Chapter 239: Solid-Liquid Transformation

Inside the manor of the Xigu Manor, a surgery with poor timing but an excellent location had just been completed.

The lead surgeon, or rather the lead chiseler, after finishing the work, used the excuse of needing rest to decline the evening's discussion invitation, left the scene, left the assistant to observe the patient's vital signs, and slipped away to a secluded, pre-prepared small room.

A cultivator guarded the door, preventing all eavesdroppers. Next door, the bodies of the Xun Sect martyrs that could still be found on the spot after the attack ended were temporarily stored; while on this side was stored a thing wrapped in multiple layers of cloth, from which only the human silhouette could be discerned.

Only a little blood seeped out from it; the fatal wound at the neck had drained away the vast majority of the life-sustaining circulating fluid, causing death within seconds, proving that the human component still accounted for a significant proportion within it.

Due to some precedents, several coils of rope were wound around the human form, firmly fixing it to a heavy solid-wood table.

【As if afraid it might come back to life.】

This was how they evaluated it, but what they did not know was that the hypothetical situation during the processing was exactly this.

However, it now appears that such a solid fixation was largely unnecessary, and it only increased the difficulty of unwrapping.

Kraft placed his hand on the tightly wrapped human form, felt it for a while, confirmed there were no signs of movement, locked the door from the inside, and took out a scalpel he had swiped from the table.

There were no extra instruments; including this small knife, which was temporarily used only to cut open the knots and cloth. With only one example currently available, rashly exploring in a destructive manner was very irrational behavior, let alone that this thing might still need to be reported to the Church.

He slightly lifted the wrapping and cut down from the center; the knife made by the Xigu family was very sharp, the fabric smoothly split into two sides and slid down, revealing a torso that looked unproblematic at first glance.

Judging solely by the exposed skin, one would probably think the deceased was an elderly person. The skin texture was so deeply wrinkled that tiny insects could hide within, loosely draped over the thin limbs.

But at the same time, one would also discover unreasonable aspects: the wrinkled skin had no pigmentation spots and was not too rough; indeed, by contemporary standards, it could be called smooth, approaching that of a middle-aged person who had gained weight due to good living conditions.

Upon examining the chest and abdomen, one could find the excessively overgrown skin layers of the abdomen, collapsing and stacking up like scales of flesh.

It actually reminded one of the effects brought about by excessive weight loss: the elastic support under the skin decreased, and the skin that failed to keep up with the speed collapsed, much like soft seafood gradually drying out and wrinkling.

But this manifestation was truly too significant; it looked more like a basketball with its valve core removed, its contents consumed and lost in large quantities and rapidly, leaving behind a shriveled skin bag.

"Setting oneself on fire, isn't it?" There probably wouldn't be a better way to burn fat; if the process were controllable, I believe many people would go crazy for it.

The facial features of the deceased had been completely erased by such intense changes; even someone very familiar with them would probably find it hard to recognize the original appearance.

But the deep skin folds themselves might serve as proof that the subcutaneous fat was once relatively abundant; in other words, this person might originally have been a fat man. That counts as a characteristic, after all, fat men are not common these days.

Kraft cut open the left sleeve, separated the garment threads already adhered to the wound, and peeled this severed half-limb out of the sleeve.

It was hard to describe as an "arm"; it could only be called a new thing based on the blueprint of a human arm.

It seemed as if the long bone had been severed in the middle, yet it had not healed in the normal way; instead, a set of condyles and epiphyseal plates had been constructed directly at the broken end, forming new joints beyond the shoulder, elbow, and wrist.

To make an inappropriate analogy, Kraft felt it was simply like an earthworm disguised as bone.

This earthworm-like new growth was not completely uniform. The five fingers became slender and uneven; one could even find a new finger joint in the process of formation, located near the end of the middle phalanx of the index finger, appearing as a smooth bony tumor.

The replicated metacarpals lengthened the palm, stretching the tight skin. The extra carpal bones, crowded like tightly arranged stones on an arch bridge, forced the hand into a curved posture, with the five fingers gathered and clustered.

Overall, all the changes made the arm extremely flexible, capable of performing abnormally many bends and nearly soft movements, while still maintaining skeletal support.

Rather, this was a transformation, in a direction far removed from human habits, towards something more delicate and difficult to control.

Given the opponent's thinking ability, they simply could not control the extra joints; in combat, they could only use the limbs in a whip-like manner, grabbing sharp objects and swinging them.

【Thinking of themselves as a multi-axis machine tool?】

Facts proved that hardware was one thing, and supporting control was another.

Kraft did not understand the principle; perhaps he would never be able to figure out the principle, but this transformation trend looked quite familiar.

He put down the subject's left upper limb and raised his right hand, the palm embedded with the foreign object.

That foreign object was embedded in the center of the palm; while on the back of the hand there was a hollow depression, the healed wound surface congealed with unknown black particles, as if something had originally been embedded there as well.

Recognizing the foreign object was easy; after all, being familiar with it was like being familiar with one's own palm lines.

When calm, the lusterless foreign object indeed approached the texture of a stone; the surface, untouched by dried blood, was a dull gray-white, so bland it was indescribable, as if the very concept of color had been washed away from it.

The stone fragment occupied the center of the palm, retaining traces of artificial polishing; the rest was an irregular fracture surface, looking like a small piece of a large geometric body, with crystal-like burrs growing at the junction with the skin. This position was not good; it would affect most functions of the palm.

Kraft rolled up his own left sleeve; since a certain day, he had rarely done so. As the sleeve was pulled up, some tiny stone fragments appeared on the cold-white skin lacking sunlight, with tiny crystals growing at the edges.

【The same thing.】

The difference between the two was that the deceased's arm had added some dark, near-black veins.

During the brief glance at close combat, Kraft had initially thought it was some newly grown vascular structure to supply nutrients and the like, but now it was obviously a wrong guess.

The distribution of these things completely overlapped with a portion of the superficial veins he could recognize, occupying the distal end of the arm.

After life departed from this body, they still maintained a fullness; in contrast to the shriveled skin layers, they were extremely incongruous, still filled with contents, yet without any pulsation, clearly having flowed back along the veins and stagnated due to cardiac arrest.

His fingertips reached toward that thing, stopped halfway, and instead used the back of the scalpel to lightly touch it.

Unlike the imagined blood vessels with stagnant liquid, parts of the inner walls inside were hardened, like calcified blood vessels, while most were something similar to wet, coarse sand.

Kraft chose a relatively thin one and pried open a small opening with the tip of the knife. Some black liquid flowed out, mixed with salt-grain-like crystals of the same color.