrinthine tunnels.

To his relief, the Inquisition had not yet abandoned cooperation—they still allowed him to enter past the disguised sentries guarding the cemetery gate.

Kraft attempted conversation, but the guard claimed no knowledge of conditions below; his duties were limited to standing watch, monitoring weather, and fulfilling normal cemetery keeper responsibilities—stopping anyone who clearly wasn't merely there to attend a funeral.

It seemed nothing noteworthy had been found below; otherwise, someone would have already reported up.

After failing to conserve energy, Kraft decided to descend himself, inspect the situation, and speak directly with the commander.

The persistent feeling of being watched last night, and the malice behind it, made him suspect someone—or something—had noticed their large-scale operation.

This was anticipated, but he hadn't expected it so soon, or in this form—it suggested the drainage system was not as empty as it appeared, but rather a reversed reflection of the city's underground veins, exploited by someone with intent.

If not a misinterpretation of his spiritual sensory signals, perhaps similar signs could be found with Green.

Motivated by the self-reassuring notion that prolonged sitting demanded movement, and by his "kill and bury" sense of responsibility, he grumbled as he followed his memorized route toward the temporary camp.

The camp showed no obvious changes after a day—only a few crosses added to the sketch.

The empty coffin, originally used to transport supplies, had been repurposed as a makeshift table; a senior Inquisition official sat on the ground, elbows propped on the coffin lid, resting without dignity.

Beside him lay several sheets of notes with unusually rigid handwriting, as if a handwritten holy scripture had been shrunk onto the paper.

A team of monks just returned from the sewers sat against the wall, drying their boots, silently murmuring unreadable scriptures. They stirred awake at his entry, scanned him, confirmed no threat, then closed their eyes again, seizing rest before their next shift.

Kraft had intended to simply pick up the records from the table, but considering their relationship hadn't reached that level of familiarity, he politely tapped the coffin lid—*tock, tock*—to wake Green.

The priest sat up, sharply scanning his surroundings for the source of the vibration; upon recognizing Kraft, he sighed and yawned, surprised the inquisitive professor had actually shown up.

Without a word, he shook his head and handed over the sheets.

Each fragment of notes was numbered and labeled with the speaker's name, though it was hard to believe they could recall anything clearly after traversing so many nearly identical corridors.

Compared with the sketch, the search had expanded outward from the current corridor in both directions, with two teams operating externally to extend the known boundary; at least one team always remained at camp resting and awaiting rotation.

Feedback was nearly identical: all tunnels leading to the hall were built of similar brick and stone, occasionally featuring recessed niches on the walls, yet never yielding anything useful.

These repeated observations reinforced a preexisting understanding: these were not sewage structures, but rather subterranean passageways designed for transit, with alcoves left for pausing or crossing paths.

After traveling far enough, the tunnel inevitably branched—like tree limbs splitting, then splitting again.

Some ended beyond the reach of light, forcing teams to turn back; others had collapsed, impassable, with only water trickling through gaps among the rubble.

For a structure that could be called a ruin, such damage was normal—but each encounter left explorers with an inexplicable unease, a subconscious conviction that the engineering capable of preserving the hall's intact state until today should not have succumbed so easily to natural decay.

As the explored area expanded, the frequency of blocked passages increased; bricks and stones, detached from the walls and now large enough to obstruct the way, were found with what the monks called deliberate, ancient chisel marks.

One monk, intrigued, tentatively suggested these marks resembled construction traces found on ruins dating to the kingdom's founding era—distinctive imprints of immature stone-working techniques.

The conclusion: external destruction. Someone—or something—had deliberately and violently damaged these engineering marvels, to prevent others from entering through the tunnels, or perhaps to prevent escape.

Yet this was advantageous for the team: any blocked sections were inaccessible not only to them but also to the heretics; they could simply mark them with a line.

The real headache lay in the tunnels too distant or too branched to trace further—these they could only abandon for now, becoming dead ends marked by dashed lines on the map.

"Besides these dead ends and endless branches, have you found anything else?" Kraft asked, more interested in signs of movement—"Being followed? Fresh traces of activity?"

"No, almost nothing. The search area is still too small; it will take more time. More time." Green unfurled the map—radiating from the hall like the tentacles of an anemone, the explored directions nearly reached the paper's edge. "But I feel they're nearby. Perhaps changing strategy would be easier."

"Why say that?"

"One team reported that as they returned, nearing the hall, they sensed a faint glow ahead—but when they reached the tunnel mouth, they saw nothing." A number on the map was circled.

"Someone must have just passed through that entrance. That's the closest we've come to finding them. I plan to station a few men in the hall without lighting—next time they pass, they'll be seen."