[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies":3,"chapter-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-240":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Notes on Kraft Anomalous Studies",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2283718,4467,"Chapter 240: Concealment","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-240",240,"\u003Cp>Kraft saw Green the next morning.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He sat on a coffin, leaning against a small bonfire, his matted hair dripping water, steam rising from the folds of his clothes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sight of a soggy mop was at least reassuring—he was still sitting on the coffin, not lying inside it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was clear something urgent had happened last night; the situation had deteriorated beyond worse in a short time, forcing the one meant to hold the camp to take action himself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Most crucially, he not only had the courage to leave, but the ability to return—rare and deeply comforting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After all, not all church personnel are willing to compromise; losing this link would render their verbal agreement equivalent to total collapse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He saw no corpse, and the priest didn’t seem the type to sit on a companion’s coffin—Kraft felt slightly relieved and stepped forward to greet him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As soon as he neared, Green, feigning sleep, swiftly gripped his sword hilt and turned his head.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His mental state was out of sync with his excessive alertness—he first subconsciously concluded safety, relaxed his fingers, then took several seconds to recognize the visitor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Ah, Professor.” Father Green drew a deep breath, snapping himself out of his daze, and halted the professor’s motion to find a spot on the coffin lid. “You arrived later than I expected.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Can you imagine I set out at dinnertime yesterday? Not everyone dares try again after an ambush in a rainstorm.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Ambush?” That keyword jolted his nerves; Green’s gaze sharpened.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Heretics. I suspect we’ve been noticed all along. Most of them stayed behind forever, but your people suffered losses too.” Kraft expressed deep regret for the fallen monks. “My condolences.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Green showed no great emotion; his reaction was contained within a brief suffocation, his response sluggish to this shocking news.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The Father will receive their souls, lifting them into the blessed realm.” His fingers turned the sword hilt; the feeble flame cast a blurred, oxidized yellow glow along the winged guard, his gaze drifting unconsciously with the light spot until it vanished into the shadows beneath broken pottery.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“They merely went ahead, waiting for us to fulfill our duties before reuniting.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He stared blankly at the tangled shadows that had swallowed the faint glow, then added, “And the Church tends to what remains of them in this world—their honor, their property, their families.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The professor wisely refrained from interrupting, letting Green sink into this state, as if praying or convincing himself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lingering fear, grief, aimless terror and rage surfaced in turns across his expression, nearly bursting forth—but as the prayer words, seemingly carved onto his tongue, flowed smoothly, they were gradually smoothed from his face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Through this, he seemed to rediscover some anchor—or gain temporary numbness. Minutes later, the weary but as steady as ever priest returned.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Tell me about the ambush you encountered.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“It’s hard to put into words.” How could one describe encountering heretics wielding Ranami flying blades?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“They didn’t look like trained fighters—dispatching most of them wasn’t hard. The problem was one of them performed some kind of... ‘heretical evil trick’—something that defies reason.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft chose a phrase he thought might facilitate communication, observing the priest’s reaction.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>By now, the conversation would inevitably turn to deeper matters, and people’s responses to cognitive upheaval could not be predicted from ordinary impressions—some collapsed on the spot, others erupted in despair, or developed pathological cravings—unpredictable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Anomaly? Or anomaly phenomenon? I think that’s what you mean—a technical term for things whose logic can’t be explained, like...”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Green stopped mid-sentence, realizing someone was staring at him with astonishment, as if watching some rare spectacle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What? Do I look like a man who’s only ever read the Holy Scripture? The church’s library may be no smaller than a university’s. Understanding the Lord’s will demands knowledge broader than mere scholarship.” Realizing he’d been trapped in a stereotype, he ruthlessly exposed its fallacy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Clergy who reach this position have all undergone training in grammar, logic, and rhetoric; those who advance further take electives in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and church music, with major ecclesiastical academies available for deeper study.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“At the very least, you must know how to name something accurately, without ambiguity.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Apologies—prejudice always blinds the eyes of mortals.” Kraft frankly admitted his error, yet still doubted the priest would easily accept certain things.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“In any case, I’ve found something extraordinary—something you’d never imagine—that might secure us aid. No one could remain indifferent.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unexpectedly, Green showed no immediate interest; instead, he asked a secondary question: “How many have seen it?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“So far, only the man you sent to notify us. Even they saw little—I exercised restraint. I won’t let unrelated people know what they shouldn’t.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“That’s not too bad.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Why say that?” The implication suggested the priest was desperately limiting knowledge—even dividing his own people into reliable and unreliable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Because of something you absolutely wouldn’t imagine.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft’s words were thrown back at him verbatim. As he puzzled over this, Green rose from the coffin and lifted the lid.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Inside the coffin, meant to conceal, lay a red-brown, bloated humanoid form, its surface still marked with charred burn marks.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Armor? Where did you dig this up?” His first reaction was shock, then instinctive regret.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“In the waterway—but I’m not sure it was the waterway we thought it was.” Green’s expression was so dark it could drip water; the suppressed emotions surged back upon seeing the armor, rising with a sour taste to his throat, making his voice hoarse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“More precisely, we didn’t find it—it found us. And that waterway... now I think about it, it felt as if it had been stitched into the normal tunnel and then removed.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A strange, illogical phrasing—impossible to imagine a waterway being pasted and peeled away like torn paper. But to the discerning ear, chaos and illogic were themselves the hallmark.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“And then?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What does this look like to you?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Following his gaze, Kraft’s attention shifted from the charred mass vaguely visible inside the armor to the breastplate, to the faint golden pattern there—a word long on his lips slipped out.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Excalibur?!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In an instant, countless seemingly unrelated pieces of information snapped together—dense threads weaving and branching in countless directions, yet pointing to nothing clear.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Lower your voice—we must keep this secret.” Green wished he could sew shut that mouth. Seeing Kraft still hadn’t fully grasped it, he voiced his greatest fear: “No one will risk getting entangled in royal troubles over a ‘minor heresy.’ You understand what I mean?”\u003C\u002Fp>",1081,"2026-06-20T02:15:56.940Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","3f95bc987cee62d16f3fa85f0988be7976059bdf2d0e67765f446e107b0eea4c","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-241","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-239",406,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fnotes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-cover.jpg"]